Assault weapon ban's effectiveness debated

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | March 28, 2004 | Torsten Ove

[MikeJ75]

On the streets of Pittsburgh, they call it the "chopper."

It's the AK-47 assault rifle, a favorite of the gangster set.

"They're still at a premium," said William Mullen, deputy police chief. "It's the street mentality. It strikes fear in everyone."

[aomagrat]

Frankel's bill would grandfather in assault weapons owned before the law goes into effect, but also would require owners to submit to a background check, register the weapon with the state police and use the gun only on the owner's property or at a firing range.

And like the california law after which it is modeled, registration will be quickly followed by confiscation.

[angkor]

They're in a snit because the defintion of an ugly gun is so difficult to capture through the law.

Malvo and Muhammad could have done their evil with a two-shot clip (I vaguely recall they had the standard 10-round mag), but the story implies that a ban on high-cap mags would have stopped them.

Their frustration in defining ugly guns belies the illogical nature of the AWB.

[gortklattu]

They could have used a lever action thuty-thuty and wreaked the same havoc..... The AWB is an incremental assault on all weapons.

[Hardastarboard]

Hell, they could use a sawed off shotgun, or just keep six or seven short flintlock rifles in the car and use them one at a time, with a guy loading in the back (ever see the old Daniel Boone TV show?). That would get kinda smoky with black powder, though.

As soon as I saw the lead sentence about the "nickname" of the AK, and then a deputy chief / political appointee talking about what's happening on the streets, I stopped reading. The only contact this guy has with the streets is stepping on it to get into his limo to go home. Pathetic.

[riverrunner]

Just more anti gun lies from the left.

[gortklattu]

Last night I found new hope. I was at a dance in Boulder, Colorado and one of the ladies there told me that she now thinks she's a conservative. After running a business of her own (on the side) for eight years (eight?) she's seeing the light.

Her family detests conservatives. So, she's a school teacher, a boulderite, a woman, and a born liberal...now turning into a conservative.

Miracles do happen....

[IronJack]

In the gang wars of the early 1990s, the AK-47 turned up frequently in shootings.

No it didn't. It showed up in .1 percent of violent crimes. That's one out of a thousand.

But unless it was a dominant force, there would have been no need to ban it. So the Left created the Myth of the Assault Weapon.

The Ban is a law that doesn't work, created to solve a problem that didn't exist in the first place.

But now its supporters can claim that they "eliminated" all those nasty assault weapons (that were never there to begin with).

[IronJack]

an AK-47, or its cousin, the AR-15

HAHAHAHA! Ignorance can be so amusing! An AK has as much in common with an AR as a bicycle has with an umbrella.

[SauronOfMordor]

Malvo and Muhammad could have done their evil with a two-shot clip (I vaguely recall they had the standard 10-round mag), but the story implies that a ban on high-cap mags would have stopped them.

They shot single shots only. A bolt-action would have worked better for them. A muzzle-loader would have worked for them

[glock rocks]

there's too much wrong with this steaming pile to even try to fix it.

bang.

[Beelzebubba]

This makes me imagine a fictional scenario where a "had-it-up-to-here" gun owner snaps, and goes into a gun-grabber-lobby office with a lever action rifle, some antique cowboy pistols, and a double barrel shotgun to wreak havoc.

[El Gato]

This makes me imagine a fictional scenario where a "had-it-up-to-here" gun owner snaps, and goes into a gun-grabber-lobby office with a lever action rifle, some antique cowboy pistols, and a double barrel shotgun to wreak havoc.

Cowboy Bob goes postal????!!!

[archy]

This makes me imagine a fictional scenario where a "had-it-up-to-here" gun owner snaps, and goes into a gun-grabber-lobby office with a lever action rifle, some antique cowboy pistols, and a double barrel shotgun to wreak havoc.

A real cowboy might manage a little better than that.