A Ban on Assault Weapons in the US must go ahead
I remember hearing in the news that a temporary 10 year ban on assault weapons passed through the US congress in 1994. I thought, “this will be interesting”.
As it transpired, it wasn’t. Simply because due to various reasons including the fact that the time frame was short, statistics on crime and gun crime in relation to the ban were weak and unreliable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_assault_weapons_ban#Effect_on_crime
Yet the fresh attempt at a ban, currently at the stage of being discussed at the House of Representatives, should be brought to fruition.
Even if a new ban fails to put a dent in gun crime, there must be attention drawn to the issue and the legislation should be symbolic and a beacon for common sense and civility. How, on earth, can anyone possible argue the case that it is a person’s right and indeed his or her need, to own a machine gun? The type you see in Die Hard or Boys ‘n’ the Hood. They make a lot of noise, they cause a hell of a lot of damage, though in reality, they work like they do in the not-so-unrealistic A-Team…in that it is virtually impossible to hit the people you aim for. Your clip runs out and all you’ve done is put a shit loads of holes into two dozen cardboard boxes and a nearby Lincoln.
I jest, as the consequences of using such weapons are potentially horrific. They cause absolute carnage and put everyone else’s safety at risk. The notion of being allowed to possess an M-16 is an absolute farce. The fact that in the States you can currently get hold of arms like this beggars belief.
Funny enough (surprise, surprise) the pathetic and disgusting decision to NOT re-enforce the ban was because of George Bush’s actions. Or should I say, inaction. Here’s an article from USA Today dating back to 2004 when the ban expired:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-09-12-weapons-ban_x.htm
Good old fashioned unscrupulous politics and corruption, you can’t beat it. Forget the people, forget community safety, forget common sense…just be at the beck and call of pernicious, twisted organisations like the NRA and watch the funds flood on in.
A ban, should it transpire, may not cause a dent on gun crime, simply because most crimes are committed with small guns, like Glocks and other hand guns. Yet it is a step forward and symbolic more than anything. It will keep the momentum up for the anti-gun lobby (the fact there needs to be a lobby for this is a joke in itself) and keep the cause in the media. I only hope for the sake of our cousins o’er the pond that one day, sanity will reign true, and something is done to crush the prevalence and legality of gun ownership.
Filed under: Politics and Current Affairs: Lucky Dip | Tagged: Comment & Analysis, Politics and Current Affairs: Lucky Dip, society, US politics
LOL! Your arguments are idiotic. Firstly, the Founders intended the 2nd Amendment to ensure that citizens could have military hardware. Go to any decent library and look up the supporting evidence if you don’t want to believe me. Secondly, you’re ranting about a corrupt government and at the same time demanding a disarmed populous. Can you possibly see the stupidity of that?
Er, Jonolan, I know all about the US Constitution and what the founding fathers intended…at the time. Though, perhaps through not fault of their own, they were shortsighted enough to not realise how society would change. Unreliable militias and lack of government enforced law and order was the norm in the 18th and 19th centuries in the States. I think it is fair to say that America has moved on sufficiently since then to demonstrate that placing the responsibility of sorting out criminals in the hands of individuals is not the best idea.
How can every day citizens possibly be left with the task of fighting back against criminals using guns of various descriptions, when the risks to self and others are massive? Why do US gun nuts have such a lack of faith in law enforcement? And lastly, what proof is there that mass proliferation of guns amongst the populous leads to a decrease in gun crime and death by firearms?
Any cursory study of the facts will lead you to the conclusion that arming a population en masse is utter madness and stupidity of the highest order. No wonder things are so out of control over there, and any old deranged nut job (Virginia Tech?) can legally get hold of guns and murder people.
For goodness sake, join the 21st century and reality - leave protection and security to those best trained and employed for the purpose. No-one would employ me as a professional Heavyweight boxer, why do American’s self-employ themselves as latter day Jean Claude van Dammes?
