Ghost of a Rider
Gold Member
A former coworker and friend of mine likes to make knives and has a knife collection. Should he have his collection confiscated because some other A-hole decided to stab someone? Should I have my truck taken away if some idiot drives drunk and kills someone?
Assault rifles were banned prior to Cruz going on his assault rifle shooting spree. They should be banned again because it was a mistake to allow the 1994 ban to end. Here's why.
. Klarevas has compiled data on gun massacres involving six or more fatalities for the 50 years before 2016. His numbers show that gun massacres fell significantly during the time the assault weapons ban was in place, and skyrocketed after the ban lapsed in 2004. A separate mass shooting database compiled by Mother Jones magazine shows a similar trend.
So why did mass shootings spike in 1998 and 1999 during the assault weapon ban? There were two mass shootings in 1997 with eight killed and five wounded. But then it spiked in 1998 and 1999 with three shootings with 13 killed and 36 wounded in '98, and five shootings with 44 killed and 54 wounded in '99. If my math is correct, that's a 62% and a 450% increase in mass shooting deaths in '98 and '99, respectively, from '97. All of this during an assault weapon ban.
I can't say what effect the ban had on mass shootings but I can say that there are obviously other factors at work here, considering the numbers. If it was as simple as banning assault rifles then the numbers should have trended down and stayed there.
Gun, not knife massacres, fell significantly during the ten year assault rifle ban.
Your friend's knife collection will remain safely in his hands.
That wasn't the point. The point is that if you're going to take semi-auto rifles from everyone because a few murdered people with theirs, then by the same principle, we should ban knives because a few chose to commit murder with them.
So. “the real objective of the assault weapons ban was always to reduce both the frequency and lethality of mass shootings.” Which the original ban did. You see your friend's knives are not ever going to be involved in a mass shooting or any government confiscations. Another weak paranoid and foiled argument on your part.
The problem with this is that, as I said, they punished law abiding gun owners and infringed on their 2nd Amendment rights to do so.
As I've pointed out a few times to other posters, there is a massacre happening on our highways right now. In 2015 alone there were 3477 deaths attributed to distracted driving. I can't find solid numbers on how many were texting or talking on the cell phone but it looks to me after perusing a few websites that it would be better than half of them. That's roughly 1700 teenage deaths every year from texting and driving. And texting while driving is currently the leading cause of death of teenagers.
The National Safety Council estimates that cell phone use is the cause of 1.6 million accidents a year and the death of roughly 11 teenagers every day. That's 11 teenagers every day. These accidents and deaths are happening despite the fact that texting while driving is against the law. Eleven kids are dying every day and all they can think to do pass a law against it and raising awareness campaigns. Not once has it ever been suggested that cell phones be banned or that cars be banned or anything like that.
Eleven kids a day die on our highways but by God, we've got to do something about that scary looking gun!