[Originally from awb-assp.zip; I edited out some message breaks. -- Jeff C] =============================================================================== Date: 03-07-94 Time: 04:37a Number: 2582 From: MIKE BARTELT Refer: 0 To: ALL Board ID: NETEAST Recvd: No Subject: Yeah, I know, enough. 1/6 872: U-Guns Status: Public ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gun Owners Foundation Assault Weapons Bans: A Solution in Search of a Problem Senator Kennedy: "...Are you going to make a recommendation to us to ban the manufacturing and production and the distribution of those weapons in the United States?" Mr. Bennett: "No, I'm not Senator...We do not want to - we've had this discussion before - interfere with the legitimate rights of gun owners and collectors and hunters." - Discussion between Senator Edward Kennedy and Drug Czar William Bennett during September 7, 1989 session of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some people think that the whole question of assault weapons is an easy one. "I don't need an AK-47 to shoot a deer," they say. Actually, there is much more to the issue. Some essential facts have been lost the supercharged rhetoric of gun control advocates. Assault Weapons Bills Often Affect Traditional Hunting Guns ----------------------------------------------------------- The primary fact is that a true "assault weapon" is a military firearm which can be fired either "automatically" (many shots per trigger pull) or "semi-automatically" (one shot per trigger pull). In other words, a true assault weapon is a machine gun - already regulated by federal law. The firearms that are covered by the so-called "assault weapons" laws are semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns. Some of these firearms are made to look like a military-style weapon but are mechanically indistinguishable from the traditional-looking deer rifle. The _Wall_Street_Journal_ has noted that national legislation banning these firearms could cover 20-30 million of them. Legal experts in the California Department of Justice did not believe it was possible to ban so-called "assault rifles" without banning -all- semi- automatics. [1] Some states have passed legislation just this sweeping. In 1989, New Jersey State Senator Frank Graves introduced a bill which defined an assault weapon as any rifle or semi-automatic shotgun with a magazine capacity of 7 or more rounds or any semi-automatic handgun of 18 or more rounds. Any firearm which uses a detachable maagzine technically has a "magazine capacity" of these large sounding numbers because it can accept a magazine of -any- capacity that fits in that firearm. Because of the wording used in this bill, and similar bills introduced in both the U.S. Congress and the state legislatures, a lot more people stood to lose their firearms than may have initially realized it. In this way, hunters and other sportsmen are misled into thinking that they have nothing to worry about. By the time New Jersey passed a semi-automatic firearms ban, state officials estimated 300,000 firearms in the state were affected. [2] Owners of many rifles or carbines designed to accept a detachable magazine of more than 15 rounds, owners of shotguns which could hold over six rounds, and owners of handguns which were designed to accept a magazine over 17 rounds learned that they owned "assault weapons." [3] By this definition, a Mossberg model 500 pump shotgun with eight-shot capacity, which is used by many police agencies and honest citizens, is transformed into a threat to society. So too is the Glock 17 pistol, which is rapidly becoming the choice of law enforcement for many of the same reasons which make it appealing for home defense - it is easy to maintain properly, easy to shoot and makes extra shots available if needed. California did have an assault weapon incident before it passed a ban on 56 kinds of firearms in 1989. [4] A psychotic individual, who passed California's 14-day background check for the handgun he used to kill himself, used an AK-47 during the commission of a heinous crime. Instead of drawing the lesson that gun control laws don't prevent crime, California's politicians decided to ban some rifles and shotguns and impose a waiting period on the sales of all other long guns. Unlike New Jersey's ban, Californians who owned banned weapons prior to a certain date would be allowed to keep them, so long as they registered them. [5] Like many laws passed in haste to score political points, California's new gun laws ran into problems. California mental health professionals criticized the new requirement that the mental health facilities submit the names of all patients to the state. Dr. Peter Gruenberg, president of the Southern California Psychiatric Society complained, "how paranoid do you have to be to see that as a possible infringement on your civil rights?" [6] Police officers learned that because they had pled guilty to certain crimes years before, they could no longer carry guns as police officers, leading Frank Grimes, vice president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League to argue, "I don't believe it was ever the intent to take away the career of a peace officer in the pleading of a case eight or 10 years ago." [7] By June 18, 1991, California Attorney General Dan Lungren felt compelled to warn California law enforcement officials to be careful in making "any seizure, arrest or prosecution" for possession of something "which may be viewed as an assault weapon, pending legislative action." [8] Lungren noticed that many of the guns listed by trade name either did not