Gun Control IS on Obama's Mind

For those of you that thought, and voted, under the premise that Obama was not going to enact gun control think again. In case you missed it about six months ago the Attorney General Eric Holder said,

"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,"

Now let me stop him right there and help educate those of you who don’t know about the Clinton “Assault Weapons Ban” of 1994.

The “Assault Weapons Ban” didn’t really ban any “assault weapons”.

An assault weapon is by definition a firearm that can be switched from semi-auto to either full-auto or three round burst by either movement of a switch or lever. The military has assault rifles like the M16 that by flipping a switch the soldier can go from firing one round per pull of the trigger to three rounds each time there is a pull of the trigger.

You can own assault weapons in the US only if you have a Class III Federal Fire Arms License (FFL). This basically makes you a firearms dealer, which requires $200 up front and extensive background check and loss of your civil liberties, because the ATF can check your house or store anytime they want to make sure that you’re following the federal law. These laws pertain how store your firearms, conduct your record keeping, etc. It is a big deal to get this license because in involves multiple fees and continuous back ground checks.

Under the 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” this was and still is the case. What was banned were guns that had “evil features”, and I put that in quotes because that is the exact language used in the law. A rifle or shotgun could not have more than two of the following:

- Folding Stock

- Pistol Grip

- Bayonet lug

- Flash Suppressor or Treaded Barrel (to mount a silencer on)

- Grenade Launcher

- *Also banned were magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds

There were some additional laws that pertained to pistols but to make my point this: No actual guns were banned per-say just the just features on the guns.

The law rewrote the definition of what the law considered an “assault weapon”. If you have a shot gun that you used to turkey hunt that had a more pistol style grip and any kind of folding or telescoping stock you were breaking the law. Granted, guns that were this way before the law was enacted where grand-fathered in, but what if you put the new aftermarket stock on your shotgun before or after the law took effect? There is no way to know. How do prove that to law enforcement officer that if came that way. What if you deer hunting rifle is say an old M1 Garand (an old WW II style rifle). It has the flash suppressor and the bayonet lug, again grandfathered in but how to prove it.

This makes my second point: No one ever died from a drive-by bayoneting. How many grenade launchers have been used in muggings? When did a thug, who is going to hold up the corner convenience store say, “my magazine only holds ten bullets and not twelve, I guess I will stay home today and watch TV”? Not to mention that someone that is going to commit a crime isn’t going to count the number of “evil features” on his gun before he is going commit armed robbery or murder. Last time I checked these were already illegal.

This law was, and might be again, a reason for the government to harass gun owners in this country. To take regular law abiding citizens who want to practice their Second Amendment right and make them a felon for it. That’s right, modifying that ten round magazine by taking out the spacer to hold twelve or fifteen and you’re a felon. And felons lose their second amendment rights for the rest of their life.

The face the Obama administration is putting on this is that it’s because of the drug war that is going on in Mexico. “If only we can stop the flow of guns from the US being sold to the drug cartels.” Seriously, if you go the link where ABC covered this back in February (here) one of the videos shows a man shooting a M60 machine gun, and is titled “U.S. Guns Arming Mexican Drug Gangs; Second Amendment to Blame?” Let me type that again, a man shooting a MACHINE GUN. Again unless you have the Class III FFL, pay a bunch of money and fees, submit to background check and let the government search your house without warrant, you cannot even possess one of these. These weapons being used by the drug cartels are obviously bought on the black market and are illegal under current law to begin with.

Instead of bringing back this legislation the Obama Administration, Congress and individual states need to enact are laws that slam criminals when a gun is involved. If you hold up a gas station with a gun the penalty should be twice or three times what a normal robbery would be. If you murder someone with any type of firearm the sentence isn’t 20 years, but 40 years. These laws combined with a public awareness program to inform people that these are the consequences of using a gun in a crime would protect law abiding gun owners and put scum where they belong, behind bars for a very long time. Not only would this approach be effective, but it would be guarantee have support of gun-rights activists, the NRA and the Republican party.