Feinstein and Schumer Welcome President Bush's Support of Assault Weapons Ban

Feinstein and Schumer Welcome President Bush's Support of Assault Weapons Ban Reauthorization

- Seek to Work with President to Swiftly Reauthorize Ban, Close Clip-Importation Loophole - April 16, 2003

Washington, DC - U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) welcomed the announcement that President George W. Bush supports the reauthorization of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which is set to expire in 2004.

In an article published this weekend, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "The president supports the current law, and he supports reauthorization of the current law."

Senators Feinstein and Schumer, authors of the original assault weapons legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives, will introduce legislation to reauthorize the ban shortly after Congress returns from recess. The legislation would:

Reauthorize the prohibition on manufacture, transfer, and possession military-style assault weapons, while protecting hunting rifles and other firearms. Close the clip-importation loophole, which prohibits the sale of domestically produced high-capacity ammunition magazines, but allows foreign companies to continue to bring them into the country by the millions.

Preserve the right of police officers and other law enforcement officials to use and obtain newly manufactured semi-automatic assault weapons.

In a letter to President Bush, the Senators wrote: "As the original authors of the Assault Weapons Ban in the Senate and the House, we strongly believe that military-style assault weapons have no place on America's streets and should be banned. In 1994, we fought hard to win passage of the original ban, and shortly after Congress returns from the spring recess we plan to introduce legislation that would reauthorize it.

This is why we were pleased to see that your spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated your support for the ban and its reauthorization this weekend when he said, 'The president supports the current law, and he supports reauthorization of the current law.'

We welcome your support and look forward to working with you to gain swift passage of this legislation. The current ban is due to expire in September 2004 and in order to continue to keep these weapons off the streets, it is imperative that the reauthorization bill becomes law.

As part of the reauthorization, we also plan to include language to close a loophole in the 1994 law, which prohibits the domestic manufacture of high-capacity ammunition magazines, but allows foreign companies to continue sending them to this country by the millions. A measure that would have closed this loophole passed the House and Senate in 1999 by wide margins, but got bottled up in a larger conference due to an unrelated provision. You indicated your support for closing this loophole during the 2000 presidential campaign, and now, with your help, we can prevent the manufacture and importation of all high-capacity clips and drums.

Once again, thank you for your leadership on this matter. With your assistance, we will be able to pass legislation to continue the ban and help make America's streets safer."

Oh! The other issue here is guns Feinstein calls "assault weapons" are rarely, rarely ever used in a crime. So they aren't a danger to anyone. So then why do Feinstein and Shumer want to ban guns that aren't a real-world danger. There must be an ulterior motive. I don't own any "assault weapons" but they should not be banned because:

A They aren't a real danger

B It is unjust to single them out for prohibition

C Nothing will be gained. Crime won't be reduced

D It is a loss of freedom with each gov't prohibition

E It is legally unconstitutional to ban them

Yours is an old and common argument. The argument being that the US military with its bombs, missiles, tanks and artillery would wipe out a group of people immediately.

Well, if the military could isolate the rebellious people and put them all in one city with no supporters or other innocent non-partisans then you are right they could wipe them out.

The problem for the government is that they cannot possibly use any of their bombs, missiles, artillery, tanks and other heavy weapons because rebels would be thoroughlyl mixed in with their supporters in the population and they would have absolutely no way to know who would shoot them in the back as they walked past a given house.

In Iraq, all of the people hated Saddam and so our troop got lots of help from the locals.

In Vietnam, many people hated the US forces and as a result they never, ever knew when the enemy was standing right next to them ready to kill them.

That is the difference. That is why all of the bombs, missiles, artillery and tanks of the US military would be useless if a large uprising of armed citizens were to occur.

Have I explained that adequately?

Pardon me. It is legal to own Machine Guns in any states with Class III laws. Some states have banned the ownership of fully-automatic machine guns, while many allow it.

Also, it completely destroys the liberals argument that "assault weapons" must be banned for public safety when you consider how machine guns are almost never, and I mean NEVER, used in crime, though it seems they would be the weapon of choice for criminals in states where these are legal.

But then, we know the liberals only ageneda is to ban all guns eventually.

Why should Bush spend his political capitol and break a campaign promise on something that can be killed in the House?

