Panic! Buy guns and bury them!

Recently I have been accused by more than one person of being some sort of end times apocalypse bunker building freak for stressing that now is the time to buy that gun you always wanted. I assure you that this is not the case (I’m not a freak). For starters, I do not have the finances to purchase an end times arsenal. On the budget of a public servant I am lucky to afford the guns that I already have. I do own a small collection of Russian guns, an SKS, an AK, a Mosin etc. along with a few cans of ammo. I will not deny that if I did win the lottery I would construct some sort of bunker with a large arsenal, but the chances of that are slim.

I do think that this IS the time to buy guns and horde ammo, but probably not for the reason you think. If recent history is any example then soon it will likely be illegal to purchase the rifle you want. First off, a bit of a history lesson is in order.

On Sep 13, 1994 Congress passed a law, and Bill Clinton signed it the same day, that banned certain weapons from the law abiding citizens. Gun manufactors were required to stop production of semi-automatic assault weapons and ammunition clips holding more than 10 rounds except for military or police use. Weapons and magazines that were made before the date were still legal to be traded and sold. The bill banned, by name, the manufacture of 19 different weapons:

• Norinco, Mitchell, and Poly Technologies Avtomat Kalashnikovs (all models);
• Action Arms Israeli Military Industries UZI and Galil;
• Beretta Ar70 (SC-70);
• Colt AR-15;
• Fabrique National FN/FAL, FN/LAR, and FNC;
• SWD M-10; M-11; M-11/9, and M-12;
• Steyr AUG;
• INTRATEC TEC-9, TEC-DC9, AND TEC-22;
• revolving cylinder shotguns such as (or similar to) the Street Sweeper and Striker 12.

Banning weapons by name is very stupid. For starters Norinco is a Chinese COMPANY not a gun, they make copies of all kinds of guns. The same goes for just about all of the rest.

The bill also banned copies or duplicates of any of those weapons. The bill also prohibited manufactors from producting firearms with more than one of the following features:

Rifles
• Folding/telescoping stock
• Protruding pistol grip
• Bayonet mount
• Threaded muzzle or flash suppressor
• Grenade launcher

Pistols
• Magazine outside grip
• Threaded muzzle
• Barrel shroud
• Unloaded weight of 50 ounces or more
• Semi-automatic version of a fully automatic weapon

Shotguns
• Folding/telescoping stock
• Protruding pistol grip
• Detachable magazine capacity
• Fixed magazine capacity greater than 5 rounds

The law was pushed by backers of the Brady campaign with an unending downpour of lies and half truths. Most people who did not know anything about guns assumed they were telling the truth. Gun enthusiasts were labeled as “extremists” and gun manufactures were labeled as “notorious” in the name of crime prevention. The brady campaign uses quotes like “ Assault weapons are designed to be spray-fired from the hip,” which is an outright lie.

The law expired and collectors and gun enthusiasts were allowed to resume their hobby. When it expired the left wing media launched a propaganda campaign to scare the uneducated masses. According to them when the ban ended on Sept. 13, 2004, gun crimes and police killings were predicted to surge. Instead, they have declined. For a decade, the ban was a cornerstone of the gun control movement. Sarah Brady, one of the nation’s leading gun control advocates, warned that “our streets are going to be filled with AK-47s and Uzis.” Life without the ban would mean rampant murder and bloodshed. This was a lie.

Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assault weapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders than the 43 states without such laws, suggesting that doing away with the ban actually reduced crime. (States with bans averaged a 2.4% decline in murders; in three states with bans, the number of murders rose. States without bans saw murders fall by more than 4%.)

The fact that the end of the assault weapons ban didn’t create a crime wave should not have surprised anyone. After all, there is not a single published academic study showing that these bans have reduced any type of violent crime.
Such a finding was only logical. Though the words “assault weapons” conjure up rapid-fire military machine guns, in fact the weapons outlawed by the ban function the same as any semiautomatic – and legal – hunting rifle. They fire the same bullets at the same speed and produce the same damage. They are simply regular deer rifles that look on the outside like AK-47s.

For gun control advocates, even a meaningless ban counts. These are the same folks who have never been bashful about scare tactics, predicting doom and gloom when they don’t get what they want. They hysterically claimed that blood would flow in the streets after states passed right-to-carry laws letting citizens carry concealed handguns, but that never occurred. Thirty-seven states now have right-to-carry laws – and no one is seriously talking about rescinding them or citing statistics about the laws causing crime.

An unpublished 2004 study commissioned by the United States Department of Justice found that assault weapons were used in only a small fraction of gun crimes prior to the ban, about 2 percent according to most studies and no more than 8 percent. Large capacity magazines that are also covered by the ban, however, are used in crime much more often than AWs and accounted for 14% to 26% of guns used in crime prior to the ban. Following implementation of the ban, the share of gun crimes involving AWs declined by 17% to 72% across the localities examined by this study; however, this was primarily due to a reduction in the use of assault pistols (APs), which are used in crime more commonly than assault rifles (ARs).

When questioned about the wording of the ban most of it’s backers can’t even explain what it is they are banning, or how it would effect crime. On the April 18, 2007 showing of MSNBC's program, Tucker, the conservative/libertarian pundit Tucker Carlsoninterviewed McCarthy concerning the Virginia Tech massacre and her proposed reauthorization of the Assault Weapons Ban. He asked her to explain the need to regulate barrel shrouds, one of the many provisions of the Act. She responded that more importantly the legislation would ban large capacity "clips" used in the Virginia Tech massacre and that the class of guns chosen were those used by gangs and police killers. After admitting that she did not know what a barrel shroud was, she ventured a guess, "I believe it is a shoulder thing that goes up".

H.R. 6257 was introduced by Mark Kirk [R IL-10] on June 12, 2008 and seeks to re-instate the Assault Weapons Ban indefinitely as well as to expand the list of banned weapons. The bill was also referred to the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security on 7/28/08. It has four co-sponsors (as of November 5, 2008) supporting it:
 Rep Castle, Michael N. - [R DE-1] - 6/12/2008
 Rep Ferguson, Mike - [R NJ-7] - 6/12/2008
 Rep Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana - [R FL-18] - 6/18/2008
 Rep Shays, Christopher - [R CT-4] - 6/12/2008

I (and most of the gun community) feel that it is inevitable that given the results of the recent elections the ban will be re-instated. This has caused an absolute run on everything that is on the market. I personally bought the last AR-15 that Ft. Thompson had for sale last Friday. The only things left on the shelf are low budget low quality and used rifles that are overpriced and will soon be gone as well. Every store on the internet is out of AR15 parts, especially lower receivers, since they are the part with the serial number on it that will be grandfathered. This is all occurring on speculation.

While I do not expect the world to end or zombies to take over any time soon, I do believe that the citizens of this country should be armed. Remember that gun laws only affect the people who chose to obey them.

GUN LAWS DO NOT EFFECT CRIMINALS. Gun laws only have negative effects on crime because they take guns away from law abiding citizens who could otherwise use them to prevent crime. The types of weapons that are banned by this legislation are not even used in crimes, they are used by law abiding gun enthusiasts who, in a worst case scenario, would be the people defending this country if the worst were to happen.