Well, it’s your run-of-the-mill piece about what anti-gun liberals want to do regarding the Second Amendment, but at least it’s honest. For years, we’ve been subjected to Democrats voicing their support for hunters, while saying they want to get AR-15s and other so-called assault weapons, off the street. Hunting rifles are actually more powerful than the AR-15, but that’s a different debate. Then, there’s the anti-gun Left not knowing what they hell they’re talking about, saying they don’t want to take away people’s guns, but draft legislation that bans semiautomatic firearms. Um, that’s a gun ban. Most, if not all, of the firearms owned by civilians, with the exception of revolvers and bolt-action hunting rifles, are semiautomatic. It’s not scary. It merely means self-reloading after firing a round. It’s one round per trigger pull. It’s not the same as automatic or machine guns, the latter of which use belt-fed ammunition.
Regardless, the whole crux of their argument is that banning so-called assault weapons, expanded background checks, waiting period etc. will save lives. It won’t do that, and the anti-gun Left knows it. So, thanks to Vox for actually showing the end game of the Democratic agenda on firearms, which is that they really just want to ban guns. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have cited the Australian model on gun control. Clinton even went so far as to say the Supreme Court got the Second Amendment wrong in 2016. The level of violence in Europe, which is often cited by liberals to make the false argument that America is a shooting gallery, would require gun confiscation. Also, the Second Amendment’s language in the Constitution might not prevent such an extreme piece of legislation from passing; it’s the fact that there are not enough votes—and there probably never will be. Hey, at least there are gold stars for honesty (via Vox):
…let's be clear about precisely what kind of decision is letting events like this recur. Congress's decision not to pass background checks is not what's keeping the US from European gun violence levels. The expiration of the assault weapons ban is not behind the gap. What's behind the gap, plenty of research indicates, is that Americans have more guns. The statistics are mind-blowing: America has 4.4 percent of the world's population but almost half of its civilian-owned guns.
Realistically, a gun control plan that has any hope of getting us down to European levels of violence is going to mean taking a huge number of guns away from a huge number of gun owners.
[…]
The legal scholars I talked to suggested that an Australia-style program would probably pass muster. If we went further than Australia and also banned handguns, that might cause problems; the Supreme Court struck down Washington, DC's handgun ban in 2008. But Australia's actual system is probably constitutional.
"Courts have consistently upheld bans on military-style semiautomatic rifles because other firearms are equally useful for self-defense," Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, says. "Gun control isn't stalled because of the Second Amendment. It's stalled because elected officials won't pass effective new laws to reduce gun violence."
Sanford Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas Austin and author of the landmark article "The Embarrassing Second Amendment," concurs: "If such an extraordinary law actually got through Congress (meaning with necessary Republican support), then I find it impossible to imagine that there would be five votes on the Court to say no," he says. "But the real problem, of course, is that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of Congress actually passing any meaningful legislation re guns, let alone this kind of quite radical legislation."
Well, I’ll let you debate the Australia model being constitutional. The idea that people would a) turn over their AR-15s is laughable; and b) police going door-to-door to arrest and confiscate firearms to those who refuse would be political poison not to mention a tsunami of lawsuits that would clog the legal system. Also, not a single Republican would support this so Levinson is right about the political reality. Still, Vox showcased the anti-gun Left’s ultimate goal, which is why the upcoming 2018 elections are key. In fact, every election in every state is key to protecting our Second Amendment rights.
We left Europe for independence and to be free from tyranny, but thanks for your honesty.
— Razor (@hale_razor) March 14, 2018
Editor's Note: Yes, I know you can hunt with an AR-15 rifle, a Ruger Mini-14/30, and M1A Springfield, so I added bolt-action to clarify which rifles I meant regarding hunting and the proposed semiautomatic firearm ban.
