benEzra
benEzra's JournalThe guns that they are fighting hardest to ban are involved in less than 300 murders/yr.
"Wouldn't heavier gun-control go a long way towards preventing that from happening. That is heavy gun-control would decrease gun-deaths and take away an argument for the banning of guns What do you think?"
I'd like to point out that the guns they are fighting hardest to ban are involved in less than 300 murders a year nationwide, out of 12,000+, despite being some of the most popular guns in U.S. homes.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-20/table_20_murder_by_state_types_of_weapons_2013.xls
Or look at the vitriol they direct at holders of concealed carry licenses, who have a lower rate of homicide than even the police, and far lower than the population at large. So, no, low rates of violence wouldn't stop them from pushing more bans, I think. It has become an idealogical crusade, not a pragmatic one.
I'd also point out Australia, where their always-low homicide rate has never stopped the prohibitionists from calling for more bans. They've already banned pump shotguns (!) and their laws would put a lot of British gun owners in jail, yet the Australian gun-control lobby is now talking about banning 1860's-style lever actions and straight-pull bolt-actions. It never ends.
What make/model AK, and how many rounds through it?
How did you assess that it was a Chinese variant, how was it lubricated, and what magazines did you use? Was this a civilian non-automatic, or a clapped out military full auto, and were you getting double feeds, bolt over base, failure to cycle/eject, or feed ramp hangups? Were they x39's, or .223 conversions?
I shot a SAR-1 (Romanian non-automatic AK derivative, 7.62x39mm) competitively in the early 2000's, mostly with steel-case ammo, and never once had a failure of any kind in ~2,000 rounds. Trigger pull wasn't as good as an AR or a nicer bolt action, but certainly as good as a Glock and better than my Ruger Ranch Rifle. Accuracy is as good as a Winchester .30-30 if you stuck to the fundamentals and used the sights like you're supposed to instead of trying to shoot like some idiot in a B-movie, and the safety was secure and very well designed. The Soviets considered them effective out to 300 meters, and mine would keep every round in the black at 200 yards with decent ammo and a 1x optic. Given their reputation for reliability and extreme durability, coupled with my own experience, I'd say your experience was an extreme outlier.
As to Uzi's, they have always been regarded as very high quality firearms, as are most Israeli designs, but they've never been common in this country and have always been something of a collector's item. Perhaps you're confusing them with the civilian Intratecs? AFAIK, China never imported any, and I doubt IMI would have licensed their production; the only non-IMI's I'm aware of were made by a U.S. company under license.
Out of curiousity, do you feel about AR's? You certainly can't claim those are low quality, inaccurate, unsafe designs, or commonly misused.
Ummm, you realize that an actual Uzi submachinegun is $5,000 to $10,000
for a civilian-transferable pre-'86 model, yes? They are exceedingly rare collector's items. An actual full auto civilian-transferable AK *starts* around $15,000, and they are even more rare. You have to get special authorization from the BATFE to own any automatic weapons (BATFE Form 4, which involves a very extensive background check, and your local chief law enforcement officer signs off on the application). Possession without a Form 4 gets you 10 years in Federal prison; they are as tightly controlled in this country as artillery and shoulder-fired missiles.
There are non-automatic civilian Uzi lookalikes, but they are high quality firearms that work like any other 9mm pistol (one shot at a time, and they fire from a closed bolt like a regular pistol).
There are civilian AK lookalikes, too---also non-automatic---but none have been imported from China since the early 1990s. All American-market AK's are quality firearms, and would cost more than mass-market AR's if they were made entirely in the U.S. at U.S. labor rates, since they require a lot of hand fitting.
The Chinese AK's were always regarded as nicer than most in terms of fit and finish. Even the Romanian AK's shoot well, though some of the early ones had cosmetic blemishes and the finish is typically more industrial than the nicer Chinese variants. I used to shoot a nice SAR-1 in local USPSA matches, and put a couple thousand rounds through it without a single failure of any kind.
The thing is, civilian Uzi lookalikes and civilian AK's are among the safest and least misused of all firearms, so the "safety" argument against them is bunk.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-20/table_20_murder_by_state_types_of_weapons_2013.xls
It's a tax that directly targets the lawful exercise of a constitutional right.
Poll taxes were one such punitive tax. So was the tax on printer's ink that was struck down by SCOTUS in Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 1983.
http://law.jrank.org/pages/12734/Minneapolis-Star-v-Minnesota-Commissioner-Revenue.html
Ignorance of Firearms Law, Exhibit A.
"For the 10 years that the ban was in effect, it was illegal to manufacture the assault weapons described above for use by private citizens."
No, it was NOT illegal to manufacture AR-15's and civilian AK's for sale to private citizens. It was only illegal to manufacture new AR-15's and civilian AK's and call them "Colt AR-15" or "Poly Technologies AK-47" (or 17 other naughty names), or to manufacture a new AR-15 or civilian AK and fit them with more than one scawwy feature (e.g. a pistol grip was OK, but a pistol grip plus a bayonet lug was verboten for new production).
