Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA., speaks on behalf of Xavier Becerra, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Leigh Vogel/Pool via AP)

Crimes committed with rifle-mounted grenade launchers are about as common in the United States as crimes committed with rifle-mounted bayonets. Even if someone decided to attach a grenade launcher to his rifle, he would have a hard time finding something to launch with it, since grenades are strictly regulated as “destructive devices” under federal law. The rest of the targeted features [under Feinstein’s latest “assault weapons” ban bill] likewise do not make a gun especially lethal: They have nothing to do with rate of fire, ammunition size, muzzle velocity, or muzzle energy.

President Joe Biden, who supports a new “assault weapon” ban, nevertheless concedes that the 1994 law had no impact on the lethality of legal firearms. The problem, according to Biden, was that manufacturers could comply with the law by “making minor modifications to their products—modifications that leave them just as deadly.” The new, supposedly improved ban does not solve that problem, which is unavoidable when politicians target guns based on arbitrary distinctions.

Yet Feinstein insists that the 1994 ban worked as intended, because mass shootings declined while it was in effect, then rose afterward. Even without dissecting her post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning or delving into the debate about mass shooting trends, it should suffice to point out that if Biden is right about the practical impact of the ban, Feinstein must be wrong. If that law left mass shooters with plenty of equally deadly alternatives (which it did), it is hard to see how it possibly could have obstructed them. Nor would the lack of a barrel shroud or a folding stock stand in their way in the unlikely event that Feinstein’s current bill is enacted.

— Jacob Sullum in Dianne Feinstein’s Latest ‘Assault Weapon’ Bill Is Just As Illogical As All the Previous Ones

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

58 COMMENTS

  1. I guess “Braindead” didn’t lie… I did not see the dreaded AR16 specifically listed, but it could fall under the catch all “a detachable magazine and one other feature” clause… So I guess he DID lie…

    • Speaking of support, as Donald Trump said in his letter a week ago, send your political dollars to his Save America PAC. Do NOT send any money to the RNC. Support the Save America PAC. The cease and desist order that he sent to the RNC states they cannot use him or his likeness to solicit funds. If you see the RNC using his likeness report it to the Save America PAC. Support the Save America PAC. DO NOT SUPPORT THE RNC.

      • How does Trump confirming that he represents a personality cult, not the former Republican party, relate to the proposed “assault wespon” ban?

    • sometimes perception becomes reality…people thought they couldn’t get them anymore…so many stopped trying…or, in some cases… they just didn’t like the looks of what they could get

    • If your talking about something I’m not aware of disregard this, but a Civilian cant own or buy a AR16. That is strictly only for the military. Most have a 3 position trigger. Simi auto(1 shot for every trigger pull),Burst 3 shots for every trigger pull, then full auto. The Joe citizen can purchase the AR15. It has 2 trigger positions. Safe, and simi (one shot for one pull of the trigger. The biggest reason the AR15 type rife is so popular has not one thing to do with it being more dangerous than say a bolt action rife. The reason is just like a car or a motorcycle ,or house. Its very easy to buy add on parts and change its appearance to make it your own.Its much easier to change out the whole upper part to have more than one caliber . Thats it. Thats the big bad boogieman gun. people just dont understand if your not familiar with guns.Its no more dangerous than any other gun. Also AR does not stand for ASSALT RIFLE!!! Its for ARMALITE Rifle. Thats the first company to make one.

      • but a Civilian cant own or buy a AR16.

        Thanks for the learning experience (I only own 8 ARs, three I built from 80% receivers) but a civilian can’t own an (AR)16 because there is NO SUCH THING… It’s a JOKE… Biden told a factory worker “Hell no, I’m not going to ban your AR16” shortly before he invited him outside to beat the hell out of him as his Chinese handler nudged him along… Now I’ll give you a couple minutes to catch up..

      • Since this is *supposed* to be the TRUTH about guns, let me correct that wildly inaccurate description of a 3-position selector. There are all manner of possibilities, but the main understanding of a military weapon includes “Safe” first and foremost, then “Semiauto” (there is no such thing as “Simi” short of a simulation of something) and *either* 3-round burst fire or full auto. Scott, please, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t just make it up.

