Editor's Note: Headline has been changed to reflect accuracy.
Yesterday Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) stopped by The View, where the issue of gun control was bound to come up during the roundtable discussion. Sen. Paul aptly noted that Second Amendment supporters and gun owners aren’t opposed to background checks–Rand admitted that he doesn’t object to them. But for private sales, there’s no way to verify one was conducted without a national gun database set in place to track all of them. That’s the fear–and one that’s legitimate.
Whoopi Goldberg, who openly admitted to being a gun owner, asked why anyone objects to getting automatic weapons off the street.
“Automatic weapons, they’re not for hunting. They do nothing — they’re only there to kill. And you’ll notice that a lot of things that happened are with automatic weapons,” she said.
Paul answered by saying that civilians can’t legally own automatic weapons outright without going though the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Civilian ownership is heavily constrained via the National Firearms Act of 1934, and filing the proper NFA paper work with the ATF, includes registering your firearm with them. So, in all, one cannot go into a gun store and just buy an automatic weapon without the proper paperwork, which is something Whoopi seems to miss in this exchange. The market is heavily regulated.
The senator then described the differences between automatic and semi-automatic, with the latter being open for legal civilian ownership. Contrary what is printed in the news media, semi-automatic weapons are not machine guns, nor do they fire multiple rounds per trigger pull. For those firearms, as stated above, a NFA permit would be required for ownership.
The vast majority of legal civilian firearms that aren’t NFA registered are semi-automatic. Handguns are semi-automatic. AR15 rifles are semi-automatic. In all, they just mean self-reloading. So, when you see a poll showing support for a ban on semi-automatic weapons, but then see another one showing how support for a handgun ban are at record lows–the pollsters asking the questions didn’t word it properly, or the people answering don’t know the proper definitions. Either way, for Whoopi and fellow View fans, you just can’t go into a gun store and buy an automatic weapon.
(H/T The Blaze)
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