GOP To Let Assault Weapons Ban Expire

[filkertom]

This just makes me sick. Even more so because of these quotes from our "leaders":

"I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told reporters.

[snip]

[House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay said the ban was "a feel-good piece of legislation" that does nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.

Gaaah.

Comments

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Well, much as I dislike Rep. DeLay, I have to say that he has a point there. The Assault Weapons Ban didn't do anything to keep the weapons out of the hands of anyone who wasn't law-abiding in the first place. (shrug) While I'm willing to entertain the position that the average American citizen has no legitimate use for a working assault rifle (other than we're a capitalist economy so if you can afford it, why not, which doesn't hold much water), I don't have any respect for the criminalization of gun ownership by the responsible citizen. Course, I'm also the draconian fiend who feels that any crime involving a deadly weapon should automatically double the penalty and that any injury committed during the criminal act be returned onto the offender threefold... (grin)

[mtgat]

*shrug* And see, I read somewhere that, since the Ban was passed, crimes using the guns banned under it have decreased 60%. The article was in a magazine, and didn't attribute it, so I can't say for sure it's correct, or that it takes into account any rise in crimes using other weapons. However, if it's even close to true, um, I'm going to have to say the Ban was a good thing. Call me funny.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Heh. Undocumented statistics, my favorite. Here's the problem with things like this: they never define their terms. First off, the FBI does catalogue crime trends; problem is, they're usually about four years behind due to the time it takes to gather the relevant data from the cooperating agencies nationwide. Consider that they are gathering everything relevant to each crime, including some details like was a gun involved, were drugs involved, what the final charge was, and if a conviction was gained on that charge or if a plea on a lesser charge was made, etc.

So my first question would be, "What crime census was this 60% attributed to?" Since there's no attribution, I'm leary to accept that as hard data at all, but that ignores point #2: statistics can be bent to say whatever you like depending on the definitions involved. For instance, what happens if a city reclassifies one crime as a different category of crime? Let's say a felony is downgraded to a misdemeanor. Well, technically, when they go back and check the numbers, they will see a decrease in felonies for that time period. This isn't necessarily because the police force suddenly made a bunch of arrests; it could simply be because less felony charges were entered into the local judicial system for prosecution. What you wouldn't hear in a "tough on crime" speech that highlights that is a corresponding rise in misdemeanors, not coincidentally matching the number of crimes for which arrests were made under the same circumstances but which are no longer felonies. Still, you've statistically cause a drop in felonies; politicos can conveniently ignore the misdemeanor stats since the people aren't likely to press them for those numbers.

Actually, that leads to a third point: of the arrests made and the charges levied, how many convictions were actually made for those charges? I can think of one "tough on crime" politician back in my hometown who liked to point to the number of arrests made under his newer, more stringent law that he sponsored through the state house. Of course, what he didn't want you to do was find out that many arrests made under that law were thrown out and the law itself was eventually overturned as being unconstitutional... by the time that became clear, he'd already been re-elected and got the mileage he needed out of the numbers he was quoting.

(shrug) I call it like I see it. Banning ownership of guns doesn't stop criminals from getting them. Arguments can be made that criminals who were buying the guns legitimately now have to go through black channels to get the guns, but is that a legitimate restriction of the freedoms of the average citizen? Me, I'm not in Congress nor do I play with assault rifles; only reason the whole thing matters to me is that I support cops and want to see less assault rifles in the hands of criminals. The Assault Weapons Ban, from the data sheets I've read from the DoJ over the past six years, don't support that goal. It sounded good... but didn't have much in the way of teeth.

[mtgat]

Yes, and this is why I included the caveat that I didn't see an attribution for the data, or I would have looked it up myself. I like having sources. :) I tend to see a ban like this as not so much restricting criminals from getting guns through legitimate channels, but more restricting the availability overall of those same weapons. Type A semiautomatic rifle is banned. The gun owners who already have one quietly put it in the back of the gun case. The criminals who want one now have to go elsewhere and pay a lot more to get one through a back channel. In theory, for some of them it becomes more of a hassle than it's worth, and the ones who do go ahead and acquire one now have another charge on their rap sheet. *shrug* Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

It's the rational, calculation criminals we should be most afraid of. Most criminals don't think very far ahead in regards to their crimes; for the most part, the average criminal doesn't do the mental calculus of "risk of danger/punishment v. potential gain" that the Threat of Law approach has to assume in order to be plausible. See, if you make a law and say, "This punishment is harsh enough to deter people from breaking this law," you're assuming people are going to do several things:
1) think about the punishment and
2) believe they'll get caught.
The research that's been done on the subject gives this approach to criminal justice a hit-or-miss rating; in other words, it doesn't work as planned. People who commit violent crimes come in two types: the ones who'll commit the crimes because they want to and the ones who did the violent crime in a fit of passion. The passion criminals aren't thinking ahead in terms of profit/loss; they're just reacting, so the assault weapons ban actually did have some impact there. People couldn't use a machine gun to kill someone in a fit of passion if they weren't allowed to have the gun and were law-abiding enough to not buy one despite the law or hide one in the back of their gun cabinet. For the ones who were going to commit the crime anyway, though, this is just another step they have to take to have the tools of the job, and they're going to go do whatever it takes. Heck, you can go interesting places by defining a criminal as someone willing to achieve a goal no matter what the cost. (You can also end up finding some of our best-known politicians with this definition...)