exist at all or were so misrepresented that "without some new legislation to correct or clarify them, enforcement is not practical." [9] Even before the Attorney General's attempt to clarify the law, most Californians who own banned firearms have not bothered to comply with it. Only 35,788 of the estimated 300,000-500,000 affected firearms were registered prior to the December 31, 1990 deadline for doing so. [10] Assault Weapons Not the Choice of Criminals ------------------------------------------- When the gun control side has it pointed out to them that their sweeping "assault weapons" ban will disarm large numbers of voters, they usually come back with a more limited bill which affects a certain number of scary-looking firearms that they claim are the choice of criminals. Actually, police departments nationwide agree that criminals do not prefer these weapons. The Chicago police seized 14,988 firearms in 1988, yet only 469 were semi-automatic rifles of any kind, including, as the Chicago Police Crime Lab - Firearms Section told an interviewer, "hunting rifles." Edward Ezell, Curator of the Smithsonian Institution's National Firearms Collection, informed the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 5, 1989 that police forensics officials agreed that the 12-gauge shotgun and the .38 caliber revolver "continue to be the primary firearm used in crimes and shootings." Captain John Cerar, the commanding officer of the Firearms and Tactics Section of the New York City Police Department, goes so far as to say the police don't even need to switch from six-shot revolvers to high capacity nine millimeter semiautomatic pistols because "less than nine percent of the guns on New York streets are nine millimeter. Of those weapons used in police officer shootings, the percentage is even less." [11] New York City has seen the number of police officers shot decline by almost two-thirds from 1971 to 1988: while 47 officers were shot and 11 were killed in 1971, just 17 were shot in 1988 and the five officers killed that year were the highest number since 1980. [12] There are those who argue that the danger will increase as more of these firearms are sold. Maryland Governor William Donald Schaefer, who has pushed for a ban on these firearms both in Maryland and nationally, claims that "80,000 assault-type weapons were sold in the United States" in 1990. [13] That sounds like a lot of guns to people who don't know the facts. But the latest figures available to firearms expert Walter J. Howe allowed him to calculate that over 2 million long guns were produced in the United States alone the previous year. [14] In other words, the number that alarms Gov. Schaefer is just 4% of a single year's production of rifles and shotguns in America. Governor Schaefer's allies also claimed that Maryland needed to ban these firearms because, as Col. Leonard Supenski of the Baltimore County Police put it, "assault weapons...have features that make them more threatening, particularly to police officers." [15] One would have to think this threat would manifest itself in some quantifiable way - like an increase in deaths of citizens and police officers caused by semi-automatic rifles. But that is not the case. According to the state of Maryland's official figures, the number of murders committed by all rifles (not just "assault weapons") dropped from 20 in 1989 to just 8 in 1990. [16] Rifles and shotguns of all kinds were responsible for just 5.2% of all murders in Maryland - blunt objects of all kinds alone accounted for nearly that many murders in the state (4.3%). [17] Also, according to the Maryland State Police, just one brave law enforcement officer was killed in the line of duty in 1989. [18] The FBI adds that the officer was killed "with a .38-caliber handgun." [19] While this tragedy grieves the community, it is hard to see how the proposed Maryland law would have saved even this life, since the officer was killed while investigating narcotics sales on a Baltimore City apartment stairwell. [20] Since it is already illegal in Baltimore to sell drugs, making certain semiautomatic firearms illegal will not affect criminals who wish to own one. It is not without interest that memos were circulated within the California Department of Justice which suggested that the sponsor of the California ban, former Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-LA) and others agreed not to include future studies on what firearms were used in crimes because these facts were "unlikely to support the theses on which the law was to be based." [21] No sense confusing legislators with facts. Large Capacity Guns Better for Self-Defense, According to Police Testimony -------------------------------------------------------------------------- On February 27, 1990, Col. Leonard Supenski of the Baltimore County Police testified before the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in favor of a "PROHIBITION ON THE MANUFACTURE, COMMERCIAL SALE AND PRIVATE POSSESSION OF ASSAULT-STYLED WEAPONS BY ANYONE EXCEPT LAW ENFORCEMENT AND MILITARY PERSONNEL - PERIOD. WE ALSO SEEK A BAN ON MAGAZINES OF OVER 15 ROUNDS CAPACITY" (his emphasis according to written testimony.). Yet a little over a month earlier, January 8, 1990, Col. Supenski testified as an expert witness in a case brought by Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse in their efforts to overturn the state Handgun Roster Board's approval of nearly all FIE-manufactured handguns as suitable for "legitimate sporting activities, self-protection, or law enforcement." Supenski stated that his objection to a