I bought a brand new (2002 manufactured, 2002 imported) 7.62x39mm civilian AK in 2003, during the Feinstein non-ban. To comply with the Feinstein law, it had a smooth muzzle (no brake, though a pin-on brake would have been legal) and the catch on the bayonet lug was ground smooth. That's one of these, a Romanian SAR-1:
Note the lack of bayonet lug and a smooth muzzle, which made it ban-legal 1994-2004; mine looked just like that. It came with a newly imported ex-Warsaw-Pact 30-round magazine and a rare, newly imported 40-round RPK magazine (collector's item). Spare magazines were only $5.99 for 20-rounders and $9.99 for 30-rounders, since they could be freely imported under the Feinstein law.
It was a great rifle to shoot, plenty accurate for 200-yard plinking, though you had to allow for the drop of the low-velocity cartridge (muzzle velocity of 7.62x39mm out of a 16" barrel is only 2350 ft/sec). I shot competitively with it until I eventually upgraded to an AR, and I eventually sold the SAR-1 to come up with a down payment on my current residence. Of all the guns I've ever sold, I'd buy that one back first. Mine had a Kobra optic, which was a neat piece of history in its own right.
Thing is, many millions of people did what I did. The AR-15 platform became one of the top selling rifles in the United States between 1994 and 2004, thanks in large part to Ms. Feinstein's misguided holy war against them. AK imports from Europe skyrocketed after 1994.
The net result was that after 1994, "assault weapons" as currently defined became *more* available and common, not less, and that rise in popularity has continued to the present day. If you dislike the current popularity of the AR-15 platform vs. (say) the Ruger Mini-14, thank Ms. Feinstein and Mr. Schumer; they greatly speeded their adoption into the mainstream in the mid and late 1990s.
" the measure's prohibition on high-capacity clips (sic) was probably its most effective provision."
The Feinstein law didn't affect the availability of 30+ round magazines for AR's and AK's *at all*. During and after 1994, tens or hundreds of millions of 20- and 30-round military surplus magazines for AR's, AK's, CETME's, G3's, FAL's, M1A's, etc. etc. etc. were imported from Europe, perfectly legally. This influx kept the rifle magazine market saturated, and gun owners well supplied.
The *only* guns which the 1994 Feinstein fraud significantly affected magazine prices for were those that (1) used nonstandard magazines and (2) were new enough on the market that there weren't large stockpiles of magazines to go around. Over-10-round Glock magazine prices quintupled, but you could still buy as many as you wanted; my wife paid over $100 for a Glock 19 magazine during the ban era, but could have bought twenty of them if she wanted to devote the funds to do so. Pro-gun police departments helped out civilian owners by trading their used 15+ rounders for post-1994 ones, so that the pre-'94s could be sold to civilians, but even that wasn't really necessary; manufacturers had produced decades' worth of supply prior to the ban's enactment, and doled them out as prices warranted. It was certainly a big moneymaker for distributors. Smith & Wesson and Beretta 15+ round magazines were cheaper, as I recall, because they had been around longer at the time.
Had the ban gone on longer, a black market in magazines could have eventually developed in another decade or three, but that was never an issue.
The gun industry did downsize some popular models to take advantage of the dimunitive "Clinton Clips", which gave rise to the extra-concealable Glock 26, and some people decided to simply upsize their caliber instead of paying for more expensive wondernine magazines (hence the increase in popularity of the .40 S&W and .45 ACP during that time). But anybody who wanted full-capacity magazines could legally buy them, and we did.
Funny that Iowa and Vermont are almost as low...
on that chart, and both are *very* pro-gun. Vermont doesn't even require a license to carry a concealed pistol.
...the AWB years, when AR-15 and AK ownership TRIPLED.
You do understand that the AWB increased, rather than decreased, sales of AR-15 type rifles, civilian AK's, and whatnot 1994-2004, yes? That the AWB didn't ban any guns whatsoever, only the names that could be used to market them?
I guess that means that more people owning .223 and 7.62x39mm semiautos, and vastly increased concealed carry licensure, correlated with a sharp decrease in the crime rate. Hmmm....
"Certain types of guns used to kill people, exclusively."
This, he can be educated on.
The rifles that the DLC/Third Way want him to ban are among the *least* likely to kill people, and among the *most* likely to be used for sporting purposes and other lawful/moral uses.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-20/table_20_murder_by_state_types_of_weapons_2013.xls
His previous history shows he is not idealogically commited to the Prohibition position, so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt on that.
Vermont isn't the stop-and-frisk, gunz-r-evilll utopia of Bloomberg/Guliani's NYC; AR-15's are exceedingly popular in the state, and Vermont doesn't even require a license to carry a concealed 9mm for self-defense. It's one of those places that shows that a lawful gun culture is not a left/right issue.
The gun control lobby has become a parody of itself.
A racist loser passed a background check thanks to an unfortunate FBI clerical error, and then murdered nine people with a low-capacity (and very ordinary) .45 caliber pistol.
The response from the gun control side is "Yay, maybe we can ban some more rifles this time! And magazines! Or at least we can tell people we will, even if we don't have the votes!"
It became the pet issue of the Third Way in the early '90s
as a way to "triangulate" the opposition and appeal to right-leaning law-and-order authoritarians. The "build more prisons and put more people in them" mantra was already taken, so the Third Way/DLC seized on "ban scawwy guns" as a second-tier alternative.
At some point, key people in the party leadership actually fell for the "assault weapon" fraud and came to believe that some civilian guns were an existential threat to 'Murrica, and acted accordingly. The rest has flowed from that bait-and-switch, IMO.
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