[arensb.livejournal.com]

As much as I want to agree with you, I don't feel confident that I can pass informed judgment on this. Yes, it's good to keep guns out of the hands of people who would shoot up a shopping center. But I've also seen the argument that the assault weapons ban basically bans guns that "look scary," rather than on the basis of real characteristics. I don't know enough about guns to know whether this is true or not.

Then again, it can be easier for a cop to tell whether a gun looks scary, than whether it actually is scary. To say nothing of potential victims: it's probably easier to hold up a store with a toy gun that looks real than with an automatic pistol that looks like a toy.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Remember also that, until they can get the darn thing in their hands, cops have to react as if it is a real gun with live ammo. And it's just not that difficult to make even the most outlandishly colored but realistically molded toy gun look real.

[mtgat]

I'm kind of (okay, very) annoyed at the gun lobby. As soon as a bill is brought up, they throw millions of dollars at it, fighting and wheeling and dealing until the thing is practically toothless, before it goes up for a vote. And then, when the law finally goes into effect, they say, "Why bother having these laws when they're completely ineffective / only apply to a specific kind of weapon?" The logic, it hurts my brain.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Now on this, I agree. The various lobbies, not just the gun lobby, have WAY too much influence in DC and, for that matter, in our state houses. (And by "influence," I mean "money to throw.") The lobbies are an abuse of the republican system of government, each subverting the representation of the people by claiming to be the voice of either "the people," "the otherwise silent majority," or my favorite, "reason."

I'd like to see the lobbyists done away with, replaced by direct (though perhaps non-binding) referendums to poll the electorate as to what the voting majority really DOES think about all this stuff. Directly address the issues rather than the indirect method of propping up or throwing out a representative on what could be one of a dozen different issues.

[mtgat]

Yeah, but then we've got lobbyists I like, too, like the Human Rights Campaign people. But more polling would be nice.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

The HRC doesn't have tons of money to throw around. They're still fairly grass-roots at this point. Now, if and when they get the money to act like a 400 lbs. gorilla on Capitol Hill, we may not like them so much. My favorite lobby group at the moment is actually MoveOn, mainly because they're not throwing money at the Reps. and Senators but at the people in terms of "wake up" calls. Sudden shocks to the public conscience... it's a hell of an interesting approach. :)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Good luck. That would mean educating the populace with the truth. That, frankly, is a great idea, but hardly ever advantageous to those in power, which is why they work so hard to lie their asses off. [/cynic]

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

(grin) You, a cynic? NEVER! (/sarcasm)

Seriously, though... not necessarily the whole populace. Just the percentage that votes. (shrug) If the whole populace wants to exercise their franchise, fine, but as it stands now, we're not talking more than 20% of the enfranchised on a good turnout.

Still, I have to agree, educating the unsheared masses (the sheeple) would be somewhat risky. They don't like to think and are more likely to stampede than wake up when presented with unwanted things like "truth," "unvarnished facts," or "unpleasant news."

[thingunderthest.livejournal.com]

As I see it, the argument that the law doesn't keep the weapons out of the hands of criminals as they are already not obeying laws is limited in scope.

The legalizing of assult weapons makes it easier for criminals to keep assult weapons as they do not need to be hidden. Also if there is no civilian market for assult weapons, they will be manufactured in smaller quanitities and there will be less of a supply available for criminals to obtain and use. The opening of the ban will be a boon to the weapons manufacturing companies because not only can they sell to law abiding civilians, but the increased availability of the weapons will create an increased need for that level of firepower.

As I see it there is really no civillian need for assult weapons (out side of militia use) and self defense use of assult weapons is only a factor if they are out in the eassy hands of criminals and you are expecting to have to defend yourself in a full out firefight as apposed to a simple robery. I'm a bit leary of private security firms having access to assult weapons, unless they are guarding things that need to be defended against attack by paramilitary forces.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

The legalizing of assult weapons makes it easier for criminals to keep assult weapons as they do not need to be hidden.

Easier, perhaps. But easier than "no effort at all" isn't really notable.

Also if there is no civilian market for assult weapons, they will be manufactured in smaller quanitities and there will be less of a supply available for criminals to obtain and use.

