Debunker: Assault Weapons Ban Bunk

["DoubleAction"]

Today is: January 22, 2013

In the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting, President Obama has called upon Congress to enact a ban on so-called “assault weapons.” Such a ban, we are told, will “save and protect lives, while reducing crime.”

The United States tried this once before. After 10 years as the law of the land, the effects of the 1994 ban on “assault weapons” were so indeterminate that a 2004 study funded by the Justice Department concluded: “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” Congress permitted the ban to expire in 2004.

Those who want to reintroduce the ban point out that the number of people killed by firearms during the ban declined an average of 3.93 percent per year. But firearms murders were already declining before the ban was enacted, and in fact had declined at an even greater rate—4.17 percent—the year before it went into effect.

Moreover, the ban occurred during a general decline in crime. While firearms murders decreased, other murders decreased even more: for example, while annual murders by gun declined by 3.93 percent, the annual decline in murders by fire (arson) was 3.98 percent; strangulation, 4.56 percent; explosives, 9 percent. None of these were covered by the ban.

Read More :

www.humanevents.com/2013/01/21/debunker-assault-weapons-ban-bunk/

["DoubleAction"]

Terminology Writer Richard Lowry said that the term "assault weapon", used in the 1994 crime bill that followed the 1993 Brady Bill is a "manufactured term". This term is used by the Brady Campaign to refer to semi-automatic or self-loading rifles. Critics maintain this is done in order to conflate them in the public imagination with assault rifles, and the Brady Campaign has, on occasion, used the terms interchangeably. The Brady Campaign contends that self-loading and select-fire weapons are virtually identical, since a semi-automatic rifle may be fired rapidly.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Campaign

The Brady Center & The Second Amendment

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA V. HELLER

Amici Briefs

BRIEF FOR BRADY CENTER

#5
]4. The phrase “keep and bear Arms” refers to
possession and use of weapons for military
purposes
While the lower court thought it self-evident that
the word “keep” injects a private, non-militia purpose
into the Amendment, there is no historical or textual
basis to believe that while the right to “bear Arms” is
military, the right to “keep and bear Arms” is not.
There are, of course, multiple contexts in which “keep”
has an “obvious individual and private meaning[].” Pet.
App. 27a. It does not, however, have that meaning as
part of the phrase “keep and bear Arms” in a constitutional
provision referencing the importance of a “well
regulated Militia.”

supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/briefs/07-290/07-290.mer.ami.pet.brady.pdf

Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign, suggested to D.C. before the Court granted certiorari that it modify its gun laws rather than appeal to the Supreme Court. Helmke has written that if the Supreme Court upholds the Circuit court ruling, it "could lead to all current and proposed firearms laws being called into question."

After the ruling, Paul Helmke stated that, "the classic ‘slippery slope’ argument", "that even modest gun control would lead down the path to a complete ban on gun ownership", "is now gone." Helmke added that, "The Court also rejected the absolutist misreading of the Second Amendment that some use to argue ‘any gun, any time for anyone,’ which many politicians have used as an excuse to do nothing about the scourge of gun violence in our country and to block passage of common sense gun laws."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

.......In other words; The Brady Campaign, was one of many organizations that opposed our Individual Rights To Bear Arms, under The Second Amendment.