Another win for the Left (Moved from Legal)

I see this phrase all the time and still haven't gotten a good answer explaining it. What is an assault weapon and what is a military style semiautomatic weapon and how far back in years are we talking.

Jack B. said:

What is an assault weapon and what is a military style semiautomatic weapon and how far back in years are we talking.

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Easy. Anything the gun grabbers want to take away is an assault weapon. It will be so declared right before they come to take it.

Haven't semiautomatic weapons been almost completely restricted in New Zealand for a long time?

I do have a married niece in New Zealand. Her husband is a hunter. To renew his permit, government authorities took her into a separate room, and questioned her heavily about not just whether he has a history of domestic abuse, which the records would show anyway, but whether he has ever shown anger or whether she ever felt fear of him. They assure her if she'll cooperate and testify against him that they'll deny him a permit without explaining why.

Of course there is no appeal.

A subject of the New Zealand government has nothing remotely equitable to the rights of a citizen of the United States. Never has. So far as I can tell, the majority of the people of New Zealand find the idea of individual rights abhorrent--this based upon their legal doctrines.

This topic will get moved as it is not "Legal", should be moved to General Discussion

But we do it to ourselves as we have "firearm enthusiasts" that are only looking out for themselves these days. A house divided will not stand. What is equally as frustrating as a "leftist/statist" espousing the need for gun legislation/bans are the firearm owners not standing up for all 2nd Amendment rights. Even on this very board do we have people who are willing to give up the following: AR15's, bumpstocks, binary triggers, magazines with capacities greater than 10 rounds, etc. How are we to defend the 2nd Amendment when we have those among us that don't even believe in what it says? None of the items I just listed (along with the items that are already banned/regulated: full auto, destructive devices greater than .50 cal, suppressors, SBR's, etc) should be restricted for American citizens according to the 2nd Amendment. And yet, in all of this we have gun owners willing to give more for appeasement? Ridiculous.

It's tiring to hear the words come out of a firearm owners mouth, "we have to give them something or we'll lose it all." With that attitude we've already lost it.

Jack B. said:

I see this phrase all the time and still haven't gotten a good answer explaining it. What is an assault weapon and what is a military style semiautomatic weapon and how far back in years are we talking.

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Once at a party a woman was talking about the evils of military assault rifles and openly speculating how anyone could possible enjoy owning, shooting, or touching one.

I told her that just day I had been shooting an assault rifle, one with as good a claim to the title as any, a Trapdoor Springfield--an actual frontal military assault made more sense in those days than it does now, although I didn't bother trying to explain that to her. I made sure to tell her that it was considered capable of firing twenty times in a minute in trained hands.

Her response, "How could you bear to hold something so evil?"

These people live in the age of specialization If their car isn't running, they take it to a mechanic. If their sink is clogged, they call a plumber. They don't want to be bored with details about transmissions and pipes. They want the problem fixed. If a politician promises them a solution, and tells them they can feel good about it to boot, what more could they want?

There is nobility in feeling like you care about the solutions to the problems of the world, but it's going entirely too far to demand the tediousness of examining the details of the various solutions offered, or imagining the young, attractive newscaster might neither be an expert nor value principles of individual liberty.

An assault weapon, realistically defined, is anything that can be used as a weapon to assault another human being. So, in common modern use, it is a meaningless term invented by politicians and media types to induce fear and loathing among the uneducated, toward a particular object, for the purpose of instituting a gun ban.

40-82 said:

Haven't semiautomatic weapons been almost completely restricted in New Zealand for a long time?

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No, up to now NZ has been fairly open by world standards. There were various categories of licenses. With an "A" license, you could have a "neutered" AR-15 (no pistol grip, threaded barrel, or bayonet lug, magazine capacity limited to 7 rounds), which was not required to be registered. With a "C" license, you could have an AR-15 in military configuration, which was required to be registered. An "E" (collector's) license would let you have basically anything, including functional machine guns. (However, you were not allowed to actually shoot these.) The licenses were progressively harder to get. This whole system is being overthrown in the wake of the Christchurch shootings.

The problem in NZ was that interest in these kinds of guns was fairly limited, so there was no political support in favor of them. Only a tiny minority of people were affected. Sad to say, the shooter chose his venue wisely, for maximum effect.

I don't understand why this is considered a win "for the left" when the most clear and present threats to gun control in the US are becoming more and more bipartisan. In less than a week bump stocks will be become material felonies on the level of unregistered machine guns, and more Republican legislators at the state and federal levels are supportive of red flag laws. Eventually, gun owners of all political stripes are going to have to set aside the tribal identity politics if we want to have a prayer of stopping anti-gunners.

But more to the point of NZ specifically -- gun ownership is not a constitutional right, nor does the country have a cultural history of gun ownership in its DNA the way we do. So, it's no surprise that a gun ban could be so easily pushed through.

