Future national assault weapon bans?

[Soybomb]

Don't panic too much, this is all just my speculation. Anyway I notice when reading a thread like "how many magazines should I have" that alot of people reply as many as you can afford because its a matter of time until there is another ban. Now the problem I'm seeing is that if you read alot of anti sites about their take on the dead AWB they contend that a major reason we saw no positive effect on crime rates was grandfathered weapons and magazines. I don't buy into that, but its what they're selling now for future assault weapon bans. For example the proposed illinois ban gives you 90 days to get your assault weapons and 10+ round mags out of state before you'd have to turn them in.

Clearly the people that are stocking up belive another ban is inevitable. Do they also believe they will still be so lucky as to have the grandfather allowances this time around? If you can muster enough support to pass one I don't think its implausable to believe you couldn't make it stricter as well.

 

[ElTacoGrande]

Clearly the people that are stocking up belive another ban is inevitable. Do they also believe they will still be so lucky as to have the grandfather allowances this time around? If you can muster enough support to pass one I don't think its implausable to believe you couldn't make it stricter as well.

Good question.

Clearly the preview AWB was impotent because a) it grandfathered everything b) copycat rifles were allowed and c) it had a ten-year sunset. The only thing the ban accomplished was loss of the House and Senate by the Dems.

If they're going to pass another ban they're going to do it "for real" this time. But they just barely got the previous ban through, that was with Dem majorities and a Dem president, and that was in the impotent form it was in. Even the Dems are backing away from gun control these days; it's an albatross around their necks.

I think if the ban didn't have grandfather clauses, there would be very poor compliance with it and people would be even more upset about it.

One other thing to come out of it is that the gun rights organizations (and manufacturers) have learned that if we preceive them as compromising on AW bans, they will pay the price for it. That's a good thing.

 

[beerslurpy]

The original AWB was a tough sell and the political environment has become a lot more hostile to the gun control side since then. If anything, I think we will see national CCW first and probably continuing legal attacks on the 86 ban and the sporting purposes test.

 

[antsi]

The original AWB was a tough sell and the political environment has become a lot more hostile to the gun control side since then. If anything, I think we will see national CCW first and probably continuing legal attacks on the 86 ban and the sporting purposes test.

I agree with you, if the post-Clinton political trends continue. (Except about national CCW - that would be a pleasant surprise to me).

There are many out there who would like to reverse these trends though. I don't think it would take much for the pendulum to swing the other way. We are in a 49-51 political landscape now. Just a couple votes the other way, and all kinds of Feinstein-Kennedy-Schumer stuff starts getting written into law.

 

[MudPuppy]

The media continues to chip away and portray the gun as evil at every opportunity.

I'm surprised at how many folks I actually know that are anti-gun. Shocking, because I grew up in po'dunk Texas and have sinced moved to "the big city"...

I was watching one of those cop shows where they found an evil semi-automatic machine pistol and the drama queen...err, peace officer...no, I was right the first time--anyway, it was apparent to me the gun was just waiting to kill people and nobody needs those types of guns and so on.

You're 100% right the fight needs to be taken to them, if we conduct ourselves defensively and try and keep the anti-gunners from taking more rights then we're doomed to failure.

Definitely need to roll back that ban on FA and the whole 922r is just stupid. CCW for every state is a good start. Observance and respect of the bill of rights would be even better.

 

[Mongo the Mutterer]

The media continues to chip away and portray the gun as evil at every opportunity.

And we have to continue to chip away and challenge the Socialist Mainstream Media... at every opportunity. Their credibility is in question constantly, and rightfully so.

 

[Standing Wolf]

If it doesn't happen sooner, it will happen later. Sooner or later, the leftist extremists will reassert the legal principle that some guns, because they're scary-looking, can be prohibited for commoners to own.

 

[cbsbyte]

I believe that the focus of gun control supporters is to push their gun control measures on the state level until the federal political make up is suitable for there ends. Right, now it is a lot easier fro them to push AWB, and gun control in many states, than nationaly.

