I would not take this to be the form that is eventually introduced, but I think it’ll be a good indicator on how serious they are about actually trying to pass something. Feinstein is proposing here implementation of a ban worse than California’s. Some salient features:
- There will be a single feature test. Basically if it has a pistol grip or thumbhole stock, it’ll be banned.
- If it holds more than ten rounds, from a fixed magazine or otherwise, it’ll be banned.
- Grandfathering under the National Firearms Act only. In other words, Mr. and Mrs. America, you have to pay a $200 dollar tax per gun to register, and then NFA rules apply to transfer under the grandfathering. I guess she realizes Mr. and Mrs. America aren’t going to turn them in anymore.
If this is really the proposal, they are either not serious about passing something, or they are hoping to horse trade their way to to something still stronger than the 1994 ban, but not as bad as their first offer out of the gate. Needless to say, we need to soundly reject this bill, and not agree to compromise on something better. The response to Feinstein needs to be nothing short of total defiance. She gets nothing.
So with the second one, she is basically banning ALL firearms that accept magazines.
She knows that this will never fly. She just wants to make sure the final result is a law at least a bit stronger than the ’94 ban.
How much they are willing to give on this is a good signal of how serious they are about passing something.
She needs to be tarred and feathered already. You can kiss my ass if you think I’m complying with any of that.
Yeah surprised she gave up on the confiscation idea.
This needs to die, and quick.
Interesting. I suspect this means that either Senator Feinstein is not listening to Senator Reid, or this is a bargaining chip against the Republicans.
It would not surprise me one bit if the anti-Rights cultists ended up trading all or most of this bill in exchange for just banning private sales. Closing the gun show “loophole” has been one of their rallying cries for a long time, and if they push hard enough on the rest of this bill I can easily see the Republican “leadership” giving in. That lets they can try to look like they’re “doing something” in the wake of these tragedies, it lets them try to claim “we kept it from being much worse!”, and it lets them make it go away (as much as they can).
With the media screaming 24/7 that “this is what the majority wants” the Republicans might think they can get away with it. And the party leadership doesn’t care if people get primaried out of a job (as long is it’s not them) – [sarc] after all, what are gun owners going to do after this, vote Democrat?[/sarc]
Neat, both my Beretta 92FS and my M1 carbine would be banned (along with my real black rifles).
Question for those of you who were active when the ’94 AWB was passed:
What can we learn from that loss to help us with this new monstrosity?
I agree that the current version doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing; but it certainly will help some Fudds think “Hey, compared to what they started with, this isn’t too bad! Yuck Yuck”
I was not a gun owner in 1994, but I remember the fight. The lessons are:
1. Don’t elect a President who will spend political capital pushing gun control.
2. Don’t make gun rights a single-party issue.
3. Don’t think you can depend on NRA or any other organization to make up for your lack of action, or lack of action on the party of the community. They depend on you more than you depend on them. Think of them as a negotiator on your behalf more than anything.
That said, this isn’t 1994, and we’ve improved the issue in a lot of ways. But we’ve also enabled a terrible thing with the late election results, and what you’re seeing now is a newly emboldened left. Where does it go from here? I don’t know. A previous commenter might be right. They might trade all this for something else we’re not expecting, and won’t seem that bad in comparison.
Sebastian,
You said it best: we cannot rely on the NRA to carry the ball, it’s up to each & everyone of us to write emails to our congresscritters AND to the editors of our local papers. Short & sweet, especially to the congresscritters. Don’t be a dick, just a quick, “No new gun laws, support armed guards and/or teachers” or something similar.
DO NOT offer any sort of compromise on our part. Yes, suggest that States do timely submissions of mental health prohibitions to the NICS, but don’t offer anything else. THAT’S the part that should be left to the NRA.
Gee, this even hits 1911 single stacks. After all, someone makes a 15 round single stack magazine for them.
Third option, some people took the wrong lesson from ’94; that you can polish biological waste until it is acceptable sandwich fare. We’ll see, I guess
(I suppose I should have said, faile dto learn the long-term lesson of ’94)
So what CAN we propose to “trade”?
I hate the very concept, but unless we can defeat them completely, there WILL be something that comes.