Bush would spend NO "Political Capitol" breaking this campaign promise. Those who support him and the 2nd amendment would vote for him after he "broke" this promise. Those who hate him, hate RKBA and will vote Democat will most assuredly NOT reward him for keeping this promise and would vote against him whether or not he kept it.

Do you understand?

what must be done is convince the President to reverse his stand

And that is going to be rather difficult if he thinks you'll vote for him regardless, and maybe a few anti arms rights folks might then vote for him. I don't mean to say they would, but he might believe they would.

OTOH, I think President Bush is an honorable man, and if the case could be made to him that the ban has been completely ineffective in stopping the sorts of incidents it was intended to stop and is a violation of the Constitution he swore, multiple times, to support and defend, he might just change his stance. However if he doesn't, the renewal will pass, becuase his support gives other Republicans, and even a few Democrats, "cover" to go ahead and vote for it. The pro-arms rights margin in the House is alreaday thin, and it's almost non-existant in the Senate and this cover would very likely tip the balence. Meanwhile as it stands now, he's committed to sign whatever POS legislation they come up with and call a "renewal" of the current law. As we've seen before, not much has to change to severly impact gun owners. Such as the two or three sentence change to the Gun Owners Protection Act (the last amendment passed to it no less and that in the wee small hours IIRC and by voice vote) that completely banned a whole class of newly manufactured small arms from citizen ownership.

But is a static interpretation of all after more than 200 years reasonable? I am torn.

Yes it is. Why, because if the provision in question no longer "fits the times" an amendment is the only legitimate way to change the Constitution. Allowing any other method, such as judicial interpretation, destroys the main purpose of having a written Constitution and written laws. Everyone, and that includes the government itself, needs to know what the law says, what is permissable and what is not. Otherwise you get... well pretty much what we have now in the area of gun law, and other areas as well, nobody knows for certain if an action legal today will be legal tomorrow, without any legislature passing a new law, or the people, via their state legislatures, allowing for and approving a change to the law that governs the government. We get government by government, not by the people.

As for the rules changing, what about the Instant Replay before making a call in football? Why is there sudden death in pro-football, but not in college games?

But those rules weren't changed by a referee on the field. The ref gets to make the call on wether the reciever came down with one or two feet inbounds, not that two feet or one foot are required for a completed pass. The Judical branch is like the referee, it has to decide if a violation of the rules has occurred or not, it does not get to change them itself, any more than the referee can.

Their are procedures for the governing body of a sport to change the rules, often requiring a vote of representatives of all the teams, just as their are provisions for amending the Constitution. The rules can't (in general) be changed unilaterally by the Commissioner, just as the President can't change the laws, nor can Congress, by itself, change the Constitution.

Bad, but I can understand the administrations position. This is a time bomb waiting to go off 2 months before an election, by taking this position the administration shields itself from the bombardment of the mainstream press ready to pounce and shout, "Bush hostage to gun lobby".

Like I said before, the place to kill this legislation is in the House, where 2nd Amendment issues actually can make or break elctions.

The problem is that by coming out in support of the renewal of the ban, the President has made the task of killing it in the House much, much more difficult. If he'd just said, "I need to wait and see the bill before I decide to sign it or not", that problem would be much less. It wouldn't be as good as him saying he wouldn't sign the bill in terms of getting it killed in the house, but that action would result, as you say, in him being demonized by the gun grabber press, which is most of it. He should have kept his mouth shut, or more properly, told his people to keep their mouths shut.

I seriously doubt the founding fathers had modern weaponry in mind when they wrote the second amendmant.

In a way, you'd be wrong. They knew that individuals, as well as some towns and townships, owned cannon. Some people owned cannon armed ships, the "ultimate weapon" of the day. Yet they put in no restrictions on what sorts of arms the people could keep or bear. Even a muzzle loading cannon armed with "grape" or "chain" would clear out a crowed much more effectively than any real full auto assault weapon, and a bit quicker too. Reload are sort of slow, but then so were reloads to muskets and especially rifles in those days.

They even put a provison aknowledging private ownership of these weapons into the base Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added. That provision grants Congress the power to issure "Letters of Marque and Reprisal", which authorize private individuals to "hunt" the ships of particular foreign countries (that the Marque part, the Reprisal part is similar but applies to actions on land). Not much point in giving the Congress power to issue what amounted to "hunting licenses" if no one could own an appropriate weapon, in this case a ship armed with mulitiple heavy cannon.