particular .38 caliber revolver was based upon the need to remove the cylinder to reload the firearm: [It is difficult] to rapidly reload this weapon. ...You've got six shots and that is it. ...The homeowner always has to contemplate the possibility of reloading, and one of the reasons for that is the law requires you to retreat. Retreat to the point in your home where you no longer can retreat, and then you can stand your ground. Eighty percent of those [knock and grab entries of occupied homes] involve more than [one] individual. So the possibility of needing to reload rapidly and quickly is always present. FIE's attorney suggested during cross-examination that if reloading was so essential, "the best weapon to have would be an assault rifle with a 30-round magazine." Not wanting to be on record as justifying the ownership of AK- 47's, Supenski replied that, "no, the best weapon to have, IF YOU MUST HAVE A WEAPON, is a shotgun" (emphasis added). The man officially in charge of crime prevention in Baltimore County, after discussing how you or I must be prepared to face a gang of hoods bursting into our living rooms at any moment, seems to think that private firearms ownership is an "if you must" option - nice to have but not a necessity. Baltimore County residents now know that their police administrators believe six shots is too few and 15 shots is too many for civilians to have available to protect their loved ones. But when the police are allowed to choose their own guns, magazine capacity is a big selling point. "More" almost always equals "better." Even in 1978, it was standard procedure for a Philadelphia, PA police "Stakeout Car" to contain two .30/06 rifles, two 12-gauge shotguns, a .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun and a .30 caliber M-1 assault carbine. The cars also each contained 1,000 rounds of ammunition. [22] The Santa Fe, New Mexico Police Department literally brags that it has more fully automatic machine guns than the Los Angeles Police Department. [23] If the police who -visit- dangerous neighborhoods for a few minutes feel that they need a high capacity semi-automatic to ensure their safety, what of the people who -live- in those same neighborhoods? Surely these worried citizens have even more right to own such a firearm. Gun Owners of America Executive Director, Larry Pratt, knows all too well what goes through a citizen's mind during a time of danger. Pratt often reminds politicians that he has learned the importance of individual gun ownership during the 1968 riots in Washington, D.C. As a man with a wife and a young family, he had every reason to fear for their safety in a situation well beyond the capabilities of the local police. Pratt purchased the best high-capacity semi-automatic firearm available to him at the time - a shotgun. Had some of the firearms which are on many banned lists today been available to him then, "I can assure you that I would have bought one." While most Americans are able to spend little time thinking of what the police can do to protect them during times of domestic tranquility, there is no guarantee that this will always be the case. Citizens, like the police, have a right, and some would say a duty, to be able to prepare themselves against certain threats. Assault-Type Semi-Automatics Often Less Dangerous ------------------------------------------------- California's new assault weapons law bans firearms like the AK-47, which fires a 7.62 x 39 cartridge, and the UZI, which fires the same 9 mm cartridge which more police departments are turning to for their departments' handguns. Neither of these bullets will do half as much damage on impact as the .30-'06 cartridge used by an ordinary deer rifle. When firing comparable bullets, a 7.62 x 39 cartridge will generate only two-thirds of the muzzle velocity of a .30-'06 cartridge (2350 feet per second vs. 3140) and barely half of the muzzle energy (1495 foot-pounds vs. 2736). [24] Yet the .30-'06 was invented in 1906, long before the weaker cartridge used by the AK-47. [25] Why would the military want to switch from a more powerful cartridge to a less powerful one, as it has done? Mr. J. Bolton Maddox, a retired Washington police captain, flatly stated that semi-automatics like the AK-47 were designed to wound, rather than kill. [26] A well-placed shot from any firearm can be fatal. But obviously, a person has a better chance of surviving being shot by a bullet meant to wound a 170- pound man instead of a bullet meant to kill a 500-pound animal. Politicians Using Assault Weapon Issue as Political Ploy -------------------------------------------------------- Advocates of gun bans of this sort continue to claim that criminals and drug dealers prefer these firearms. The evidence suggests otherwise. Of the 72 murder weapons used in the District of Columbia in 1989 which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was asked to trace, precisely -one- was a rifle of any kind. [27] Of the 16,370 firearms seized in New York City in 1988, rifles of all kinds totaled 1,028. [28] (A firearm can be seized for any number of reasons in New York City, including a lack of the proper permit.) Politicians have sezied on this issue not because there is a great problem but precisely because this is a visible issue which appears to affect few people. They can appear to be "doing something" about crime without putting people in jail. Governor Mario Cuomo of New York berated the New York Legislature in 1989 for failing to pass an assault weapons ban in order to protect the police. But it turned out that no police officers were killed with