Can we recommend or support improvements to NICS? Combine requiring States to report to NICS with a process to do a personal search and correct bad information? Make NICS available for private-party sales? I believe it’s a felony to make a private-party sale where you have a suspicion that the buyer is a prohibited person. So, access to NICS (and a “Proceed”), would provide a legal defense in the event a “bad” sale actually is made? If those changes were made would we all still oppose NICS for private-party sales? (i.e., closing the “gun-show loophole”, which isn’t real) What if it was available for private-party, but not required (see above–make it an affirmative defense in the event someone’s accused of selling to a prohibited person.)
I’m spitballing here. Looking for something that might actually improve “the law” (i.e., all statute and CFR) while giving something to politicians on “our side” to be able to negotiate with. “Nothing” works when you have both houses, or a house and the Presidency. Right now, the Republicans are going to be looking for SOMETHING they can do that will look “Bipartisan”.
It’s certainly not happening on the budget…
Right now, the Republicans are going to be looking for SOMETHING they can do that will look “Bipartisanâ€.
How many of those are reliable RKBA types?
Right now the “conservatives” in the House are holding the whip hand, Boehner’s Plan B wasn’t even close enough to hold a vote on. Why would they be different on this issue, beside of course it being a different issue? And is the House leadership, which very well might change on January 3rd, that eager to lose their majority in 2014? Ditto Reid and his approach towards Feinstein so that he avoids losing enough of those Red state Senators in 2014 to become the Minority Leader. Already she and her ilk are doing damage to the brand….
Right now is not the time to talk about trades. We have to find out where the votes are and what’s going to happen. Now is the time to write your Congressman and demand there be no new gun control. That forms the basis of not having to trade anything.
If they are looking for an alternative to gun control, that’s what NRA’s School Shield program is meant to do. You can also talk about mental health issues.
We also need to take a hard look at SSRIs that have warnings on the label such as
– Mania/Hypermania
– Agitation
– Confusion
– Paranoia
– Psychosis
– Hostility
– Hallucinations
– Depersonalization
– Lack of Emotion
Why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that nearly all of the active shooters were taking SSRIs? There is a significant problem with not only the over-medication in our culture, but also with the drug approval process.
No offense, but you need to prove causation first. This is like saying that since people die in hospitals, then hospitals kill people.
IOW, it’s quite probable that it was the underlying mental problem that is the issue, and not the medicine that is being used to treat it.
Like I said in the other thread, remove the Hughes Amendment and remove Suppressors from the NFA.
Now THAT’S a compromise.
Not that they’ll ever consider it.
They would, because it would expand the full of the NFA to encompass all semi-autos.
We need to push, and need to push hard. Push them back, into a hole, and have them backed right up to the constitution and get our rights back. We should not stop until all of this crap is repealed.
They are going to introduce the most stringent thing they can get away with, without having the media laugh at them for not being serious. That it stands no serious chance of passage is a feature, not a bug. This way, they check the box off. Did something serious. It never comes up for a vote. And their base can’t blame them, but rather blames Republicans. And Obama can also distance himself from this – making him look reasonable to the masses and helping him prepare for the defense of his future gun banning Supreme Court justices.
I can see the media interviews already:
Q: Do you support the 2nd amenmdnet
A: Of course I do. Don’t all Americans?
Q: Lets talk specifics. What about reasonable gun control measures, like Dianne Feinstein’s proposed ban
A: First of all, I am not talking about issues that will come before the court. That said, Sen. Feinsteins proposal isn’t law. And isn’t likely to be law. Its an over reach. And the political process has a way of preventing congressional over reach. But there is of course, as Justice Scalia said in Heller, plenty of room for reasonable regulations of guns.
I
Got to love how part of her list of work-arounds is already outdated.
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2012/12/12/frs-15-california-featureless-ar-15-stock/
I’d rather see a bill introduced that calls for the crucifixion of congressholes. Then we could get the country back on the right track. But you know how congressholes are, it’s really hard to nail them down, but it’s always worth trying!
30 states have Republican governors…
Let the slimy bitch grow a set, and come and get the guns herself.
The first dozen or so through my door will suddenly inherit several smoking holes in their chest.
“A sucking Chest Wound is Nature’s way of saying ‘It’s time to slow down.'”
Molon Labe!
Jerry Pournelle commented in a context that I forget that he “didn’t plan on conducting a point defense against the government”.
I add that playing by the other side’s rules is one of the first steps towards losing.
This really should about Mental Health and not about guns, it was the Mental Health Systems Act of the 1980s, that allowed individuals with mental illnesses to remain in their home communities with minimal hospitalization.
But I guess it cost less for the government to go after the guns, than institutionalize and protect society from the mentally ill.
