Papers

A Case for "Assault Weapons"

November 2008

Since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, a consistent stream of chatter has been heard from the legislature, and from the president-elect himself, pertaining to a permanent assault weapons ban. Mr. Obama's transition website, change.gov, reveals his agenda to include reviving the failed 1994 "assault weapons ban" to create a permanent ban on semi-automatic firearms that look scary enough to be considered military-grade. His agenda calls this "common sense" gun legislation.

As a father of four, I take my right to self defense very seriously. In spite of the number of sick crimes in this country, Obama is known widely as being, by far, the most anti-gun politician the United States has ever seen. He's historically supported permanent handgun bans, 500% excise taxes on ammunition, and other legislative acts, many of which would be considered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court's recent ruling of DC vs. Heller - all in an attempt to prevent law-abiding citizens like myself from being able to defend our families from criminals who would seek to harm us. Many left-leaning liberals have taken this recent Supreme Court decision, which ruled the 2nd Amendment to protect an individual right to keep and bear arms, to somehow suggest that this right only extends to firearms practical for home defense (and not arming the people to protect themselves from an overstepping government, which is what it was really meant for).

Since there are already a number of debates on that subject, I've decided to challenge the liberals on their own turf: lets suggest, for the sake of argument, that they're right: that people should only have access to firearms practical for home defense. With this in mind, I submit the following documented cases of gang home invasions, many recent ones, and some involving nearly 30 gang members who have joined in a gang rape, assault, or murder of innocent victims.

The left-wing liberals don't want you to know just how many violent cases of gang invasions this country has seen in the past ten years. They don't want to you know that there is a very real threat by violent gangs, like MS-13, that justify the need to use a tactical firearm to protect your family. What they want you to believe is that banning evil looking guns will somehow make your neighborhood safer. Sadly, this is the opposite of the truth.

I challenge our liberal congress and Mr. Obama to explain why a home owner or father should be denied the right to protect their family from being brutally beaten, raped, or murdered by a gang in their own home, as this is the statement an "assault weapons" ban makes: that you do not have the right to outgun your assailants; that for the sake of a "safer society", you must give your family over to be tortured and slaughtered as sheep. Please explain how anyone, armed only with a hunting rifle or handgun capable of holding ten rounds, can be capable of sufficiently defending themselves and their family against 15, 20, or even 30 men invading their home.

If you check the dates above, one thing you'll notice is that the number of gang members involved in a given home invasion or gang rape was at its peak during the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban. Since the expiration of the ban, the number of malicious individuals involved in a given crime have dwindled to less than a dozen. Expect another ban to not only make defending yourself impossible, but also to lead to another massive jump in the number of gang members involved in your murder.

But even if we presume a dozen men, rather than two dozen invading your home: given that robbing an individual of their right to protect one's self is unacceptable, this leaves only one conclusion. With the significant increase in gang-related home invasions in the past decade, the only viable means of defense against such an attack is what the liberals call an "assault rifle"; what in actuality is a standard firearm capable of accommodating more precise close-range optics, firing rounds with safer close-quarters penetration than a hunting rifle, and holding enough rounds to defend against more than a few individuals.

Consider for a moment how an assault from even ten or fifteen criminals would begin: there is no chance of locking one's self in a room and calling the police, or any time for police to arrive. There is no chance of rounding up the family to run out the back. There is no chance of reasoning with the criminals. The home owner's only hope to protect their family is to overcome the threat. This requires the proper tools and level of proficiency.

The knowledge level of the average non-gun-owning American about firearms is very poor. The ignorant media has assisted in driving people's emotions based on ignorance by misinforming the public of basic facts about firearms and their use in lowering crime rates. What the liberals are referring to as "assault weapons" are not machine guns, but semi-automatic "civilian" firearms. That is, they operate just like a revolver or any semi-automatic firearm: one bullet per trigger pull. While their magazines can hold more ammunition than an average handgun or hunting rifle, they are designed to direct their recoil to the back, so they don't fly up like a handgun, thereby improving accuracy by means of better target acquisition. They also have far less power than a hunting rifle, making them safer when used at close range, as there is less chance of shooting "through" an individual or obstacle and hitting someone else. Frangible ammunition can further improve the safety of these calibers, allowing them to fragment before they will exit your house and hit the neighbors. In addition to caliber, hunting rifles have the added drawback of a longer barrel, which means they are less maneuverable in tight quarters.

