"No-ban" pre-ordering going on now...Agree or not?

Here are excerpts from crappy misleading articles out there designed to confuse "joe-ignorant" public, and the common sense refutation highlighted...

8/20/04: Editorial – Time to outlaw assault-style guns, from indystar.com.

"The SKS is patterned after the AK-47. Most police officers carry a .40-caliber Glock handgun, which is what Laird had. It's no match for the SKS. Although Laird was fatally struck above his chest protector, the SKS fires a 7.62-caliber bullet that is powerful enough to pass through body armor."

As is practically every centerfire rifle cartridge. It is deceptive to characterize the 7.62x39 round fired by this rifle as some sort of "super bullet" that is far more powerful than those used by other guns. If the writer of this editorial knew anything about guns, he'd know that this round is actually at the low end of the scale of rifle caliber power, being roughly half as powerful as the .30-06 commonly used by deer hunters.

"The 1994 federal crime bill prohibited the importation and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition. But gun manufacturers have circumvented the law by making a few design changes and producing different models of weapons that remain just as deadly..."

The '94 AWB is very clearly written... firearms cannot be equipped with certain features (which are generally considered to be cosmetic in nature and do not affect the lethality of the firearm). Gun manufacturers removed these features from their products. This is not "circumventing" the law... it is demonstrating full and complete compliance with the law. If you don't like the fact that "a few design changes" resulted in guns that are "just as deadly" remaining in production, talk to Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, and the others who authored and passed this bill back in 1993-94.



8/20/04: LaWall: Renew assault gun ban, from The Arizona Daily Star.

"If the ban, signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton, is allowed to expire Sept. 13, domestic manufacture and sale of the banned firearms will be legal again. "The gun industry is licking its chops just waiting for the assault weapons ban to expire," [Pima County Attorney Barbara] LaWall said...."

"Then the streets of America, the neighborhoods of America, are thrown open to many of the lethal firearms we see nightly on the streets of Iraq," she said. "These killing machines have no place on our streets."

The guns covered by the ban are NOT the same as the fully-automatic AK-47s and other machine guns seen in Iraq. Yes, we know the Brady talking points fax instructs you to say that, but you are participating in the spreading of mistruths.

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, like LaWall a Democrat, said he was unable to attend the press conference but supports extending the ban.

"I am a strong proponent of people's right to defend themselves with firearms. However, I am opposed to assault rifles. In my judgment they are designed primarily for warfare," he said.

South Tucson Police Chief Sixto Molina said he, too, supports extending the ban.

"In my experience as a police officer for the last 32 years, I've never seen any of those guns used for anything legitimate," he said. Read more.

I was at the shooting range last weekend... about half of the many people there (men, women, and children) were enjoying target shooting with so-called "assault weapons." Isn't that legitimate? During the Rodney King riots in LA, store owners protected their shops with so-called "assault weapons." Is that not legitmate either? What about the numerous hunters that use these firearms for varmint and other small game hunting? And, of course, perhaps the Chief should pay a visit to the Camp Perry National Championship or the numerous other competitions held throughout the country that use "assault weapons." Are these activities not legitimate?

 

I rented a CX4 Storm carbine for a couple weeks...Very nice. easy to disassemble...No recoil (especially with 115 gr. bullets),...and very accurate to 50 yards or even 75 yards.

I love the fact it is shorter than other rifles with the same 16 inch barrel...

...I asked Beretta, and I hate to say it but ...No...

I am 95% sure of this information, but I would call them again to double check...

Of course there are 20 or 30 round "after-market" magazines, but the reliability is absolutely not good...Without rounds, they attach, and detach well...until you fill the puppy up with the bullets!...Different story! My experience has been that the weight of the rounds causes the magazine to simply drop from the recoil...and don't try to pry the magazine hole out to gain a better foothold...(I tried that.) It can damage the attaching function (release button)..Not good when you need the reliability of the "good" Beretta magazines to function well...

I know it sucks, but having quality "Beretta-made" 15 round magazines is much, much better than thinking about getting low quality "after-market" 20 or 30 round magazines...(especially, if the need for self-defense arises)

I realized that is not what you asked, but I wanted to make sure you don't feel compelled to get an inferior magazine...

 

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Anti-weapon campaign runs on fiction

By JOE WALDRON AND DAVE WORKMAN
GUEST COLUMNISTS

Touring the country in an effort to renew the 10-year-old ban on so-called assault weapons, the numerically challenged Million Mom March has been conducting a campaign built largely on fiction.

