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New York Times and assault weapons bans
NY Times editorial, "Myths About Gun Regulation," January 31, 2013:
"As busy as the gun lobby is in promoting macho myths about self-defense -- stand your ground and outshoot the bad guys -- it is no less dedicated to spinning myths for lawmakers to use as excuses to avoid enacting laws to deal with the shooting sprees that regularly afflict the nation. This was clear at the opening Senate hearing on gun controls this week, where Judiciary Committee members seemed to have largely swallowed gun lobby propaganda that the evidence shows the original 10-year ban on assault weapons was ineffective.... The false statistics comfort members of Congress who fear the gun lobby or their more conservative constituents, or both, and are blocking a new and stronger ban on assault weapons proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein."
NY Times Editorial, "The Moment for Action on Gun Control, January 15, 2013:
"Some lawmakers are already talking about focusing on the background checks and bowing to gun lobby's opposition to an assault weapons ban. That shouldn't stop the administration and its allies from demanding that all these provisions be passed immediately. With the deaths of Newtown's children still so fresh, the public will be repulsed by lawmakers who stand aside and do nothing."
NY Times editorial, "The Assault Weapons Myth," September 14, 2014:
"But in the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.
It turns out that big, scary military rifles don't kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.
In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows.
......
Most Americans do not know that gun homicides have decreased by 49 percent since 1993 as violent crime also fell, though rates of gun homicide in the United States are still much higher than those in other developed nations. A Pew survey conducted after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., found that 56 percent of Americans believed wrongly that the rate of gun crime was higher than it was 20 years ago."
8 Comments | Leave a comment
Stay tuned for the handgun ban. I suspect legitimate self-defense usage will become as disparaged as "dissent" is now. They seem to be trying already.
The third, much remarked upon item is not a NYT house editorial, it's a signed OPED. That they published it means something, but it's not as significant.
To Harold (above): Actually, it's labeled "news analysis," with the author described as "a reporter who covers gun violence for ProPublica." Not sure how "news analysis" compared to "op ed," but the status appears to be a step above "op ed."
The serious potential-ship for a handgun ban sailed long ago. Recall that the original 1934 GCA was a *handgun* ban, that part was removed as politically unfeasible. Handgun bans were proposed with half-measures in '63 and '68 (the years of "Saturday Night Special" fever) and all they got were import restrictions.
The anti-gunners couldn't accomplish them then; now we even have CC in Illinois and growing in CA with thousands of people getting permits for home protection, which is handguns, not rifles, even in restrictive NJ, DC, and MD, etc.
There are now 10 million licensed concealed carriers in the US, more than the 5 million NRA member, and every single one of those people has a stake in their carry gun, a handgun, remaining legal and mostly unregulated.
The NYT is welcome to try to revive that chestnut, but the hill they will be going up has only gotten steeper and is still growing.
The only viable angle of attack left to the anti-gunners is access control via expanded mandatory BCG's, and support for even those seems to have peaked last year.
> The serious potential-ship for a
> handgun ban sailed long ago.
"Why bother making it illegal if you can just make it impossible to get?"
Mr. Maddow is right. While we're looking the other way, the EPA will ban lead bullets. Or the CDC will decree powder a carcinogin and it'll be made illegal to keep it in a house with children. Or all the ranges will simply be shut down. Then what?
If the EPA bans lead bullets, and rules powder a carcinogen, I guess that would mean that the natural progression from soap box, through ballot box, to cartridge box would be complete.
At that point it would become plain to many people that it was past time for a reboot on the great experiment.
Heaven forfend that it come to that, but I suspect it will before my time on this earth ends.
Your mention of 1993 made me wonder why most statistics on violence go back to the 1990s or no earlier than the 1970s. A little searching brought me to this: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2221
Now, I have not verified their source material, but it neatly confirms my bias (and I suspect other supporting data will as well) that when we talk about falling crime rates, and in particular homicide, that it is actually going back to where it was pre-1970 (or late 1960s). This neatly coincides with the rise of gun regulations. I'm not sure which leads, gun regulations or crime, but the two do seem deeply correlated in the U.S.