  2. It’s the same old “brown wall syndrome”! They keep throwin sh*t against the wall to see what sticks!!

    • the crazier the bill…the less likely it will pass…or, at least survive constitutional review…

      • Oh, yeah, I’m ALL OVER putting my faith in John Roberts to protect my Constitutional rights . . . not.

        That d***less wonder of a political windsock would pimp out his grandmother for a shot at a favorable article by Linda Greenhouse and an invitation to the “right” D.C. cocktail parties. If that twerp caught fire in front of me, I wouldn’t p*** on him to put it out . . . but I would stick around to watch him burn.

    • Yeah but now they stole three elections and control all three houses! They can pass any law they want! our last line of defense the Fed Court is a JOKE! They turned a blind eye to the voter fraud due to blackmail as well as bribery im sure!!! So any “unconstitutional” laws they want too impose on the people there is nobody to challenge it! They are emboldened since they got away with the theft of three elections this past cycle! The time ot fight back is now and NOT after we have lost our GOD given rights that no person on the earth can take away! I will never abide by any laws, restrictions or executive orders this illegitimate President/Admin and Government try to impose on the people! FUC* THEM!!!%

  3. The solution to these illegitimate regime activities is for the military to follow through on the insurrection act and sweep the slate clean. The deep state’s meaningless legislation will be relegated to the grave along with the residues from tribunal justice.

    • The craving for Gun Control is something democRats like fienstien just cannot shake. The thought, the want, the taste for gun confiscation runs deep in their veins. Placed there long ago by their democRat slave master ancestry fienstien and her ilk have no choice but to carry on a democRat Party Jim Crow Gun Control KKK Family Tradition. A family tradition that obviously passes from one generation of democRats to the next.

      What the Cross is to dracula the AR15 is to those like d. fienstien and her ilk. They see themselves as “normal” therefore they see those exercising a basic Constitutional Right as lowly deplorables in need of their superior intellect and Gun Control guidance. Ah the satisfying thought of an unarmed, placid American citizenry. Look out Utopia is on the way. An unending supply of slaves bowing to every command coming down from those at the top.

      Time after time fienstien and her sick Gun Control ilk have shown they clearly share the one key attribute of all murderers, thieves, rapists, kidnappers, tyrants, slave masters, perverts and child molesters…In order for each of the aforementioned to do what they want to do to you and yours requires you and yours to be unarmed…That’s chiseled.

      • ..And if Feinstein’s bill does pass, you’ll only have 20 million AR’s to defend yourself, hundreds of millions of hi-cap mags and hi-cap semiauto pistols! You’ll be as helpless as a new born!

    • I hope you’re not holding your breath for that. The military is almost fully “woke” at this point. If they come after anyone, it will be us.

      • Beat me to it. The military seems more concerned with utilizing its verified Twitter accounts to send thinly veiled threats to journalists than in anything else at this point. To your last point, I fear you are correct.

      • Could be correct. However, once the “military” you imagine understands that the choice is between facing down 100 million gunowners, and eradicating 537 politicians and personally taking over, I think the situation will change. For those politicians, there is only one obvious action, and that is to make certain the military does not have access to its guns and ammunition.

  4. It is not “Insane” or “Ineffective”. You’re still planting the notion that our enemy are innocently misinformed, and that we can have debate and reason with them………STOP…..PLAYING………SOFT!!! It is well intended to carry out the Leftist/Stalinist Agenda of Civilian Disarmament; Outright Evil from a Senator who is whored off to Spies from Communist China.

    Mark Levin put it best last week about these Gun Registration, Bans, and Confiscations Laws being put upon us. To paraphrase Mark Levin;

    “These Gun Bills are the Canary In The Coal Mine. Disarm the people, then establish the Dictatorship. If these Gun Bills get through and to Biden’s Desk, then every other Leftist Agenda Item has the Green Light to pass. National Mail-In Voting and counting votes 10 days after an Election, which is the Voter Fraud Cheating Practice of Ballot Stuffing,….The Electoral College subverted by the National Popular Vote Compact, where the Presidential candidate who wins the Popular Vote gets all Electoral College Votes; Packing The Supreme Court, turning it into a Democrat Party Activist Politburo…….All of that will follow if the Democrat Party Civilian Disarmament Bills get through”.

