Posted on 06/26/2002 11:16:46 AM PDT by 2nd_Amendment_Defender
As is common with any controversial issue, there's a great deal of misinformation floating about, and misperceptions held by those affected by the issue.
Nowhere is this truer than with 1994's infamous "Crime Bill," the second significant piece of federal firearms legislation passed that year. Aside from the "assault weapons" (whatever those are) provisions, a significant portion of that bill dealt with magazines (or "clips" by the unknowing, the lazy or the sloppy thinkers)... very simply, if one is a civilian (non-military, non-law enforcement), one may not legally possess any "high capacity ammunition feeding device" of more than ten rounds manufactured after that date. Centerfire, rimfire... makes no difference.
Now it would not be unreasonable for anyone in the firearms community to assume that the author of this particular provision was someone like then New York Democratic Congressman (now Senator) Charles Schumer, Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum, or one of the "Boxstein Senatorial babes" from California, Barbara Boxner or Dianne Feinstein, or any number of gun-grabbing legislators or appointees of the Clinton Administration.
But, sad to say, it was none of those, or anyone even associated with them. It was Bill Ruger, "one of our own" who, for whatever his motives (and you'll get a lot of heated opinions on just what those motives might have been), became a Vidkun Quisling to Second Amendment stalwarts.
In view of what has transpired in the intervening years, few will remember 17 January 1989 as being being a critical juncture for American firearms owners, but just as the Miami Firefight of April 1986 was a catalytic moment in the development of handgun ammunition, drug-abusing drifter Patrick Purdy's malevolent depredations in a school yard in Stockton, California, was a milestone that galvanized anti-gunners and put the firearms community in a defensive posture from which it is still operating almost a dozen years later.
Purdy, a criminal in possession of a Kalishnikov (quickly identified in the news media as an "AK-47 deadly assault rifle") and a Browning High Power pistol, went into a school yard in Stockton, California, and unleashed a hail of 7.62 X 39mm rounds at a bunch of grade school children, killing five of them before dispatching himself with a single 9 X 19mm round from the handgun. (Ahhhh!, but that he'd tried to reverse the process!)
This terrible event, seized upon by national broadcast and print media, played right into a scenario envisioned by HCI wunderkind Josh Sugarmann and privately circulated in November 1988, so the antigunners were thoroughly prepared to launch a well-coordinated propaganda campaign designed to confuse the general population and to fractionalize the firearms community ... the operative phrase being "assault rifle."
Gun people, and the author was no exception, were immediately put on the defensive, and were kept busy lamely pointing out that Purdy didn't have an "assault rifle," which type of firearm had been tightly regulated since the National Firearms Act of 1934, but that he had a perfectly legal (in most jurisdictions) semi-automatic weapon. (Not that it matters that much, but the long gun involved was a Norinco SKS-56, 7.62 X 39mm semi-automatic carbine.)
Sugarmann had devised a scathingly brilliant strategy, for all any of us wound up doing was getting the mainstream media to create the term "assault weapon," while in March President Bush and his "drug czar," William Bennett (brother of President Clinton's attorney during the Lewinski scandal) temporarily suspended² further importation of a whole bunch of semi-automatic long guns by means of an Executive Order. And at the same time, a great many rank 'n' file gun owners began to rationalize that "Well, we really don't need those awful military-style assault weapons for hunting or target-shooting anyway."
Papa Bill Ruger speaks on gun control:
"A constant problem the industry has is that you can't compromise with gun prohibitionists."
The American Rifleman
June 1998, page 60, in a profile of the man who had just donated $1,000,000 to the NRA.
William Batterman Ruger, Senior is not a stupid man... he might be somewhat naive politically, but he's no dummy! Figuring that unless he took action, the jig was soon-to-be-up for a number of firearms, including his Mini-14 and perhaps even his extraordinarily popular Model 10/22 rimfire repeater. Unfortunately the lessons of Munich and Neville Chamberlain seemed to have been lost on the senior Ruger in the post-Stockton madness, for his creative approach was to toss the high capacity magazine "baby from the sleigh" in the desperate hope of appeasing the pursuing legislative wolves. Reasoning that the public was probably more concerned about the high volume of fire which Purdy was able to generate, than the speed at which he delivered same, Papa Bill proposed that Congress enact legislation limiting the capacity of magazines to fifteen (15!) rounds.
