In the wake of the massacre in Newtown, Senator Feinstein of Califorinia has introduced a bill that would permanently ban new sales of “assault weapons”. (Existing weapons would be “grandfathered” but would be subject to some restrictions such as storage requirements and background checks.) Details can be found on her webpage, including a link to the text of the bil (PDF file). (I know, just what we need: Another thread about guns. But I saw some threads–in the Pit, mainly–where some posters were being asked about what sort of gun control measures they thought would be reasonable, and replying that they’d have to see what was actually proposed. Well, the bill has been submitted, and we citizens can look it over and decide for ourselves now.)
There are several gun control proposals floating around right now: universal background checks (“closing the gun show loophole”); restrictions on magazine capacity; and this ban on “assault weapons”.
I’d like to leave universal background checks and restrictions on magazine capacity for other threads, and focus on the ban on “assault weapons” as defined in the bill (although the bill does include magazine capacity restrictions as well).
The bill defines assault weapons as follows:
The bill also includes some helpful definitions:
There is also a list of specific makes and models of weapons which are restricted by name (and, somewhat curiously, a list of specific makes and models which are explicitly declared to not be banned or restricted).
Would anybody care to defend the “assault weapon” style of gun control? (Defined here as restrictions on what the Senator refers to as “military-style” weapons, but leaving “high-capacity ammunition feeding devices” for another debate.)
Personally, I don’t think the “assault weapons” approach makes any sense at all. (Nor did the similar Clinton-era law.) Looking at the list of defining characteristics, it really does come down to questions of “style” not functionality. This is not a restriction on some particularly dangerous caliber, like, say, weapons that fire explosive shells, or particular mode of operation–all of the weapons discussed in this law are semi-automatic weapons, not “machine guns” (which are heavily restricted by other laws), but the bill is not a ban on semi-automatic firearms in general, a bunch of which are specifically named as being OK.
More specifically as to calibers and modes of operation: A bunch of AR-15 type rifles are named as “assault weapons”, while the venerable M1 Garand is included on the list as one of the nice guns that aren’t being banned or restricted. The AR-15, of course, looks like something you’d hunt xenomorphs with, while the M1 Garand looks positively cuddly by comparison. But functionally, both are semi-automatic rifles–once a round has been chambered, they will fire once each time you pull the trigger until the gun’s magazine is empty. The AR-15 generally fires .223 Remington or the very similar 5.56×45mm NATO, while the Garand fires the famous “thirty-aught-six” (.30-06). Here’s a pictorial comparison of the two cartridges side-by-side. The .223 and .30-06 are the two rifle cartridges in the middle (the pointy ones between the short and stubby .45 pistol cartridge on the left and the shotgun shell on the right). Note that the .223, strongly associated with “assault weapons”, is considerably smaller than the .30-06, which is strongly associated with friendly-looking guns with wooden stocks. (Although neither cartridge, or any cartridge, would in and of itself be banned or restricted by the law.)
Why should we as a society care if someone’s semi-automatic rifle has a “barrel shroud”? Or a folding stock? (It “enhances concealability”, but the law does nothing to restrict ordinary handguns–the semi-automatic pistols specifically defined as “assault weapons”, having features like a second pistol grip or a magazine that inserts outside the pistol grip, are probably as a rule going to be bulkier and less concealable than garden-variety handguns.) Or if someone’s rifle has a pistol grip or a “forward grip” or thumbhole stock on it? And “grenade launchers” are not actually grenades–“grenade[s], rocket[s], or other similar destructive device[s]” are already heavily restricted (read: basically outlawed) by other laws. Threaded barrels allow for the attachment of flash suppressors (again–why do we as a society care about those?) or silencers (which are already heavily-restricted by the aforementioned National Firearms Act). What does it matter if a pistol has a second grip or if the magazine is inserted outside the pistol grip?
I should add that–in no small part from reading debates about gun control on these boards over the years–I’m generally in favor of gun rights and against gun control. I could probably be persuaded to accept, say, universal background checks. But laws against “assault weapons” strike me as fundamentally irrational, pointless, and quite probably in bad faith. (From the Violence Policy Center–a pro-gun-control group–“[assault] weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons” and the group’s real goal is actually a ban on handguns, not any sort of rifle.) And proposals for new restrictions on guns that are ill-informed, just plain don’t make any sense, or are really stalking horses for potentially sweeping bans on entirely different categories of weapons are at least part of the reason why many gun rights supporters are so skeptical about seemingly sensible laws like universal background checks.
