Editorial

Assault Weapons Unnecessary
Anywhere In The United States

Guns galore, screamed the facts, why do we need to rescind the assault weapon ban by letting the legislation expire?

But there was no answer, only deathly silence on the floor in Congress. No one started the process to continue the 10-year-old ban on semi-automatic assault weapons in the United States. So on Sept. 13, 2004, the guns went on the shelves for sale.

Guns, properly managed and in the hands of people with training, should be something such qualified Americans can get and keep and carry. But assault rifles are strictly man killers, and these are the ones just ‘un-banned.’

They should be banned.

What such weapons have are military features. They have flash suppressors to hide the shooter’s location. Instead of a maximum of a 10-bullet capacity, they have 30-round magazines. There is a bayonet lug to which the owner can attach a large knife, perhaps for close combat conditions.

These are not sportsmen’s tools or weapons for self-protection. These are potentially mainstays for criminals, like machine guns became in the 1920s, or on a lesser but still deadly level, like brass knuckles and garrotes.

Guns of this sort are made to kill other men, nothing else.

And any handful of militia people or individuals who think they can somehow use these rifles to defend themselves against the American Army are certifiably loony. Similarly, anyone who thinks they can somehow fight against the world’s terrorists with a collection of these weapons is equally foolish. Terrorists don’t engage in stand-up fights with small arms, however sophisticated.

Fanatics took down four planes with small knives on Sept. 11, 2001. Terrorists are far too clever to rely upon assault weapons, save as a tool sometimes used in ambushes.

If anyone has a real need for an AK-47, an Uzi or TEC-9, a Bushmaster (one commercial version of the M-16), or other 30-bullets per clip weapon, he or she is in the military or is a criminal. And it is far too easy to modify such weapons from semi-automatic, where the trigger must be pulled each time the gun is fired, to fully automatic, where with the touch of a trigger a whole clip can be fired in a split second.

But how did this quiet slide back into the sale of these super guns happen?

Somebody must have been listening to the winds of political power.

Somebody was; George W. Bush and the Congressional Republicans heard the voices on the wind of one of their favorite lobbies, the National Rifle Association.

If President Bush let the ban expire on such weapons, he could get the NRA endorsement this election year. That was the apparent quid pro quo, the charge.

Yet however stiffly the NRA wind blew through the Republican camp is less important than the actions of the Bush Administration. The fact is, Mr. Bush never worked to renew the assault weapon ban.

As is so often the case on such controversial issues, he waffled a great deal, which might also be called flip-flopping. He offered some half-hearted attempts at supporting an extension of the ban. Administration spokesmen said Bush’s position was manifest, he supported the ban, as had past presidents: Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and the late Ronald Regan.

But Bush never pushed the ban with Congressional leaders. Bush could easily have rallied support on this measure. He didn’t.

Since he took office, Bush has pushed around Republican legislators like pawns.

Had he asked for the ban, he would have had it. He could have removed any chance that such weapons would ultimately fall into the hands of criminals or crazies, but he did not.

There were also some gun bills that John Kerry sponsored, but in the recent legislative struggle over assault weapons he seemed to have other priorities. Like Bush, Kerry is a Second Amendment supporter. He hunts and uses guns regularly.

Both of the current presidential candidates were powerless, it seemed, to make the issue move; as a senator, Kerry of course has no direct influence on the House of Representatives. Kerry could only hope to influence the issue by seeking to sway public opinion in a manner that would bring voter demands for an extension to the House members. But whether because of political concerns relating to the NRA and gun owners in this election year, or because it simply seemed an impossible task, he didn’t do so.

And President Bush assumed the position that if House members themselves could not pry the legislation out of committee, and therefore bring it to a floor vote on whether to extend the ban, well, what could Bush do?

Oh please, don’t take the American people so shallowly that they are supposed to swallow that two-headed stance.

Make no mistake, though, unlike Kerry, Bush opposed the ban thoroughly, utterly and unquestionably. He did have influence in the House. And Kerry did have harsh words for Bush.

Bush was allowing criminals – including terrorists – access to assault weapons, it was asserted, and it was stated that Bush bowed to the gun lobby and let the weapons ban die rather than engage the issue.

These were strong words, of course, but they were delivered only the day after the ban was removed.

Kerry carried such firearms during his service in Vietnam. He used an M-16 to kill at least one Viet Cong soldier in an action where he actually beached his boat and chased the ambusher down. Kerry knows exactly what an assault weapon can do.

If he knows how to campaign, then a new ban on assault weapons has to be a potential touchstone. Bush has handed him the issue on a platter. Kerry seems to be trying, now, to rally some backing. Obviously it will have to be a ban on just some firearms, not all of them.

But if Mr. Kerry truly wants to make this a presidential priority, he needs to make his message clear and simple. For Kerry, however, making anything clear and simple can be daunting

But this is not just a presidential campaign issue. This is a life and death matter.

President William J. Clinton signed the assault weapons ban in 1994. He did so after some California massacres shocked people into action. There was a 1984 multi-person killing at a McDonald’s in San Diego County that took 21 lives. Five years later there was a Stockton elementary school yard bloodletting of five people. In 1993 there was still another assault weapon, or super-weapon, if you will, episode at a law firm that ended with eight dead and six wounded.

So Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California sponsored the bill opposing such guns and it passed and became law. That is, until September 2004, when no one could manage to get it voted on again, which meant that it’s ‘sunset,’ it’s expiration date, became effective.

Oh, but surely there are bans at the state level.

Massachusetts has one.

But nothing on the national level exists any more. Some argue, of course, that the ban was a joke anyway. Crooks could almost always get hold of whatever weapon they wanted, which has a certain amount of truth to it. But now the assault rifles belong to everyone again, and therefore they will circulate more widely.

Instead of an occasional robbery or murder with a super-weapon, every dispute between husband and wife carries the possibility of SWAT-style enforcement tactics. Terrorists will have handy access to any weapon that hits their fancy, be they American terrorists or foreign-spawned suicide killers. Killing will be just plain easier now.

All the pollsters, all the NRA pundits, all the apologists for assault weapons, which when slightly modified become true super-weapons, will explain until they are breathless that there will be no increase in death because of this ban being broken.

They will be wrong.

Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Army Rangers and other special forces personnel not only know how to use these weapons, they know the difference between a simple shotgun and an AK-47 or M-16 style assault weapon. A crazed person needs just one pull of the trigger on a fully automatic AK-47 to kill 30 people, then pop in another magazine and murder that many more. The average citizen doesn’t know this palpable difference, but those who wish to learn may now buy an AR-15 from Bushmaster, and discover what it feels like to handle a military-style weapon that will unload up to 30 rounds as fast as one can pull the trigger.

But these guns are called assault weapons for a reason: they are meant for war.

Nobody truly believes these weapons are the best for downing deer or other game, even though some of the guns might be used for that purpose, requiring restraint on the part of the hunter so that the animal isn’t so badly decimated that the meat isn’t usable.

These weapons are designed to kill people, lots of them, very efficiently.

But President Bush is not listening to those arguments. He is listening to the clear, loud voice of the National Rifle Association, which wants to be able to assure that there is virtually no restriction on the sale of weapons. NRA officers have rights, of course, just as all Americans do. They have good points to make in saying farmers and ranchers need rifles, hunters need rifles and shotguns and people in frightening surroundings may need a handgun.

Americans can and do argue those points, but the consensus to date has been that such uses are legitimate. We agree with that consensus.

Military assault weapons, however, are a different matter. There isn’t any reason why anyone should need an assault weapon anyplace at all in this country. None.