Nashville News Blog

Hey Gilbert, don't you have a book burning to get to?

Hey Heart of Dixie, don't you have a book burning to get to?

The picture above shows lots of Title II firearms which are not at debate here. Title II firearms are heavily regulated and were NOT the focus of the 1994 omnibus crime bill normally called the 'Assault Weapons Ban'.

The author shows his fundamental misunderstanding when he states that 'but there's little indication that he'll go after your 20-gauge or .30-06, unless it's sawed off.' A 'sawed off' shotgun is a Title II firearm and thus not part of the first 'Assault Weapons Ban.'

There is a misconception in the press that 'Assault Rifles' are somehow machine guns. They are NOT. Rosie O'Donnell, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, have all three been quoted as saying that 'no one needs an AK-47 (or machine gun) to hunt deer'. This underlines a fundamental misunderstanding of what an 'Assault Rifle' was when it had a definition under the 1994 'Assault Weapon Ban' and what a machine gun is. A machine gun will fire more than once per single action of the trigger. All weapons banned under the 1994 'Assault Weapon Ban' would fire at most once per single action of the trigger.

There is no functional difference between what people think are assault rifles and many types of hunting rifles. The modern Browning BAR (hunting rifle - not the automatic rifle from WWII) and Remington 7400 are a couple of good examples. The modern BAR fires once per action of the trigger and takes a detachable magazine. So does an AR15 or an AK-47 clone, FN-FAL, HK-91, etc.(so-called Assault Rifles) The difference between the two is only cosmetic.

But if you asked an anti-gunner or member of the press to look at a photograph of each and ask them which one is the assault rifle, they would always pick the black one that looks very much like a rifle carried by soldiers. The 'hunting rifle' that they do not want to ban has pretty wood furniture and maybe polished blue steel and looks very different from the AR15. Again, I have illustrated here that there is no functional difference.

This point is made painfully clear when reading the verbiage of H.R. 6257 Appendix A 'Centerfire Rifles--Autoloaders'. This is a list of rifles that would be excluded from the new 'Assault Weapon Ban'. These rifles are excluded by name from the ban because their function is EXACTLY the same as that of the rifles that are banned in the resolution. These excluded rifles look like hunting rifles and are not black and evil looking.
The guy who wrote this knew that there were no functional differences but wrote the ban and exclusion list anyway. What hypocrisy?!?!?

"AR-15 rifles in particular--a semi-automatic rifle made iconic in Vietnam."

Not really. Most used fully auto M16s.