 

[Lone_Gunman]

Eventually some politician will equate "homeland security" with firearms confiscation, and most Americans will gladly surrender their firearms in the name of safety and the War on Terror, just as they have done already with their privacy rights.

A few Americans will attempt to defy the law, and be branded domestic terrorists, and then killed by government assassins in the style of the Ruby Ridge and Waco killings.

The groundwork for this has already been laid by the Bush administration. Americans have been successfully taught to give up rights in the name of public safety and "patriotism".

 

[Matthew Temkin]

I do not see any bans, except in states such as mine, NJ, Mass and other similar states.
Being anti gun has proven to be a bad thing for reelection or, as in the case of Al Gore and John Karey, for election to the White House.
I remember local NY area gunstores selling out of any tactical firearm soon after Sept 11, 2001, and I believe the political climate to be vastly different as to 1993.

 

[Zundfolge]

I guess I'm one of the few optimists here.

I believe there are less antis in the US today than there was in 1994. Certainly there's still too many of them, and the ones that still exist are much more shrill, but there's a lot less "rank and file" gun control supporters out there (we can thank a handful of Islamists for their antics one September for that I bet).

 

[TexasRifleman]

Be tough to pull off Federally again. Be like trying to enact Prohibition twice.

The attacks will now be state by state instead.

 

[Creeping Incrementalism]

I'm pretty sure that, if there are any future bans, they will grandfather in old items and just ban new sales, as they have done in California. The old dogs can say, "hey, they haven't taken away my guns (and I've heard it said on this board, as a reason to vote Democrat)", but few young people won't get the opportunity to know what it's like. It's creeping incrementalism--you get the ban, but without all the problems of actually grabbing guns.

 

[beerslurpy]

I've thought about this a lot and I think that the gun rights movement is really riding the crest of a wave that is bigger than many of you beleive. And we have many of our biggest enemies to thank.

First, the early 90s gun ban movement was a combination of two political trends:
-dissatisfaction with Bush I and the republicans because they essentially abandoned their core. Many republicans either sat out the election or voted third party. Clinton won with 41 percent of the vote and the Democrats regained both houses, essentially erasing all of the Reagan era gains conservatives had made.
-success with gun banning as a "tough on crime" platform that was very powerful on the west coast for the Democrats. This allowed the Democrats to potentially reclaim an area that Reagan had made very strong for Republican politicians.

So the Democrats got what was essentially a temporary reprieve from conservative voters and they also got a misleading political trend from California and attempted to take it nationwide. Essentially, the Democrats overstepped and didnt begin to catch on until after the 2000 election when Clinton started handing out cluepons to explain the Gore defeat in TN.

The end result of the AWB misstep was:
-many secretely anti-gun politicians exposed themselves
-gun owners began to vote in large numbers
-the resulting political mess generated additional scholarly interest in the 2nd amendment and additional political interest in pandering to gun owners

In the past 5 years we have gotten a number of events that caused people to question the ability of government to protect them:
-sept 11 and the war on terror
-katrina
-the border troubles

Due probably to competition from Fox, media overall is trending slightly more centrist and occaisionally a non-fox affiliate lets a pro-gun or pro-self defense bit slip through.

Has anyone here read "The Tipping Point"? The main idea was that lots of little things add up to produce major shifts in society. I see increased academic enthusiasm for individual gun ownership, increased media and public tolerance of it and increased legislative protection of gun rights. My family members are actually buying guns! None of this alone is a sea change, but together all the straws break the camel's back. A few more little things to push us in the right direction and I think you might actually see repeals starting to happen.

Just keep asking yourself what you can do to help the movement. Giving money helps. Getting people interested in shooting sports or self defense helps even more. Writing letters helps if you can write well.

 

[ElTacoGrande]

Has anyone here read "The Tipping Point"? The main idea was that lots of little things add up to produce major shifts in society.