Machine guns - fully automatic pull the trigger once and get a whole bunch of bullets - have been HEAVILY regulated since the National Firearm Act of 1934.
If you are going to be hysterical about something, you should read a little.
What the Brady Campaign and all the Left loves to call “assault weapons” are NOT fully automatic. They are semi-automatic. Pull the trigger once, get ONE and only one bullet.
Thanks for the clarification Zendo…I’m pleased to hear that mug punters, when they procure their guns designed for armies and fully trained militia, are able to only pop ONE bullet at a time towards random targets in fear and confusion.
Good point, well made. I completely change my mind after having my entire argument blown to pieces on a technical glitch, and am a fully fledged member of the Gun Nut Squad.
Where’s my NRA application form? I want to become a regional chair by the end of next month.
Quick point.
While in the US, people feel the need to slot into the deranged political parameters of that country by dividing pro and anti gun people into “Left” and “Right”, I like to think that in the UK, we have two separate camps that debate this issue. (And when I say debate, I mean, discuss every now and then when there’s nothing else to do, simply because it is a non-issue as it should be in any civilised country.)
Those two camps are not Left or Right, but, Common Sense on the one hand, and peculiar hobbyist/contrarian loon on the other.
The debate is a fair accomplie. Give people guns, and the liklihood is, under various auspices, they will probably end up going off and hurting someone. Or killing them of course.
If America made moves to completely disarm the populous and ensure gun amnesties and better funded and trained law enforcement then we might start to get somewhere.
John
I don’t even know where to begin.
First off, you’re British. You don’t live here. If you want to criticize US gun laws, feel free as you have. But ultimately your opinion has no bearing since you don’t live here.
Two, good for you that you’ve read the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. You understand the historical context but then choose to ignore it because they couldn’t have predicted the course of modern society. They didn’t have to. They provided a framework for future generations to operate in and had faith they would do so in a manner faithful to their intentions. That’s why we have the US Constitution.
Third, you’re expressing an opinion based on a 3 year old article! Why not investigate the issue with more recent information.
Four, as pointed out to you, you don’t have any knowledge about what you are talking about. Movie references are not reality! It is very hard and very expensive to own a machine gun here. You’ve fallen victim to invented media terms such as “assault weapon” that have no real definition in fact.
Five, the so-called “ban” that expired in 2004 and you are calling for renewal on banned NOTHING. It banned FEATURES, not functionality. If a gun had a specific combination of 2 or more out of 5 listed features, it was considered an “assault weapon” and couldn’t be sold after 1994. All the manufacturers did were to remove those banned features. The rifles sold as “assault weapons” during the ban were functionally identical to those sold prior to the “ban” but cosmetically different. That’s it. Not one gun was confiscated or turned in, registered or restricted in that time.
And the ban was an abject failure except to harass citizens, raise awareness of gun rights in this country and did absolutely nothing to reduce crime. The CDC agrees when they studied issue.
Six, why the call for “symbolic” action you know won’t have any effect? The 1994 “ban” was considered symbolic under the same logic. You don’t pass laws that restrict rights for the purposes of symbolism!
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It is the hallmark of ideology over reality.
Finally, why do you think the idea of legal gun ownership to be a problem? You like Britain now that legal gun ownership has been crushed (to use your term)? You like the skyrocketing incidence of violence of all types? You like that fact you are utterly dependent on the Government for your safety and well-being and if you attempt to defend yourself against an attacker, YOU will be charged with assault? You think that is correct? You think that is a reasonable state to live in?
Here, we still have the notion of self-defense of one’s person and home. That criminals are not elevated to higher level of protection than their victims. The UK wasn’t like that once. 80 years ago and up to the 50s, the UK was similar to the USA with regard to rights towards guns and self-defense. Only by ignoring centuries of common law and by legislative fiat in contradiction of past precedent did the Government take power to enforce its wishes and disarm the populace. And look where it has gotten you.
