HoodaThunk?

With all the reports in the media about increased gun sales pretty much all over the nation, I’ve been paying extra special attention to 2nd Amendment-related issues. Over at Instapundit I found this reference to a post over at Right Wing News: “Assault Weapons Ban Introduced…by Five R.I.N.O.s.” While I normally really hate that term (“RINO”) there are instances where nothing less will sufficiently describe a person. The Clinton-era “assault weapons ban” was enacted in September 1994 and, all protestations to the contrary, succeeded only in banning weapons that basically looked scary. When the 10-year expiration hit in 2004, I wrote:

The fact of the matter is, ladies & gentlemen, that not a single unbiased study has been able to link the ban with a reduction in crime anywhere. The CDC’s study released in October 2003 concluded that there was no conclusive evidence that such a ban did anything to reduce crime. Common sense will tell you this is true when you listen to the ban’s supporters’ complaint shortly after the ban was introduced. They were upset that gun manufacturers were getting around the ban by making cosmetic changes to the guns’ designs.

If a cosmetic change is all that’s needed for a gun to get off the banned list, then the ban is concerned with cosmetic issues, not safety issues.

Months later, even the liberal Democratic-party propaganda wing known as The New York Times was running stories that showed that none of the dire predictions made about letting the ban expire had come to pass. The ban didn’t make things safer and letting it fade away didn’t make things more dangerous. It was a bad law based on lousy logic and political pandering. I can assure you, however, that I would be shocked to see alleged Republicans being the ones to move to reinstate it.

Color me shocked.

H.R. 6257, “To reinstate the “Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act” was submitted to the House by Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and co-sponsored by Reps. Mike Castle (R-DE), Mike Feguson (R-NJ), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and Christopher Shays, (R-CT). No other co-sponsors have been noted. Duane Lester at Right Wing News (linked above) thinks it’s time for these Reps to just leave the Party. I agree.

There’s 1 thing I’d like to note, however, about this bill. Take note that the bill was actually introduced back in June 2008. That means it’s been on the books for months, not something that’s just come up. Second, I know that Shays has already been kicked out of office and some of these others might have followed suit. Either way, the bill should be torpedoed instantly if it comes up to a vote and the NRCC should give some serious thought about whether to permit these people to carry the GOP standard in the next elections.