Bans make no sense
COMMENTARY
By Emily Baker

As a journalist, I believe my mission in life is to inform the public of the plain, complete and naked truth. As the assault-style weapons ban is set to expire next year, the uproar caused by anti-gun supporters has made it obvious that we journalists have not done our jobs to tell the complete truth.

So, here is the truth about why banning assault-style weapons is illogical.

All of this information was taken from the Web sites of the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

First, to clear up a common misconception, an assault-style weapon isn’t a machine gun, which is a fully automatic gun. A fully automatic gun will continue to fire bullets as long as the trigger is pressed. Ownership of fully automatic weapons by civilians has been banned in the United States since the 1930s. Since that time, one homicide has been committed by a civilian with a fully automatic gun. And the culprit was a police officer.

Assault-style weapons are either semi-automatic (which means a shooter can continue to fire bullets without stopping to cock the gun) or they have two or more features like folding stock, a silencer, a flash suppresser, a pistol grip or a large-capacity magazine.

Banning these weapons makes no sense, and here’s why. Unfortunately due to space, I can’t go into the dozens of reasons why banning these weapons is unreasonable, so here are the high points.

Semi-automatic weapons can be fired quickly, so they are banned. Double-action revolvers can be fired just as quickly because the shooter doesn’t have to cock the hammer before shooting again. Double-action revolvers aren’t banned. Why not? Nobody knows.

Anti-gun supporters claim a pistol grip allows the shooter to fire the gun from the hip. I suppose that is true. But if the shooter can’t see through the sights to aim the gun, i.e. the gun is not at the shooter’s shoulder or shoulder-height, there is no accuracy aside from dumb luck.

A high-capacity magazine holds 10 or more cartridges. Banning these makes no sense because some rifles hold up to 20 cartridges in the barrel. These rifles aren’t banned. Why not? Again, nobody knows.

People who wish to ban these weapons in the name of safety have their hearts in the right place, but considering only 1 percent of all homicides are committed with assault-style weapons (the exact same amount of homicides were committed with assault-style weapons prior to the ban taking effect in 1994), banning these weapons in the name of safety just doesn’t make sense.

Emily Baker is a senior news-editorial journalism major from Midland.