HPCadm17 said:

An assault weapon, realistically defined, is anything that can be used as a weapon to assault another human being. So, in common modern use, it is a meaningless term invented by politicians and media types to induce fear and loathing among the uneducated, toward a particular object, for the purpose of instituting a gun ban.

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The gun community was complicit in originating this term.

Properly speaking, an "assault rifle" (sturmgewehr) was a term that originated in Germany during WW2, meaning a selective-fire weapon firing an intermediate rifle round. This term was picked up by the gun industry in the U.S. to denote military-lookalike semiautomatic guns. This was for marketing purposes. The antigunners just took advantage of a term that was already out there.

AlexanderA said:

The problem in NZ was that interest in these kinds of guns was fairly limited, so there was no political support in favor of them. Only a tiny minority of people were affected.

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The article I read this morning stated that there was 13.5k of them in the country with a population of approximately 5m.

AlexanderA said:

The problem in NZ was that interest in these kinds of guns was fairly limited, so there was no political support in favor of them. Only a tiny minority of people were affected. Sad to say, the shooter chose his venue wisely, for maximum effect.

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So in a way, here in the US we should be thankful for the Clinton AWB since I believe it kicked off our obsession with the AR15. Very few people owned one before 94. I'll even go so far to say it probably opened up the eyes of a lot of folks who believed that the US would never ban guns.

Charlie Martinez said:

Today the Left is already trying to modify our Constitution. They want to eliminate the Electoral College, change the number of judges in our Supreme Court & remove the 2nd Amendment. This was unheard of just a few years ago so there's disturbingly strong evidence that a very bad process is already underway.

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That's not really a constitution change, just a change in the laws. Certainly not unprecedented. This is actaully how the first major expansion of Federal government control with the huge rollout of federal regulations under Roosevelt in the 1930s. Threats to pack the court unless they agreed to his administrations desires, huge regulatory overhauls, the NFA 1934. Itbwas extremely successful and has major bearing on our governance to this day. Yes, everything old is new again.

Charlie Martinez said:

In their day a man's word was as good as a written contract & honor was highly valued. Under that assumption they wrote our Constitution so it would protect everyone' rights. Unfortunately our enemies are also protected while they diligently take advantage to tear our country & eventually the very same Constitution that gave them the freedoms they currently enjoy.
Today the Left is already trying to modify our Constitution. They want to eliminate the Electoral College, change the number of judges in our Supreme Court & remove the 2nd Amendment. This was unheard of just a few years ago so there's disturbingly strong evidence that a very bad process is already underway.

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While it makes for a great romantic notion to think the founders were all unassailable men of honor, that doesn't hold up at all to history. While he was Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson gave a man a translator's salary who couldn't even speak the language he was supposed to be translating, so that he could spend his time writing articles about his political opponents -- including the very president in whose cabinet he was serving. Hamilton lost any shot at the presidency because he was engaged in America's first major political sex scandal and taken down by the Reynolds pamphlet. He also engaged in scheming to invade Spanish Florida behind the President's back. Burr and Hamilton took their rancor for one another all the way to a meaningless and unnecessary duel where the sitting American VP killed a man. The Citizen Gene Affair supported by Jefferson and other anti-federalists was an obvious attempt to open the door to a foreign government to beat war drums that, again, ran directly counter to the President whose cabinet Jefferson was serving on. Then there's the whole "owning other people thing" that wouldn't get sorted out for about another century.

I'm not saying it isn't complex, but there was plenty of duplicity among that amazing and interesting group of human beings. There was plenty of false information, rancor, partisanship, assassinations of character and the literal variety, etc.

Your other claims about the EC, SCOTUS, and modifications to the Constitution are also not new in American history, all the way up to the current President calling the electoral college "a disaster for democracy."

Pretending our problems are new and all brought on by "the Left" is factually incorrect, and only serves to feed the continued erosion of our rights.

Charlie Martinez said:

From what I read in the news "military style" semi automatic weapons are no longer restricted, they are now prohibited & all owners have to turn them in or suffer the consequences. I guess under that description even a 1911 pistol would be illegal.
Our Constitution is probably the best legislative document ever written. The genius of our Founding Fathers is reflected in the fact that even after hundreds of years the Constitution applies to life today. But they never expected or anticipated the degree of corruption & immorality that we are facing today. In their day a man's word was as good as a written contract & honor was highly valued. Under that assumption they wrote our Constitution so it would protect everyone' rights. Unfortunately our enemies are also protected while they diligently take advantage to tear our country & eventually the very same Constitution that gave them the freedoms they currently enjoy.
Today the Left is already trying to modify our Constitution. They want to eliminate the Electoral College, change the number of judges in our Supreme Court & remove the 2nd Amendment. This was unheard of just a few years ago so there's disturbingly strong evidence that a very bad process is already underway.

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I don't know enough history of New Zealand to know for sure that handguns were always illegal, but this new legislation isn't costing them the privilege to own handguns--they've never had anything like a right. But they've long ago lost the ability to own handguns.

