Senate Democrats Introduce AWB Legislation

If there was ever an enemy to America’s lawful gun owners, it was the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. In fact, until her death in 2023, Feinstein never met a gun ban she didn’t embrace.

Now, her replacement, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California, is continuing where Feinstein left off. On April 30, Schiff announced that he and several other Democrat senators have introduced a new measure to ban so-called “assault weapons,” despite the fact that such a ban has virtually no chance of passing, given that pro-gun Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House.

“Thirty-one years ago, after the Stockton schoolyard shooting in California, Senator Feinstein successfully led bipartisan legislation to ban military-style assault weapons,” Schiff said in a news release announcing the legislation. “Over the next ten years, and until the measure expired, the assault weapons ban was a vital tool in the struggle to reduce gun violence and mass shootings. It saved lives.”

 In fact, Schiff is spouting lies when he makes that claim. A congressionally-mandated study of the federal “assault weapon” and so-called “high-capacity” magazine ban concluded that “the banned guns were never used in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders” before the ban, and the ban’s 10-round limit on new magazines wasn’t a factor in multiple-victim or multiple-wound crimes. Additionally, a follow-up study concluded that “AWs [assault weapons] and LCMs [large capacity magazines] were used in only a minority of gun crimes prior to the 1994 federal ban,” “relatively few attacks involve more than 10 shots fired,” and “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

Of course, Schiff and his anti-gun cronies are likely aware of those facts. However, the desire to control Americans by taking away their guns is too strong to be concerned about the fact that the Clinton-era gun ban was completely ineffective.

When asked about the likelihood of the measure passing, Schiff initially appeared to acknowledge that its failure was imminent. He even attributed the impending failure of the legislation to the National Rifle Association, a pro-freedom organization that gun-ban advocates love to hate.

“I think the path is a very difficult one, given that the Republicans have control of both houses,” he said. “And at this point, they are still very much in the throes of the NRA. What has always been so perplexing, galling, to me is that when you ask the actual members of the NRA, they will tell you they support an assault weapons ban.”

Of course, that is also false. Since NRA membership lists are not available to pollsters, there’s no way Schiff shouldn’t be able to make that claim with a straight face.

The real reason Democrats continue to propose such a ban is to bolster their financial support from various gun-ban groups. Seemingly realizing this, Schiff abruptly changed his stance mid-answer to proclaim that the bill will definitely pass.

“I also want to say that we have seen things passed in this Congress, for well or for ill, that we never would have imagined we would see the day, and it has happened,” he said. “This bill will pass. It is just a question of how quickly we can get it passed. I’m certainly determined to do everything I can to make sure that day comes soon.”

Fortunately for America’s lawful gun owners—and equally unfortunately for Schiff and other gun-banners—that day is not likely to come anytime soon. If the introduction of the legislation tells us anything, it is that anti-gun lawmakers will never stop pushing to ban common semi-automatic firearms owned by millions upon millions of law-abiding Americans. Consequently, we must continue fighting to ensure that such legislation is killed each time it is proposed.