This goes back to the 50’s, actually (see some details in the link), and the first legislation I know about was JFK’s Community Mental Health Act. To quote the first paragraph of Wikipedia’s entry on it:
Oops, should have replied to this as well:
But I guess it cost less for the government to go after the guns, than institutionalize and protect society from the mentally ill.
Actually, there’s a theory of governing that’s e.g. used in D.C. called anarcho-tyranny where both of these are “good” actions. The idea is a variation on the old pattern of the top and bottom classes conspiring against the middle, but in this case the bottom is replaced by unorganized criminals and in our case the severely mentally ill. Allow the streets to be full of them and deny your subjects the rights and/or means to defend themselves and they become a lot more dependant on the government. I heard it said that if a part of D.C. voted “the wrong way” they might find themselves with a lot less police protection. This sort of thing has been openly used in the U.K. (effective self-defense judicially nullified in the ’50s with gun control going back way before then, and e.g. Blair’s stripping rural and other areas of most of their police protection (he explicitly wanted to destroy the former)) and Singapore (in the latter case, the state owns almost all the housing, so they don’t have to do anything quite so vicious).
My only worry is do we have enough congressmen who favor our side AND have enough spine to stand up and say NO!
I sure hope that every one of you who’ve commented here has written all 3 of his/her congresscritters. Zermoid says he hopes that we have enough of them on our side: they get (and stay) on our side because they’ve heard from US. When the emails are running 100:1 in our favor, it becomes difficult for them to vote any way except ours.
If you’ve not yet written, do so NOW, and if you neglect to write, SHAME on YOU!
^ THIS!
Specific directions that I use: go to Wikipedia and search on your state; that’ll give you your two Senators and a link to a list of your State’s House delegation (in the sidebar to the right), accurately spelled (hey, that’s important for me!).
Search on each of those, you’ll find their senate.gov or house.gov site. It will have a Contact page where you can send an email. If a Congresscritter really has his act together, there will be a “2nd Amendment” topic option and his staff will get back to you quickly, even during this holiday season.
That would be Senator Roy Blunt, not that I was worried about his vote; my Democratic Senator is *awful* and I expect no reply, House members have lower budgets but should at least be counting at some level. My House representative is almost certainly getting emails in the direction of 100:1 in our favor, but that’s of course because of where I live. Still won’t hurt to let him know, the local MSM certainly isn’t taking that tack.
Harold,
I used bing.com and plugged in my Senator’s name(s), and Representative’s name. Among the search results was their official contact, and clicking on that took me to their site. The Rep’s site wanted my ZIP + 4, but had a handy link to the USPS to look that up.
My senators are Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, both pretty much 100% anti-gun, my Rep is John Dingell, usually reliably pro-gun. Didn’t matter, every one got a quick note.
I personally think it’s important to email them no matter how you “know” they’ll vote. Let ’em hear from you!
It may not be worthless in the long term to send emails to Congresscritters like Levin and Stabenow; sure, you won’t convince them, but their staffers will know who’s saying what, and that can’t hurt. E.g. that Levin can win because of tenure doesn’t mean a new Democrat replacing him when he retires can afford to be as anti-gun.
Re: Finding your congresscritters – It’s also worth noting that there’s an app for that*.
* Also available for iThings.
This morning I finished putting together a point-by-point destruction of Senator Feinstein’s “proof” of the efficacy of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban which she is using as part of her reasoning for the introduction of a new ban in Congress.
Please take the time to read this and forward it to your Congressional representatives in the Senate and House, as well as forwarding it to any and all whom you feel would be interested in or benefit from this information.
This work is being released under a Creative Commons license and is freely distributable for non-commercial usage as long as it is unaltered and source attribution is given.
http://pc3c.org/files/feinstein_fisking.pdf
Gregory,
Your work is nice, but the congresscritters probably already know the facts. If not, the NRA, et. al. will take care of that. Our job is to [almost literally) tip the scales by sending short notes that essentially say “NO!”. Two to maybe 5 sentences is all it takes.
Besides, if they receive mail that appears to be of the mass mail or cut & paste sort, they automatically throw it out.
Now, if you have a relationship with a local newspaper reporter that might be assigned to write something on the gun issue, it might be a good idea to send that to him/her. You and I know most of the facts because of sites like this, but journalists often/usually don’t. However, you can overwhelm them, they are busy folks, too, and aren’t necessarily interested in getting a degree in Gun Control Facts.
Just sayin’.