To the Times: The letter from Kim Osborn caused me to respond to many comments I have heard or read since the expiration of the assault weapons ban. About the Osborn letter, it’s always good to see young people express responsible opinions, but it’s always disappointing when those opinions are supported by inaccuracies.
After a dramatic opening, the Radnor High School journalism student goes on to define a semi-automatic weapon as an assault weapon that will "release a full round of bullets with one pull of the trigger."
I was not certain what that meant until I read on. An automatic weapon is defined as shooting "a single bullet with one pull."
Wrong. An automatic weapon will fire as long as the trigger is depressed until it runs out of ammunition. A semi-automatic weapon fires once, and only once, for each pull of the trigger.
Originally, the concept of an assault weapon was embodied in the German MP-38 and MP-40 submachine guns used in World War II. A weapon capable of semi- or fully automatic fire using a relatively light, but still very deadly, round for close infantry attacks.
One of the first statements I heard was assault weapons were more powerful than the police. I assume the speaker meant more powerful than police weapons. Interesting, because SWAT teams carry a variety of assault weapons -- M-16s, a variety of SIG submachine guns, and other nasty items that would certainly persuade me to end my evil doings were they directed at me. Even our local police have M-16s or AR-15s, a semi-automatic variant of the M-16.
Someone else commented there is no place in civilized society for assault weapons. Really? I hope the army and the police have a few ’cause the bad guys certainly get them.
I’m a law-abiding citizen and the Constitution says I have a right to keep and bear arms. Please don’t trot out that old saw that the founding fathers never envisioned machine guns. They beat one of the greatest powers in the world using, among other things, rifles accurate at three times the distance of the weapons with which the British were armed. Many in the British army thought it criminal that we would use such a barbaric weapon to kill their officers at great distances and leave their soldiers without commanders.
One I really love is "Stop the violence." Sure, but let’s define violence. The right-to- life crowd considers abortion violence. What about domestic violence? What about boxing or hockey games? What violence are we stopping?
Another popular mantra is assault weapons spray bullets. If you review the definitions above, you will see the original assault weapons did in fact "spray" bullets, as they were fully automatic. The weapons prohibited under the assault weapons ban were semi-automatic and only go bang once for each pull of the trigger. I suppose that a really fast finger could approximate a "spray" of bullets, but that’s a stretch.
Another comment was made by an inner-city preacher. He claimed assault weapons spur self genocide among African Americans. I wasn’t aware there was self genocide going on in the African-American community. Sadly, a great deal of young African Americans are shot, but it seems the shooting is often drug related. I’ll wager statistics would show assault weapons are involved only in a small number of shootings.
Many scare tactics prey upon our fears of being attacked. What is more fearsome than a big black ugly gun with a 30-round magazine and a bayonet on the end? Sure, that’s what we all know that drug dealers use in street battles and junkies use to hold up convenience stores.
Of course, there are no bad people, only bad guns. Imagine you are a felon about to hold up that store or drive down to the corner and shoot the competition. How are you going to conceal an 8-pound, 36- to 40-inch rifle when you walk into the store?
Or, driving up to the corner with your Kalashnikov in your Altima, you raise the 34-inch rifle to your shoulder and find there just isn’t enough room to put the weapon to use. These fellows are not going to use assault weapons, they’re gonna use handguns, or already illegal submachine guns, they are smaller and easier to conceal as well as easier to bring into action in small, confined places.
Someone commented that raising the ban would give terrorists, domestic and foreign, access to guns of mass destruction. I doubt very much that foreign terrorists are coming to this country for assault weapons when every black market in the world is selling stolen or surplus Soviet Kalashnikovs, Dragunovs, SKSs.
Domestic terrorists? Last I heard they were using heating oil and fertilizer, but perhaps they were law-abiding terrorists and didn’t buy during the ban.
Maybe the best comment I heard was at a meeting. The subject of weapons was not on the agenda, yet a lady stood up and commented upon how much danger we all were in since the ban had expired. She pointed out these very dangerous and very scary guns were once again flooding our streets and, I quote, "... they buy kits to make them even more dangerous...."
I’m stumped. Someone needs to tell me how to take a weapon that launches 115 to 180 grains of lead from anywhere between 1,800 and 2,500 feet per second and make that more dangerous. You want dangerous, get a short-barreled (not sawed-off, they’re illegal also) shotgun. The true dangerous weirdo will choose that weapon every time.
The assault weapons ban was feel-good legislation that accomplished little, if anything. I read many statistics that showed the weapons prohibited under this ban were responsible for a small percentage of crimes. The ban prohibited scary-looking guns and made no real difference to the general health and well being of most Americans.
If someone had two semi-automatic rifles, both chambered for 7.62x39, a common cartridge first produced by the Soviets, one could be completely legal and the other a prohibited weapon under the ban. If one had a fixed magazine and a straight stock with no military features, it would be perfectly legal under the ban, and in states where semi-automatics are legal for hunting, a nifty deer rifle. If the other had a pistol grip, flash suppresser, and a bayonet lug, leave it in the back of the closet ’cause its prohibited. No matter that it uses the same mechanism to fire the bullet and fires a cartridge of the same caliber at the same rate of fire, gun number two is wicked. Gun number one is not yet wicked, but perhaps we’ll get around to it in the next ban.
Please, forget about the gun control matter. Want to prohibit something that will have a real, measurable and positive effect on society? Ban criminals. Capture them, prosecute them, and sentence them appropriately. Don’t let them go on technicalities and don’t reduce their sentences or parole them. Make them pay the price of their deeds. Stop controlling law-abiding folks and start controlling the bad guys.
Also, commend the journalism students, but ask them to get their facts straight before they commit to print.
GEORGE A. ALBANY III
This is just one man's opinion, which I go along with. The ban is over, now stop prosecuting the gun owners and go after to gun criminals. Nod to my Dad for the link to this article.
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