TLAW - donate now!

In honor of one of my few socially conscious friends, today's post is sponsored by the TexLex for Assault Weapons PAC (TLAW . . . I like it). Actually, I'm kidding. Seriously. Anyway, this socially conscious friend sent me an email asking me to support some last minute initiative to keep the current assault weapon ban from expiring and then she implied that the fact that it is expiring is somehow Bush's fault. She also notes that since the ban has been in place, assault weapon crimes and deaths have gone down. Seems kind of obvious, though. If I were to ban pickup trucks, wouldn't pickup truck related accidents and deaths go down? Where are the numbers that show overall gun crimes are down, or that violent crimes are down, or some other viable crime statistic is down than can be traced to this assault weapon ban. I overheard somewhere the other day that there is no evidence that the assault weapon ban had anything but a casual affect on crime in general, but I haven't seen any credible numbers to back this up (or otherwise). Thus it seems to me that the fact that this ban is expiring is evidence of how good legislation works. If we think we have a problem, and we pass a law to deal with it, and we tag it with a sunset clause, if it doesn't end up working like we thought, we can move on and let it die with no long term negative consequences.

Now, as for this being Bush's fault, that's just partisanship with very little or no credible evidence behind it. As a civics reminder, for the President to sign a bill into law, it has to be presented to him by Congress, which is made up of representatives from all 50 states. If these representatives do not present a bill to the President, there's no way he can arbitrarily make it into law. Now, if Bush had vetoed an extension of this assault weapon ban, I'd agree that it's his fault it's no longer in place, but he didn't, because he was never presented with the bill. So it seems that the blame for the expiration of the assault weapon ban should be on Congress itself, and not on the President. And if Congress is truly representative and this legislation was never initiated because the voters didn't want it, then again, I think this is a great example of the legislative process working just like it's supposed to. So, instead of being mad at the President, or at Congress, be mad at your fellow voters and your neighbors and your friends because it is a reflection on their beliefs that the assault weapon ban hasn't been extended.

Evidence that this is a non-issue can be seen in the little or no media attention that has been directed at this issue. There have been no major news stories on this and no legitimate commentary. If this were an issue, there'd be public interest stories in every news segment, it'd be on the front page of every major paper, and the national police union would be holding press conferences. But this is such a non issue that even the NRA isn't spending any money it. So again, it seems to me that the will of the people is being done by the ban expiring quietly and we all need to move on and remember that it's not guns that kill people, it's people that kill people.

If you take away one form of weapons, criminals will just find another to commit the same crime. If it's not an assault weapon, it's a shotgun, and if not a shotgun, a pistol, and if not a pistol, a baseball bat, and if not a baseball bat, a 2x4 and if not a 2x4, a brick, etc. I hope you get my point. Banning particular weapons won't solve crime problems, it won't keep people from getting killed, and it certainly won't deal with the underlying issues that cause crime in the first place. So let's quit legislating at the external issue, and instead start dealing with the internal problem that lead to crime, like greed and poverty and racial tension. Until we solve these problems, people will die, one way or the other.