President Obama Suggests Pushing for "Assault Weapon" Ban Not In the Cards

I apologize, obviously you did not understand my sarcasm laden comments. I DO NOT SUPPORT A GUN BAN, partly for the reasons laid out in my last comment. Any type of imposed ban is just a form of our citizens being oppressed. A wise man once said, “A true patriot shall be ready to bear arms against their own government at any time” Our right to bear arms was put in place as a “reset button”, to instill in our government a fear of the people. The government should always place the will of the people above their own agendas, and if that is not done the people should rise up and force them too instill our will. A firearms ban makes this almost impossible. I am not advocating another civil war and I only believe the government should be overthrown by force, only after careful review, consideration, debates, and only when all else has failed. Anyways my last comments were strictly sarcastic and were supposed to be taken that way (They weren’t Joel), so in the future I will do my best to make sure you understand my point..

Any gun ban only hurts us as americans. i have my cwp and i use it every day. my 16 round mag or my 9mm xd never shot anyone hmmmm come to think of it my sig 556 and its 30 round mag never killed any one either. come to think of it a gun has never killed any one the person behind it did. with todays economy crime is up my police force has been cut wich is good for me in the priv sect but not good for joe or jane smith bec guns are bad right? wait i can rob you with a knife should we ban those to how will i cut my steak. but if we ban any gun does that stop criminals from getting them i think not. Why should the goverment have arms bigger and better than mine what if the goverment gets out of line hmmmm 1776 ring a bell THINK PEOPLE a gun has never killed anyone and mexico wants US gun ban why so we are all unarmed and they are armed to the teeth. Buy them while you can use your head be safe protect your family

the drug trafficers already have tons of these guns they buy them by the thousands the ban will only hurt the average folks who can only afford one and why should the united states conform to mexico's crap laws

Well it seems to me there is one big reason we should ban assualt weapons, so that the people won't have the same firepower as the government. Once we have banned the guns, we will come and collect the ones we know about. After that we can institute anything we want to , because the people cant fight back.

Oh and we need to work quickly because our people know the mexican drug cartels
are armed with fully automatic weapons, and we don't want them to figure out that when we institute this ban they wont have anything to defend themselves with.

There has to be some sort of legislation that requires every gun and riffle to be registered and accountable for. Many women, I speak for my self - are assaulted at gun point and have to ways of defending them selves, when your being held by the criminal that's pointing a loaded gun to your brains and saying if you scream, kick or move i will kill you! I don't say people should not have a form of defense, but in most cases it's turns into tragedy and innocent people are dieing. Because they don't think before they fire the weapon or are immature and go around on shooting sprees killing whoever they can target. Having places where you can buy guns and riffles with no registration no questions asked (as shown on ABC channel the other night) is not safe. It makes it easy for anyone to buy a riffle and not be psychologically well and go on and kill innocent people. all arms of fire should be registered. it's been 8 years and the police hasn't been able to track down the person and the gun that almost killed me. Why? because it wasn't registered, it was probably stolen and never reported as stolen. Meanwhile, this person is still out there and doing it to others. Most people don't see the point in reinforcing this policy and they should, many people many children are being hurt because of this. Unfortunately, until you are faced with life and death just because some freak either wants your money or wants to rap you, there will never be any sort of urgency to regulate this situation, because the decision makers in this matter haven't been in a similar situation. I was never in favor of the gun policy during president Bush's years but always hoped the next time around someone in the White House would do something about this. I am disappointed that President Obama does not she an urgency in this matter when daily we turn on our T.V's to hear about an innocent person, child had that had their life's cut short.

"As a long-time resident and elected official of Chicago, Barack Obama has seen the impact of fully automatic weapons in the hands of criminals,”

-Fully automatic weapons have been illegal everywhere in the US since 1933 and Chicago has some of the strictest gun regulations in the US. They are on a par with the DC regulations that were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
-Evidently federal, state and local gun laws do nothing to keep illegal weapons out of the hands of criminals. Thank you for supporting the position of legal gun owners in America, even if it was unintentional.

“These are also not weapons that are used by hunters and sportsmen."
- I read the Second Amendment again just to make sure. The words ‘hunt and sport’ aren’t there. I don’t think they are used anywhere in the Constitution in any context. Where to gun control advocates keep getting that?

I see the term assault weapon thrown around here. The legal definition of an assault weapon is a weapon that can selectively fire in two modes, semi auto and full auto. This type of weapon is only available to the military and law enforcement. The weapons that can be sold to private citizens are weapons that look like assault weapons but are semi auto only. The reason the liberal media throws around the term "assault weapon" is to scare those who don't understand the difference into supporting the proposed AEB. Also, having been in Air Force weapons systems for ten years and having trained with some of the best weapons and defense instructors in the world a long gun like a AR-15 is always preferred over a hand gun or even a shotgun for home defense. Shotguns can be a good choice if the right ammo like "00 buck" is used, although most personal defense trainers worry about the amount of recoil shotguns produce.

"That is an un-educated opinion. Assault weapons are not designed for an activity, they are designed to fit requirments."

KR, if you look up requirement in the dictionary you will see that a requirement is a condition that must be met to facilitate the occurrence of something else. You don't have requirements on their own. Assault (or tactical) rifles must meet military requirement to be suitable for COMBAT.

Calling for reinstating the Assault Weapons Ban to fix Mexican crime rates is missing a very, very large logical gap in the argument.

The AWB affects semiautomatic weapons.

The Mexicans are having problems with criminals using fully-automatic weapons, which are a completely different thing.

If journalists or politicians would look at what the AWB actually banned and what weapons are actually used to commit crimes, they'd see they don't line up. Which made the ban moot for stopping crime, and arguably a limitation on rights Americans previously had, like it or not.

youneedtoknow,

Now that I think about it, how can it be that they say they can trace 90% of the weapons to the US, but they only give us the serial numbers of 25% of them?

