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Adam Winkler courtesy polentical.com

“There was one certain impact of proposing to ban the sale of assault weapons: it was guaranteed to stir gun-rights proponents to action. Ever since Obama was elected, they’ve been claiming that he wanted to ban guns. Gun-control advocates mocked this claim—then proposed to ban a gun. Not only that, the gun they were trying to ban happened to be the most popular rifle in America. It’s one thing to ban machine guns, which few law-abiding people ever wanted or used. It’s another thing entirely to ban a gun that millions of American gun enthusiasts love to shoot.” – Adam Winkler in Did the Assault Weapons Ban Kill Gun Control? [via dailybeast.com]

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33 COMMENTS

    • Even more than that, I’d like a reduction in the restrictions on SBR (perfect for home defense) and suppressors (perfect for introducing newbies to guns). Maybe something akin to if you have a CPL/CPP, you get the fast pass for approval.

      • Or just the regular background check you do when buying a gun… why are suppressors or sbr’s bad? Especially when you can buy 22lr guns (quiet) and bullpups (short)?

      • +1
        Totally support that. Constitutional carry for the whole country while we’re at it! Do it like the Demorats and throw everything at them and see what sticks.

        Gotta get that super majority across the board.

      • As a protest I think we should all remove the mufflers from our cars. So that we can’r sneak up on pedestrians and run them down. Its for the children!

  1. I understand the point he is trying to make but object to his comment on machine guns.His characterization is impossible to support given the warped market exisiting from 1934 to 1986. All the more so since 1986. I would bet a substantial subset of gun owners would be interested in owning an automatic weapon if they were affordable which they have not been 79 years.

  2. Read the entire article at the link. Adam Winkle is anti-gun. He wrote a brief against Heller.

    What he is saying is they went about civilian disarmament in the wrong way.

    Like many terrorist organizations they went for the symbolic kill instead of a more stealthy tactic where they could of had more support from fence sitters.

    • Which is why it’s too early to declare victory. They won’t stop till they’ve paid a steep political price, losing what they crave most, power over other people’s lives.

    • Yep, we can assume that they won’t make the same “mistake” again. The next attempt at confiscation will be fought using substantially different tactics. This is why gun owners need to be aware of much more than just strict legislative direct attacks on the 2nd.

      • They are doing stealthy stuff already. Like chipping away at preemption in a number of places. Philadelphia is about to ban concealed carrying even with a permit in city parks, claiming to be able to regulate “city property”. I guess they’ll next try to argue that city streets are also city property. And PA has preemption on the books. Tucson is fixing to pass an ordinance requiring reporting stolen firearms within 48 hours. And AZ has preemption too. And don’t forget that failed bill in CO about liability for selling “assault weapons”. They are trying all they can, and there will be more, all across the country. And don’t forget that failed bill in CO about the liability for selling “assault weapons”.

        It was, however, good to see them overreach a bit on the federal level this time. I thought they would be smarter, but they couldn’t help it. Unless their calculation is that they want everyone to stand up and be counted, so they can go after the wavering Democrats and suburban Republicans in the next elections. Or maybe they just talk tough to cover up the fact that they overreached.

    • Nope, Pascal, Winkler is not anti-gun, but probably one of the most balanced writers there is on the tension between the right to bear arms and the interest of governmental authorities in ensuring public safety. The amicus curiae brief that Winkler and Erwin Chemerinsky filed in the Heller case was in fact supportive of Heller.

      • Really? Then whys he signed so many declarations in so many cases in favor of the defendants’ position that more guns equals more crime? He perhaps once was balanced, but now he is a well-known advocate arguing against lawsuits seking to open up ccw issuance in California

  3. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American … the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.–Tench Coxe

  4. They will never stop. Gun control will never die. It’s like universal healthcare. They will be very patient and attempt to get what they want bit by bit by bit.

    • They’ve actually been quite clever about universal healthcare. The emphasis on hospital care, which encourages rent-seeking to the tune of up to six times the price charged by an independent specialist, has gradually eroded the supply of privately-practicing physicians and, especially, surgeons. The change to direct reimbursement of physicians, rather than of patients, along with insurer pricing agreements, has created a local oligopoly of medical care, driving up prices.

