In his first address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday evening, Joe Biden launched some assault words at Second Amendment rights, renewing a push to ban AR-15-class weapons and “high-capacity” magazines.
But were they really “assault words”?
Well, they were — as much as the rifles Biden’s handlers are targeting are “assault weapons.”
Missing from Biden’s speech was relation of the fact that more people are killed every year with “personal weapons” — hands, fists, and feet — than are murdered with rifles of any kind, never mind the AR-15-class subcategory of them.
But not satisfied with omissions of Truth, Biden also last night uttered a lie: That the 1990s-era AR-15-class weapons ban worked. “No, it didn’t,” writes the Blaze.
The site then provides some background, telling us:
Biden declared gun violence “an epidemic in America” before saying, “In the 1990s, we passed universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that hold 100 rounds that can be fired in seconds.”
He argued, “Talk to most responsible gun owners, most hunters — they’ll tell you there’s no possible justification for having 100 rounds —100 bullets — in a weapon.”
The ban the president was referring to was the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, passed as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement act of 1994 under President Bill Clinton.
The law actually banned the “transfer or possession” of ammunition feeding devices that carried more than 10 rounds (not 100), ABC News reported, and the manufacturing of 18 models of specific semiautomatic weapons.
“We need a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines again,” Biden told Congress and the American people on Wednesday. “Don’t tell me it can’t be done. We’ve done it before … and it worked.”
This is untrue. As the Washington Times reported in 2004, “The federal assault-weapons ban, scheduled to expire in September, is not responsible for the nation’s steady decline in gun-related violence and its renewal likely will achieve little, according to an independent study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ),” which is the Department of Justice’s research, development, and evaluation agency.
The DOJ isn’t alone in this assessment, either. As reporter Emily Miller reminded us, “Biden’s biggest lie of this speech is that the ‘assault weapon ban’ worked. No, the FBI said to let it sunset after ten years because it had no effect on crime.”
Of course, how could it? Since, again, rifles are used in fewer murders than are “personal weapons” — and since AR-15-class firearms are just a subset of rifles — it’s not mathematically possible that a ban on them (even one that could take them off the streets) could make a marked dent in crime.
But what of mass shootings, in which the Left implicates AR-15-class weapons? Well, from “1976 to 1994, about 18 mass shootings occurred each year,” reported the Washington Post last month. “During the ban — 1995 to 2004 — there were about 19 incidents per year,” the paper then admitted. “After the ban, through 2011, the average went up to nearly 21.”
This doesn’t mean there isn’t a correlation here. This increase, though statistically insignificant, does correspond to America’s increasing immorality.
So why are some people afraid of the rifles in question?
Propaganda.
To manipulate emotion, AR-15-class firearms have arbitrarily been designated “assault weapons” in defiance of all reason. As Ivn.com explained in 2012:
Prior to the adoption of the assault weapons ban (AWB) in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, there wasn’t a specific definition of an assault weapon. The closest thing to an assault weapon would be an assault rifle, which is a short-barrel (under 16 inches) which can shoot in semi-automatic (one bullet with each pull of the trigger), select-fire (usually 3 bullets with each pull of the trigger), or fully-automatic (multiple bullets with each pull of the trigger).
Sale, ownership, and possession of firearms that can use select-fire or are fully-automatic is controlled through the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1968.
In reality, AR-15-class rifles are merely semi-automatic firearms — as are most guns sold in America today. This means that just one round is released with every trigger pull.
Moreover, the AR’s standard round is small caliber, roughly the same diameter as a .22, and is moderate in power.
I’m old enough to remember when gun-control efforts bore some relationship to reality. That is to say, in the 1980s and ‘90s, gun-control advocates focused on handguns; they were used in most murders committed with firearms, after all, and were criminals’ weapon of choice because of their concealability. While I still opposed these efforts, at least they made some kind of sense.
But now it’s Alice’s Adventures in Gunderland. The Left refuses to enforce existing gun laws against criminals in crime-ridden major cities, but wants to seize weapons that are used in almost no crimes from people in Middle America.
That’s an assault, alright — on rights and common sense.
