Banning assault weapons will not work

On May 2, in New York City, a Black woman attacked two Asian women with a hammer. On May 14, three people were slashed with knives within a 12-minute period on a New York subway. On March 17, a young woman was attacked with acid, burned, and blinded in New York. On May 18 in Florida, May 13 in Hawaii, and on March 12 in New York, men were set on fire. On May 21, a Jewish man in New York was attacked with pepper spray.

Antifa and BLM rioters have routinely, and as recently as this week, used metal pipes, Molotov cocktails, laser pointers, frozen water bottles, canned vegetables, mortar-like fireworks, eggs, glass bottles, chunks of concrete, bricks, and fire in their continuing attacks on first responders and random Americans. Pro-regressive pro-stateless-Arab protestors have also resorted to violence beyond words to attack Jews since the recent cease-fire in Israel. Not to mention fists and feet.

Biden’s nominee to head the ATF, David Chipman, wants to ban assault weapons? His position and statements would be laughable if they weren’t so darn dangerous. Besides, they are disingenuous. He carried an AR-15, just like the millions in circulation, as an ATF agent? Come on, man, it was fully automatic; there’s no comparison.

Believing, and encouraging others to believe, that banning semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines, regardless of their capacity, will make America safer has no basis in fact. Paper targets will be safer. Varmints will be safer. Banning such weapons may harm some small business owners who own gun shops and shooting ranges, as well as some larger manufacturers of ammunition, reloading supplies, and firearms.

Why not simply believe the government’s own statistics on weapons of choice? The FBI murder stats for 2018 show there were 14,123 murder victims in the United States. Not too bad for a population of 330,000,000, though devastating for those closest to the crimes. Of those, 297 or 2% were killed by criminals using rifles. The category of rifles was not further broken down, so there are no easily available numbers on how many “assault weapon”-type rifles were used, but logic says fewer than 297.

Nearly 11% of those victims were killed by criminals wielding knives, and 3% by those employing blunt objects like hammers. The most favored tools of murder before knives, which were #2, were handguns. Their owners were responsible for 73% of all murders.

The Senate bill mentioned by Chipman during his testimony contains a pages-long list of all the weapons to be banned. As a former public servant, I hate to say it, but lessons are rarely learned. What happened when the DEA listed all the drugs? Creators of illicit drugs changed a molecule and went on about their business. Technology is a wonderful thing, and as easily abused as it is used.

Besides, all crime is defined as a matter of legislation at federal, state, local, and tribal levels. Criminals, by definition, by their very naming, defy such legislation. Who in their right minds could possibly think that even more legislation would take those weapons out of the hands of such people? Or prevent murder altogether?

A few years ago, a friend was heading off to a conference in Europe. I advised her to stay away from refrigerated trucks. Many more people were killed in Nice, France, by the single driver of that truck on July 14, 2016, than have ever been killed in the United States by a single person wielding a semi-automatic rifle. Some UC Berkley students were among the injured. The perpetrator of that crime just happened to be out on parole after having attacked someone with a wooden pallet. Assault weapons?

It’s been disheartening the past couple of years to watch the Soros-ecutors around the country behave as though they believe that redefining crime, or refusing to prosecute criminal activity, will reduce crime. Just the opposite. People and their communities are even less safe.

The murders and assaults are not committed by weapons, but by those employing them. The Pro-regressives live in a dream state where people, when their exterior environment is modified, are expected to magically become internally changed into good, kind, compassionate people who no longer harbor violent and murderous thoughts or intentions. That’s like believing if you take away all the syrup, pancakes will cease to exist.