Activists Mount Last-Ditch Bid to Extend Gun Ban

Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 9/7/04 | Joanne Kenen - Reuters

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gun control activists, health care advocates and law enforcement groups geared up on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort to prevent a 1994 ban on assault weapons from expiring next week, but even its most ardent backers acknowledge the drive is all but futile.

But the influential National Rifle Association gun lobby, meanwhile, said it would "not take anything for granted" as it works to send the ban into oblivion.

Ban advocates called on President Bush (news - web sites) to intervene and get Congress to act. But Bush, who in his 2000 campaign promised to sign legislation, has been publicly silent for months as the clock ticked.

The ban on such weapons as Uzis and AK-47s will expire at midnight next Monday unless Congress votes to renew it. While warning that high-powered guns and large-capacity ammunition clips could flood America's streets, even the most ardent backers of the ban in Congress admitted that it is almost certain to lapse.

"The likelihood (of extension) is remote," said California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record). House Republican aides concurred, and predicted that ban advocates would not have an opening to try to get legislation through this week.

"I'm trying to put pressure on the president," said New York Democrat Carolyn McCarthy, elected to Congress after her husband was slain in 1993 by a gunman on a Long Island, New York, train. "This whole thing is in Bush's court."

Several public opinion polls, including one released this week by the National Annenberg Election Survey, have found deep public support for the ban, even among many gun-owners and conservatives. But the NRA has fought it fiercely.

"The NRA is an extremely powerful group, there's no two ways about it," said McCarthy, adding ruefully that politicians "don't want to tick them off" two months before elections.

EARLIER EFFORT SUNK

The Senate did vote to extend the ban earlier this year, but as part of a larger bill on gun-maker legal protections that was later sunk at the NRA's behest. Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives strongly oppose the ban and have not allowed a vote on it. McCarthy had hoped to force a vote this week, but said she would not be allowed to bring it to the floor under House rules.

With the clock ticking, groups favoring a ban on the high-powered weapons have tried to draw public attention to it. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has a full-page ad running in the New York Times and Washington Post asking, "Why does President Bush want to put cop-killing guns back on the street?"

More than a dozen leading health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the American College of Emergency Physicians (news - web sites) jointly called for the ban's extension on Tuesday, describing gun violence as a public health crisis.

"It is a health-care crisis and it is an incredibly costly health-care crisis," said Amy Sisley, an emergency room doctor at the University of Maryland Medical Center, speaking on behalf of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

She said 90 percent of spinal cord injuries in the United States are caused by gunshot wounds and noted that $1.8 billion a year is spent on spinal cord injuries.

Major law enforcement groups, including police chiefs from big U.S. cities, plan to rally for the ban's extension at a Washington memorial for fallen police officers on Wednesday.

The NRA in a statement posted on its Web site dismissed the campaign for the ban as a "PR show to blame inanimate objects for the acts of criminals."

But warning its well-organized and highly motivated members against complacency, the NRA said, "We have come too far in the past 10 years not to pull out all the stops in the next week and a half to ensure that this ban expires as Congress intended, and becomes nothing more than a sad footnote in America's history." (Additional reporting by Maggie Fox)

[flashbunny]

hey, what does it matter? It sounds dramatic, and it scares people. Let's print it!

[supercat]

Yep. I'm waiting to get some more high caps for my Glock and I'll probably slap a folding stock on my AK as well.

Unless the AK was imported before 1990, adding a folding stock would violate Bush's 1990 ugly-gun edict.

[flashbunny]

threaded barrels, flash hiders and bayonet lugs were legal all along, just not in combination with two other 'evil' items (for rifles)

[TLI]

4 DAYS . . . 23 HOURS

[Squantos]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1209542/posts?page=12#12

Oh course I have !............:o)

Stay safe !

[Widows Son]

Is it just me, or is there something very signifigant that he is holding an empty gun? Somehow it seems very appropriate.

[Melas]

Can't be true. I just read recently that automobile accidents account for most SCI's, so how could guns be accountable for 90%?

