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Extensive and meaningful legislation. Listened to a show on NPR last night on my way home from Xmas shopping. Can't believe how f-ing ignorant I am on what our elected officials do without nary a notice - burying pork on appropriations bills.Originally Posted by Dakkster
The entire transcript can be found HERE
A few points to note....
...and this next one is a real bite in the arse...DIAZ: In 1994, Congress passed a thing called the Semiautomatic Assault Weapons Ban. And it was very flawed. One of the flaws was that it defined a semiautomatic assault weapon in terms of a gun that had at least two of certain features. One of them was the actual crucial feature, which is the ability to take a high-capacity magazine.
But the others were what we call bells and whistles. They were irrelevant, almost decorative features that were on these guns, such as a bayonet mount, which means you could put a bayonet on the gun; a thing called a flash suppressor or flash hider, which means the flash from the barrel of the gun is less observable; a stock in the rear that could be extended or shortened.
None of those characteristics had anything to do, really, with what makes an assault weapon so dangerous. However, the requirement that you have at least two of those meant that gun manufacturers could say, a-ha, we can keep the ability to take the high-capacity magazine and just knock off all the rest of these bells and whistles; we still have essentially the same gun for all functional purposes, but it's now federally legal.
And that's what Bushmaster figured out. They actually rose to prominence after the 1994 Semiautomatic Assault Weapons Ban because they took off all of the truly irrelevant bells and whistles and just produced a basic gun. Having done that, they had a wide-open market for a long time because they sort of conceived this idea that, well, it's easy to make a gun that's legal. And then other manufacturers began to do the same.
But Bushmaster was very successful in that period. So you could say that the 1994 assault weapons ban, because of its flaws, actually spawned Bushmaster.
...it gets better....So are people using these as hunting rifles?
DIAZ: The industry says that they are, but preliminarily let me say this: Let's assume that there is a large number - a large number of people who - take your choice of benign uses - use it for hunting, use it for target shooting. The policy choice, the cultural choice that we face is: Is that enough, does that balance the bad consequences that we know flow from the easy availability of these firearms? Does that balance the slaughter of children? Does it balance the increasing killing of law enforcement officers that we see from assault rifles? Does it balance the traffic to other countries from the United States civilian market?
So it's not just a question of do other people use these. The direct answer to your question is, because the gun industry and the National Rifle Association have been so very successful in shutting down federal sources of data - for example, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and basically shutting down cogent research from the Centers for Disease Control and Injury - we don't really know the extent of the use of these guns in crime, because we cannot get even the generic aggregate data. It's been shut down. What we learned from are simply - for example, at the Violence Policy Center we do a lot of anecdotal research. I, for example, did a study about assault weapons a couple years ago, but I had to rely entirely on what I could derive from news reports and other public sources.
You cannot get that information from government sources because of something called the Tiahrt Amendment, which has basically shut down ATF from releasing data. So...
GROSS: So this amendment prevents the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from releasing information about what guns have been used in crimes. Do I have that right?
DIAZ: You have that exactly right.
...the intellectual dishonesty is rampant in DC....DIAZ:The gun industry realized that it really loses every argument where you can have facts. So they got Congressman Todd Tiahrt from Kansas to sponsor what are called riders. You put them on appropriations bills. And it basically says, ATF, you cannot spend any money to release any of this data.
So immediately we're shut down. ATF collects by make, model, caliber - data about the guns and the type of crimes they're used in. So we could, for example, were ATF able to release this data, we could say we want to look at Bushmaster. How many of these Bushmasters have been used in how many crimes and where in the United States over the last, what, 10 years? Take your pick.
That data is available in the files of ATF, but it cannot release it. It is forbidden by law from releasing it.
GROSS: So the Tiahrt Amendment, which is basically a rider to the appropriations bill that was introduced by Congressman Todd Tiahrt, what year was that first passed?
DIAZ: It was first passed in 2003, and it's been amended since and continuously included in appropriations bills.
...not to mention accessibility....GROSS: You mentioned that there are restrictions on the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control's ability to do gun-related research. Do I have that right? And if so, can you explain what those restrictions are?
DIAZ: Again, it's another one of these funding restrictions. There was a period of time when the CDC was sponsoring what's called peer-reviewed research about gun death and injury, what were the causes, and it was getting uncomfortably close to the question of proliferation of firearms and particular kinds of guns.
So the NRA's supporters on the Hill actually wanted to abolish this particular unit of the CDC and were calmed down and persuaded to simply make a funding restriction, which essentially says the CDC cannot do any research related to gun control.
That has meant that a number of promising research initiatives in universities and in teaching hospitals and what have you were shut down, and although the CDC does some very useful compilation of data, they're very careful about the research they do. That's another thing that I think Congress and the president should look at.
We should open up the CDC. We do it for - if a brand of tires has a problem, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is going to know that within weeks. If there's an epidemic of some kind of disease, the CDC's going to know that within weeks or months. We have an epidemic of gun violence, and we've shut down everybody from looking at it.
Read the entire transcript, it is very informative if not depressing.GROSS: Another thing that has changed in the nature of guns that are available for civilians today is their size. I mean they are small. They are easy to conceal. And, of course, in many places it's legal to carry concealed weapons now in the U.S. So can you talk about the design and technology that have made it possible for, you know, very small semi-automatic weapons?
DIAZ: Yes. And this is an example of how the National Rifle Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the gun industry work together kind of hand in hand to market and create markets for guns. Fifteen years ago or so, it was in most states in the United States it was difficult to get a permit to carry a gun concealed on your person in public. The laws were what is known as May issue laws. You had to show some reason, and in that case, the issuing authority may or may not issue the gun to you.
The NRA, in particular a woman named Marianne Hammer in Florida, who was the former president of the National Rifle Association, began a crusade to change these laws. They started with Florida where they succeeded, and they were able to have enacted so-called shall issue laws, where unless you are a prohibited category - meaning a convicted felon or a non-citizen or a number of disqualifying categories - the issuing authority must give you a permit. After a certain period of time it's automatic, you get the permit. These laws then spread like wildfire and the NRA publicly said - Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president, said we're going to take the show on the road and they did. And these laws have changed all over the country. So now, I'm not sure what the last count is, but by far the great majority of states allow concealed carry of handguns. And they also - many states recognize each other's licenses. They call it reciprocity.
This was a terrific boon for the gun industry.
