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#Post#: 17--------------------------------------------------
Feinstein Goes For Broke With New Gun-Ban Bill
DIR By: kwslater
Date: January 2, 2013, 5:52 am
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)—author of the federal “assault
weapon” and “large” ammunition magazine ban of 1994-2004—has
announced that on the first day of the new Congress—January 3rd—
she will introduce a bill to which her 1994 ban will pale by
comparison. On Dec. 17th, Feinstein said, “I have been working
with my staff for over a year on this legislation” and “It will
be carefully focused.” Indicating the depth of her research on
the issue, she said on Dec. 21st that she had personally looked
at pictures of guns in 1993, and again in 2012.
According to a Dec. 27th posting on Sen. Feinstein’s website and
a draft of the bill obtained by NRA-ILA, the new ban would,
among other things, adopt new definitions of “assault weapon”
that would affect a much larger variety of firearms, require
current owners of such firearms to register them with the
federal government under the National Firearms Act, and require
forfeiture of the firearms upon the deaths of their current
owners. Some of the changes in Feinstein’s new bill are as
follows:
· Reduces, from two to one, the number of permitted
external features on various firearms. The 1994 ban permitted
various firearms to be manufactured only if they were assembled
with no more than one feature listed in the law. Feinstein’s new
bill would prohibit the manufacture of the same firearms with
even one of the features.
· Adopts new lists of prohibited external features. For
example, whereas the 1994 ban applied to a rifle or shotgun the
“pistol grip” of which “protrudes conspicuously beneath the
action of the weapon,” the new bill would drastically expand the
definition to include any “grip . . . or any other
characteristic that can function as a grip.” Also, the new bill
adds “forward grip” to the list of prohibiting features for
rifles, defining it as “a grip located forward of the trigger
that functions as a pistol grip.” Read literally and in
conjunction with the reduction from two features to one, the new
language would apply to every detachable-magazine semi-automatic
rifle. At a minimum, it would, for example, ban all models of
the AR-15, even those developed for compliance with California’s
highly restrictive ban.
· Carries hyperbole further than the 1994 ban.
Feinstein’s 1994 ban listed “grenade launcher” as one of the
prohibiting features for rifles. Her 2013 bill carries goes even
further into the ridiculous, by also listing “rocket launcher.”
Such devices are restricted under the National Firearms Act and,
obviously, are not standard components of the firearms Feinstein
wants to ban. Perhaps a subsequent Feinstein bill will add
“nuclear bomb,” “particle beam weapon,” or something else
equally far-fetched to the features list.
· Expands the definition of “assault weapon” by
including:
· Three very popular rifles: The M1 Carbine (introduced
in 1944 and for many years sold by the federal government to
individuals involved in marksmanship competition), a model of
the Ruger Mini-14, and most or all models of the SKS.
· Any “semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle that
has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10
rounds,” except for tubular-magazine .22s.
· Any “semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle that
has an overall length of less than 30 inches,” any
“semiautomatic handgun with a fixed magazine that has the
capacity to accept more than 10 rounds,” and any semi-automatic
handgun that has a threaded barrel.
· Requires owners of existing “assault weapons” to
register them with the federal government under the National
Firearms Act (NFA). The NFA imposes a $200 tax per firearm, and
requires an owner to submit photographs and fingerprints to the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), to
inform the BATFE of the address where the firearm will be kept,
and to obtain the BATFE’s permission to transport the firearm
across state lines.
· Prohibits the transfer of “assault weapons.” Owners of
other firearms, including those covered by the NFA, are
permitted to sell them or pass them to heirs. However, under
Feinstein’s new bill, “assault weapons” would remain with their
current owners until their deaths, at which point they would be
forfeited to the government.
· Prohibits the domestic manufacture and the importation
of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The
1994 ban allowed the importation of such magazines that were
manufactured before the ban took effect. Whereas the 1994 ban
protected gun owners from errant prosecution by making the
government prove when a magazine was made, the new ban includes
no such protection. The new ban also requires firearm dealers to
certify the date of manufacture of any >10-round magazine sold,
a virtually impossible task, given that virtually no magazines
are stamped with their date of manufacture.
