Archive for January, 2009
“Circumventing the law”?
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Government and Law, Self-Defense on January 26th, 2009
While reading the Wikipedia page on “assault weapons”, I came across this quote:
In March 2004, Kristen Rand, the legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, criticized the soon-to-expire ban by stating, “The 1994 law in theory banned AK-47s, MAC-10s, UZIs, AR-15s and other assault weapons. Yet the gun industry easily found ways around the law and most of these weapons are now sold in post-ban models virtually identical to the guns Congress sought to ban in 1994.”
I’ve heard that phrase used before. In a case right here in Georgia, a man was found to be in possession of an AK-47-style rifle receiver that had been converted into a pistol by removing the shoulder stock and shortening the barrel. Because of the weirdness of the laws, rifle-receivers that have been converted into pistols are legal, but short-barreled rifles (with barrels less than 16″) are illegal. The primary difference between the two is the presence or absence of a shoulder stock.
The prosecutor argued that the man was attempting to circumvent the law. The defense attorney stated, quite rightly, that the man was attempting to comply with the law (and was, in fact, in compliance with the law). Jury found for the defense.
When the Assault Weapons Ban made rifles fitting certain descriptions illegal and manufacturers modified their rifles to omit those features, they were attempting to comply with the law, not circumvent it. If I take the shoulder stock off my AK-47-style rifle so as to allow me to legally cut the barrel down below 16″, I’m attempting to comply with the law, not circumvent it.
Watch for this shitty semantic trick. Law enforcement, legislators, and prosecutors do it very often. You made the laws, you assholes! Don’t blame us when we comply with them and you don’t get what you thought you were going to get!
Assault Weapons Ban
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Self-Defense on January 9th, 2009
What with the new administration, I have started getting mail from the Bradys pushing for another assault weapons ban. The previous assault weapons ban expired in 2004. This video clarifies the confusion and misunderstanding about firearms that is brought about by the inaccurate term, “assault weapon”.
For those who don’t want to spend ten minutes watching the video: “Assault weapon” is a made-up term for rifles that have certain cosmetic features, such as a collapsible stock or barrel shroud. Some of these features do have functional effects–for example, a collapsible stock makes it easier to store and transport a rifle, by shortening its overall length and a barrel shroud protects the user of the rifle from burns if the barrel gets hot from firing–but these functional effects do not change the overall deadliness of the weapon. Guns without a barrel shroud, collapsible stock, and other prohibited cosmetic features, function in exactly the same manner as those with prohibited cosmetic features.
Rifles that have these “evil” features were illegal under the old assault weapons ban. Other rifles that were functionally completely identical to banned rifles were completely legal, as long as they did not have the prohibited cosmetic features. This is demonstrated very vividly at about 7:00 into the video, where the author takes a legal “hunting-style” rifle and converts it to a would-be-illegal-under-the-AWB “assault weapon” simply by changing out the stock.
When you start hearing about the “assault weapons” ban or laws banning “military-style” weapons, keep in mind that these laws are analogous to banning a car based on whether it has a spoiler or not. Functionally, the guns that would be banned are completely identical to “hunting” or “sporting” weapons in every way except for cosmetic features, and these cosmetic features do not fundamentally increase the deadliness of the weapons. So-called “assault weapons” are not fully automatic and they are not used by any military force in the world. (Fully automatic weapons are heavily regulated under other laws that are not related to “assault weapons” bans.) “Assault weapons” bans arbitrarily make certain guns illegal solely based on the fact that they look scary or look like military weapons, and that is a bad criteria for which to limit the legal rights of the people.
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