an "assault weapon" during the entire previous year. [29] Similarly, New Jersey Governor James Florio railroaded the legislature into passing a ban on semi-automatics in 1990, even though "assault weapons were not used in any murder in the state in 1989." [30] Furthermore, the New Jersey State Police admitted they did not have "complete figures on their [assault weapons] statewide use by criminals." [31] Yet despite this lack of hard evidence that there was any problem whatsoever, a law was passed which made criminals of the owners of 300,000 firearms. [32] The events in New Jersey should remind us exactly what a ban on what many mistakenly believe to be a small group of firearms will mean in practice. Even though military-style semi-automatics are a relatively small part of the nation's firearms stock, a ban on such firearms must inevitably affect more traditional-looking rifles and shotguns. There is no way to mechanically differentiate the firearms proposed for registration or confiscation from the ordinary centerfire rifles honest citizens have used for sport and recreation for years. Now that Congress feels it can ban some firearms, despite clear wording of the Second Amendment, exactly what protection do other firearms have? Recall that New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested recently that Congress could ban the sale of 9 mm ammunition on the basis that they had already banned Teflon-coated bullets. [33] This ban, it is safe to predict, will have no effect on criminal behavior, which will lead to cries for still more stringent gun control. New York City's original handgun permit law was sold to the public back in 1911 as a way to stop killing. The City murder rate leaped 18% over the next 12 months. The legislature decided the law was too weak 68 times over the next 70 years - but fewer New Yorkers than ever feel safe in their homes, let alone their streets and parks. [34] It is also worth recalling that federal income tax was once a temporary measure that affected relatively few people. The dangers of most legislation become evident only after time. Those who urge compromise on this issue forget that neither the National Rifle Association nor Gun Owners of America is likely to be allowed to decide how the compromise legislation will be enforced. A member asked Gun Owners of America founder and chairman, Senator H. L. Richardson to investigate what he believed was police abuse of the California assault weapons ban. The member was shocked to learn that the police were being told if any homes in a neighborhood they were visiting contained registered "assault weapons." In one case, officers investigating a man sleeping in a car were told that a hazard (a legally owned and registered AR- 15) existed at the address the car was parked in front of. Senator Richardson, outraged at this abuse of the privacy rights of citizens accused of absolutely no crime, filed a formal complaint with California's Chief Deputy Attorney General, David Stirling. Stirling's response: The legislature has not specifically limited the use of this information and accordingly this Department does not believe it has the authority to place limitations on its use which were not imposed by the legislature. In other words, unless the government is specifically told not to do something, it feels free to do what it wants. Silence is permissive. Yet California gun owners are not allowed to interpret silence as an argument for protecting their rights. The referee is by no means neutral in California or elsewhere. Often he is all but wearing the uniform of our opponents' team. Legal Government Record Keeping Often Breeds Illegal Record Keeping ------------------------------------------------------------------- The government has shown itself willing to flout even clear prohibitions on certain conduct if it chooses to do so. California resident Mike Smith learned this the hard way in January of 1991. Smith was stopped by the police after three hours of shooting practice near the Santa Rosa Mountains. The area he had chosen for his practice turned out to have been an unmarked game reserve in which any shooting was banned. The Bureau of Land Management Officer involved in Smith's arrest took an interest in his Springfield SAR-48 rifle. Under a new California law, the rifle in question had to be registered. He called in the make, model and serial number of the rifle. It turned out that the rifle was not registered. But the police had on file who the rifle was sold to, when it was sold, and from what store it was sold. Evidently, the BATF had illegally transferred to the police already illegally obtained data from California gun stores. Gun Owners Legal Assistance Program is aware that BATF has attempted to compile a list of names of those who have purchased firearms covered by the state's new gun law. BATF has gone to individual gun stores and copied the names and addresses of those who bought "assault rifles." This "forward tracing" is illegal under federal law. Military-Type Firearms Are Protected by 2nd Amendment ----------------------------------------------------- Assault weapons legislation not only disarms honest hunters and sportsmen while not further troubling the thug and his already illegal and far more deadly sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, but it also cuts at the heart of the Second Amendment to our Constitution. The Second Amendment was enacted not to protect hunters and sportsmen, but to ensure that the government never had a monopoly of force it could use to oppress the citizenry. Recent events in Panama, China and