™

youneedto know says:

'everyone knows Democrats have no respect for The Second Amendment.'

'everyone'.... really? or just the fringe paranoid elements of society that can't deal with losing free democratic elections?

re: professor R
"Obama's been playing loose with the facts (Bill Bennett's discussion on CNN yesterday).

yeah, Bill Bennett, Mr. Accuracy ? please

I may be a republican, and some here call me a right-wing idiot pretty regularly (even though I'm truly a moderate), but I have no problem with a ban on assault weapons. In fact, this was one of Obama's campaign promises I actually had no problem with him keeping. Figures it would be one he would decide to take a pass on. What gives? They say they don't want to expend political capital on this but they have no problem attacking a dozen different problems at the same time and using political capital to push high speed rail, health care reform, etc. etc. We can't get the man to concentrate on the essentials and leave the rest for later-- and now he won't push for an assault rifle ban?

I mean, it's easy to support a ban. There's no money involved. Maybe that's the problem-- no spending to reward some interest group, so forget about it?

The anti gun Democrats, as well as their willing accomplices in the press are spreading a lie about the flow of guns from the US into Mexico. They like to claim that 90% of the guns used by the drug cartel are from the US. THIS IS BALD FACE LIE, which should suprise no one, because everyone knows Democrats have no respect for The Second Amendment. THE FACT IS 15% of the guns are from the US. The rest come from South America, Russian organized crime, Asia, Guatalmala and The Mexican Army which has had 150,000 deserters in the last few years. They have taken their army guns with them.

Your precious Democrats don't want you to know that their 90% "statistic" is a line of yellow bellied garbage.

It is not surprising that so many Americans are stocking up on guns and ammo, because they know their Democrat government is just a bunch of chronic liars, only concerned about shoving their extremist agenda down our throats.

There have been a number of comments here about gun choice for home defense, especially concerning "assault weapons" (semiauto rifles) in that role. I have been shooting for many years and own multiple guns, and personally favor handguns for home defense.

While you can certainly use a semiauto rifle for this, a rifle is essentially a large, heavy longer range weapon for use from 25 yards to longer range. Home defense is most likely at very short range, such as within 20 feet inside the home against a home invader.

Handguns have the big advantage of being easily carried in a belt holster, leaving your hands free for normal activities. But if you need a gun instantly, you can draw it and use it in a second or two. You also have close control over a handgun on your belt, unlike a long gun standing in a closet in another room, which could be used against you if the invader gets it first. Running to the closet for your long gun will also take much longer than drawing your handgun from its belt holster. Paranoid as it may sound, I often wear a handgun concealed while at home, which requires no special permit.

The comments that handguns are heavily regulated and hard to obtain may apply in a couple of US locations, but in most of the country handguns are readily available to honest citizens. If I did want to use a long gun for home defense, I would use a shotgun with the legal minimum barrel length of 18 inches, and keep it ready and hidden near the place where I spent most of my time at home.

I didn't know that it banned detachable magazines. I don't think it did, because I know several people who had post ban AR's and they all used pre ban 30 round mags. not to mention,fixed AR stocks are far superior for accuracy, and the flash hider ban just encourages people to use bull barrels, so you are just encouraging people to buy accurized AR's which make excellent Designated marksmen type weapons. good job liberal congress, you have encouraged people to make sniper rifles out of AR-15's.

Guns do not kill, people do. Unfortunately, there are too many idiots who have to easy access to guns. Why anyone needs an assault weapon is beyond me.....Maybe to run drugs...that is a good reason....Illegal, but a good reason...

Obama's been playing loose with the facts (Bill Bennett's discussion on CNN yesterday). It's not the 90% he hurled out, nor even the 70% quoted in a flawed study that examined the handful of weapons that were traceable, its far below that--the vast majority of weapons captured by Mexican authorities couldn't be traced because they are made in Russia or China and coming through South America. (See March 15 Los Angeles Times.)

Obama's real goal is to enact a gun ban (all weapons), preceded by licensing to identify gun owners. And he is simply trying to find a way to sell it to the American public. Without that, given his fealty towards our constitution--or lack thereof--I'm not sure he would be in Mexico.

In general, I think he greatest threat to our constitutional rights that we have ever confronted, and what is scary is that all that stands between him are one conservative supreme court justice (removing that would result in a supreme court that would rubber stamp whatever he wanted) and 65 or so blue-dog Democrats.

"Assault weapons are designed for 'assault', that is attack. You should never need a gun to attack somebody."

That is an un-educated opinion. Assault weapons are not designed for an activity, they are designed to fit requirments. Lightweight, field maintenance, ammunition designs, modularity and functionality beyond standard operating, such as mounts for cooling the weapon etc. Their versatility over standard hunting weapons make them appealing to people who target shoot.

If you are a shooter, you'd understand the enormous functionality an "assualt" weapon has over your average hunting rifle for sport shooting and home defense.

And for your information, they are tactical rifles. "Assault" label was created by anti-gun lobbies to influence people to think they are unecessary. There is no such official term in gun circles.

Many of the guns are US made and sold to foreign militaries. Corruption in those militaries are leading to cartels getting their hands on them. They carry AK47's too, wheres the outcry that Russia is arming cartels? Because they are not, no more than we are. The mexican military is one of the main sources of illegal arms in Mexico, as well as central American militaries. Lets use some common sense.

Do they buy some weapons here? Yes, legal semi-automatic weapons. However, their prized weapons and most numerous, heavy caliber fully auto weapons are coming from militaries south of the US as well as more easily obtained russian made weapons that have flooded South America during the cold war.