One of the arguments against the Constitution has always been that the founders couldn't anticipate the changes of the modern world. Fourth Amendment protections against search & seizure, it was argued during Prohibition, were obsolete because the original signers couldn't have anticipated the motor car, and it wasn't as if the police could surround a house and wait at leisure for a Judge to sign a warrant..

As much as I enjoy and like the positive and patriotic tone of your post, I would suggest that the Founders did anticipate corruption and immorality. The purpose of the document was to keep the power in the hands of the people and by its very nature limit our necessary trust in government. The Constitution puts more faith in the common citizen than ever before in history and less faith and more accountability for those in government. Your words about the value of the contract are well taken. John Marshall, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court believed in the sanctity of the contract. If this country were to be taken seriously, he believed it would be because we honored our contracts. Unfortunately, that's one of the things we lost early on. If you have a contract with the government, you're bound. The government is bound only so long as they want to honor the contract.

The idea of changing the number of judges on the Supreme Court is nothing new. The Court fought with FDR over much of his New Deal legislation, and he threatened to expand the Court to fifteen members, if they didn't stop bucking him. He could have done it with his control of both houses, and they backed down. We got the promise of a chicken in every pot, and his four freedoms: two of which freedom from fear and freedom from want are essentially meaningless. FDR was a brilliant man; there is no denying that, but he was not a great believer in individual rights.

The Electoral College exists because small states like Rhode Island knew they'd be swallowed up by the power of populous states like Virginia and New York without some kind of check against the power of pure democracy, same reason each state has two Senators. Without these checks, we'd have extreme regional dominance. For now, the goal of ending the Electoral College is pure fantasy. To do so would require ratification by the legislators of thirty-eight states. What do you imagine the chances are of all the small states banding together to nullify their influence?

We were in a unique position in the 1780's. George Washington and the mercantile powers on the east coast had taken on the might of the British Empire and effectively lost. While the Continental Army couldn't stand in the field against the British, neither could the British consolidate an interior held by free riflemen. Most of us just wanted to be left alone, and that's what we would have opted for. Mad George III barely knew we existed. We saw him as less of a threat than the monied interests on the east coast.

Until the British made a serious mistake and allowed Tarleton to make his reprisal raids in the interior. It aroused the over mountain men and along with pressures from Parliament the British were ready to cut their losses. Nothing much would have come of this. It would have been another, democracy in name only run by powerful monied interests, but with the unusual combination of the military and political power of the riflemen of the west,combined with having brilliant spokesmen in men like Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, something special happened that never existed before in history.

The sad thing is that human nature is human nature and our history since that time has been the re-acquisition of power by the government and the financial interests behind it who were forced to cede freedom and power to the common man.

Any betting historian would long ago have predicted we would have lost it all, first in practice, finally in name. But a spirit was born that never really died. It surfaces in time of need. Remember Charleton Heston, holding that flintlock rifle over his head and his words. "From my cold, dead hands."

As of July this year in Wa State, an assault rifle is defined as as any rifle that is semi auto and uses the energy "gas" to chamber the next round. Yes, as of July my pure stock Weatherby 22LR rifle will magically turn in to a assault rifle.

Charlie Martinez said:

Pretending our problems are new and all brought on by "the Left" is factually incorrect, and only serves to feed the continued erosion of our rights.

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I have no idea who you are but I am almost 100% certain that you have never experienced the transition that takes place when a democracy turns into a socialist dictatorship. I always urge people that care about what happens in our country to listen a little more to those that have been there & done that. Ignorance, arrogance, complacency & greed are the Left's best friends.[/QUOTE]

I have not experienced that transition. Point me toward a good book if you like, I'm certainly interested.

It's popular on this board to attack "the Left" (whatever that means) while ignoring very clear and present 2A opponents who don't fall under that flag. I oppose *all* anti-gun politicians, and if others did the same we just might have a shot at this thing. The strategy of only opposing the anti-gunners that happen to be on the left is not sound strategy for the continued security of 2A over the long term.

Not just guns. I am dismayed by the attitude by so many influential people that foreign ways are better. We must do as the Wise Leaders of the Old World say.

Yes, it is called Socialism. Some call Venezuela failed Socialism, in reality it is Socialism in action.

I am sick that imnsho = this will just create a criminal element of once legal citizens.

Just as prohibition did in America a "few" decades back

Then there will be a HUGE supply of "illegal" guns that were once legal.

The big difference is in NZ they were already registered and not protected by a 2A so the authorities know where to go if a certain serial number is not turned in. Kind of hard to dodge that. I suppose that you could say they were in your car and you were on the way to turn them in and stopped at the gas station and somebody stole them or some such. you *might* not get in as much trouble but still some for sure. This is a prime example of not giving SN to a .gov entity in the first place. As of today registration is not needed in the state of ME, only SN when filling out a 4473 at your local FFL per BATFE rules. Privae sales are exempt as long as the person is of age and not prohibited as best you can tell.