The usual suspects have spoken again. Before the blood has had the chance to dry at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Senators Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein are going to propose an "Assault Weapons" Ban on the first day Congress reconvenes in January.
According to Feinstein, the bill will ban the sale, transfer, importation, and possession of whatever she declares to be an "assault weapon." The proposed ban will function prospectively and not retroactively, so individuals who currently own such weapons will apparently not face government confiscation. (So NOW is the time to stock up on ARs and AKs.) And the bill will also limit magazine capacity to ten rounds.
The Democrats should be ashamed of capitalizing on a tragedy to further their own anti-gun agenda. The facts aren't in yet on the Newtown massacre, but it seems that the killer took three guns from his mother--a 10mm Glock, a 9mm Sig, and a .223 Bushmaster--and used them in the shooting. No word yet on the magazine capacity of the rifle, either (although it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference given that he was shooting at unarmed children).
Sandy Hook is not about the particular weapons used. It's about an irresponsible mother who somehow allowed her mentally ill son to have access to her firearms. She paid for it with her life, and dozens of innocents paid for it with their lives as well. There is simply no law that can be enacted to prevent this sort of tragedy. The government simply cannot protect us from everything, despite all we've been taught by our state-run schools and our liberal media. Tragedies will happen in a free society; lives will be lost as a result of all our civil liberties, and not just the right to keep and bear arms. (Unfortunately, all the media attention to these killers virtually assures that another tragedy is already in the making.)
Thankfully, this new "assault weapons" ban has zero percent chance of making it through Congress. The Senate will pass it, but the Republican-controlled House most assuredly will not. And any Blue Dog Democrat who sides with the party leadership can be assured of losing his or her seat in 2014. Although the internet is ripe with anti-gun hysteria in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, it's safe to say that those calling for gun bans were not the ones voting for Republicans anyway. (In fact, the majority of the internet anti-gunners probably live in liberal Democrat districts, with Representatives who would have supported the ban in any case, regardless of any mass-mailing campaigns.) So it is very unlikely that any Republicans will be swayed to back the bill.
Senators Feinstein, Durbin, and others like them fail to recognize the need for semi-automatic rifles like the Bushmaster, or for magazines that hold more than ten rounds. As urbanites, they fail to realize that, when you live in a rural environment, an AR-15 is a much more appropriate weapon than a handgun for defending yourself against attackers. As privileged urbanites who have never had to live in a dangerous neighborhood, they fail to recognize that an AR-15 or similar weapon would be vital in the event of a riot.
More importantly, as collectivists and statists, liberals fail to realize that the population needs "military-style" rifles to keep the government's tyrannical impulses in check. We're not asking for machine guns, tanks, surface-to-air missiles, or nuclear weapons: all we're asking for is our right to possess and use the same rifle that is standard issue for our infantrymen (minus the fully automatic option, of course). That way, if a Hitler or a Pol Pot ever rises to power here, we citizens should at least be able to give his mercenaries hell long enough to turn the tide. (Guerilla warfare only works if the guerillas have access to the semi-automatic rifles used by their adversaries.) You don't have to look too far back in American history to find a time when members of a disfavored ethnic, racial, or religious minority were persecuted, lynched, or herded into camps, either by the government or with its cooperation or tacit approval. The right of the people to keep and bear arms makes it increasingly unlikely that such travesties will ever occur again.
We need our AR-15s and AK-47s to help keep you guys in check, Senators Durbin and Feinstein. You will not take our Second Amendment rights from us.
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