The anti-gun lobby is in retreat in this country because for the most part, the American citizen has woken up to the fact that the Government and police can’t (and have no duty) to protect them. They are ultimately responsible for their own safety. Most people here believe (correctly) that gun ownership is an individual right guaranteed to them by the US Constitution. It will not be taken easily here despite that anti-gun lobby’s best efforts. And it won’t be the NRA fighting them. It will be people like me who will not be left helpless by the Government who legally has no duty to protect me.
For what it is worth. I could discuss this at length but I think I’ve said enough. Feel free to contact me if you would actually like to learn something and discuss the state of affairs in this country as they truly exist and not what you believe them to be.
Good day.
Thanks for your post Matt.
As I noted on your own site, I shall provide a proper detailed response to your comments over the weekend.
for now, I bid thee adieu
John
“I completely change my mind after having my entire argument blown to pieces on a technical glitch”
It’s not a technical glitch, it was a major part of your “argument.” It’s quite clear to any objective reader that your main problem with the AWB expiring is that now “automatic machine guns” are legal and available again. Well, they’re not.
So what we’re left with is you advocating a ban on what basically amount to scary looking hunting and target rifles. But you don’t understand that, because you simply don’t know a single thing about firearms.
I love it how the primary case against my viewpoint on the public ownership of firearms is…I don’t know my guns. I.e. I have little idea of what one type of gun does over another, because I don’t spend my geeky life flicking through catalogues and getting a hard-on over some black steel cobbled together in some factory by third world immigrants.
Hey, get the news flash here: I know I don’t. The fact I am not a gun enthusiast with infinite knowledge of guns dents my argument about as much as a gnat would dent my car were it to fly into it as I drove down the M1.
All I need to know to make my argument stand on legs is: a type of firearm was given a temp ban in 1994, which could have been re-ssued in 2004 but wasn’t and that the new attempts at such by the HoR should be successful in order to build momentum for the case against wider gun ownership in society per se. In other words, I support the anti-gun lobby, further reasons for this could be promulgated in further, sensible debate. But seeing as the majority of people coming on here have done so via ONE gun-nut site shows the breadth of opinion we are getting on the topic since I posted it the other day.
Maybe in a year or so, once this site is out of its infancy and more widely known, we’ll get a wider spectrum of opinion. As it stands at the moment, I thank you for your views Guav, but I think we wont get very far as you seem hung up on the fact that I do not possess a churlish child’s passion for playing ‘War’ and what happens when I press this switch on this gun, etc etc.
Go get hard on your gun mags, leave sensible moderate debate to those who’s minds haven’t been warped by the irrational love of violence and confrontation.
John
I shall jump in! I think there has been a major misunderstanding of how law and order works in the UK. It is entirely legal to defend yourself and your home from an attacker using reasonable force. The only person in recent times to be convicted of this was a man called Tony Martin, who used an illegal and un-registered shotgun, in the dark with no warning, to blow a large hole into the back of a teenager who had broken into his house. No, they shouldn’t have been there, but they were unarmed.
Also, this notion that we had really liberal gun laws here. Is was allowed to own a gun for hunting, farming, sport etc. That does not include machine guns, hand guns, or howitzers. The reason we now don’t is because a classroom of children in Scotland your slaughtered and people decided that they would prefer to just not have legal ownership. Maybe it went a bit too far in regard to sport, but no one in this country needs a gun. I have never read or met anyone here that claims to.
The major problem you fail to grasp is that the founding fathers intended citizens who lived in a vast country to defend themselves from invaders, not own serious weapons designed for war in 21st century cities.
My American chums, do you have any idea how many teenagers have been killed in the whole of London in 2007? 20. 20 teenagers in a city of around 10,000,000 people have been killed by knives mainly, a couple by guns in the last ten months. Can you please tell me the figure for, I don’t know, D.C or Chicago? Something tells me it will be just a tad higher. The reason we DON’T have a gun problem here is that we don’t have guns! When you read headlines here about a gun epidemic, I don’t think you have any idea what that means in Britain, that means A person has been shot within a month of someone else. Panic sets in here over two people people being shot.
