Opinion
Fairfax, VA – -(Ammoland.com)- By the standards of today’s anti-gun zealots, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) seems at first glance to be aiming rather low with H.R. 1263, which seeks to add to the National Firearms Act any “semiautomatic rifle or shotgun that has the capacity to accept a detachable [magazine].”
Oh, don’t get us wrong. No reasonable, freedom-loving person would try to impose such a preposterous, constitutionally-suspect burden on such a large swath of America’s firearm owners.
But unless you’re actually proposing to ban and confiscate guns, and maybe even to nuke resisters, you’re hardly at the vanguard of contemporary Democrat firearm prohibitionists.
Only last year, Deutch himself was co-sponsoring legislation to ban America’s most popular centerfire rifles.
And even now, he’s trying to ban and encourage the surrender of the types of magazines that are standard equipment on the firearms Americans commonly use to protect themselves and their homes.
So what gives? Is Ted going soft on his hatred for firearms? Not really.
As usual, the devil is in the details.
We all know by now that anti-gun Democrats want to ban AR-15s and other highly popular and extremely common semiautomatic rifles, which is why they generically refer to them as “assault weapons.”
Anti-gunners in fact compete with each other in trying to find the most comically hyperbolic terms to describe these ubiquitous firearms peacefully possessed by millions of law-abiding Americans.
Deutch himself prefers to call them “weapons of war made for the sole business of killing people.”
Heck, “award-winning journalist and … author” Nina Burleigh even tried to one up all gun controllers by tweeting, “Almost every single person I’ve ever heard of with an AR-15 has been a mass murderer.”
But if anti-gun Democrats are so proud of wanting to ban “assault weapons,” why would one of them settle for the lesser step of regulating them under the NFA, in which case they’d still be legal but subject to a $200 tax, federal registration, a de facto waiting period of many months, and reams of red tape?
While the H.R. 1263 takes a lesser step than an outright ban, it also substantially expands the types of firearms affected by the bill. Usually “assault weapons” are legislatively defined as a semiautomatic rifle or shotgun with one or more “military style features” – things like pistol grips, flash hiders, collapsible stocks, etc. – that any serious person understands do not fundamentally change the ballistics, performance, or capacity of gun.
Deutch’s latest bill avoids this by drawing a much brighter line at all semiautomatic rifles and shotguns fed by a detachable magazine.
This is much more sweeping in scope than any “assault weapon” ban currently pending in Congress.
It would include not just centerfire rifles like the AR-15 and AK variants but even the sorts of rimfire .22 and .17 rimfire rifles used for target shooting or hunting small game like rabbits or squirrels or for teaching the fundamentals of marksmanship to Scouts and summer campers. There are tens of millions of these rifles currently in law-abiding hands.
It’s enlightening to see that anti-gun members of Congress, who claim to be focused on reducing “gun violence,” are more concerned with rimfire rifles used for plinking and small game than focusing on why so few criminals who try to buy a gun are actually prosecuted. Perhaps Congressman Deutch has a special affinity for squirrels, rabbits, and woodchucks.
About:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
Need to register ALL Democrats AND liberals soon. Won’t be quite as hard to find them when the SHIT HITS THE FAN !
Nina Burleigh even tried to one up all gun controllers by tweeting, “Almost every single person I’ve ever heard of with an AR-15 has been a mass murderer. Hmmm.. she reveals the sort of company she keeps. I know dozens of people who own those Black and Ugly rifles, and together they own well over a thousand of them. Maybe several thousands. And so far NOT ONE has ever used one of those rifles to harm any person. I wonder if she remembers the civiliain neighbour who, when he heard shots fired (from an AR tye rifle) at the church… Read more »
SOmebody whack this congresscritter upside his brick haid and remind him that this nation exists precisely BECAUSE Stupid Farmers with their SquirrelGuns plucked those Squirrel Guns off their walls, walked out their front doors, and began FIRING UPON THE ENEMY, at that time King George Three’s much hated Lobsterbacks. The greatest, best equipped, most highly skilled and trained, fighting force on the planet ws bested time after time over ten years and finally driven from this continent at Yorktown because “Stupid Farmers with their Squirrel Guns” know how to, and when, to use them. Washington State have already had their… Read more »
Weapons of war? Exactly the kind of thing our forefathers thought American’s should keep around their homes or with them when they travel.
Little bites at the big apple. Banning and restricting ownership and the exercise of total control begins (began) with the first national anti-gun acts and now we are down to the core of the apple and need to stop the process, even little moves as we don’t have a lot left to lose any more before it’s all gone.
There is so much that could be said on this topic, and who is the $$$ behind it but it is important for us to know, to LEARN from history: read the entire article at the link https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/28-12-2012/123335-americans_guns-0/ Americans never give up your guns Thursday, December 27, 2012 By Stanislav Mishin These days, there are few few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one’s self and possessions. This will probably come as a total shock to… Read more »