There has been a lot of noise on this board lately about whether our new president will, upon taking office, be continuing the proud Democratic tradition of disarming the peasants.
While I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt, I’m fairly confident that rushing the following bill through the (predominantly Democratic) House and Senate and onto the President’s desk will be at least as big a priority for the new administration as tackling that pesky economy.
The bill is named “H.R. 1022: Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2007.” It has been sleeping since February 2007, just waiting for the opportune moment. On January 20 of next year, that moment will have arrived.
The bill is essentially a fortified version of the 1994 ban. It gives the standard laundry list of scary black firearms, ticks off the horrifying characteristics that qualifies these weapons for the ban (threaded barrel, pistol grip, barrel shroud, etc.), but then it also bans:
A semiautomatic rifle or shotgun originally designed for military or law enforcement use, or a firearm based on the design of such a firearm, that is not particularly suitable for sporting purposes, as determined by the Attorney General. In making the determination, there shall be a rebuttable presumption that a firearm procured for use by the United States military or any Federal law enforcement agency is not particularly suitable for sporting purposes, and a firearm shall not be determined to be particularly suitable for sporting purposes solely because the firearm is suitable for use in a sporting event.’
So the M1 Garand, the M14, the M1 carbine, the Ruger Mini-14, the Remington 1100, the Benelli M4 and a whole mess of other firearms will all be banned as well, since all of them have been procured by the military or police, or are based on the design of such a firearm. And the fact that you shoot your Garand in CMP highpower matches probably won’t convince Obama’s Attorney General that the M1 is “particularly suitable for sporting purposes.”
This is a very bad bill, brothers and sisters. I can’t imagine even the overconfident new administration being so bald-faced as to pass this into law, but if they do, the whites of their eyes will be visible for all to see.
Get yours while you can.