He had his Sturm Ruger braintrust prepare model legislation centered around this high capacity magazine prohibition with the fervent hope that "the guns [would be] saved." He even consulted with some others about this approach, including Neal Knox who attempted to dissuade him in the strongest possible terms (for Neal, anyway) from his foolhardy initiative. Papa Bill slept on Knox' council... and then on 30 March 1989 had his proposed legislation delivered to selected members of the House and the Senate. A portion of his document read:
The best way to address the firepower concern is therefore not to try to outlaw or license many millions of older and perfectly legitimate firearms (which would be a licensing effort of staggering proportions) but to prohibit the possession of high capacity magazines. By a simple, complete, and unequivocal ban on large capacity magazines, all the difficulty of defining "assault rifles" and "semi-automatic rifles" is eliminated. The large capacity magazine itself, separate or attached to the firearm, becomes the prohibited item. A single amendment to Federal firearms laws could prohibit their possession or sale and would effectively implement these objectives."
Shortly thereafter, the Sport Arms and Ammunitions Manufacturers Institute (SAAMI) endorsed the 15-round limitation in a position paper issued on 2 May 1989. It read, in part:
"The possession of any 'extra capacity' magazine in combination with the possession of a semi-automatic firearm, other than .22 caliber Rimfire, should be regulated. 'Extra capacity magazines' are detachable magazines which hold in excess of 10(!) centerfire rifle cartridges or shotgun shells, or detachable pistol magazines which hold in excess of 15 centerfire cartridges."
"Semi-automatic firearms as such should not be the object of any legislative prohibition. It is actually the large magazine capacity, rather than the semi-automatic operation, which is the proper focus of this debate."
But then SAMMI and NSSF (National Shooting Sports Foundation, which shares quarters with SAAMI) were always little more than adjuncts of Sturm, Ruger anyhow. It is instructive to note that in addition to Sturm, Ruger, SAAMI was then comprised of Winchester Ammunition division of Olin, Browning Arms, Federal Cartridge, Hercules, Hornady Manufacturing, Marlin Firearms, O.F. Mossberg, Omark Industries, Remington Arms, Smith & Wesson, Thompson/Center and Weatherby.
Within months, President George Bush, midway through his first year in office, had a proposed crime bill which contained the Ruger-inspired limitation on magazine capacity, but which did not find favor on Capitol Hill. As Executive Editor Joe Tartaro noted in his 7 July 1989 Gun Week column entitled "A Fistful of Cartridges:"
If the President's proposal had not included the 15-round magazine bite, the whole crime package would probably already be law.
In his final syndicated column of 1989, Neal Knox discussed the implications of Bill Ruger's actions the previous Spring, and addressed some remarks aimed at him by Steve Sanetti, Sturm, Ruger's general counsel and the only person other than Papa Bill ever authorized to issue statements for the company:
Steve Sanetti says "I know better" than to ascribe Bill Ruger's magazine ban proposal to business considerations. Maybe so; I don't think Bill is by any means "anti-gun," nor do I think he really wants a ban on either guns or magazines (after all, he got his start as a machine gun designer).
But I do think Bill Ruger is pushing a plan that would protect his business while affecting only his competitors, and I think he's damaging the efforts of those of us attempting to stop all proposed bans. Further, I don't think his actions on this issue, and other issues in the past, allows him to be described as "the strongest supporter of our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms."
What I know is that about 9 p.m. the night before Bill sent a letter to certain members of Congress calling for a ban on high-capacity magazines he called me, wanting me to push such a ban. His opening words, after citing the many federal, state and local bills to ban detachable magazine semi-autos, were "I want to save our little gun" -- which he later defined as the Mini-14 and the Mini-30. I'm not ascribing Bill's motives as "expedient from a business standpoint;" Bill did.
