The Assault Weapons Ban of 2017
California’s senior Senator has once again jumped on the post tragedy bandwagon and introduced a new gun control bill that would have done nothing to stop the tragedy she is exploiting. The Assault Weapon’s Ban of 2017 is a rehash of the previous / expired Assault Weapon’s Ban with a little Californication thrown in for bad measure. What the bill contains is not quite as interesting as what it does not.
Much like the original California “assault weapon” classification in the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989, this new bill lists specific firearms by make and model. It then goes on to list series information and then the purely cosmetic features of firearms, all components of California laws — so no big surprise.
Then, it goes further. The new bill includes .22 versions of firearms, never previously included in California, as well as banning the receivers and other components of these firearms. Tube fed magazine capacity would be strictly limited to .22 ammo. Those who are in lawful possession of these newly banned firearms and magazines are “grandfathered” and may keep them, with new storage and transportation requirements of course. All transfers must be registered through FFL’s.
If all this sounds like it doesn’t respect the Second Amendment, the Senator is proud to point out that they have specifically exempted “2,200 guns for hunting, household defense or recreational purposes”.
Where to start…
How about that so-called “assault weapons” don’t actually exist. They are a made up classification of rifles, shotguns and pistols to make them sound more dangerous than other firearms. These cosmetic features, now referred to as “military characteristics” in this bill, don’t do a damn thing to change the ‘lethality’ of the firearm; they only make it look scarier to the gun control elitists.
The addition of frames and receivers should come as no surprise. California has been working to ban those for years to prevent individuals from assembling their own firearms. New California laws have already been enacted to force you to serialize and register new firearms you build yourself.
But the bill exempts so many firearms, right? To California residents, this is going to sound an awful lot like the “Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale”. An ever-dwindling list of handguns the state has approved for residents to buy. The list is dwindling since no new pistols will ever be able to meet the states requirements for addition and updates to existing ones are treated as new. As time goes on and old models are no longer manufactured, the list will shrink away to nothing. Once you understand this, you can see where this exempted rifle and shotgun list would go.
As bad as all of this is, it’s what is not in the bill that is the most frightening. While it “grandfathers” current possession of the newly banned firearms and magazines, something we know from California is a lie (more on this later), the bill says nothing about registration. If you are allowed to keep these firearms and legally transfer them, what good is a ban? Sure, no more new firearms will be available and you’ll begin to lose some to age and wear or from owners turning them in on their own, but in a nation that has over 350 million firearms in private hands, firearms that can easily last a century or more, that’s a pretty long game of attrition.
The answer is this bill is nothing but a showboating crock of nonsense. The Senator’s press release says: “This bill won’t stop every mass shooting, but it will begin removing these weapons of war from our streets.” Aside from the obvious exaggeration of calling civilian semi-automatic firearms “weapons of war”, this bill doesn’t do a thing to get rid of anything, just limit what can be purchased going forward.
Why not? Because the bill is purposely incomplete. As evidenced by the actions of California and other anti-gun states, their intent is to register then outlaw, confiscate and eliminate firearms and standard capacity magazines. If they included the rest of their plans, it would have been immediately recognized for what it really is. But in it’s current form, it poorly attempts to show how much the Senator and her equally complicit co-sponsors ‘respect the Second Amendment’, all while trying to capitalize on the death of innocent men, women and children.
Perhaps it’s time for California’s senior Senator to retire and stop embarrassing herself, the state and the Constitution she is supposed to represent.
Bob
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