Assault Weapons Ban

NPR had two stories on the Assault-Weapons Ban yesterday.

Both All Things Considered as well as Newshour which featured an interesting discussion between DiFi and Larry Craig.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Craig, will that be the impact of -- if this ban ends on Monday, do you agree with Sen. Feinstein that we'll see a lot of these sold in this country?

SEN. LARRY CRAIG: Well, she speaks in very dramatic and impassioned language. There are 30 million semiautomatic weapons owned by law-abiding citizens in this country today -- 30 million; not 8,000, not 7,000, 30 million. They are owned and operated lawfully and legally by citizens who owned them prior to the ban. They are not in the traffic of crime today. Less than 3 percent of them ever appear there. Those are the facts.

MARGARET WARNER: But do you think there will be a very vigorous sale of these?

SEN. LARRY CRAIG: Any time you lift a ban, if you had banned Lincoln automobiles for five years and you lifted the ban, there would be a pent-up demand in the marketplace for anything. Americans own firearms. More Americans today and more women than ever own a firearm for self-protection, and yet crime by the use of a firearm has dramatically dropped and is continuing to drop because the law enforcement community goes after those who in illegal fashion use a firearm.

The discussion basically concluded with this:

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: You know, he's saying the people want it to expire. That is just plain wrong. Every single poll has shown two-thirds to three-fourths of the American people want the bill to continue. That's a fact, Larry.

SEN. LARRY CRAIG: Until you define what's in the bill and the type of...

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: Oh, that's baloney.

MARGARET WARNER: All right.

SEN. LARRY CRAIG: Well, I don't deal with baloney, neither does Dianne. We disagree on this issue.

I disagree with Sen. Craig. I think DiFi does deal in baloney, though I suspect that in private he would agree with me.

WELCOME to everyone from Alphecca. Its a regular indirect Instalanche. There's lots more on the Assault Weapons Ban here and the forthcoming vote to repeal the D.C. Gun Ban. Feel free to browse. A good place to start is here. Just keep scrolling down.