      Too, the emphasis on medically futile heroic interventions for dying men and women drives a large part of Medicare costs. Hospitals make most of the money off said interventions because they have the equipment and staff to perform them. Personally, I don’t want to be kept “alive” by a forest of tubes at a cost of $3,000 a day if I’m already on my way out. Pneumonia is an old man’s friend.

      So, because we refuse to let people die without cracking their chest open in a code and then putting them on a ventilator until their back is covered in bedsores, medical care costs our society a great deal. People generally don’t realize this because they don’t see the cost, at least not all at once. Indeed, that’s most of the point of insurance, spreading out payments to be more manageable; this unfortunately tends to ruin the pricing mechanism.

      The other side of this is encouraging the poor to seek medical care via EMTALA. The poor don’t generally get good continuity of care, or even baseline prophylactic care, so their health problems worsen relatively quickly, and they have little incentive to take care of them until they become acute, because Uncle Sam will, generally, pick up the tab for emergency care far more readily.

      The optimum is to go full-private or full-public, but there is a lot of pressure towards a public system, especially since insurers have been spending an increasing amount on nebulous “overhead,” driving up the cost of private insurance. Since each insurer is essentially part of a colluding local oligopoly, and their payouts track the Medicare reimbursement ceiling, the price of insurance is generally not reduced by market competition. The individual mandate will make insurance prices even worse, especially for young people, which is part of the point: transferring much of the cost to the young and healthy (who also, coincidentally, have the largest unemployment rate at present).

  5. Thanks to Adam Winkler, we have a new meme — the “gun reform movement.” Not to be confused with the “bowel movement.” The wingnuts keep struggling to find a marketing scheme that will play in Peoria.

    For the children. Common sense. Weapons of war. Assault weapons. High capacity clips. Their only purpose is to kill. If it saves one puppy. Okay, that one was mine. But you get the point. Our enemies spend a lot of time and energy polishing the turd.

    • We kinda have a wildfire problem here in CA. One of the very few gun restrictions I agree with is our ban on tracer ammo.

      Not saying it should be banned everywhere — pretty sure you can shoot tracer all day long in Louisiana and not cause a 50,000 acre fire. 🙂

    • Hadn’t seen that yet, thanks!

      Apparently Bonta was briefed on the takings clause by someone with an actual clue. I find it incredibly satisfying that the thing stopping so many of these idiots is that we have too many guns for the state governments to give us fair market value in a forced sale, even here in CA.

  6. The idea that gun grabber politicians are open to reason is a dead end
    street. They are not open to reason or facts. They are only open to how many
    people they can deceive with emotional cries that will further their own
    careers. The real issue at hand is the 2nd Amendment. If we are to be able
    to resist a tyrannical government we need weapons commensurate with the
    common American soldier. That would start with military select fire common
    issued rifles, M4 and M16. That would include body armor, available armored
    vehicles, and grenades. Any other discussing is Kabuki theater. Either we
    have a 2nd Amendment or we don’t. “Keep”, means I own it and you can’t have
    it. “Bare”, means I have it right here on me and its loaded. “Not be
    infringed” means not in any way be limited. Its simple. We have let the so
    called ” national conversation” be controlled by the grabbers. Political
    correctness will be the death of freedom this nation.

  7. Find it funny the only Dems who want the AWB is the Kaliforian hag and Obama both Obama and Biden dont have reelection SO only Dems in total fascist strongholds want it.

    • Almost all the Dumoldcraps want it. Only the ones in the fascist strongholds can afford to go public with it.

  8. Why do they want a ban on semi-auto rifles with high capacity magazines, easy to use ergonomics?
    Because when the time comes and the grievances of the people have been ignored and the government has decided to use the “state security force” to force peace and tranquility across the land, this security force will hate to run into well armed and equipped citizens. Citizens with weapons just at a part with what they have.

    The only thing that this state security force wants is to ensure the position and power of it’s masters.

  9. I think gun control will be accomplished economically. When a simple handgun costs 10000 dollars and the ammo is 5 dollars a round who will be able to afford one?

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