Gun Ban Update (September 13, 2004)  Sunset of the Clinton Gun Ban

HISTORY OF THE CLINTON GUN BAN

Newly elected President Bill Clinton wasted little time in seizing upon “assault weapons” as a political issue. Along with “midnight basketball” and the never-to-be-fulfilled promise of 100,000 new police officers, it quickly became part of an effort to transform concern for public safety into a political issue.

Clinton had barely finished moving into the White House when he proclaimed we “can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles.” Then, stringing together several whoppers in a single sentence, he announced, “I don’t believe that everybody in America needs to be able to buy a semi-automatic or fully-automatic weapon, built only for the purpose of killing people, in order to protect the right of Americans to hunt and practice marksmanship and to be secure.”

Of course, not everybody in America can buy a firearm—felons, drug addicts, illegal aliens and fugitives from justice, for example, can not—and ownership of fully-automatic firearms has been heavily regulated by federal law since 1934.  And, of course, semi-automatic firearms, which have been around for more than a century, are used by millions of Americans for hunting, self-defense, recreational target shooting and in formal marksmanship competitions such as the Olympics.  Read More ...