the Soviet Union should remind us once again that when a government has a monopoly on the means of effective defense - like semi-automatic firearms - there is no check upon its appetities. Noted constitutional scholar Stephen Halbrook has documented that "[t]he British attempt to seize or destroy the arms and ammunition at Lexington triggered the revolutionary shot heard round the world." [35] Some of those arms were among the finest available at the time and helped win America her independence from tyranny. The British could not understand why the colonists wanted to keep their military-style flintlock muskets since the British Army was there to "protect" them. Today, the same question is asked about the paramilitary assault rifles owned by hundreds of thousands of Americans. The issue has remained fundamentally the same over the years. The Founding Fathers in their wisdom tried to guarantee that no future tyrant, be he domestic or foreign, could impose his will upon a helpless population. It is worth noting that the Supreme Court's statements on the Second Amendment indicate that military-style semi-automatics are specifically protected. In the 1939 case United States v. Miller, a case involving a sawed-off shotgun, the Court stated: In the ABSENCE OF ANY EVIDENCE tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" AT THIS TIME has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficacy of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is ANY PART OF ORDINARY MILITARY EQUIPMENT OR THAT ITS USE COULD CONTRIBUTE TO THE COMMON DEFENSE. [36] Those who argue that the authors of the Second Amendment did not intend to protect the right of ordinary American citizens to own military-style weapons must contend with the fact that at the time the Second Amendment was passed, the musket of the average homeowner was just as good (and sometimes better) than the firearms used by professional soldiers. This was the basis for the Supreme Court's statement that "ordinary military equipment" or firearms that can be used to "contribute to the common defense" would be protected under the Second Amendment. This nation has enjoyed 200 years of freedom because, like the Swiss and the Israelis, individuals have the right to bear arms that can be used effectively against would-be tyrants, both foreign and domestic. That is a far surer foundation for our freedoms over the next 200 years than some bland assurances that we have nothing to fear and never will. -------- Notes ----- (1) CALIF. POLITICAL WEEK, Sept. 2, 1991 at 1. (2) USA Today, May 24, 1990 at 3A. (3) State of New Jersey, Bill No. 166 (as enacted) at 5. (4) Washington Post, May 18, 1990. (5) Washington Post, December 31, 1989, at A3. (6) Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1991 at A21. (7) Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1991 at A3. (8) Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1991 at A3. (9) Id. (10) L.A. Times, April 3, 1991 at A11. The Times estimates there are 300,000 privately owned guns covered by the law, but California REACT chairman T.J. Johnston estimates there are at least 500,000 such firearms in the state. (11) Maxwell, _Outgunned_, POLICE, Feb. 1990, at 28. (12) Id. (13) Baltimore Evening Sun, August 20, 1991 at D3. (14) Howe, "Firearm Production by U.S. Manufacturers, 1973-1989," 35 SHOOTING INDUSTRY SHOT SHOW GUIDE 80 (1991). (15) Washington Post, February 12, 1991 at B7. (16) CENTRAL RECORDS DIV., STATE OF MARYLAND, 1990 UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS 42 (1991). (17) Id. (18) CENTRAL RECORDS DIV., STATE OF MARYLAND, 1989 UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS 165 (1990). (19) FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS KILLED AND ASSAULTED 1989, 32 (1990). (20) Id. (21) CALIF. POLITICAL WEEK, September 9, 1991 at 1. (22) WRIGHT, ROSSI & DALY, UNDER THE GUN: WEAPONS, CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN AMERICA 72 (1983). (23) Maxwell, supra at 29. (24) NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION, NRA FIREARMS FACT BOOK 265, 266 (2ND ed 1988). Ballistics comparison is between 125-grain bullet in .30-'06 cartridge and 122-grain 7.62 x 39 mm Russian cartridge. (25) Id. at 69. (26) Baltimore Sun, October 23, 1989. (27) "The Antidrug, Assault Weapons Limitation Act of 1989," Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, (Minority Views), at 18. (28) Ibid. (29) New York Post, August 21, 1989. (30) N.Y. Times, May 18, 1990, at B5. (31) N.Y. Times, May 17, 1990, at B6. (32) USA Today, May 24, 1990 at 3A. (33) Gun Week, March 4, 1988, at 2. (34) David T. Hardy, "Gun Control: Arm Yourself with Evidence," _Reason_, November, 1982, p. 38. (35) S. HALBROOK, THAT EVERY MAN BE ARMED 62 (1984). (36) Id. at 165 (emphasis added). =============================================================================== Transcribed on 10 Nov 93 from an undated, non-copyrighted monograph provided by Gun Owners Foundation. Minor editing accomplished where necessary to convert certain text (underscores). Reformatted for distribution in electronic file form. For information concerning membership in Gun Owners of America, or available publications, contact: Gun Owners of America Voice: 1-703-321-8585 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102 Fax: 1-703-321-8408 Springfield, VA 22151 Please reference the "Electronic Frontier" in your communication. --- þ OLX 1.52 þ He who laughs last found the dirty meaning. þ [R2.00q] þ U'NI-net: Lynn's Live Wire þ Sunnyvale, CA þ 408-745-0127 ===============================================================================