OPINION:
According to President-elect Joe Biden’s website, his administration wishes to “Ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons.”
Partly, his rationale for this position is that since present federal law puts a three-shell restriction on migratory bird hunting, this should apply elsewhere.
What Mr. Biden and his team chiefly neglect is that this cited bird hunting restriction was signed into law because — markedly — more than 90% of the world’s migratory birds have been shown to lack protection. One-half of migratory bird populations have declined during travel in the past 30 years. In North America alone, The New York Times noted that the level of “birds in the United States and Canada has declined by 3 billion, or 29 percent, over the past century.”
But this level of extinction does not apply to humans — unless of course we are talking about leftist-backed abortion.
Mr. Biden’s further statement on his website that “our federal law does more to protect ducks than children” is a total reach. In terms of protecting our children, the confiscation of assault weapons would have little impact, and only impede on our constitutional rights.
According to Statista Research Department data, from the years 1982 to February 2020 rifles accounted for 47 incidents in mass shootings, while shotguns at 26 incidents. Alternatively, handguns were used 143 times, with 95 incidents. In terms of the number of murder victims in 2019 by weapon used, Statista also reports that handguns accounted for 6,368 fatalities (the most by far) compared to rifles and shotguns at 364 and 200, respectively.
What is confusing is why Mr. Biden is running on an unsubstantiated platform to ban these particular firearms. Americans own lots and lots of rifles, it turns out. In 2018, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) reported that approximately 638,000 machine guns, including assault rifles and submachine guns, were circulating in the United States. However, these are simply not the primary weapons used in mass murders. The data does not support that assertion.
The left habitually misunderstands just how much of the firearm economy is dependent and comprised of assault weapons. All told, upwards of 4 million rifles were manufactured in 2016 — and 25% of all U.S. rifles are technically classified as AR-15’s. Given the sheer number of assault weapons in circulation — it is a wonder why so few have been used for mass shootings. Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox found in a 2013 research study that assault weapons accounted for just 24.6% of mass shootings, while handguns a whopping 47.9%.
One of the other major flaws of Mr. Biden’s stance is illuminated when one takes into account data from the years 1994 to 2003 — when the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Act was effective.
During this period, the National Institute of Justice, along with University of Pennsylvania criminologist Dan Woods, found that the United States “cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence … there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.” John Lott of The Wall Street Journal, who mentions the study in his 2013 piece on crime, alludes to a 5.7 per 100,000 murder rate prior to the ban expiring — in conjunction with the fact that the murder rate fell to 4.7 per 100,000, in 2011.
Similarly, a 2018 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found zero substantiation that “assault weapons bans” will lower “the incidence of fatal mass shootings.” Most of all, the Bloomberg-funded research “did not find an independent association between assault weapon bans and the incidence of fatal mass shootings after controlling for the effects of bans on large-capacity magazines.”
Nonetheless, it is President-elect Biden and his progressive cast of anti-American characters who aim to enforce a citizen registration of assault weapons under the National Firearms Act (levying taxation and forcing firearms not merely being transacted to be in the federal government database) — and enact a mandatory, buy-back program.
It was failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, similarly, who proposed going door-to-door to collect firearms (then changed his stance after realizing the ridiculousness of the idea. On MSNBC in 2019, he said that “a visit by law enforcement to recover that firearm” would be put into law. Interestingly, this is the same Democratic Party that claims it is unfeasible to travel door-to-door deporting illegal immigrants.
While Mr. Biden is adamantly anti-Second Amendment — given his voting record — and having said in February that he would “do everything in my power in office or out of office to get those assault weapons off the street,” the political hypocrisy could not be more exhausting.
The same man who shrieks about the need to take the American people’s guns — the establishment puppet who has suggested “defunding the police,” employs numerous armed guards with assault weapons of their own. On Nov. 6, for instance, the left-wing Daily Beast reported that Secret Service was beefing up “protection ahead of possible victory declaration.”
Throughout his campaign, Mr. Biden always had armed security guards. And for his protection — this is the proper move. I encourage it.
But it is unacceptance for the left to fail to wholeheartedly condemn criminals rioting and looting like whining toddlers this summer, while maintaining a stance aimed at violating the rights of law-abiding Americans.
Why should the president-elect have his own government-funded self-defense, while we stand defenseless, stripped of individual liberties, at the mercy of an overbearing national government?
Simple. We should not. Cannot. More guns equals more freedom.
• Gabe Kaminsky is a student at the University of Pittsburgh and can be reached at gkaminskycontact@gmail.com.
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