Obama: No Assault Weapons Ban Forthcoming

Yet.  This is very good news to those of us waiting on parts for our AR-15s.

He’s “unwilling to expend his political capital” on reinstituting the AWB.  At least he understands the risks, even if he doesn’t understand the legislation.  This article demonstrates how Obama (and even Jake Tapper) have an abject lack of understanding about what the Clinton-era AWB was all about.

“As a long-time resident and elected official of Chicago, Barack Obama has seen the impact of fully automatic weapons in the hands of criminals,” then-Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign stated. “Thus, Senator Obama supports making permanent the expired federal Assault Weapon Ban. These weapons, such as AK-47s, belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets. These are also not weapons that are used by hunters and sportsmen.”

That ban expired in 2004, and Mexican President Calderon recently told Nightline that he thought “it was very good legislation. During that period, we didn’t suffer a lot, like we suffered in the four or five years” since it expired.

But the White House has indicated it is not willing to expend political capital on the issue. At a joint press conference with President Calderon, President Obama just now said that he has not backed “off at all from my belief that the assault weapons ban made sense…Having said that, none of us are under any illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy.”

Gee, ya think?  I guess Obama thinks the 2nd Amendment was included only to protect the rights of “hunters and sportsmen,” rather than the rights of every citizen to stave off governmental tyranny.  Constitutional scholar indeed.  Now let’s poke the holes in the President’s understanding of what the AWB was all about.

Mr. Obama apparently thinks that the Assault Weapons Ban was a ban on “fully automatic weapons,” and thus he demonstrates his woeful ignorance.  Fully automatic weapons (one trigger pull, multiple shots) were banned from civilian use long before Bill Clinton took office and signed the AWB.  In fact, fully automatic weapons were banned before Bill Clinton was even born, in the National Firearms Act of 1934. 

So if those people who possess and use fully automatic weapons were criminals even before the AWB was passed, then what was the purpose of the AWB?  It was to ban semi-automatic weapons (one trigger pull, one shot.)  The AWB was quite the draconian joke.  Since no legal definition of an “assault weapon” existed prior to 1994, the Democratic Congress had to invent one on the spot.  Rather than determining what characteristics made a weapon “dangerous” (ha), they determined which models of guns they deemed to be unfit for civilian hands and then quantified the common characteristics of those weapons.  Their definition of an “assault weapon” became any gun which possesses these “dangerous features.”  (Essentially, “it looks like a machine gun, so it must be an assault weapon!)  So what were those “dangerous features,” one might ask?

• Pistol grips.  (Because pistol grips are so deadly.)
• Telescoping or folding stocks.  (Again:  Deadly!)
• Bayonet lugs.  (Because so many deranged lunatics had attacked people with fixed bayonets, I guess.)
• Detachable ammunition magazines.  (Presumably because it’s faster to reload than a 6-shot revolver.)
• Threaded barrels.  (Because you might be able to attach a flash suppressor to it!)

Ladies and Gentlemen, THIS is what the AWB banned.  Not “fully automatic weapons.”  So what was the point?  The point was that the Federal government didn’t want its citizens to possess anything more effective than a pop gun.  The methodology they used to define “assault weapons” was simply a poorly constructed back door to limit the effectiveness of the 2nd Amendment.  These weapons can still only fire one shot at a time.  To define that as an “assault weapon” is laughable. 

The argument about guns showing up in Mexico from America has already been debunked, but even if it were true, the AWB is a straw man argument.  Fully automatic weapons are already illegal here.  If people have them, they’re getting them illegally and are already criminals.  So the AWB only limits (and punishes) law abiding citizens.

I would say that we should be thankful that cooler heads seem to be prevailing, but that’s clearly not the case.  This is only a pragmatic decision based solely on the fact that Obama doesn’t think he can get away with it.  If he can’t get away with it when the Democrats control the Executive and Legislative (and nearly the Judiciary), then how could it ever happen?  So maybe that’s a good sign after all.  Do they fear stirring the wrath of an armed populace?  The wisdom of the Founding Fathers prevails again.  A split Congress in 2010 might put the nail in the coffin for this.