Posted on 07/30/2005 7:27:23 AM PDT by Graybeard58
Gun-control agitators were overjoyed when the City Council in Columbus, Ohio, unanimously passed an ordinance this month banning ownership of semi-automatic firearms.
Councilmen said the ordinance will reduce gun violence, but the ban is much more likely to enable violent crime.
Semi-automatic firearms are hardly the public-safety threat they're made out to be. They are used in a tiny fraction of crimes and always by criminals who don't obey gun laws.
As always, taking weapons out of the hands of law-abiding citizens will make them more vulnerable to gun-toting criminals.
Moreover, the assault-weapons ban passed by Congress in 1994 never made America safer. Its chief achievements were to erode personal liberties and give the uninformed a false sense of security.
When the Bush administration finally allowed the ban to expire last fall, gun-controllers predicted police shootings would surge and cities would be overrun by gunslinging gang members, drug dealers and other criminals.
But the most obvious consequence of that decision was to show just how useless gun-control laws are.
Executive Director Joe Waldron of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms called the Columbus ban a victory of "symbolism (over) substance; a flimsy sham that will only victimize competitive shooters, collectors and other law-abiding firearm owners. In terms of genuine public safety, this ban is a fraud, and its supporters know it."
Undaunted, Columbus has adopted the same failed strategy, and its first victim was its economy. Two months after picking Columbus to host its 2007 annual meeting and convention, the National Rifle Association decided to move the event to a city that respects gun rights and the Constitution.
An average NRA convention attracts tens of thousands of people. The Columbus Chamber of Commerce expected the 2007 event would have poured $20 million into the local economy and garnered the city copious free publicity from national news coverage.
Instead, Columbus is stuck with a worthless gun ban and its businesses are out $20 million; yet another case of gun-controllers shooting themselves in the foot.
Any politician that doesn't believe responsible law abiding citizens have a right to protect themselves and their families is a dangerous threat and should be thrown out of office.
As a gun owner, I don't know where I'm not wanted.
Go Spartans!
I had the opportunity to go to the OSU-Michigan game last year and some of the tshirts being worn by some of the co-eds were GREAT!!!
You're stranded on an island with a cannibal, mass murderer, and a Michigan fan. You have a gun, but only two bullets. Who do you shoot?
The Michigan fan...twice.
What keeps Ohio from sliding down into Kentucky?
The fact that Michigan sucks :)
Ann Arbor is a whore!!!
The only good thing that ever came out of michigan is I-75....*grin*
(required Toledo humor)
CCW is a beautiful thing
.357 Mag S&W, 4" ,stainless
speak softly...carry a hand cannon
Not really. Automatic and semi-automatic are defined by the action of the recoil and not the design of the trigger mechanism.
Definitions of Semi-Automatic on the Web:
* A type of action in which gas from the burning gunpowder in the shell automatically ejects the spent shell and loads another.
There have been only two revolvers that were semi-automatic to this date. The British Webley-Fosbery and the Italian Mateba. I think the Mateba is still in production.
Shhhh. You'll start driving up property prices.
Isn't Columbus a suburb of Cleveland?
Why would a city that is bigger be a suburb of a city that is smaller?
Columbus is bigger than Cleveland AND Cincy these days, especially in terms of city population...
and Politically the 2 are polar opposites as well...
Plenty of room here.
Almost all of those cases are based on state laws, and the federal courts have ruled time and time again that the second amendment is not applicable to state gun laws.
The showdown will come from a federal gun law (the federal AWB was a good opportunity, but it was challenged on Commerce Clause grounds, not the second amendment) not a state gun law.
The closest we got was the 2001 decision by the 5th Circuit Court in United States v. Emerson where they stated that the federal law (18 U.S.C. section 922(g)(8)) preventing gun possession if subject to a domestic violence restraining order covering was unconstitutional and that the Constitution guarantees the right of an individual to bear arms for purposes unrelated to militia service.
But, this was countered by other rulings of the Fourth, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Circuit Courts that "a federal criminal gun-control law does not violate the Second Amendment unless it impairs the state's ability to maintain a well regulated militia."
We've got a ways to go before we have the USSC resolve this.
Yeah, I know. The Ozarks really are one of the few "Garden of Edens".
Just got back from a pontoon ride that included breakfast on the lake (fresh melon, pancakes, sausage and potatoes with bloody marys and mimosas), then stopping by a friend's place where they were working on their sea wall; we tried to act sympathetic. We went swimming for a couple of hours mid-day. Back for our naps...
Whatever the case, I agree with Thomas Jefferson in that the Sup Court was never intended to have this sort of 'final arbiter of the Constitution' power that it has given to itself.
Its a disgrace that we have to wait for as few as 5 people to tell us what the Second Amendment means.
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