As far back as 1988, gun prohibitionists figured they could fool the public into supporting a ban that, as history has shown, has been essentially symbolic. Sixteen years ago, Josh Sugarman with the Violence Policy Center put the campaign in its proper perspective, admitting, "The weapons' menacing looks coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semiautomatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."

Contrary to myth, guns affected by this ban are not machine guns. They fire one shot with each press of the trigger, the same as many shotguns used by duck hunters, or rifles used by big-game hunters.

Another myth pandered by the MMM is that these rifles use "powerful" ammunition. In fact, they are chambered for cartridges that are near the low end of the energy level spectrum, on par with a deer hunter's .30-30 Winchester. That bullets from these guns will penetrate a police officer's protective vest is not a secret, because virtually every centerfire hunting rifle bullet sold today will go through such a vest. Those vests are designed to stop handgun bullets.

Prohibitionists claim that these firearms have no legitimate purpose. Thousands of competitive shooters, who participate in registered matches with these rifles all over the country almost every weekend of the year, would disagree. Most of these guns are suitable for home defense, many are legitimate collector's items and others are used for hunting.

These guns are not the "weapon of choice" among criminals. Studies at both the state and federal levels, both before and after the ban took effect, have shown that so-called assault weapons are used in less than 2 percent of violent crimes.

Anti-gunners note that crime gun traces on the banned firearms have plunged by 66 percent in the past 10 years. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Congressional Research Service say that trace data is not a reliable indicator of guns used in crimes. Such traces are conducted for a variety of reasons, only one of which is to establish the trail of guns actually used in crimes. A significant number of traces are used to track recovered stolen guns.

Ban proponents claim that after the ban expires Sept. 13, U.S. streets will be "flooded" with these guns. The "ban" only placed a freeze on production. Those rifles are still out there, legally for sale -- albeit at premium prices because of all the media hype -- and most of them are in the gun safes and cabinets of law-abiding gun owners. Banning their production did not eliminate them, and had nothing to do with a drop in homicide rates, as, apparently, neither do any other gun control laws.

A damning admission about that came last October from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released a review of 51 previous "studies" of gun control laws. The conclusion? None of these laws reduced crime, something gun rights activists had been telling the CDC, and the public, for years.

The CDC, in its report, admitted that " ... the Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence." That includes gun and ammunition bans, waiting periods, school "zero tolerance" laws, child access/safe storage statutes and licensing or registration laws.

That disclosure was reinforced by the Violence Policy Center's Tom Diaz, who told National Public Radio on March 11, "If the existing assault weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe it will make one whit of difference one way or another in terms of our objective, which is reducing death and injury and getting a particularly lethal class of firearms off the streets."

Anti-gunners want to ban guns, period, no matter how they mask it, or how they accomplish it. The Vancouver Columbian recently took them to task for "passing along misleading information" in their effort to eliminate private gun ownership. Apparently, they didn't get the message.

Joe Waldron is executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Dave Workman is senior editor at Gun Week, a publication owned by the Second Amendment Foundation

 

I'm pumped, I tell you...

The wait that is ready to end after 10 years is very satisfying for me...I know last minute things could happen, but even the senate architects of the ban have recently said "it's over"...I have been here for several months spouting off about how the ban will end, but truth be told, I really didn't think it would really happen...Surely they don't take away something, and give it back again. That just doesn't happen in the history of our government...

It's almost like a dream coming to fruition, I honestly felt the ban would disappointingly continue...I have never been this happy in a long time. Tears of joy are almost ready to swell because of this high...

I didn't get to see nightline...It must have been interesting...

 

If this (below) is from nightline, than they (the media) continues to fool joe "ignorant" public...No wonder 60 something percent doesn't know what the heck we're talking about...What pisses me off is when you have educated people (i.e. some senators, some police chiefs) talking about machine guns among other idiotic misconceptions to the public, when the ban has nothing to do about machine guns...NOTHING!...The famed 1997 North Hollywood shootout at the Bank of America?...Illegal machine guns which the ban absolutely does not address or cover in any fashion...It targets AR15 and other sporting rifles because of features, and features alone plus high capacity magazines...I believe in high capacity magazines and I stated why in my previous posts...

Expiration of Gun Ban Prompts Misleading TV Report and Ad
(CNSNews.com) - Gun control advocates and some media outlets are misleading the public into thinking that fully automatic weapons will hit the streets on Monday, when the so-called "assault weapons ban" expires, Second Amendment supporters say.