While I agree that a ban on over-15-round magazines would be "indefinitely preferable" to a ban on the guns that use them, that's not the question. Neither I, nor the other gun groups have ever believed that we were faced with such an either/or choice. Early last year the NRA legislative Policy committee discussed various alternatives to the proposed "assault weapons" ban, and wisely decided that magazine restrictions wouldn't satisfy our foes, but would make it more difficult to stop a gun ban.
I was particularly shocked when I realized Bill was talking about a ban on possession of over-15-round magazines, rather than a ban on sales (which is bad enough). I told him that such a law would make me a felon, for not only did I have standard over-15-round magazines for my Glock pistol (a high-capacity which has sharply cut into Ruger's police business), I have many high-cap mags for guns I don't even own, and don't even know where they all are. As I told Bill, after a lifetime of accumulating miscellaneous gun parts and accessories, there's no way I could clean out all my old parts drawers and boxes, then swear -- subject to a five or ten-year Federal prison term -- that I absolutely didn't have an M3 grease gun mag or 30-round M-2 magazine lying in some forgotten drawer.
Bill said (and all these direct quotes are approximate). "No, there'd be amnesty for people like you. We have to propose a ban on possession before they could take us seriously."
He contended that the public's problem was with "firepower," which could be resolved by eliminating high capacity mags.
I told him Metzenbaum and Company would gladly use whatever he offered, but they weren't about to willingly agree to eliminate high-capacity magazines as a substitute for banning guns; that their intention isn't to eliminate "firepower" but "firearms."
Bill finally said, "Neal, you're being very negative about it." He got angry, then said "Well somebody's got to do it; by God I will." And the next day he sent his letter to the Hill; the evidence indicates a few weeks later he talked SAAMI into supporting undefined "regulation" of magazines over-15-rounds -- a vote that might have gone a little differently if any produced high-capacity magazines as standard for either rifles or pistols.
I suspect that Ruger and SAAMI's actions are responsible, directly or indirectly, for the Bush administration's proposal to ban high-cap mags, but that proposal has been ignored -- except as evidence that "the Bush administration and the American firearms industry recognize there's a problem -- that Americans shouldn't be allowed to have such guns."
Of course, that isn't what Bill Ruger and SAAMI are saying, but that's the message they're sending. Perhaps it isn't business expediency to propose banning only that which they don't make, in an effort to protect what they do make; but it sure can't be claimed to be in defense of the Second Amendment.
Five years later William B. Ruger Sr.'s model legislation served as the basis of the "high capacity ammunition feeding devices" section of the Clinton Administration's "Crime Bill," save one major detail... the 15-round capacity had been dropped to 10-rounds by the time it had passed and been signed into Law on 13 September 1994! (The antigunners not only stuck it to "us," but stuck it to their Quisling as well.)
Why were we not surprised?!
What was surprising was that within four years the NRA would celebrate the man so enthusiastically. For many, this is one wound which has not healed, and the author has not only not purchased a Ruger product since that time, but subsequently sold at distress prices, his Mark II pistol and prized Model 77/22 rifle.
Aside from his million dollar donation to the NRA Museum, William B. Ruger, Senior, should be remembered as the man who embraced the investment casting process very early on, and whose Pine Tree is one of the most respected investment casting enterprises in the world, the man who gave us the Mini-14, the 10/22 and the first American-made production firearm chambered in 7.62 X 39mm... and the man who told NBC News' Tom Brokaw that:
"No honest man needs more than 10 rounds in any gun."
"I never meant for simple civilians to have my 20 or 30 round magazines or my folding stock."
"I see nothing wrong with waiting periods."
And, sadly, that too must be part of the Ruger legacy.
Wouldn't it be too bad if someone, somewhere found something that could put Sugarmann in jail, or at least show him to be a complete hypocrite? I'd love it, for instance, if HE owned a firearm defined as an "assault rifle" under that odious legislation, or if he carried concealed. Come on - ANYONE - can't something be found to eliminate this hoplophobe's poisonous voice?
As for the ban on high capacity magazines I can't make heads, or tails of it. I know you speak the truth, because I remember when the Law went into effect. The factory magazines are disappearing fast. Luckily for me I stocked up a few years ago when they were still cheap. The weird thing is that there are plenty of the after-market cheapo plastic magazines available. How do you account for that?
