Banners Want It All!!!

[Moped]

House Democrat from San Francisco is calling for a total ban on all so called "Assault Weapons".  He wants to buy them back at $200 a piece and prosecute anyone that defies the ban and keeps theirs.  Here's his opinion piece in USAToday.

Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters: Ex-prosecutor in Congress

Eric SwalwellPublished 3:15 a.m. ET May 3, 2018

     

Ban assault weapons and buy them back. It might cost $15 billion, but we can afford it. Consider it an investment in our most important right, the right to live.

(Photo: AP)

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 Gary Jackson never stood a chance.

Gary was 28 and working as a security guard at a taco truck in Oakland, Calif., in 2009 when he saw Dreshawn Lee carrying a sawed-off shotgun and reported it to police. Three months later, Lee took his revenge by shooting and killing Jackson with an AK-47-style semiautomatic assault rifle.

I was the prosecutor who persuaded a jury to convict Lee and persuaded a judge to put him away for 65 years to life. But Gary’s autopsy report still haunts me.

Trauma surgeons and coroners will tell you the high-velocity bullet fired from a military-style, semiautomatic assault weapon moves almost three times as fast as a 9mm handgun bullet, delivering far more energy. The bullets create cavities through the victim, wrecking a wider swath of tissue, organs and blood vessels. And a low-recoil weapon with a higher-capacity magazine means more of these deadlier bullets can be fired accurately and quickly without reloading. 

An assault weapon, then, is a hand-held weapon of war, capable of spraying a crowd with more lethal fire in seconds.

So Gary didn’t stand much chance. First-graders and teachers in Newtown, Conn., didn’t either. Nor did dancers at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, nor concert-goers in Las Vegas, nor teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., nor the people at the Waffle House outside Nashville. Like so many American mass-shooting victims in recent decades, their doom was all but assured by the murderer’s tool.

 

Nonetheless, we can give ourselves and our children the chance these victims never had. We can finally act to remove weapons designed for war from our streets, once and for all.

Reinstating the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 would prohibit manufacture and sales, but it would not affect weapons already possessed. This would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.

Instead, we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons. The ban would not apply to law enforcement agencies or shooting clubs.

There's something new and different about the surviving Parkland high schoolers’ demands. They dismiss the moral equivalence we’ve made for far too long regarding the Second Amendment. I've been guilty of it myself, telling constituents and reporters that “we can protect the Second Amendment and protect lives.” 

The Parkland teens have taught us there is no right more important than every student’s right to come home after class. The right to live is supreme over any other. 

Our courts haven’t found a constitutional right to have assault weapons, anyway. When the Supreme Court held in 2008 that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that this right “is not unlimited” and is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

More: Navy vet on Vegas: We need gun laws that make us as safe as our military

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

Since that District of Columbia v. Heller decision, four federal appeals courts have upheld assault weapons bans. Many other firearms are available for self-protection, they found, and the danger that assault weapons pose to society is a legitimate reason for states and localities to ban them.

Australia got it right. After a man used military-style weapons to kill 35 people in April 1996, that nation adopted strict new measures and bought back 643,726 newly illegal rifles and shotguns at market value. The cost — an estimated $230 million in U.S. dollars at the time — was funded by a temporary 0.2% tax levy on national health insurance.

America won’t get off that cheaply. Gun ownership runs so deep that we don’t even know how many military-style semiautomatic rifles are in U.S. civilian hands.

Based on manufacturing figures and other indirect data, there could be 15 million assault weapons out there. If we offer $200 to buy back each weapon — as many local governments have — then it would cost about $3 billion; at $1,000 each, the cost would be about $15 billion.

It’s no small sum. But let’s put it in context.

The federal government is spending an estimated $4 trillion this year; $15 billion would be 0.375% of that, not that we must spend it all in one year.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s tax “reform” — a giveaway to corporations and the rich that threw comparatively meager scraps to working families — is projected to increase the national debt by $1.9 trillion over the next decade.

What is it worth to American taxpayers to not see our families, friends and neighbors cut down in a hail of gunfire? Consider this an investment in averting carnage and heartache and loss. 

When I think of Jackson, I think of all the others who died with wounds like his. I think about my dad and two brothers who put their lives on the line as law enforcement officers. I think about my 11-month-old son, Nelson, and the safe classrooms I want him to learn in.

America has a deadly problem, a problem other developed nations have avoided or addressed. Some say we’re already too far gone to take corrective action, but we cannot have a defeatist attitude about this. Fixing our problem requires boldness and will be costly, but the cost of letting it fester will be far higher — for our wallets, and for our souls.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California’s San Francisco Bay area, is co-chair of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/05/03/ban-assault-weapons-buy-them-back-prosecute-offenders-column/570590002/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories

 

[Grand Torino]

Quote

Australia got it right. 

 I have friends in Australia...ask them if they got it right.

[RED333]

The left will never stop, and we can not stop as well,.

[SWCUMBERLAND]

Gun-grabbing assclown. $200? Cheapskate... 2.5 troy pounds of precious metal silver is about $500 at the moment... thirty pieces of silver being the going rate for traitors.

SWC 

 

[Ronald_55]

What do you want to bet if they bought all these back at $200, a bunch of them would get sold for profit somehow by some fat cat in DC? Even a cheap a$$ AR in 5.56 is worth double that. Let alone all the stupid people that turn in stuff like a vintage Garand at the buy backs in the past. 