Good analysis Senor Cervesasslurpy,

The big tipping point thing we have is CCW reform has swept the nation. It's as close to a scientific experiment about gun ownership as you can imagine. You say "anyone who has a clean background and goes through some paperwork (etc) can own and carry a gun about town." If guns really make people into crazy killers, or if ordinary citizens can't be trusted with guns, then we would have seen some obvious proof. CCW ownership is highly monitored and absolutely accurate and indisputable statistics about permit revocations are available.

And, surprise surprise, in the almost-40 states (WI and KS coming soon!) that allow CCW, none of the bad things have happened, none at all. What we have seen is a mild reduction in crime, although it's not clear that CCW gets credit for it. But certainly nothing bad has come of it.

That's the tipping point. Once people are packing guns all over the place, it's hard to argue that we need to ban standard capacity magazines or bayonet lugs.

 

[beerslurpy]

No, individual pieces cant be the turning points. The turning point is just a point in time where things go from creeping forward or backward to an avalanche in either direction. 92-94 was a false turning point because it came about for reasons that were short-lived. I agree below that CCW will be key in turning opinion around wherever we can pass it. The problem is that there are still a lot of areas where it hasnt passed or is under attack because it only barely passed or passed with restrictions.

We will know we have reached a turning point when repealing the 86 ban or the sporting purposes language of the the 68 GCA seems like a common sense thing to the average person. Until then, we still have to keep plugging away.

Before we hit an enduring turning point, we will need the following things:
-another 1-2 federalist/formalist justices on the supreme court. I'm not even sure we have 5 that would recognize the 2nd amendment as guaranteeing an indvidual right. We dont yet have 5 that understand the commerce clause. We need a supreme court receptive to 2nd amendment arguments and interstate commerce attacks on the federal gun control laws.
-concealed carry passed and active for at least 5-10 years in the borderline states like KS, MD, MO, WI, DE. I realize MO technically has concealed carry, but someone should send another copy of that memo to StL. Concealed carry has a huge effect wherever it takes root.
-more laws protecting and encouraging self defense with firearms
-a few more watershed events that hit home the worth of individual firearms ownership and the harms of disarmament. A terrorist attack foiled by CCW holders, a massacre in a place where guns are completely forbidden, the government failing to protect people from disasters, looters, mexican army units, etc.
-there are tons of other things that we already do to encourage gun ownership, we need to keep these things up.

We can honestly get by without CA, NY, NJ or MA buying into things. They will eventually be dragged along kicking and screaming.

 

[xd9fan]

Eventually some politician will equate "homeland security" with firearms confiscation, and most Americans will gladly surrender their firearms in the name of safety and the War on Terror, just as they have done already with their privacy rights.

A few Americans will attempt to defy the law, and be branded domestic terrorists, and then killed by government assassins in the style of the Ruby Ridge and Waco killings.

The groundwork for this has already been laid by the Bush administration. Americans have been successfully taught to give up rights in the name of public safety and "patriotism".

+1 big time.....this is how both Pro- Govt parties will/are playing it.

 

[xd9fan]

In the past 5 years we have gotten a number of events that caused people to question the ability of government to protect them:
-sept 11 and the war on terror
-katrina
-the border troubles

The problem I have with this is that Govt(meaning both pro-govt parties) does not see it this way..they look at these events and either say 'see we need a bigger Govt to handle these things because the states cant" therefore the GOVT grows. Or if you have listened to the Katrina/fema herrings....its all what can "we the Govt" should have done......which means the govt will grow...in an effort to be better next time.

 

[beerslurpy]

Politicians come and go. Move the voters and the politicians will eventually follow. Who cares what the politicians thought in 93? In 95 most of them were gone.

 

[Sam Adams]

Tipping Point

Beerslurpy (great name - I wish that the stores would offer them) and ElTacoGrande:

I agree that the adoption of CCW on a large scale is a series of events that is very much in our favor, for several reasons:

First, literally millions of people nationwide at least have the ability to be armed in most places so, as you've mentioned, it is a big experiment to show whether the country becomes the OK Corral vs. showing that law-abiding people stay that way with a gun in their possession (i.e. they can resist the demonic possession).