Also, Canada. Something that you don’t mention is that Canada has more guns per head than you do, yet has a fraction of the gun crime. Canadians own guns in a way that many europeans own guns, for sport, hunting, farming etc. Maybe the reason for less people dying is that they don’t see the gun as a right, something that is for war or intended to shoot another person. They see it as something to shoot a Moose. Maybe you could comment more on the reasons for people dying rather than your need to own something intended to wipe out villages.
Kev
Sounds like you need to look up facts, instead of just watching movies that have faulty information.
Wow, you have said you read the constitution and the bil of rights, but have you read any of the works, like the federalist papers, leading up to the ratification?
People like you, who fear citizens with evil military weapons, are of the completely opposite mindset of what the founders had.
The founders feared a central government with a standing army. Their experience with the king and his soldiers beared out their decision to maintain that the whole populace should have arms equal to that of any standing army, because ONLY the citizens had a vested interest in freedom. To think that they were shortsighted about the advancement of modern society is extremely shortsighted.
Matt:
I’ll try and make my response and clear and concise as possible. I like to use numbered points to help aid this. Allow me to begin.
1) You are right, I am British and my opinion has precious little bearing on US domestic policy vis a vis gun control laws. Though as you correctly note, I am free to criticise and I shall exercise my right to say what I think about the matter.
2) My point is not that they failed to consider changes to society per se. I think it amazingly unfortunate for your country that a special amendment was set aside to make it rightful and legal for every day Joe Bloggs’s to bear arms. I understand that to make a revision of an amendment needs the support of the Executive AND two thirds of congress to agree. There’s almost fuck all chance of that happening on guns, which is why I indicated the SYMBOLIC significance of providing some form of momentum and public awareness and support for gun control. It’s worth hoping that some day, the ‘right to bear arms’ is eroded and made more realistic and amenable to a normal, civilised society. Here’s hoping.
I can understand why the Constitution was made hard to change…but quite why it was deemed necessary to make it a ‘right to bear arms’ is beyond me. Surely, if things got that bad and a government became all dictatorial and oppressive or King George invaded again, then the people would rise up and get hold of loads of guns anyway. The whole thing would be a fait accomplie, so the law was pointless and has ended up backfiring massively.
3) My article was dated 2004 and I knew it was dated 2004 when I researched and used it for my article. It was completely relevant and important for the article as it reflected all the necessary facts that transpired, contemporaneously, from the non-extension to the assault weapon ban. i.e. the age of the article is a moot point and irrelevant.
4) My hollywood references did not in fact betray a lack of knowledge or understanding…they were to embellish a point via humour. My point was, arm a normal citizen with a high power weapon, and the likelohood is - they won’t know how to use it properly and will probably end up killing unintended targets…or putting alot of holes into random nearby vehicles. I’m sure, if you read the section again, you’d see what I was getting at.
Media Term? Assault weapon? Look mate, I couldn’t give a fuck about what guns do what, it really doesn’t inflate my dick that much. All I know is, an Assault Weapon is a bit better and a bit more “kick ass” as you Americans might say, than a handgun. End of story. If you live in a house and you hear someone coming through the door downstairs, do you really need an unwieldy assault rifle to go and do your business? No. So why the need to make them legal? Ridiculous. It’s clearly an antiquated law than allows very strange people to get together and hang their towels off eachother’s penises while they pour monstrous verbal vitriol over non-existent ‘Straw Man’ liberals whp apparently are crawling all over America in a bid to institute socialism and the confiscation of guns. Get. Over. It.
5) You make an interesting point here, as you have provided evidence to show that the law was quite ineffective and served to prohibit little if nothing. I would ask then: What was the purpose of the temp ban and why, if it was pointless, was it instituted? If you could be balanced in an answer, that would be handy. I’m not really up for listening to a tirade against pussy bitch sell out Liberals and democrats etc.
