Gun Control Nuts Don't Know What They Are Talking About

What they aren’t saying about gun control

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Sam Rolley

The Obama White house and congressional Democrats spent Tuesday criticizing Republicans for shooting down a series of knee-jerk gun control bills in the Senate late Monday. They contend that 2nd Amendment supporters are all but guaranteeing the nation will see another Orlando-style attack.

But what the gun control supporters haven’t said about their anti-firearm agenda is far more interesting.

Ahead of the gun control push, Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen joined her congressional colleagues on the left in a media blitz aimed at demonizing “assault weapons,” along with anyone insane enough allow them to remain in citizens’ hands.

“The fact is, the AR-15, the gun that (Omar) Mateen used, that’s a weapon of war; it’s advertised as being able do technologically advances in killing people that previous weapons have been unable to do and somebody who is buying that kind of a weapon isn’t buying it for target shooting,” Shaheen said on Mitchell in the Morning. “They’re not buying it to go out and hunt deer. You don’t need an AK-47 or an AR-15 to hunt deer. They’re buying it to do bad things and we need to recognize that and address it.”

That’s a particularly interesting, if totally false, argument for a few of reasons.

First, Mateen didn’t use an AR-15 to carry out his horrific crime.

As Bob Owens over at Bearing Arms pointed out:

The rifle used by the Islamist terrorist in Orlando was instead a Sig Sauer MCX carbine, a modular, multi-caliber (able to swap to different calibers, including 5.56 NATO, 300 BLK, and 7.62×39) rifle system that sometimes utilizes STANAG magazines common to more than 60 different firearms, but otherwise has no major parts that interface with AR-15s in any way, shape or form.

This of course, will make no difference at all to the anti-gun politimedia, who don’t particularly care about factual accuracy and who likely wouldn’t be able to tell an AR-15 from a toaster oven if their lives depended on it.

The confusion underscores a very important point about the insanity behind the left’s emotionally-charged push for a ban on black guns: It’s not simply a push for a ban on the sale of AR-15s or “assault rifles.”

As I pointed out the other day, the anti-firearm movement is comprised mostly of people who have no familiarity at all with the weapons they so fear. Detachable magazines, the ability to fire more than 10 rounds without reloading and semi-automatic action are all characteristics of the “assault rifle” platform. But there are hundreds of other firearms that also bear those characteristics.

Even gun control advocate Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor, pointed out that this makes it impossible for legislators to hammer out a ban which targets “assault rifles” only. Unlike many gun control fans, he knows what he’s talking about.

Writing in The Los Angeles Times, Winkler noted that there’s already evidence that the bans are unworkable in places like California and New York where they exist:

The laws, however, are largely ineffectual. Because these guns are really just ordinary rifles, it is hard for legislators to effectively regulate them without banning half the handguns in the country (those that are semiautomatic and/or have detachable magazines) and many hunting rifles as well.

Lawmakers have instead focused on cosmetics. The federal ban applied to all semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines and two or more military-style features, like flash suppressors and a bayonet attachment. California law tightens the rules a bit; even one of the military-style features is prohibited.

But gun makers have been able to easily skirt these laws. They just sell the same semiautomatic rifle, with the same lethality, but without the military-style features.

If the federal government were concerned about the lethality of firearms, any new bans would need to reach far beyond physical appearance. And in case you were wondering, you can buy a California-compliant version of the MCX rifle used in the Orlando attack right now. 

Disarming Americans would undoubtedly be easier if we gave the government some sort of secretive and unchecked power to deny gun rights to massive groups without explanation. That’s why Dianne Feinstein, who has maintained a career-long desire to disarm average Americans as she’s grown elderly in public office, offered that atrocious no fly / no buy bill.

As Reason’s Jacob Sullum explained, she even updated an earlier failed version of the bill to strip more rights from the proletariat:

Under Feinstein’s 2015 bill, the attorney general can stop the transfer of a firearm if he “1) determines that the transferee is known (or appropriately suspected) to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support or resources for terrorism” and “(2) has a reasonable belief that the prospective transferee may use a firearm in connection with terrorism.” The amendment Feinstein introduced last Wednesday, by contrast, lets the attorney general block a sale if he “determines, based on the totality of the circumstances, that the transferee represents a threat to public safety based on a reasonable suspicion that the transferee is engaged, or has been engaged, in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support or resources thereof.”

In the revised version, there is no additional requirement that the attorney general have reason to believe the weapon the suspect is trying to buy will be used in a terrorist attack. Hence an old lady who cut a check to a Hamas-affiliated charity (thereby “providing material support” to terrorism and arguably threatening public safety) could be stopped from buying a handgun for self-defense even if there was no evidence that she planned any sort of attack with it. Feinstein’s amendment also expands the dragnet beyond the FBI’s so-called Terrorist Watchlist, which is believed to include more than 1 million people, to cover anyone who was under investigation for “conduct related to a federal crime of terrorism” during the previous five years. The Justice Department would be notified of attempted gun purchases by people who fit that description, giving it a chance to block the sales.

Sounds sensible, huh?

Now, let’s revisit Shaheen’s idiotic gun-control statement with a focus on her claim that people are buy powerful guns “to do bad things and we need to recognize that.”

I agree with her. And I think the folks who wrote the 2nd Amendment would too.

Now, I know the left likes to put all the focus on the “well-regulated” line in the Amendment which guarantees the right to bear arms. But I’d argue that its authors, after dealing with some pretty terrible leadership themselves, might’ve hung more importance on a single word.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a freeState, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I suppose someone who has been on the public payroll for more than two decades might have a little trouble believing it— but a healthy skepticism of government probably had something to do with the decision to include the term “free” rather than say something like “sovereign” or leave it simply at State.

Maybe the nation’s founders even realized that governments of not-so-free states often like to advise the citizenry in one direction while the leaders move in another? Sort of like asking Americans to hand over powerful weapons, while simultaneously arming tax collectors to the teeth.

Via The Daily Caller:

The amount the IRS spends on weapons and equipment has risen since 2006 from around half a million to $1,070,456 in 2014. Purchases of guns and ammunition spiked in 2011 to more than $2 million, according to the report. Over the same period, the number of special agents the IRS employed declined from more than 3,000 to just about 2,000 in 2014.

The IRS spending, according to Open the Books, was included in a broader $1.48 billion spent “on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment” by the collective non-military federal agencies during the same period.

For a little perspective: There are currently 182,000 U.S. Marines at the ready to deal with attacks on the homeland— and there are more than 200, 000 armed federal officers with arrest authority to deal with its citizens.