Do you really think it's a good idea for anyone to be able to buy a machine gun?

Yes, why not? They could before 1934, and machine guns had been around about 50 years at that point. The quasi ban on machine guns came about as a result of prohibition and the gangs it created, along with lots of the same time of hype and demonization of inanimate objectes that we see today, even though by then prohibition itself had been repealed. At least with prohibition they modified the Constitution to allow them to institute it, and afterwards that was seen to have been a mistake and the grant of power was repealed via another Constitutional amendment. I call it a quasi ban, because, depending on where one lives, "just anybody" can get a machine gun, even today. Prior to the early 1980s, one could get a brand new from the factory machine gun. Now it's somewhat more difficult and you can't get a truly "new" machine gun. You do have pay a $200 tax and get your local Sherrif or Chief of Police to sign a form stating there is no reason why you shouldn't have a machine gun.

OTOH, when passed that $200 Stamp Tax ammounted almost to an outright ban, since many of the guns themselves, say a Thompson submachine gun or a BAR automatic rifle (a favorite with crooks and G-men alike) could be had for little more than a tenth of that, making the guns inaccesable to all but the rich, corporations and of course crimnials who didn't bother with the tax.

But if you'd share with me what you see as those actual "first steps" when I get back I'll then know if I haven't been "paying attention". As of right now I don't.

Just a few highlights of the federal legislation:

1934: National Firearms Act
1968: Gun Control Act
1986: Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act
1990: Crime Control Act
1994: Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act
1994: Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (AKA Assault Weapons Ban)

For the poor folks in places like NJ, MA, IL, CA and other states, the federal legislation is just the start of their problems.

As Belial pointed out when do we allow the general public to own "shoulder-held SAM launchers"? Nevermind that these firearms can bring down an airliner. Heh! We need our "freedoms"![translated unrestricted license]

Useing that SAM to shoot down an airliner, would be exercising unrestricted license, not merely owning the SAM. BTW shooting down an airliner can also be done by a good shot stationed near the end of the runway with a "varmit" gun, simply by shooting the pilot at a critical time, on takeoff or landing. A helicopter is even easier, because the move more slowly, thus are easier to hit, and are much less stable. Airliners have also been known to be brought down by 4 or 5 guys with boxcutters and a fake bomb belt. Of course if ordinary citizens had been armed on those planes, epecially the flight deck crew, the WTC would likely still be standing and 3000 of our fellow citizens would have been spared a horrible death. Government, in it's infinite wisdom, guaranteed there would be no one armed on that aircraft, except for the miniscule chance that there might be a Sky Marshal on board. That ban on armed flight crews is even younger than the machine gun "ban", in the 50s it was not all that unusual for the pilots to be armed, and the disarming was done by regulation, not by a change in the law, AFAIK.

what was the most powerful weapon available to man when the 2nd Amendment was crafted?

A ship armed with cannon, and individuals could and did own them. Using them required specific Congressional action, in the form of a letter of marque, owning them didn't require anybody's permission. Now a broadside from one of these ships, especially if the guns were loaded with "grape" or "chain", was a heck of lot more devasting than what an M-16 can dish out.

You have the freedom to keep and bear arms, but are restrained in the type of arms you can keep and bear and how you can keep and bear them

Sorry but no. Unless you can explain convincingly how such governmental restraint would not be an infringement. Shall not be infringed is a pretty strong constraint.

Under your thesis, the goverment could restrain us from keeping any arms except BB guns and we could bear them only on alternate Thursdays, if the moon is right and if we do so more than 50 miles from any town or city of more than 1,000 people and more than 10 miles from any habitation.

After all how can I defend against a tank without a proper weapon?

Maybe, but then again the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto found out, too little and too late, but find out they did, that a cheap handgun will get you Mauser rifle and a few clips of ammunition, or a submachine gun and several magazines. Those in turn may get you an anti tank or anti aircraft rocket. They might even get you a tank, under certain conditions, although I'm not aware that the Jews managed that. It does take something most Iraqies (and of course Frenchmen) don't have and that's a willingness to take the risk of dying for your country or cause.

That's exactly what my history teacher told the class when we talked about the writing of the Constitution, the second amendment was written for the purpose of enabling the citizens to fight the government, if and when it turned on them.

Gosh you must be older than the hills, which are almost as old a I am. :)

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