6) This comes down to your persepctive that ownership is a ‘right’. I would argue that it was once considered a right, and now it is so far removed from being a right in reality, the law needs to change.
What are you referring to about ‘doing the same thing over and over’?
7) You apply the right wing American mindset to a British context, which is utterly laughable. This tiny country has a population of around 62 million (if you count recent illegal and unaccounted for immigration.)
Any liberalisation of gun laws here would bring anarchy and murder. Currently, gun crime is restricted to certain nasty areas of: London, Manchester, Nottingham, West Midlands. And in those areas, 75% or thereabouts of gun crime is caused by Yardies and other black drugs gangs. They tend to kill eachother and the guns they possess are indeed illegal. They are countered by extremely highly trained firearms police officers, who are monitored in every action they take. You cannot make the link between crime and gun ownership here.
Are we utterly dependent on the government for safety? Well, if you have to put it like that, in the most part, yes. The police do their job, it’s not up to individuals to form vigilante gangs. What would that solve?
In this country, as Mr Boatang rightly said, you can use reasonable force to defend home and person. Which essentially means that unless you use violence out of REVENGE, then the law will recognise your violent actions as legal self defence. So you have about as much knowledge of the UK law in this regard, as I do about the technical infinite knowledge about all the different types of black steel that happens to fire volleys of little bullet type things in a straight line.
The only people who believe here that the criminal is protected and the people left to suffer and die is the British reactionary Far Right newspaper, The Daily Mail. Which is guaranteed to make house prices rise and to cause cancer and heart attacks. I recommend you DON’T read it.
You say the anti gun lobby is in retreat. I would argue yes, but not for the reasons you ascribe. That’ll be down to the fact that for most of the last decade, there has been both a Rep Executive and a Rep Congress. Not really conducive towards the betterment of civilised conduct in society in my opinion.
Over to you, Matt.
John
“2) My point is not that they failed to consider changes to society per se.”
The problem is that the Bill of Rights, was a list of things that were considered God Given rights. Rights can not be taken away, privileges can.
“Assault weapon” is a made up name to describe Semi-Automatic guns that have scary looking features. They are no more deadly or easier to kill with than any other Semi-Automatic gun. Each pull of the trigger fires 1 (one) bullet.
I don’t know about the UK but here, the police and government are under no legal duty to protect any one person. If you call 911 asking for help they can say an officer is on the way, and they do not have to actually send someone. And if they do actually show up they do not have to protect you from being attacked or killed. I would prefer to have my any of my guns, then to rely on the police.
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat, a Constitutional Republic is an armed lamb demanding a recount.”
Can we clarify something here. An ‘assault rifle’ is simply a term, it doesn’t mean we think that people are running around with full blown army weapons.
Also this ownership thing, under the Firearm Owners Protection Act 1986 people were allowed to have any ‘assault weapon’ before the date registered and kept, so there are all these things all over the place, we know that.
But you are always running around in circles about definitions, which the classic sign of someone who has no real argument: ‘it only fires one bullett so it’s okay’, great. Well done, it fires one at a time. The debate is over guns, not trigger pulling.
Why do you need a gun like that at all? You say the police don’t have to protect you, but protect you from what that needs a weapon like that!
why is it a God given right to own a gun? In that case, I might start walking around with a sword, that’s been around for years.
Your argument would stand up if people didnt get shot. If you have a gun and he has a gun, then by your argument, neither of you would get shot because you both have guns. But you don’t, you both get shot. So what exactly was the point in having the gun? If you didnt, you would both be alive.
And this founding fathers crap, pah-leese. They intended for militias to be formed so the state didn’t require a standing army, not that every home and car have a machine gun. That’s just stupid. The state still controls you whether you have a gun or not, you pay taxes, you have an army that would beat the shit out of you, so how does the gun make you anymore of an individual against the state? It doesn’t, you just want it to because you’re paranoid. If it wasn’t guns you were militant about it would be something else.
