New Gun Ban Legislation Information The Politicians Hope You Never Find Out

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and other gun violence in the United States, the time is ripe to fill the unsuspecting mind with as much falsified fodder as one’s brain can contain.

Those who populate the majority of the media, filling the uninformed with misleading gun information, don’t want you to know the truth behind proposed legislation, why assault weapons bans are ineffective, and why high capacity magazines are not what they want you to think they are.

Some people who disseminate information against guns outright lie, sadly, in order to try to bolster information that otherwise would have no influence, or the opposite influence, on the people they want to join in their cause. When facts are not on their side, fabricated evidence is used in place of the truth in order to make their point. Unfortunately this has clouded a lot of otherwise intelligent peoples' thinking.

Making AR sporting rifles appear to be automatic military weapons
For instance, Mayor Michael Bloomberg likes to talk about one of the guns used in the Connecticut shooting in Newtown, (the AR sporting rifle) as being one that you “just pull the trigger and mow people down.”  The intent is to make is sound like an automatic gun, when he knows full well it is not. This same wording is used by his other political cronies such as Senator Diane Feinstein when she says that these AR style rifles are meant to be shot from the hip, spraying bullets at people.

Senators against guns (some who even admit they own them) say they want to outlaw “rapid fire” guns. This term is intentionally vague since, as seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsLx5ISBXw4 , even revolvers could arguably be outlawed as being “rapid fire.” The anti-gun politicians know that most people won’t make that connection, making the ultimate goal to even ban cowboy-style revolvers while the unsuspecting public goes along with their vague verbiage.

Apparently the criteria for some media outlets to consider their guests and expert is that they can breath, and wear a clip-on tie. One of these “expert” guests on the unapologetically left sided NPR made the comment that we should make assault rifles only available to those who “have permission” to have them.

As the informed public already knows, fully automatic rifles (actual assault rifles or "machine guns") are already not available to the general public without sever restriction, and have not been since the 1934 National Firearms Act. The “AR style”sporting rifle is not an automatic weapon, yet it is portrayed over and over by the left as being automatic in order to confuse the uninformed public.

As I was reading the newspaper the other day, a local criminal justice professor of all people, asked the rhetorical question, “Is it really necessary to have assault rifles…?” Shouldn’t this supposedly educated man also know that assault rifles have been banned for over six decades? Perhaps these mouthpieces know they can speak with the same actions of drug dealers, knowing that some of what they’re peddling will get caught, but enough of it will make it through to the unsuspecting public.

The same news venue mentioned above continued to falsely make the claim that it was an “assault rifle” used by Adam Lanza in the Connecticut shooting. They also stated the Bushmaster catalog is currently, “…peddling an assault rifle…” Both are flat out lies.

Another article in a recent newspaper stated that the shooter in the Aurora, Colorado theatre shooting used an assault rifle. He didn’t. Blatant lie.

Real violent crime rates
Those who back Senator Diane Feinstein and her assault weapon ban are quick to point out that the number of AR-15s (included in Senator Feinstein’s assault weapons bill) has risen by over 2.5 million from 1995 to 2011. They will be slow—very slow—to point out that, if anything, that the proliferation of guns into the hands of law-abiding may have been a good thing. In roughly that same time period gun ownership in the United States on a whole went up by approximately 300% while the nation’s murder rate decreased by 49 percent—to a 48 year low!

High capacity nonsense
The National Rifle Association is mocked for stating that “…high-capacity magazines are standard equipment for self-defense handguns.” You’re made to believe by the mainstream media that “high-capacity” magazines are crazy for use in a handgun. Only when you know the truth can you make your own informed decision.

Every time I hear the media mention the term “high-capacity” magazine, the next sentence almost invariably mentions something similar to, “We don’t need 100 round magazines. This size magazine is for nothing but killing people in times of war.” The misleading intent here is to scare you into thinking that in order to be high-capacity a magazine needs to truly be capable of holding a lot of bullets. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No one can argue that 100 round magazines are pretty large. Even a fifty round magazine is quite large and quite impractical for most sporting people to have. I have never used one of these truly high-capacity magazines nor have I seen one until I looked up a photo online to see if they actually existed. Because I know nothing about them, I am therefore not qualified to make many more statements about them.

But what I do know is that the anti-gun lobby would never like you to find out that they consider a measly 11 rounds “high-capacity.” I have never heard a mainstream media outlet telling you the actual number of rounds that makes a magazine fall into the “high-capacity” category—11. Why don't they tell you? Quite frankly I think they'd be embarrased to tell you the truth. They don’t want you to know they are targeting magazines with 11 rounds. In fact the state of New York is proposing the ludicrous limit of 7 rounds.

