XPost: alt.politics.usa.constitution, alt.politics.guns, alt.california
XPost: sac.general
From: gp@dont-email.me

This week the nation was subjected to an embarrassing and
undignified spectacle of obstructionist partisan politics
surrounding the confirmation hearings of Judge Brett M.
Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. The Democrat caucus,
understanding that Judge Kavanaugh is an eminently qualified
jurist with an upstanding reputation and that the votes likely
exist to confirm him, abandoned the norms of the Senate and of
civility and resorted to childish and temperamental theatrics.
This included talking out of order and over their colleagues,
including Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley;
encouraging disruptive and illegal protests in the gallery; and
holding up large posters to distract the Judge as he answered
committee members’ questions.

But while such demonstrations are merely obnoxious and juvenile,
the more serious affront arose from committee members who were
either too ignorant or too dishonest to accurately articulate
the law and the facts in their exchanges with Judge Kavanaugh.
Case in point: arch anti-gun Senator Dianne Feinstein, who
grossly exaggerated the criminal use of semi-automatic rifles
and mischaracterized the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment
precedent to attack the nominee for failing to embrace her
political position on gun control.

The exchange came on day two of the proceedings, with Democrats
becoming increasingly frustrated at their inability to ruffle
Judge Kavanaugh or mount any effective resistance to his
confirmation.

Senator Feinstein began by reminding the audience that her
office wrote the federal “assault weapon” ban that was in effect
from 1994 to 2004. It’s notable that her first misstatement of
law concerned her own legislation. According to her, the law
“essentially prohibited the transfer, sale, and manufacture of
assault weapons. It did not at the time affect possession.”

That is plainly untrue. The law did, in fact, ban possession of
the controlled firearms (see page 201 of this link). The law did
not apply to firearms that had been lawfully obtained before the
law’s effective date, but that clause operated as an
“affirmative defense” that put the burden on the accused of
raising the issue at trial. Simply put, anyone found in
possession of a firearm described in the Act was presumptively
in violation of the law and susceptible to federal felony
penalties.

To her credit. Senator Feinstein at least hedged her next false
statement by couching it as a “belief,” rather than outright
assertion of fact. “I happen to believe that [the federal
“assault weapon” ban] did work and that it was important,” she
said.

Unfortunately for her, there is no credible evidence to this
effect. Two government funded studies of the law’s effects in
fact found it had no measurable impact on violent crime. More
recently, a survey of gun control laws by the Rand Corporation
found that the only perceptible effect of assault weapons bans
generally is perhaps a short-term increase in the price of
assault weapons; that in itself does not establish any
beneficial crime reduction effect, however.

Feinstein next took issue with a dissent that Judge Kavanaugh
had written in a case that upheld a D.C. “assault weapon” ban
similar to the expired federal law. Specifically, she chided him
for finding the firearms were “in common use” and therefore
protected under the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment precedent.
“Assault weapons are not in common use,” Feinstein said.

Not only is that assertion not true, it’s the opposite of the
truth. The types of firearms covered by both Feinstein’s now
expired legislation and the current D.C. ban include the most
popular rifles in modern America, including the iconic AR-15.
According to figures compiled by the National Shooting Sports
Foundation for litigation launched in 2013, nearly 4.8 million
AR platform rifles were manufactured in the U.S. between 1990
and 2012, and more than 3.4 million AR and AK platform rifles
were imported during that timeframe. The number of AR-15s
manufactured in 2012 was double the number of Ford F-150 pick-up
trucks sold– the most commonly sold vehicle in the U.S.
Approximately 5 million people in the U.S. own at least one
modern semiautomatic rifle that would be covered by the
Feinstein/D.C. bans and such rifles make up 20.3% of all retail
firearms sales and are sold by 92.5% of retail firearm dealers.
Even media outlets that support “assault weapon” bans
acknowledge that the firearm those bans most specifically target

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