The Time Is Now to Recommit to a National Assault Weapon Ban Opinion

[Judi Lynn]

ERIC SWALWELL , DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN, CALIFORNIA
ON 10/5/20 AT 12:00 PM EDT

It's been more than two years since I first called for a ban and national mandatory buyback of all military-style assault weapons, and the body count has only continued to rise since then.

Americans will be safer if our communities are once and for all free from weapons of war. In the synagogues of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Poway, California, gunmen used AR-15-style semiautomatic assault rifles; 11 died and six were injured in Pittsburgh, and one died and three were injured in Poway. A gunman toting an AK-47-style rifle with a 75-round drum killed three and injured 17 at California's Gilroy Garlic Festival. The same kind of rifle was used days later to kill 23 and injure 23 during an anti-Latino murder spree in El Paso, Texas. The very next day, a man with a modified AR-15-style weapon and a 100-round drum killed nine and injured 17 outside a nightclub in Dayton, Ohio. Later that month, an AR-15-style weapon once again was used to kill seven and injure 25 in Midland and Odessa, Texas.

In August, a teenager illegally carrying an AR-15-style rifle went 20 miles, crossing a state line to play vigilante; Kyle Rittenhouse found the trouble he was looking for, killing two people and injuring another.

. . .

Soon after a racist maniac armed with an arsenal, including two AR-15-style rifles, killed 51 and wounded 40 in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, their government enacted an assault weapon ban and buyback. And soon after a two-day murder spree claimed 22 lives in Nova Scotia this year, Canada banned assault weapons too.

More:
https://www.newsweek.com/time-now-recommit-national-assault-weapon-ban-opinion-1536267

[doc03]

1. No it is not. nt

[better]

2. Swalwell, as much as I love him on MANY issues, is not qualified for this one.

We do need to do something, but the thing we need to ban about the weapons used in these mass shootings is not military-style weapons, or weapons having ergonomic features commonly found on military weapons.

It's high capacity magazines.

Unlike a pistol grip, adjustable stock, etc., even most sane gun lovers will agree that capacity really does have public safety implications. And the reason to ban them is simple, and already evident to most gun lovers. The lower a weapon's capacity, the less effective and thus less desirable a high rate of fire is, and rate of fire is the legitimate characteristic over which bump stocks were banned. Alas, banning bump stocks does not actually prevent bump firing, it just bans a modification that makes it easier to fire really fast. Banning HC magazines makes it undesirable to.

And from a practical standpoint, it's smarter law because it is infinitely easier for law enforcement to identify a violation of a capacity restriction, upon sight, than of a weapon having more than x of this list of characteristics, the way existing and proposed AWB language defines them. Or, for that matter, say...

A bump stock.

We do need to do something about the mass shootings in our society, but that means that we need to do it well, which means that it needs to be done with the requisite knowledge about the subject matter, which unfortunately, Congressman Swallwell does not yet appear to have, because he's still targeting entirely the wrong thing, though for the right reasons.

[MicaelS]

3. Not no, but fuck no.

We are too close to the finish line to bring up this decisive policy discussion.