Many handguns have room for 11, 12, and 13 rounds to fit comfortably in the hand grip with no magazine extending beyond the bottom of the manufactured grip of the gun. So now you see that the statement by the NRA is true that “high-capacity magazines are standard equipment for self-defense handguns.” That’s because 11 rounds is hardly an absurd number of rounds for a handgun.

The liberal media makes the claim that these devices “dramatically boost a weapon’s firing power.” Now that you know a magazine with 11 rounds is considered “high-capacity” do you think an 11 round magazine “dramatically increase the firing power” as compared to a ten-round magazine? Now that you’re informed, which statement is more ludicrous? The NRA stating 11 rounds is standard equipment, or that one more round is a “dramatic increase” in firing power.

Failed Assault Weapons Ban
Those who try to make the argument that a certain type of crime was reduced during and after the 1994 ban like to cling to, and continue to report a 6.7% reduction in crime. Here’s what the DOJ actually stated when one reads beyond that statistic:

“At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more that a modest fraction of all gun murders. Our best estimate is that the ban contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders between 1994 and 1995…However, with only one year of post-ban data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this decrease reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a true effect of the ban.”

The DOJ has also indicated that they cannot rule out other factors during that time that may have had an impact on the decrease. Some of these factors include the 300% increase of U.S. gun ownership from 1992 to 2011, and the 18 new states adding the ability for the civilians to carry concealed weapons. In other words, giving more law abiding citizens the means to defend themselves may very well have been the main contributing factor. That is common sense.

Ease of purchase
An online anti-gun article I was reading made the claim that, “…anyone with a credit card can order semiautomatic weapons for overnight delivery.” As if you don’t have to abide by the law requiring a mandatory waiting period for a gun. I tested that theory. You can not.

You’ll also be told by the anti-gun lobby that, “…no one is doing a background check at gun shows.” They'll show you stats suggesting that 40% of all gun purchases occur at places that don’t require background checks. Maybe this is true, but just because a venue doesn’t require a background check it doesn’t mean the sellers at these venues aren’t doing them. In my experience the majority of sellers at the shows I’ve been to are Federal firearms dealers and always do background checks as a matter of practice. In other words, every gun I’ve considered purchasing at a gun show would have required me to undergo a background check--required or not.

And the real truth? Criminals get their guns from other criminals who often steal them from the homes of law abiding citizens who did undergo a background check. Closing the “gun show loophole” doesn’t prevent school shootings like that in Newtown, Connecticut, Columbine, or VA Tech.

U.S. gun laws responsible for crimes in other countries
There is an oft cited claim by those who want to blame the U.S. for being responsible for other countries’ gun problems by saying, “…[U.S. guns] have made their way across the border to Mexico.” What they don’t mention and don’t want you to know is that it was the Obama administration that ‘walked’ these guns into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels for this exact reason—hoping to cite that exact sentence to make it appear as if our guns are creating the problems in Mexico. Unfortunately one of the guns the Obama administration gave the Mexicans was used to kill our own border patrol agent, Brian Terry. This exposed the Obama administration’s "Operation Fast and Furious" gun running scheme resulting in our current Attorney General Eric Holder being found in contempt of Congress after refusing to hand over requested documents about the failed operation. The inquiries into this fiasco have seen President Obama claim executive privilege in order to keep documents regarding this operation-gone-bad from ever becoming known to the American public.

It’s only one small segment. What’s the big deal?
In other articles by anti-gun activists, statistics have been taken completely out of context to try and cover up the intent of the information.

You’ll hear arguments acting as if banning one segment of the guns produced shouldn’t be a big deal. Those in favor of banning AR sporting rifles will say that AR style rifles only account for “a fraction of the guns sold and used in the U.S.” so what does it matter? Stating it this way intentionally makes it sound like a miniscule amount. They don’t want you do know how large of a "fraction" it really is because they don’t tell you the truth--that these rifles are now the most popular hunting rifles sold.

They’ll tell you that “assault weapons” are “versions of military weapons.” And while there is a grain of truth here (since all guns are “versions” of each other because they all use bullets), it would also be accurate to tell you that anyone in the military would never choose one of these “assault weapons” over what they are issued by the government. Considering that even a .22 caliber rifle (yes, the same caliber you shot at Cub Scout camp) can be considered an “assault weapon”, it would be a deadly dangerous mistake for a military member to even consider taking one of these grossly inept rifles into battle. Yet, the media will try to fool you into believing these AR sporting rifles are just as effective as military issued guns based only on the way they look.

It’s understandable that when one hears only one point of view—the view saturating the media—to the exclusion of any other points of view, they will eventually believe what they are hearing. It doesn’t matter if the belief stems from fact, or if it’s just an uninformed piece of information. To one who cannot be open-minded enough to gage their beliefs against any other option, right or wrong, it’s unfortunate that perception becomes that person’s reality.

Next time we focus the argument on proposed solutions to the current gun violence in America.