Assault Weapons and The Truth

Assault Weapons and The Truth
From a post by Jarhead, over at NoWeWont...

The Obama administration has nominated an anti-gun zealot as the U.S.’s top gun cop.

The Obama administration is moving into high gear in putting gun-control advocates into important government positions.

The administration’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), Andrew Traver, should be of particular concern.

His attacks on the civilian use of so-called 'assault weapons' raise real questions about his willingness to distort the truth for political purposes. The person nominated to be the nation’s top gun cop shouldn’t use inaccurate descriptions to scare people into supporting gun control.

Mr. Traver is the special agent in charge of the BATFE’s Chicago field division. Therefore, he knows what was covered by the federal assault-weapons ban that sunset in 2004.

But in November 2009, NBC interviewed Traver and reported: “Traver says the power and randomness of the heavy caliber, military-style weapons make them so dangerous not only to people, but to police. They’re so powerful, body armor can’t withstand a hit, and they’re so difficult to control, their bullets often get sprayed beyond the intended targets, striking innocent victims even when they’re in their own homes.”

The list of problems with Mr. Traver’s claims is very long.
If he really believes that these weapons fire unacceptably “heavy caliber” bullets, he is going to have to ban virtually all rifles.
(Including...) Small-game rifles — guns designed to kill squirrels and rabbits without destroying too much meat — typically fire .22-caliber bullets, which are only slightly smaller than the .223-caliber bullets fired by the M16 (used by the U.S. military since Vietnam) and the newer M4 carbine (used in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars). Deer-hunting rifles fire rounds that are very similar to those used by the AK-47.

Speaking of M16s, M4s, and AK-47s, Traver is correct when he states that the guns covered by the federal assault-weapons ban were “military-style weapons.”

But he fails to note that this really just deals with style — the cosmetics of the guns, not how they actually operate. The guns covered by the ban were not the machine guns actually used by the military, but civilian, semi-automatic versions of those guns.

The civilian version of the AK-47 may look like the guns used by militaries around the world, but it is different. It fires essentially the same bullets as deer-hunting rifles at the same rapidity (one bullet per pull of the trigger), and does the same damage.

On penetrating body armor, Mr. Traver leaves out one important detail:  Rifles in general are often able to penetrate body armor simply because their bullets travel faster than those fired from handguns. The same can be said for going through the walls of houses.

But if he had said that deer-hunting rifles can often penetrate walls and lower-level types of body armor, it is unlikely that his comments would have generated the same fear.

Unfortunately, Mr. Traver has done more than make clearly inaccurate claims about so-called “assault weapons.”

He has supported banning .50-caliber rifles, and regulations that would force many gun shows to close down, and the Chicago handgun ban, and repealing the Tiahrt Amendment, which protects sensitive trace data from being misused in frivolous municipal lawsuits against gun makers.

He also worked with the Joyce Foundation, which has funded gun-ban groups such as the Violence Policy Center, on the “Gun Violence Reduction Project.”

The fact that Mr. Traver uses the same misleading claims as groups such as the Brady Campaign shouldn’t make it too surprising that gun-control groups are applauding his nomination.

Nor is Traver’s nomination very surprising after President Obama appointed two strong anti-self-defense members to the Supreme Court. 

But Mr. Traver’s nomination is dangerous.
Making up claims about guns to demonize them is beyond what is acceptable for someone who wants a position in which he will be regulating American gun ownership.

Jarhead’s Comment;  First of all, The Joyce Foundation, which has funded gun-ban groups such as the Violence Policy Center is sponsored and supported by "guess who?"...... "George Soros."

Now the truth;  For the third year in a row, violent crime has declined in the United States while increasing numbers of American citizens own firearms and are licensed to carry, a trend that belies predictions of anti-gunners that more guns will result in more crime, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Preliminary data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows that the violent crime rate went down 5.5 percent in 2009, compared to statistics from 2008. This covers all four categories of violent crime: murder, robbery, aggravated assault and forcible rape. Violent crime went down 4 percent in metropolitan counties and 3 percent elsewhere, according to the FBI.

At the same time, the agency’s National Instant Check System reports continued increases in the number of background check requests and the National Shooting Sports Foundation has reported increased federal firearms excise tax allocations to state wildlife agencies, an indication that more guns and ammunition are being purchased.

“This translates to one irrefutable fact,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “There are more guns in private hands than ever before, yet crime rates have declined.

In plain English, this means that gun prohibitionists have been consistently wrong. Higher rates of gun ownership have not resulted in more bloodshed, as the gun ban lobby has repeatedly forecast with its ‘sky-is-falling’ rhetoric.

“According to the FBI,” he continued, “the murder rate fell last year 7.2 percent in larger cities.  Robbery declined more than 8 percent and forcible rape was down 3.1 percent.

It might just be that criminals are less likely to attack someone out of fear their intended victim is armed.  Robbers might be discouraged by the growing potential that the clerk behind the counter is willing to fight back.  Maybe would-be rapists are deterred by the possibility that they might get shot.

“For many years,” Gottlieb observed, “anti-gunners made all kinds of wild predictions that higher rates of gun ownership and the expansion of shall-issue carry permits would leave neighborhoods awash in blood.  The data proves otherwise.  America should turn its back on the gun prohibition lobby and their insidious policy of victim disarmament.”

This is what they do not want you to see, they want the anti-gun establishment to bolster tp the ignorant masses that crime goes up when there are more weapons in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
Nothing could further from the truth.
View the statistics from 1990 to 2009 here;

http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_01.html
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