July 29, 2004

Iron Blog Subjects: Assault Rifle Ban

Going through the Iron Blog topic list:

There are generally four types of long guns. There are shotguns, which generally fire cartridges (mostly shot filled, but sometimes solid slugs). There are bolt action, or otherwise single shot weapons, there are fully automatic weapons which fire multiple bullets with one trigger pull, and there are semi-automatic weapons which fire one bullet per trigger pull like the single shot guns but which use part of the energy from firing to power a mechanism that reloads automatically.

Assault rifles were traditionally military weapons that were able to fire automatically. Such weapons have long been heavily regulated for civilian use under the law regulating machine guns. Examples are the Soviet AK-47 and the US M-16. More recently, semi-automatic rifles that cosmetically look military have been inaccurately labeled assault weapons. These rifles, mechanically identical to a wide variety of common civilian use guns, were banned for 10 years starting August 1994. Come September of this year the ban will expire. After 10 years of data, what the anti-ban forces predicted has come true, the data ended up supporting their contention that the ban did little good and was just the thin edge of the wedge to try to get larger bans passed.

Good riddance assault weapons ban. Your demagoguery and dishonesty won't be missed.

Posted by TMLutas at July 29, 2004 06:16 PM