New York Times: More fair assessment on "assault weapons"?

[Kimio]

This is most unusual, and I find it intriguing, while saying "Okay, so what's their angle, how are they trying to spin this"

As I read through it, I was a bit surprised to see that the article appears to be encouraging other methods (such as targeting high risk individuals in high risk areas, such as impoverished sections of urban areas.) and helping them get off the streets an becoming stable, working citizens.


What do you all think?

The inner cynic in me thinks they're using this to try and regain traction on a handgun ban.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/su...s&emc=rss&_r=4

[Tom Servo]

The inner cynic in me thinks they're using this to try and regain traction on a handgun ban.

I doubt it. The very term "assault weapon" is the result of a failure to get handguns banned or severely restricted. From the late 1960's until the late 1980's, handguns were the big target for gun control. It never caught on with politicians or with the general public.

Around 1989, Josh Sugarmann accepted as much. The gun control folks needed something to rally around, so he proposed the idea of "assault weapons." He admitted that it was a confusing and nebulous category. He was also honest, if not a bit crass, when he suggested that it would be easier to get a ban on "assault weapons" because it was easier to confuse them with machine guns in the public eye.

Yeah. So, well...yeah. Remember that the same folks pushing for common-sense gun laws today are the folks who knowingly supported that agenda twenty years ago.

What this article (and there was a similar one in WaPo last week) does is feign defeat and compromise. How so? Feinstein went way off the reservation with last year's AWB II. Not even her allies in the Senate warmed to it. The competing bill was Manchin-Toomey, which was supposed to be the moderate proposal.

Trust me, if the political climate was right, they'd push for AWB II tomorrow. At the moment it isn't, so they claim they're realigning themselves around a more moderate axis. Do not trust them.

[Kimio]

Oh I don't think for a second that the anti's are trying to be "fair". I've read and heard it plenty from the veterans of the gun community as well as seeing it for myself.

The inner skeptic/cynic in me refuses to completely believe anything the anties try to pull.

The anti's are not stupid, they're intelligent and well funded. They'll spin any story or event to try and get their agenda pushed through. This however, is something I was not aware of, and now that you point it out, it makes sense with what they're trying to do.

Hopefully my donations to the NRA-ILA will keep the wolves at bay when the antis rear their heads, which they will, again sometime in the future.

[BobCat45]

If I may, I'd like to quote two paragraphs from the piece. If this is beyond "fair use" please delete:

More than 20 years of research funded by the Justice Department has found that programs to target high-risk people or places, rather than targeting certain kinds of guns, can reduce gun violence.

David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, argues that the issue of gun violence can seem enormous and intractable without first addressing poverty or drugs. A closer look at the social networks of neighborhoods most afflicted, he says, often shows that only a small number of men drive most of the violence. Identify them and change their behavior, and it’s possible to have an immediate impact.

I have no idea who the author is but she is trying to make herself sound like someone who cares more about decreasing the violence than about banning guns.

The idea that "guns don't kill people. people kill people" is old hat to us, new to them. And that they are finally putting it in print and accepting that banning guns will not decrease violence ought to please us.

She also mentions, in passing, that "assault weapons" is a political (not technical) term that addresses appearance and not function.

In short - whatever the real motivation behind the article, it reads like a relatively objective analysis of a seemingly intractable problem.

[wogpotter]

Am I the only one thinking this is just a re-targeting ploy?
By that I mean dropping the failed & politically toxic (especially during election sunup time) "Assault weapons" sacred cow & switching back to a more acceptable & with better chance of success "handguns" point of aim for the pre elective speech-making?

I for one don't see them folding the tents & backing off, but I do see a change of tactic.

[GunXpatriot]

May be for re-targeting, but doesn't the general public NOT support a ban on handguns?

And honestly, the only reason people support a ban on "assault weapons" is because they haven't the slightest clue what they actually are. But I guess around these parts, I'm mostly preaching to the choir.

Oh man, the arguments I've had with people over AWB's... They always give the same idiotic responses, though.

Rant over..

[2damnold4this]

Here is a link to some more articles by Beckett on guns.

[tobnpr]

"Assault rifles" don't really exist...
"Weapons of war"....

And others. Terms derived by the liberal MSM to gin up fear and support by the uninformed and willfully ignorant masses.

I still want to puke every time I hear the term "automatic weapon" used to describe a semi-automatic rifle.

Thing about "journalism" today- the "journalists" LIE...and they get away with it. The "news" outlets publish them as fact, and the uninformed believe it.

There are no longer standards for truthfulness. There is no longer "news"- it's all editorials, usually combined with half-truths or lies to support the writer's personal views.

This article, like others she's written, is a thinly veiled attempt to push for handgun "control".

[kilimanjaro]

Look for proposals to lower the requirements and due process for adjudication of mental illnesses down to something along the lines of training police to 'recognize' illnesses or 'my neighbor is nuts' levels of Orwellian precrime.

[steve4102]

Originally Posted by wogpotter

Am I the only one thinking this is just a re-targeting ploy?
By that I mean dropping the failed & politically toxic (especially during election sunup time) "Assault weapons" sacred cow & switching back to a more acceptable & with better chance of success "handguns" point of aim for the pre elective speech-making?

A re-targeting ploy, for sure, but not to go after Handguns or any other type of firearm.

This is a ploy to go after the Gun Owner, not the Gun. These studies will be used as ammunition to lobby for "Expanded" background checks and other criteria required to purchase or Own any type of Firearm.