Kev
1. “The debate is over guns, not trigger pulling.”
Correct, just wanted to make sure you were not confusing your firearms. Guns are never going away, government won’t let them. Even if they somehow manage to get them away from every citizen of every country, they will keep theirs and kill us at will.
2. “Why do you need a gun like that at all? You say the police don’t have to protect you, but protect you from what that needs a weapon like that”
Need has nothing to do with it. No one needs a car, but they can come in handy. If i absolutely had to i could ride a bicycle or walk 16 miles to work.
3. “why is it a God given right to own a gun? In that case, I might start walking around with a sword, that’s been around for years.”
Just for the record i’m an atheist. However, the right to protect one’s self and property has existed since cavemen times. Swords are a little hard to hide, and would keep you out some government buildings and some businesses. But whatever floats your boat.
4. “Your argument would stand up if people didnt get shot. If you have a gun and he has a gun, then by your argument, neither of you would get shot because you both have guns. But you don’t, you both get shot. So what exactly was the point in having the gun? If you didnt, you would both be alive.”
Unless they shot first i would not give them a chance to shoot me. Shoot first ask questions later. As soon as i even saw a gun i would shoot them in the head.
5. “And this founding fathers crap, pah-leese. They intended for militias to be formed so the state didn’t require a standing army, not that every home and car have a machine gun.”
Actually they did it because they did not want a standing Army. They were worried that if we had standing army we may abuse it, or that the government could use it to hold us down. An unarmed citizen is a slave. Slaves do not have rights and are at the mercy of their masters.
6. “The state still controls you whether you have a gun or not, you pay taxes, you have an army that would beat the shit out of you, so how does the gun make you anymore of an individual against the state?”
They can have my guns when they prey them from my cold dead hands.
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” -Benjamin Franklin
“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far” -Theodore Roosevelt
Sticks don’t get much bigger than .50 BMG
I think this comes down to: “what sort of society do we want?”
We clearly don’t want one where everyone is armed as we have seen the results of that. Huge death tolls, fear and paranoia. If someone wants to commit a crime, then they have the advantage and I can see very few situations where having a gun would help. In fact, it would hinder as it simply encourages criminals to arm up. Much like the scenario before World War 1, where the advanced countries were arming up and building bigger and better weapons thus causing an arms race. It resulted in war and everyone lost. No-one came out the victor.
It’s similar to countries that arm its citizens. There is only escalation, not de-escalation. The majority of criminals in the UK are not armed with guns but that would soon change if regular cops armed up and particularly if they knew their intended victim or house was armed. It’s common sense.
The only argument the yanks can come up with to vaguely counter my argument is in relation to rural folks who are many miles away from the police. I’d like to hear some practical views on that. Apart from desolate farm lands, there is NO plausible reason for arming citizens.
John
“I think this comes down to: “what sort of society do we want?””
What we want and what will ever be are two different things. We will never have a utopia in any of our lifetimes.
“It’s similar to countries that arm its citizens. There is only escalation, not de-escalation.”
Maybe you should compare your local crime rates with those of “Kennesaw, Georgia”, or even my home area of Camden County, Missouri.
I don’t hanker for utopia any more than you may. Of course it can’t be realised. But a society with a manageable crime rate and death toll due to firearms can be realised. Even in your country, although it would require time and sanity to set you free from the manacles of a national psyche based on fear, paranoia and gun-lust.
My local crime rates? I’m delighted thanks. Couldn’t feel safer. And I know of no-one who has heard of or personally encountered a disturbing incident involving a firearm. A) I’m not a chav, B) I’m not a yardie gangster, C) I don’t live in an inner city shit hole. Tick, tick, tick - no need to dress up as John Wayne and whack one off in front of the mirror.
Bonus.