The Second Amendment Foundation is blasting ABC News for "distorting the facts" in a report that aired on Wednesday evening, Sept. 8.


The segment opened with footage of a 1997 North Hollywood bank robbery, in which the robbers fired fully automatic weapons. The report by ABC News Correspondent Bill Redeker suggested that such firearms would be legal when the assault weapons ban expires at midnight on Sept. 13.


The gun used in the bank robbery had been illegally modified, the Second Amendment Foundation said, "yet ABC News left the impression that such rifles will be available to the general public."


Not true


Second Amendment groups, including the National Rifle Association, note that the sale and possession of fully automatic weapons is, has been, and will remain strictly regulated by the federal government.


The 1994 "assault weapons ban" ("Clinton gun ban," as some call it) had nothing to do with fully automatic guns; it applied to semi-automatic weapons with certain "military-style" cosmetic features.


By definition, semi-automatic weapons fire once each time the trigger is pulled -- one bullet per trigger pull -- while fully automatic firearms fire many bullets in rapid succession with just one trigger pull.


"ABC's research on this story was either incredibly poor or deliberately distorted," said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. "It's the same distorted reporting we saw in 1994, prior to the ban, in which the press faked footage in an attempt to portray ammunition from these guns as explosively lethal."


The Second Amendment Foundation also complained that reporter Bill Redeker highlighted certain cosmetic features affected by the 1994 legislation. He said that folding stocks make "assault rifles" more "concealable" and the flash suppressor makes it harder to spot a shooter at night.


"These cosmetic features have nothing to do with how a particular firearm functions or how lethal it might be," Gottlieb said. "That is why the 1994 ban -- which only affected the appearance of these guns, not their operation -- was nonsense to begin with.


"ABC News sensationalized, and as a result fictionalized, what this ban did and what will result from the law's sunset," Gottlieb concluded. "That's not simply irresponsible reporting. It's journalistic fraud, and ABC News, Jennings and Redeker should apologize for it."


'600 rounds a minute'


In a related development, the liberal MoveOn.org 527 group said its political action committee would start airing a 30-second TV ad blaming President George W. Bush for the expiration of the "assault weapons ban."


According to a MoveOn.org press release, "Such weapons as the AK-47 military assault rifle will be eligible for sale and use in the U.S., able to fire about 600 rounds per minute with a range of 300 meters, once the ban on assault weapons passed by Congress and supported by four previous Presidents -- Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton, but not George W. Bush -- expires on Sept. 13."


To fire a semi-automatic weapon 600 times a minute, the shooter would have to pull the trigger every tenth of a second.


What about reloading? The Brady Campaign's own website say that assault weapons "were designed for rapid-fire, and many come equipped with large capacity magazines allowing 50 or more bullets to be fired without reloading." The Brady Campaign website also says someone shooting a semi-automatic weapon can "fire dozens of rounds without reloading" -- not hundreds of rounds, as the MoveOn ad claims.


The National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action notes that foreign rifles such as the AK-47 and Uzi were banned from importation in 1989 under federal firearms importation law, and "when the Clinton ban expires, these guns will remain banned under these other laws." American-made, semi-auto versions of those guns may be available, however.


According to MoveOn PAC's new ad, "John Kerry, a sportsman and a hunter, would keep them (AK-47s) illegal" while "George Bush will let the assault weapon ban expire."


MoveOn PAC's gun control ad will air in the Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., markets starting Friday -- a three-day ad buy totaling $100,000, the MoveOn PAC said in a press release..


The text of the assault weapon add is as follows:


(Video images of an an assault weapon supered over white background, with sound of assault weapons firing. Images of various assault weapons flash rapidly on the screen to match the sound effects audio.)


ANNOUNCER: This is an assault weapon. It can fire up to 300 rounds a minute. It's the weapon most feared by our police. In the hands of terrorists it could kill hundreds. That's why they're illegal. [The MoveOn PAC press release said 600 times a minute. The ad text says 300 times a minute]


(Video image of the weapon begins to shrink, and a red circle surrounds the weapons with a red line across the image to create the universal "no" symbol. Under the "no guns" image, the words "John Kerry supports the ban" appear.)


ANNOUNCER: John Kerry, a sportsman and a hunter

this text is ultimately via www.awbansunset.com

, as all previous text cited...