But this makes no difference to the liberal party, who have been using scare tactics to push legislation they do not even understand. Carolyn McCarthy, one of the authors of the failed 1994 assault ban bill, proved her ignorance about the firearms she was banning when she was asked exactly what a "barrel shroud", one of the items listed in her legislation, was. She cluelessly replied, "I believe it's the shoulder thing that flips up" (the barrel shroud is actually a safety feature where the barrel of a firearm is enclosed in a perforated metal or plastic guard, preventing the user from being burned, and possibly injuring others). So if you've ever wondered on what grounds firearms are proposed for a ban, McCarthy proved that it is indeed based on scary looking features (even if they are safety features), rather than any intelligent reasoning. These are the men and women you've put in power to make your decisions.

So "assault weapons" are not machine guns, but they obviously can be better suited firearms for close-quarters defense against a gang home invasion, and safer for both the occupants of the house and neighbors than a hunting rifle or handgun. I've listed several news links above to cases involving gang-related home invasions, most occurring in the past few years. Any honest individual must conclude that the only way one would even have a chance to protect their family from being brutally murdered or raped is to possess, and be proficient with, such a firearm in their home, as a large percentage of gun owners have already done. In some of the cases I've listed, the criminals themselves even brought their own rifles, during times when the 1994 assault weapons ban had already outlawed them - clearly, legislation only affects the law abiding. Every criminal in America is hoping for a new assault weapons ban, as it puts the victim at a disadvantage.

When the 1994 assault weapons ban was passed, a panel was formed to report back on the use of assault weapons in crime. When the ban expired in 2004, the panel could not find any evidence suggesting that the ban had any affect on curbing crime. In spite of this, the chicken littles of the liberal party insisted that violence would skyrocket once the ban sunset. Crime ended up going down since 2004, and many believe this was because law abiding citizens could once again sufficiently arm themselves. Obviously, crime still happens, and gang home invasions still happen. At least now, more families are protecting themselves, and avoiding otherwise deadly consequences. When homeowners are empowered with this basic right of self-defense, the criminals are the ones who go running, as they did recently in these cases:

Unfortunately, the list of unarmed victims is much longer than the list of families who protected themselves in victory, like these, because "assault weapons" were banned for nearly a decade, leaving victims helpless. I've provided is just a small snippet of news articles; many more crimes involving a dozen, two, or more individuals have been recorded. I encourage you to do your own research. I am confident you'll find many more cases, some of which didn't make it to the media. I recall reading a newspaper article about a young (14-year old) mentally retarded girl gang raped in her home by 30 men in Macon GA a few years ago, but could not find any news links online. This was 20 minutes from where I used to live.

In addition to criminals, if I were to list the number of cases where Americans needed protection from their own government (such as the Jap scare, where we rounded up the Japanese into concentration camps of our own, or the number of gross abuses and murders by corrupt agencies) or in times of emergency (such as the post-Katrina gang zones or the LA riots), the list would go on much longer. As I said, I don't believe the 2nd Amendment limits the people only to home-defense firearms in the first place - no more than the 1st Amendment limits free speech to only being in the home. I do believe, however, that even in light of the left-wing's clear misunderstanding of our freedoms, that their own arguments against "assault weapons" is anything but "common sense". It is for tyrants who would seek to disarm the people that the 2nd Amendment was design to protect against, yet even in the absence of tyrants, such firearms are today's unfortunate necessity to protect one's own home.

We live in a violent and depraved world. History is filled with evil men who have tortured and murdered innocent victims. Vlad III impaled tens of thousands of men, women, and children from rectum to mouth and hung their bodies on stakes while they slowly died over a period of days. In just the past century, millions of Jews were tortured and murdered by a man who was put into power by the popular vote, as our country stood by and watched. Just this year, a coordinated effort by terrorists to take over major hotels and other facilities in Mumbai, India resulted in the murder of nearly two hundred indivuduals including Americans, Brits, and Jewish leaders who were tortured. All of this occurred while the largely disarmed population was helpless to do anything, and on their own for days. Many attrocities of genocide, infanticide, and religious extremist slayings continue today in many countries, but go largely ignored by the world. To assume that these horrors will not, at some point, knock on our country's doors is naive; some attrocities have already found their way here.

Some say that the absence of guns in some countries is a sign of a more civil society, but in reality it's the balance of power created from the possession of firearms by the population that keeps society civil, and protects a people from being subjected to the abuse of their own government and each other. Men of greed in high places will no doubt repeat history one day; the only thing keeping this at bay is the ability for the average man to protect his family from his own government. If a man can't even protect his family from a home invasion, the greater rights of the free man are already lost.

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