Shrinking the supply only works if you shrink it small enough that they are difficult to obtain. Is there any indication that this has been the case. As far as I'm aware, there always has been and always will be sufficient supply, law or no law. There's too much money involved for it to be otherwise.

I'm not a gun nut. I don't own one, nor do I care to. But we shouldn't put in legislative controls based upon theory. Unless someone can solidly demonstrate that a ban does {not should, not might, but actually does in practice) restrict the criminal use of the weapons, there's no point to the ban.

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

I had three big problems with the assault weapons ban:

1) It had loopholes large enough to fly a starship through.

2) Criminals didn't seem to abide by it.

3) It limited magazine sizes, which means law-abiding citizens defending their homes could conceivably be at a disadvantage in a firefight lasting longer than a few seconds. Granted, this could be corrected with additional practice, but what are the odds of the average citizen getting practice time on anything but a static target range?

I do think gun education would be a good idea. Let's start with gun safety rules:

1) All guns are always loaded. If you don't think a gun is loaded, treat it as if it is anyway, just in case.

2) Never aim at anything you do not intend to destroy.

3) Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.

4) Be sure of your target (and what is beyond it).

Then reinforce with accident statistics--followed by the best available statistics on successful and unsuccessful home defenses. As a Second Amendment advocate, I get really tired of picking up my Tampa Tribune and seeing a gun accident story on the front page of the Metro section, and a story of a successful home defense on page 9. (That actually has happened several times, and the Tribune is considered a conservative paper.)

Having said all that, I do not support every citizen owning an assault weapon. I live in an apartment, and was considering getting a .45 caliber pistol similar to the M1911A1 I qualified on in the Navy. However, my roommate at the time, who is a patrolman in the Tampa Police Department, recommended a 9 mm. Reason? Thin walls. A .45 caliber ACP round will go through a target, and often through one or more walls, and could conceivably strike an unintended target, such as a neighbor. This is why one of the primary rules of gun safety is to be sure of your target. And the M1911A1 and other .45 cal pistols aren't even on the list of banned weapons. (I do support the concept of other people owning these, even though it's not practical for me to have one yet.) I believe the need for, say, a 7.62mm semiautomatic rifle like an AK-74 (the "modernized" AK-47) is extremely limited. If an individual wants to own one for target shooting, though, I have no problem with that. But as big a problem as the .45 has with traveling too far, imagine a high-powered small-caliber rifle round like the 7.62 (or the M-16/AR-15's even smaller, faster 5.56 mm round) in an apartment! That would be, as the Ghostbusters once said, bad.

My feeling is that the best possible gun safety picture would be that nobody needs guns at all. Failing that, the best thing we can do is to help gun owners match weapons to situations. It's time someone rewrote existing laws and smartened them up.

But the assault weapons legislation as originally written was just bad lawmaking. It had no teeth, and it hurt the wrong people.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

My understanding -- and I might be misinformed -- is that the assault weapons ban only applied to a list of specific models that happened to be popular at the time it was passed, so as soon as it came out, the gun makers quickly made new models which were not very different but were not covered by the ban. So a drop in the number of crimes using those specific models just reflects that the new models are being used in their place.

When the law was written (my understanding here again), the NRA decided that something that could be labeled an assault weapons ban was going to pass even over their tremendously powerful opposition, so instead they used their influence to have it written so that it didn't really mean anything. As much as it pains me to admit it, Tom DeLay is right on this specific issue -- the 1994 law is just a feel-good sop, it shouldn't have been enacted in that form, and it should expire rather than being renewed in that form.

If you want to complain about something on the gun control front, complain about the gun show loopholes in the Brady bill background checks, or shielding gun dealers and makers from liability even when they're knowingly providing guns to criminals, or even the fact that we don't have a rational system of licensing guns and gun owners, but don't complain that Congress is refusing to reaffirm a mistake that they made ten years ago.

--

In a separate thought from the above, I think that any absolute ban on owning a particular item or doing a particular activity flows from the mode of thinking that goes "I wouldn't want to do that myself, and nobody I really care about wants to either, therefore anyone who does must be crazy, so it's a good idea to protect society from them." Almost no one will actually articulate this publicly or even actually consciously put it in those terms, but I think it is the basic motivation behind banning anything that only a small number of people actually want to do. Banning things is contrary to the fundamental ideas this country was founded on: any time anyone is denied their pursuit of happiness by an arbitrary ban, we are all diminished.

Hold that separate thought

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

That separate thought makes damn good sense.....

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

I blame the economy. Who can afford a good assault weapon anymore? The ammo alone makes it difficult to keep in practice. [Only slightly tongue in cheek here...]

[seanmonster.livejournal.com]

Didn't Chris Rock do a bit about raising the price of ammo?