Posted on 05/07/2003 4:32:24 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - People who want to keep assault weapons off the streets are divided over the best way to extend the ban on those guns, which is set to expire two months before the 2004 elections.
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., on Thursday will introduce an extension of the assault weapons ban that she helped enact in 1994. The Bush administration has announced its support for continuing the prohibition on military-style assault weapons.
The issue promises to become mixed up with election-year politics, just as the original ban — passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Clinton (news - web sites) — helped fuel the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.
Many gun-control advocates who are normally allied with Feinstein are backing a more sweeping measure that Democrats in the House also will introduce Thursday.
The bill by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., and Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., is modeled on California law, which supporters of gun control point to as much more effective than the federal law on assault weapons in combating gun makers' efforts to evade the ban.
The difference is in the definition of an assault weapon. The current law and Feinstein's bill cast a narrower net than does the House Democrats' proposal.
Gun-rights groups said they will try to defeat both bills. "Empirical evidence shows this gun ban has had zero effect on reducing crime," said Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the National Rifle Association.
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On the Net:
National Rifle Association: http://www.nra.org
Violence Policy Center: http://www.vpc.org
"Where the Constitution establishes a right of the people, no organ of the government, including the courts, can legitimately take that right away from the people. All of our rights, every one of them, may become impediments to the efficient functioning of our government and our society from time to time, but fortunately they are locked in by the Constitution against permanent loss because of temporary impediments. The courts should enforce our individual rights guaranteed by our Constitution, not erase them."
Dear Senatrix Feinswine: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Its too bad you don't like that, but until you muster the necessary votes to repeal the 2nd, you can simply kiss my a**.
"Constitutional interpretation cannot properly be based on whatever policy judgments we might make about the desirability of an armed populace, or the relevance of the Amendment's concern with citizen militias to modern times. Those who think the Second Amendment is a troublesome antique inappropriate to modern times can repeal it, as provided in Article V. That has been done before, as with legislative selection of Senators, and with Prohibition. There is a serious argument for its continued relevance, from those who think that the natural right to self defense, protected by the English Bill of Rights as well as the Second Amendment, is still important as a matter of policy."
"Though general history, like legislative history, cannot be used to supplant the words of the law, it informs us of what social problem the writers of the law intended to address. The problem the Founders sought to avoid was a disarmed populace. At the margins, the Second Amendment can be read various ways in various cases, but there is no way this Amendment, designed to assure an armed population, can be read to allow government to disarm the population."
The issue promises to become mixed up with election-year politics, just as the original ban — passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Clinton — helped fuel the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.Signing on to an extension of the ban, the one that helped fuel the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994., could cause that same GOP to lose control in 2004.
Supporting gun control makes you lose elections. Opposing it makes you win.
Senatick Dianne Feinswine is afraid of the doomsday provision.
THEY BOTH SUCK
which effectively bans the AR 15 and criminalizes its possession.
I can tell you one thing, I may not be ready to take up arms in a major insurrection, but I sure as heck will never voluntarily surrender those arms to the likes of these SOB's.
Considering that 1 million of these rifles have been sold since 1994 alone, the "domestic enemies of the Constitution" would likely encounter some problems.
One could even guess that it's likely that a few of those 1 million patriots might start voting from 300 yards away.
Yep. It won't happen unless the Republicans sell us out again. It certainly won't be the first time.
An outright federal ban on semiautos would represent "the line" for a lot of folks.
You speak for millions of Patriots.
There is neither a legal nor a moral obligation to follow such an illegitmate edict.
Quite the contrary, it would be the duty of all Americans to disobey such an unconstitutional edict.
She and her cohorts are on the wrong side of history on this one; and time will prove me right..
Either way, the tryannical bastards will lose.
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