Second, you now have millions of people who almost all are buying new guns and shooting them more, plus their families (and close friends, in many cases) personally know that they're carrying, and therefore that gun owners aren't murderers in waiting and that guns don't possess any volition or special mind-control powers. This doesn't hurt our cause in the least.

Third, many of the carry guns have magazines that are "high capacity" according to the definition in the thankfully defunct AWB. Those people won't be very pleased to have their property rendered unusable or illegal, nor to have the possibility of an easy and cheap replacement for those magazines vanish into thin air.

However, there's another factor, one which neither of you discussed, which is acting as its own tipping point regarding conservative vs. liberal politics. It is the Roe v. Wade decision. Of course, Roe as a USSC decision alone has no effect on the gun issue. However, what has the effect of Roe been? IOW, who is getting abortions, and who isn't? Logic suggests that the big city liberals and their useful idiots (big city poor of all ethnic groups) are having fewer children in general, and less since 1973, whereas the number born to more conservative folks has probably changed very little. Since the political viewpoint of most people isn't appreciably different from their parents (at least once they start paying taxes and worrying about their family's safety), the liberals are losing the population war. This will, IMHO, have an increasing effect as time goes on. Not that I relish the idea of abortion, but historians of the future will point to this as a key reason why the country has turned more conservative. The impact of this on our gun laws can't help but be felt.

So, overall I am optimistic on this issue. Of course, a few incidents combined with a few glib, power-hungry politicians can change the law on a national level in a matter of weeks, but I don't see the NRA and other organizations sitting still for it - those pols in the middle won't be as easily swayed as their early-'90s counterparts were, not with the defeats that the antis suffered.

 

[ElTacoGrande]

Third, many of the carry guns have magazines that are "high capacity" according to the definition in the thankfully defunct AWB. Those people won't be very pleased to have their property rendered unusable or illegal, nor to have the possibility of an easy and cheap replacement for those magazines vanish into thin air.

This is an excellent point. There was a "window of opportunity" to ban hi-cap mags, for both pistols and longarms. Up until the 80s or so, most pistols held less than 10 shots, and most rifles didn't have big box mags and few people bought AR-15s. In the 80s, with the introduction of the Glock 17 in particular, this started to change. By the early 90s, there was a good mix of single-stack and double-stack pistols, and detachable-mag rifles were starting to become widespread. That was the last possible time to react before hi-caps became a totally standard widespread thing. That moment has come and gone; today, the bulk of handguns and semiauto rifles sold come standard with hi-cap mags. If you want a single-stack pistol, your choices are limited to either very compact pistols, or to a 1911s, which are more "afficiando" type guns anyway. Outside of those categories there are no more single-stack pistols. Banning double-column mags now means trying to ban the industry standard product. So the window may be closed on that.

the liberals are losing the population war. This will, IMHO, have an increasing effect as time goes on. Not that I relish the idea of abortion, but historians of the future will point to this as a key reason why the country has turned more conservative. The impact of this on our gun laws can't help but be felt.

That's also an interesting point. Also the downtown areas of cities throughout the US are having a renaissance. Property values are going up, middle class whites are moving in, and they are becoming safer and more interesting. People used to never ever go to downtown LA if they could avoid it, just a few years ago. Now it is a hot spot with lots of activity, nightlife, people moving in, etc. And the kind of people who are moving in have productive jobs and ambitions and little tolerance or sympathy for criminals or no-goods. These people won't vote for liberals.

You can see this trend clearly in San Francisco, where Mayor Newsom was elected instead of Tom Amiano, and Mayor Newsom is actually doing things to kick homeless people off the streets or out of SF. A traditional big city liberal mayor (like Amiano would have been) wouldn't be doing that kind of thing.