This is guest post by John Doe Investigations
FACT or FICTION? With all the recent talk of new gun laws and more gun control there is a lot of information circulating: some of it is accurate, some of it is not. Here are some points of FACT and FICTION…
FACT: President Clinton enacted the Federal Assault Weapons Ban & the Brady Act in late 1993 in response to the attempted assignation of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. This ban limited the purchase of Sporting Rifles erroneously known as Assault Rifles, “ARs”. This type of weapon was not used in the assassination attempt. Note, neither type of weapon was used in the assignation attempt: the firearm used in the attempted assassination was a .22 revolver.
FICTION: A Sporting Rifle is an Assault Rifle, “AR”.
FACT: An Assault Rifle or “AR” by definition is a Select Fire Machine Gun such as an M-16. Weapons of this type are already regulated under the National Firearms Act or NFA. NFA laws prohibit the ownership of modern day (Post May 1986) AR’s by civilians. Sporting rifles are Semi-Automatic only; while they look very similar to their military counterparts they function as a single fire or one round at a time. Consumers are able to own fully automatic weapons that are registered with NFA made prior to May of 1986. Due to the limited supply and availability of these weapons they typically average well over $3,500 for pistol calibers and $10,000 for rifle calibers. In addition to the high cost of NFA weapons a consumer has to file paperwork with NFA and wait for approval (roughly 6 months currently) before they can take ownership.
FACT: When the Assault Weapons Ban and Brady Act were originally written, they had a 10 year expiration. In 2003, George W. Bush was in office and elected not to renew it. Numerous studies have shown that Ban had no measurable impact on reducing gun violence.
AR actually stands for Arma Lite, which was the first company to manufacturer the .223/5.56 NATO semi automatic rifle that resembled the military carbines such as the M1 and M16. AR has never stood for “assault rifle”.