California Democrat Senator Kamala Harris is desperately trying to "reboot" her campaign as former Vice President Joe Biden sucks up media oxygen and soars in primary polls.
Today, Harris will announce her plans to ban "AR-15 style" firearms from importation into the U.S. From CBS News:
California Sen. Kamala Harris will announce at a campaign stop Wednesday that she would use executive action to ban imports of AR-15 style assault weapons if elected president, a senior campaign official tells CBS News.
The Democratic presidential hopeful is scheduled to speak at a Girls, Inc. of New Hampshire town hall in Nashua Wednesday morning.
In addition to banning AR-15-style assault weapon imports, Harris would suspend all other assault weapon imports until the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) conducts a study of whether those imports should be permanently stopped under existing law.
An AR-15 sporting rifle isn't a "style." It's basic and specific firearm that can be customized through accessories. More from NSSF:
Sen. Harris’s concept of the nation’s best interest is not rooted in facts. We’ll discuss her mislabeling of modern sporting rifles in a minute, but a simple scan of the FBI’s 2015 Uniform Crime Report shows that criminals used knives or cutting instruments to kill their victims at nearly three times the rate of rifles and shotgun combined. The FBI recorded 252 deaths by rifle (or any kind) compared to 1,544 stabbing deaths. To put that into further perspective, blunt objects accounted for 437 murders in 2015 and hands, fists, and feet accounted for 624 murders. But Sen. Harris tells us the problem is “assault weapons.”
Sen. Harris chooses to ignore the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hardly a pro-gun entity, looked at the full spectrum of gun control measures, including the “assault weapons ban” that was in effect between 1994 and 2004. CDC couldn’t point to a single measure that could be proven to reduce crime. A further Congressional study found “the banned weapons and magazines were never used in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders.” That report also noted that “assault weapons” were “rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban.”
Sen. Harris also ignores the fact a ban on “assault rifles” is really a ban on cosmetic features. The AR-15 family of firearms is different than the military M-16/M-4 family of firearms. AR-15 rifles are semi-automatic, meaning they fire one bullet for each time the trigger is squeezed. Modern sporting rifles are used for sporting purposes, including hunting and recreational shooting. There are more than 13 million moderns sporting rifles owned by Americans today, making them among the most popular firearms in America.
It should also be noted the vast majority of AR-15s are made in the United States, not imported from overseas. Other Democrats running for president, like Rep. Eric Swalwell and Senator Cory Booker, have proposed throwing gun owners in prison if they refuse to participate in government confiscation schemes.
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