[philman_36]

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

[William Tell]

Billthedrill said: "This stuff took all of 30 seconds to check. Reuters didn't."

Few of us subscribe directly to Reuters. Instead, some of us subscribe to liberal newspapers which print this false garbage.

If you are a Freeper who pays such a liberal newspaper several hundred dollars a year to have them publish such lies, then you are paying your hard earned money to people who are working to destroy what you believe in.

Stop it. Stop now. Send a copy of the posted Reuter's article to your newspaper and tell them that you will re-subscribe when they cease printing these lies.

[tertiary01]

What do you want to bet that within a week or so of it expiring there will be a oh so convenient shooting incident that they will blame on Bush!!

[kitchen]

From a link provided at the National Institute of Health Spinal Cord Injuries page:

Spinalcord Injury Information Network

Facts and Figures at a Glance - August 2004

Etiology:
Since 2000, motor vehicle crashes account for 50.4% of reported SCI cases. The next most common cause of SCI is falls, followed by acts of violence (primarily gunshot wounds), and recreational sporting activities. The proportion of injuries that are due to sports has decreased over time while the proportion of injuries due to falls has increased. Acts of violence caused 13.3% of spinal cord injuries prior to 1980, and peaked between 1990 and 1999 at 21.8% before declining to only 11.2% since 2000.

Amy Sisley of Physicians for Social Responsibility is clearly a liar.

[FreeReign]

Gun control activists, health care advocates and law enforcement groups geared up on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort to prevent a 1994 ban on assault weapons from expiring next week, but even its most ardent backers acknowledge the drive is all but futile.

Hillary will make this ban expiration a big part of her campaign in 2008. Look what those mean Republicans did, is what she will say.

She is hoping that the ban fails now, just like in '94 she hoped Newt would succeed in getting a big R class.

The Clintons have always needed a "bogeyman" to run against.

[Richard-SIA]

UZI's are now made in Utah, and very available RIGHT NOW, if you can pay the price.

AK's are full-auto and not available, the guns sold since the Bush-1 ban are MAK-90's, and readily available RIGHT NOW.

So the author of this piece has no real clue what they are talking about.

The "ban's" that are set to expire affect only domestically made guns and magazines holding over ten rounds.

These bans will have no real effect on imported guns, and no real effect on the availability of "assault weapons", except that a few U.S. manufacturers may put the deleted items back on their products.

[Richard-SIA]

The FIRST thing I did today was to call my senators and congressman demanding that the damn "ban's" die on time.

[Redcloak]

[bt_dooftlook]

I think that bogus quote leaped out at everyone. There is no way to slice the data to show that the vast majority of spinal injuries are NOT coming from
a) motor vehicle accidents (esp motorcycle, ATV, and snowmobiles
b) sports (at all levels)
c) workplace (e.g. construction)

What think you?

[elmer fudd]

I disagree. According to the ATF my AK has more than 50% US content and is not an imported gun. Thus it's not subject to the 1989 import rules.

[Richard-SIA]

ARGHH!

THAT sentiment is a problem.

Bad news for you, the ban that is expiring only relates to DOMESTICALLY produced firearms.

Imports will still be restricted, via Bush-1's executive order AW ban.

We need to demand that the first AW Ban also be repealed, if only to prevent so many citizens inadvertently taking actions that could result in their prosecution for breaking a law they do not fully understand.

It seems to me that there is a legal principle that any law which is too arcane for easy understanding by the average citizen is supposed to be unconstitutional, but I am not a lawyer and could be mistaken.

[Unknowing]

". . . any law which is too arcane for easy understanding by the average citizen. . . "

Nah, it has been shown that even most lawyers don't understand the Rule Against Perpetuities, for example. And arguing about difficult to understand laws is business as usual.

[cajun-jack]

when you have an accident, the gun in your backseat goes off and shoots you in the back!!!!

Didn't you learn anything in elementary school?? I'm sure they taught that to you. ( lol )