Posts Tagged guns

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.