Pelosi: “Assault Magazines” Have To Be Outlawed

Yes you read that correctly. Nancy Pelosi used the term “assault magazines in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in talking about how the kind of firepower allegedly used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings should be outlawed.

Before I continue, I have been guilty myself in referring to certain types of weapons, even some I own myself are considered by the left to be “assault weapons.” I have not cared what people have called them in the past, to be honest, that does not make them anymore or less dangerous than any other gun. However, in reading a piece by Jan Morgan, I think I’m going to stop referring to them as such. Here’s what Morgan writes:

My AR is not an assault rifle. It is not an assault weapon. It will never be used to criminally assault anyone. My AR will only be used for defensive and sporting purposes. It is simply a modern musket.

Continuing with that point, let’s define our terms here. “Assault” is defined by Noah Webster as:

1. An attack or violent onset, whether by an individual, a company, or an army. An assault by private persons may be made with or without weapons. As assault by an army is a violent hostile attack; and when made upon a fort or fortified place is called a storm, as opposed to sap or siege.

2. An attack by hostile words or measures; as, an assault upon the prerogatives of a prince, or upon a constitution of government.

3. In Law, an unlawful setting upon one’s person; an attempt or offer to beat another, without touching his person; as by lifting the fist or a cane, in a threatening manner. If the blow aimed takes effect, it is a battery.

No, she want to turn law abiding citizens that are exercising their constitutional rights into criminals. They are following Atlas Shrugged to a tee these days. A freeman can only be controlled through guilt. They are working overtime to make law abiding gun owners feel guilty for the abominable actions of others. They are trying to guilt them into freely giving away their gun rights for the good of the people. Don’t trust any of them. They are all tyrants.

I did some digging last night and found a few things. The FBI estimates that about 100 million US households have legal firearms and they also tracked about 350 deaths where a “rifle” was used. Semi-automatic rifles are some subset of that 350 number, but it is not explicitly tracked separately from bolt actions, pump actions or single shot rifles. So, the rate of “preventable deaths from semi-automatic rifles that are not needed” is no more than 0.00035%.

Then I went to the CDC stats and found that they estimate that about 8-10 million US households have swimming pools and they tracked about 3,500 drowning deaths, but they do not track specifically the subset of drownings that occurred in bath tubs, lakes, streams or swimming pools. So, the rate of “preventable deaths from swimming pools that are not needed” is no more than 0.035%.

Our government’s own numbers are showing us that swimming pools are 1,000 times more dangerous than semi-automatic rifles!

If we are willing to accept the premise that the federal government should infringe on our liberty to address unnecessary deaths, then we would see much more value in banning swimming pools! In addition, we would cause harm to much fewer individuals and we don’t even have to deal with a Constitutional issue.

Heck, we all know that swimming pools are a luxury that no family needs! We should only allow people to swim in government owned pools.

Or we could simply live with the consequences of individual liberty and understand that we can address evil doers whenever possible, but we will never be able to stop all evil.

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