· Targets handguns in defiance of the Supreme Court. The
Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second
Amendment protects the right to have handguns for self-defense,
in large part on the basis of the fact handguns are the type of
firearm “overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that
lawful purpose.” Semi-automatic pistols, which are the most
popular handguns today, are designed to use detachable
magazines, and the magazines “overwhelmingly chosen” by
Americans for self-defense are those that hold more than 10
rounds. Additionally, Feinstein’s list of nearly 1,000 firearms
exempted by name (see next paragraph) contains not a single
handgun. Sen. Feinstein advocated banning handguns before being
elected to the Senate, though she carried a handgun for her own
personal protection.
· Contains a larger piece of window dressing than the
1994 ban. Whereas the 1994 ban included a list of approximately
600 rifles and shotguns exempted from the ban by name, the new
bill’s list is increased to nearly 1,000 rifles and shotguns.
Other than for the 11 detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifles
and one other semi-automatic rifle included in the list,
however, the list appears to be pointless, because a separate
provision of the bill exempts “any firearm that is manually
operated by bolt, pump, lever, or slide action.”
The Department of Justice study. On her website, Feinstein
claims that a study for the DOJ found that the 1994 ban resulted
in a 6.7 percent decrease in murders. To the contrary, this is
what the study said: “At best, the assault weapons ban can have
only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned
weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest
fraction of all gun murders. Our best estimate is that the ban
contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders
between 1994 and 1995. . . . However, with only one year of
post-ban data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this
decrease reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a
true effect of the ban. Nor can we rule out effects of other
features of the 1994 Crime Act or a host of state and local
initiatives that took place simultaneously.”
“Assault weapon” numbers and murder trends. From the imposition
of Feinstein’s “assault weapon” ban (Sept. 13, 1994) through the
present, the number of “assault weapons” has risen dramatically.
For example, the most common firearm that Feinstein considers an
“assault weapon” is the AR-15 rifle, the manufacturing numbers
of which can be gleaned from the BATFE’s firearm manufacturer
reports, available here. From 1995 through 2011, the number of
AR-15s—all models of which Feinstein’s new bill defines as
“assault weapons”—rose by over 2.5 million. During the same
period, the nation’s murder rate fell 48 percent, to a 48-year
low. According to the FBI, 8.5 times as many people are murdered
with knives, blunt objects and bare hands, as with rifles of any
type.
Traces: Feinstein makes several claims, premised on firearm
traces, hoping to convince people that her 1994 ban reduced the
(relatively infrequent) use of “assault weapons” in crime.
However, traces do not indicate how often any type of gun is
used in crime. As the Congressional Research Service and the
BATFE have explained, not all firearms that are traced have been
used in crime, and not all firearms used in crime are traced.
Whether a trace occurs depends on whether a law enforcement
agency requests that a trace be conducted. Given that existing
“assault weapons” were exempted from the 1994 ban and new
“assault weapons” continued to be made while the ban was in
effect, any reduction in the percentage of traces accounted for
by “assault weapons” during the ban, would be attributable to
law enforcement agencies losing interest in tracing the
firearms, or law enforcement agencies increasing their requests
for traces on other types of firearms, as urged by the BATFE for
more than a decade.
Call Your U.S. Senators and Representative: As noted, Feinstein
intends to introduce her bill on January 3rd. President Obama
has said that gun control will be a “central issue” of his final
term in office, and he has vowed to move quickly on it.
Contact your members of Congress at 202-224-3121 to urge them to
oppose Sen. Feinstein’s 2013 gun and magazine ban. Our elected
representatives in Congress must here from you if we are going
to defeat this gun ban proposal. You can write your
Representatives and Senators by using our Write Your
Representatives tool here:
HTML http://www.nraila.org/get-involved-locally/grassroots/write-your-reps.aspx<br
/>
#Post#: 18--------------------------------------------------
Re: Feinstein Goes For Broke With New Gun-Ban Bill
DIR By: DGivens
Date: January 3, 2013, 8:03 pm
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The most telling part is that she has been working on this for
over a year. They were just afraid to talk about it before the
election, preferring to claim that Dems did not want to take our
guns. I am not buying the holy high ground, this is not in
response to a tragedy, it is attempting to use a tragedy to
serve their own goals.
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