To: ca-firearms From: Mike Saldivar Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 15:31:15 -0400 Subject: Re: [ca-firearms] Pro-Feinstein op-ed in today's Daily Review It is always interesting when a legislator expressly displays her bias and ignorance of a subject as the basis for her legislation. Monday’s Our Opinion in the Daily Review illustrated this point when linking Senator Diane Feinstein's continued desire to pass an "assault weapon” ban. Oddly, Feinstein uses an example proving that gun bans don't work, to attempt to prove that the ban is needed. Per the article, Feinstein cited the shooting deaths of two LA city workers by a co-worker as proof that an assault weapons ban is needed. Initial AP reports claimed that an AK-47 assault weapon was found in the shooter's car. Now, the AK-47 was banned by the first President Bush in 1989, It was banned by name in California by the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapon Control Act of 1989. It was re-banned federally by President Clinton in 1994, and again re-banned by California's Assault Weapon act (SB23) in 2000. Clinton's Federal ban of 1994 is the only one of those 4 gun bans to have expired. To find that a criminal can, still, in California, obtain an assault weapon, despite all these controls, would be to prove that gun control is an absolutely useless, feel-good measure, based on irrational emotionalism, rather than common sense and reality. This, of course, confirms the findings of a 328-page report on gun-control laws issued in 2004 by the National Academy of Sciences. The panel was assembled by the Clinton administration, which is significant, given that it was his administration's goal to restrict gun ownership as fully as possible; Senator Feinstein is a happy partner in that goal. However, after reviewing 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, a survey that covered 80 different gun-control measures and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun- control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents. What's more, the panel ignored studies showing that firearms are used by law-abiding citizens to defend themselves from violent criminals upwards of 2 million times every year, frequently without firing a shot. Feinstein has stated that if she could get the votes, she would have had all the good people of America turn their guns in. Given that history and current events prove that the taking guns from the law-abiding does not deter criminal activity, why continue to pursue this failed course?