As for the comments of Mr. Ruger I think that he was pandering in the face of (then) powerful opposition. As you said it was a misguided effort to save a little, rather than lose it all. The pandering/sell out makes me sick, but the problem is that the Mini-14 is a darn good rifle! Ideal for someone in the position of having to fight a geurrilla war. Reliable with a minimum of parts. Plus it uses .223 round that is readily available. I'm afraid I'm already on board. I'm considering the future- how bout you? A Smith & Wesson is more of a status symbol than a practical firearm.
The Mini-14 has two problems with accuracy. Large groups are common and when the barrel heats up, the groups start to string upward. I'm working on a solution to both problems.
Water under the bridge, time marches on, tomorrow is another day. A long time ago, a man tried to deal with the anti-gunners. If the gun owners would spend their time fighting against the gun grabbers instead of fighting among ourselves, we wouldn't have gun control.
AGREED!
Thanks, Shooter. Well said.
The problem, I fear, is that we (firearms enthusiasts/shooters/etc.) get into a super paranoid mind set concerning what has happened in the past. We should all remember that when the first attacks on the 2A were made (after the big one, of course, GCA '68, a time when most of us here were serving their country, and were not really informed of what was happening at home), in the late 80's, there just weren't that many people online. We had no cohesive base, and no way to quickly disseminate information. The only info we possessed was "word of mouth" at the sporting goods store, on the firing lines at the range and in the clubhouse. Even the firearms magazines (the kind you read LOL) were at least 2 months behind on any news, and one can forget news media, they were on an agitprop feeding frenzy for the anti-gun bunch.
Today, things are different. We have FR, we have the internet, we have many discussion lists where information is promulgated instantly. What we need is cohesiveness. Worrying about what someone did years ago is meaningless, it can't be changed. We have to concern ourselves with what we do NOW, and in the near future, against further attacks.
Each and every person who desires to retain their rights should register and vote for the candidate who is pro gun. That is the litmus test. If they support the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right of every citizen, then they get the vote. If they hedge and deal, they don't. Simple indeed. It also helps to put out our message whenever and wherever we can, to as many people as we can, explain what the 2A is NOT about (hunting, competition, all the usual things which we do with our firearms regularly), but is about FREEDOM. Once one gets that point across, we have made another convert, and with God's help, we will remain Citizens and not Subjects.
FMCDH
Greg
I'm a Big Fan of the P-95 (that is somewhere near to me).
But, after all that is mentioned in this article, why does that make the crap that S&W did supposed to seem better ??
. . . maybe I'm just getting too old . . .
These adds have been running for over ten years and still you can find bushels of high capacity mags at gun shows, on the internet, in gun shops, surplus stores, and just about any place guns and ammo are sold except Kmart. The truth is everyone that wants one already has one and probability has many more of them due to the low price and availability.
Strangely or not so strangely you rarely see anyone at a shooting range using these things. They are awkward is the usual reason. Plinkers will use high capacity mags when they are out to waste lots of ammo shooting tin cans or an old muffler stuck on a fence post.
Better get some high capacity mags before they are all gone ! Don't try to sell them to me, I already have plenty and don't use them for anything. Anyway, the law still sucks, that is why I bought them in the first place.
Buy a Glock 22, Glock 21 or Sig Sauer P220. Those are nice .45 semi-automatic pistols. The Glock 22 is .40 S&W caliber.
If your looking for revolvers there are Colt and Dan Wesson.
Oh, c'mon what president or congress hasn't made some sort of shady deal with some huge company or manufacturer. I sleep with my Smith & Wesson just to feel safe. Plus, it's probably the only thing in my home that's American made, so big deal with Clinton. George seems to be screwing up far better than any other pres out there! My holding my breath for him to end the war is pointless, so maybe you should give up thinking you'll get an apology.
ROCK ON SMITH & WESSON KEEP THE WEST WILD
Business is all about the customer. Big business is is all about the shareholder.
We have a new one
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