[Omega]

It's politicians like him that the 2nd Amendment was written for.

[Erik88]

2 hours ago, Ronald_55 said:

What do you want to bet if they bought all these back at $200, a bunch of them would get sold for profit somehow by some fat cat in DC? Even a cheap a$$ AR in 5.56 is worth double that. Let alone all the stupid people that turn in stuff like a vintage Garand at the buy backs in the past. 

There was a police shooting in chicago and the gun that mysteriously turned up at the scene was one previously purchased by the police department during a buy back. Pretty obvious what happened there...

[bersaguy]

Except for the Las Vegas shooting listed in his article he failed to mention that each one of these places are "Killing Field GUN FREE ZONES" How many of these same shootings would have ended much differently had a person with a Glock or 1911 stood up and shot the shooter before he could begin shooting. If they adress the GUN FREE ZONE issue and remove it these mass shootings will be far less because a good guy with a gun would be able to stop the bad guy with a gun..........JMHO 

 

So Gary didn’t stand much chance. First-graders and teachers in Newtown, Conn., didn’t either. Nor did dancers at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, nor concert-goers in Las Vegas, nor teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., nor the people at the Waffle House outside Nashville. Like so many American mass-shooting victims in recent decades, their doom was all but assured by the murderer’s tool.

 

[Cruel Hand Luke]

 

[Erik88]

[Moped]

3 hours ago, bersaguy said:

Except for the Las Vegas shooting listed in his article he failed to mention that each one of these places are "Killing Field GUN FREE ZONES" How many of these same shootings would have ended much differently had a person with a Glock or 1911 stood up and shot the shooter before he could begin shooting. If they adress the GUN FREE ZONE issue and remove it these mass shootings will be far less because a good guy with a gun would be able to stop the bad guy with a gun..........JMHO 

That doesn't fit the Liberal agenda.

[SWCUMBERLAND]

10 minutes ago, Moped said:

That doesn't fit the authoritarian statist agenda.

FTFY.

Either:

1. They honestly (ha!) don't get that their "gun free" zones are creating hunting zones for the predators.

OR:

2: They don't give two rodhams and half a fatbill, and are actually getting turned on (TWICE: from death-worship, and "new" reasons to attack 2A believers) with every incident.

(If any have doubts about the death-worship, reel back to anything since 9/11 and see how some of the comentators' eyes light up with higher bodycounts. Truly sick.)

So... lack of understanding, or understanding all too well.

You pick.

[Cruel Hand Luke]

They don't care. They want civilian disarmament and don't care what it takes to get it. At least they are finally being honest about it. For YEARS they hid their true agenda. Now that former Justice Stevens has come out for doing away with the 2nd all the kooks are being a little more vocal.... But they need to really think this through.....they run the risk of a political backlash like in 94 or worse a cultural backlash and armed insurgency if they actually try to implement this stuff...... 

[DWARREN123]

People need to realize this is just the beginning and fight it hard.

What will be next, right to free speech, right of search or right to be considered innocent until proven guilty? 

Fight these idiots and fight hard!

[Cruel Hand Luke]

The argument can be made that all of that stuff is already under attack NOW.... 

[Moped]

17 minutes ago, Cruel Hand Luke said:

The argument can be made that all of that stuff is already under attack NOW.... 

Yes it is!  Not always through legislation, but through social pressure (when they shout down conservatives on campus and other such events and places) and through the media (by choking off the conservative voices out there and subject them to ridicule as MSNBC and CNN do quite often).

[DaveTN]

6 hours ago, bersaguy said:

How many of these same shootings would have ended much differently had a person with a Glock or 1911 stood up and shot the shooter before he could begin shooting. 

All of them would have. 

Unfortunately you would have to wait for him to shoot at someone. If someone had shot and killed a naked guy walking into a restaurant before he fired his weapon, I would bet they would have to go to trial.

And no “Tried by 12” is not better for me than “Carried by 6”.

[TripleGGG]

4 hours ago, Erik88 said:

Did this happen to you too? Hate it when that happens.

[Ronald_55]

This is when I waved bye to all of mine...

 

[Chucktshoes]

I’m generally not a fan of James Yeager, but I have seen a few of his videos before YouTube killed his channel. In one of them he made a statement to the effect of “if you think it is time to bury your guns then that is the time to start using them.”

 

He wasn’t wrong. 

[bersaguy]

15 hours ago, DaveTN said:

All of them would have. 

Unfortunately you would have to wait for him to shoot at someone. If someone had shot and killed a naked guy walking into a restaurant before he fired his weapon, I would bet they would have to go to trial.

And no “Tried by 12” is not better for me than “Carried by 6”.

If I'm not mistaken didn't he shoot one or two people out side before coming in. That would have gave me all I needed to shoot him when he cleared the doorway before he ever began shooting inside.................JMHO.

[Ronald_55]

14 minutes ago, bersaguy said:

If I'm not mistaken didn't he shoot one or two people out side before coming in. That would have gave me all I needed to shoot him when he cleared the doorway before he ever began shooting inside.................JMHO.

I think he did. Hell, if I had a clear backdrop behind him, I would have just shot him through the door if he started shooting outside and was headed in. I am sure it was glass anyway.