Feinstein And Company Introduce New Assault Weapon Ban BIll

You had to know it was coming. In the wake of two deadly mass shootings where a maniac happened to choose an AR-15 style rifle to unleash his mayhem with, you had to know that Sen. Dianne Feinstein would reintroduce an assault weapon ban. Well, folks, it’s here now.

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The bill will ban the sale of any weapon that can accept a detachable magazine and has even one of the prohibited features such as a pistol grip, a forward grip, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel, or a folding or collapsible stock. At this point, it doesn’t appear to differentiate between pistols or rifles. In other words, your Ruger LC9 or Walther PPK may well be banned, though the bill does include a grandfather clause.

The bill does specifically exempt 2,200 firearms by name for various approved purposes such as hunting and home defense. It’s probable that most handguns are going to be on that list. However, that now creates difficulties when it comes to introducing new products to market as semi-automatic handguns will need congressional approval to be added to the list.

Of course, that’s based on a very brief summary and may be very different when we get a chance to look at the text of the bill.

What we do see is that it explicitly bans the sale of a number of military pattern rifles by name, which we can assume the list of names will include most AR-15 and AK-47 style rifles, as well as most other popular mil-styles. While these are grandfathered in, the summary gets a bit confusing. On one hand, it says that the bill bans the sale or transfer of any prohibited weapon but then claims that any such transfer must have a background check. That may well dictate the transfer of firearms in private hands while banning dealer sales of new guns.

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Maybe.

What is clear is that once again, the anti-gun zealots have it in their mind to limit magazine capacity for private citizens to 10 rounds. This is a standard leftist talking point, yet they forget that we had such a limit at one point in time and it did absolutely nothing for anyone. This one is a little stricter since it bans the transfer of any so-called “high capacity” magazine.

It also requires all banned weapons to be stored in a gun safe or have a trigger lock. In other words, if you plan to use a carbine to defend your life, tough. You and your family can die for all they care.

The fact that the bill also seems to include Feinstein’s bump stock bill–which is far more far-reaching than just bump stocks–should come as no surprise.

This proposal is very broad, very sweeping, and completely unenforceable.

Anyone who wants to sell 30-round magazines will still find a way to sell them. Anyone who wants to buy them will still find a way to buy them. There are absolutely no numbers on how many of these things are out in the wild as it is, which means they’ll be shifting around left and right and no one will have a clue what’s been sold prior to such a law going into effect and what was sold illegally afterward.

The same is true of rifles. Without anyone knowing who has what now, it’ll be impossible to determine if a rifle was obtained before the law went into effect, or afterward. It’s just not possible to look at a gun and tell.

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All of this is superfluous to one simple fact. Guns are not the problem!

Guns aren’t responsible for these murders, they’re simply the tool being used. Not that Feinstein or the 22 gun grabbing politicians co-sponsoring this legislative abortion care in the least about that. They simply want to take away people’s guns because it makes them nervous. They know the people aren’t are people who aren’t fans of their policies, and it freaks them out.

There is an upside.

Despite Republicans appearing to cave to Democrat’s on gun control thanks to party members sponsoring bump stock bans, it’s unlikely that this bill will make it out of committee. Even if it does, it’s got to get through a GOP controlled Senate, then the House, before landing on President Trump’s desk. As things currently stand, it would take a miracle for the Democrats to accomplish even one of those tasks, much less all of them.

That said, it’s a good idea to contact your senators and let them know how you feel about this nonsense.

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