If they cannot Ban the Firearm, ban the person. IMO that is where this is headed.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

This article is just a rehash of a study by the Center for American Progress (a lefty think tank) that was authored by a former MAIG Coordinator: http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-c...ons-report.pdf

I am guessing Bloomberg's backing and the recent 20th anniversary of the 1994 ban is why you are seeing this article and others with the same theme suddenly springing up like mushrooms in various "news" outlets.

The study basically realized that pushing gun bans at the same time you are pushing background checks was counterproductive to getting background checks passed; because it is hard to sell the "Nobody wants to take your guns away" lie concerning registration when you are trying to take their guns away at the same time. The study recommended making background checks a higher priority and shushing the "assault weapons" talk for the time being.

Instead of banning the production of new assault weapons, the study recommended registration of all firearms transfers (not just sales mind you), and that semi-automatic firearms (not just long guns either) be placed into the NFA and require a CLEO signoff (they even went so far as to emphasize the CLEO sign off part). As a compromise/partial advance measure, they might consider only requiring a CHL to own a semi-auto firearm.

Some important things to note about their alternate proposal:
1) This is a de-facto ban that is even worse than any previously proposed ban, since it effects not only newly manufactured firearms; but existing firearms already in private ownership.
2) We all know the CLEO sign-off is frequently used to deny gun ownership to people who are more than qualified to own NFA weapons simply at the whim of the CLEO.
3)Your Glock 17 can easily be construed as an "Assault Weapon." In fact, MAIG has already done so several times in the past in releasing studies on the subject. When you look at it in that light, their focus on "handguns and background checks" instead of "assault weapons" starts to make more sense.

They are in no way backing off their goals in the least. In fact, they've been surprisingly open about what their goals are and how they plan to achieve them. This "Assault Weapons Myth" story seems like a positive because it looks like the anti-gun side is finally starting to acknowledge the reality that so-called "Assault Weapons" have next to zero impact on firearm death and injury rates; but in my opinion, the real goal here is to help lull gun owners into a false sense of security prior to the important midterm elections.

We've got 40 Senators who voted for a draconian gun ban in 2013. 46 Senators voted to ban any "ammunition feeding device" of more than 10 rounds. 54 Senators voted for a "universal background checks" bill that included forcing CHL holders, who were already exempt from background checks, to be forced to make their private transfers through an FFL and fill out a Form 4473, even though no background check would be done. That is registration, pure and simple.

Many of the Senators who made those anti-gun votes are in a tough re-election fight now and they are scared. They are hoping gun owners either have forgiven or forgotten these votes. And articles like these are meant to reassure gun owners that a certain unnamed party whose leadership is universally on the wrong side of those votes is finally starting to listen to reason. But if we don't get rid of those people in November, they are going to do exactly what they say they are going to do in the CAP Study above.

Everybody here has seen the "Nobody wants to take your guns" gambit before...

Originally Posted by Barack Obama

"I just want to be absolutely clear, alright. So I don’t want any misunderstanding. When ya’ll go home and you’re talking to your buddies, and they say, “Ah, he wants to take my gun away,” you’ve heard it here — I’m on television so everybody knows it – I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away. … So, there are some common-sense gun safety laws that I believe in. But I am not going to take your guns away. So if you want to find an excuse not to vote for me, don’t use that one. Cause that just ain’t true.- 2008 Presidential Candidate Barack Obama"[/url]

How did that play out in December 2012, once he no longer had to worry about reelection?

[boltomatic]

Who knows what the angle is, maybe they are genuinely admitting they were wrong about assault rifles.

[Slamfire]

All I see are Bloomberg and his friends are experimenting with different appeals that will lead to gun bans. The more they keep this as a top headline, the more they move public opinion to their side of the argument.

Many of the Senators who made those anti-gun votes are in a tough re-election fight now and they are scared.

Gun owners need to make them more scared by going out and voting for the other candidate. Regardless of whom the other candidate might be. In elections with low turnout, gun owners can punch way above their weight class. Even if the choice is between an old gun banner and a new gun banner, removing an incumbent, means the new guy has to start from square one. Important seats and positions in Congress are based on seniority.

Knock them out!

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Who knows what the angle is, maybe they are genuinely admitting they were wrong about assault rifles.

By making them NFA weapons? That seems like a strange way to admit error.

[kilimanjaro]

Never turn your back on a gun-grabber.

They speak with honeyed words in soft cadences, to fool the unwary.

[2damnold4this]

By making them NFA weapons? That seems like a strange way to admit error.

I don't see the NYT article by Beckett as a push to make "assault weapons" NFA items. Beckett's article seems to be reporting the ineffectiveness of the original AWB and that a reinstatement won't lower crime. There are, no doubt, many gun control advocates that want a ban or want to place "assault weapons" in the NFA registry but the point of Beckett's article seems to be that other gun control advocates realize those actions wouldn't lower crime.

[wogpotter]

If you read between the lines & apply liberal logic the article says that the problem isn't "Assault Weapons" because they aren't used much in the commission of violence, as the majority of "gun Violence related events are involving handguns".

That was why I wondered if the emphasis is just being shifted from long guns to handguns as that topic has been sleeping for quite a while & is probably the next big push, along with back door ammo restrictions.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Beckett's "journalism" is basically just repeating some of the points from the CAP study I linked, which does directly advocate for making semi-autos an NFA item. Read some of Beckett's past work on the subject of guns. She is no friend to gun owners.

This is just another version of "Gun owners don't need to worry because we have totally learned our lesson on the futility of gun control - at least until after the election is over."