    • Levin is exactly correct, and he’s not the first or only person to recognize what the hell is really going on. Historically, freedom is a rarity is human society and requires constant vigilance and often extreme violence to maintain.

      • Gunny, that’s EXACTLY what our Founders told us, when they gifted us with the most brilliantly-conceived system of government extant in the world. Unfortunately, they had an overly optimistic expectation about the level of citizens we would have to maintain it.
        Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

        John Adams

        He was not wrrong.
        “

  5. We aren’t New Zealand,Australia or (God forbid- Britain). If this old hag thinks millions of us will rollover she’s as dumb as she sounds(hint:you’re painted as racist insurrectionist’s to seal the deal). Especially after a whole year of record gun sales I expect a wholesale republitard shift next year. If this nation & world remains😕

    • As I’ve said before the rate of gun ownership in those countries is much lower and rate of ownership of handguns and MSRs is much lower again. And the populations are much lower as well. Not a fair comparison.

  7. It doesn’t matter if gunm bans work or not , it just matters that The Right To Bear Arms is Infringed.
    Shall not be Infringed, but “We” can and nobody can stop us.
    Why all of a sudden is firegunms being attacked so strongly? Oh I know why. And it has nothing to do with cops getting shot, gangbangers, or people dieing left and right from gunmshots.
    One things cool though, American citizens can abort their babies at age 14 months, cant beat a deal like that. Let’s try and think of other good things this new presidency has done. Petroleum going up, that’s good, really helps Americas agriculture, covid water shot vaccines that’s good, all us poor fcks going to have to buy electric cars, that’s good, factories closing more imports, that’s good. And limiting free speech and fair elections, that’s good, open boarders more unamerican Americans, that’s good.Incomes going down cost of living going up, that’s good. A lot of good things on the way, I’m fcking real happy.

  8. Liberty-loving Americans will just simply not comply. I’m sure the mush-mind liberal progressive DemoRATs will be “shocked” when their edicts are given the collective one-finger salute.
    What I think they will do is pressure states like mine (MA), that have de-facto registration of guns, to crack down hard on us as an example. So, if you’re state is one of the “bad” ones, hide your guns real well. Get creative and keep them accessible, but hide them. The police will soon tire of harassing otherwise law-abiding people. They will tire of having to get search warrants to search private property. I would bet that a lot of LEOs would refuse to do it in the first place.
    I don’t know what they think they can do in states that are still part of America. Especially states with huge rural areas. Do they think that local sheriffs and deputies are going to try to disarm the country folks because Beijing Biden and DiFi say so? Doubtful.
    There’s 400 million guns in private Americans’ hands. That horse left the barn long, long ago. They’re the biggest armed force on the planet.
    The clueless DemoRATs don’t seem to learn anything. They will learn some hard lessons if they try to push this crap too hard.

    • I still can remember that bill in the 90’s causing some confusion…and in some cases people were charged…primarily dealers who were rapidly becoming an endangered species…and it was the ATF that was doing it…

      • Yeah, they were on display at Waco, really impressive stuff. These guys are clowns, only accomplish anything when unopposed. Opposed even slightly, they climbed through an upstairs window and machine-gunned each other. I was sure shocked.

      • …until we don’t.

        This is why it’s so important to never register whenever possible. They can’t know what they don’t know, if what they don’t know about is hidden from them.

      • “Grandfathering” is no reason to accept unconstitutional laws. They will come back in less than one decade to confiscate those grandfathered guns, which of course you had to register to take advantage of the protection, right? We all need to keep in mind that among all the different and mostly idiotic and unworkable, unenforceable laws there is one common thread, then we will discover the actual goal. That goal is a REGISTRY!!!! After which they will suddenly discover that all those other stupid laws have never and could never work, clearly the only answer is door-to-door confiscation, here is the list, let’s get to it.

  9. It is not whether or not the previous ban was effective, or if this bill would make society safer, or not. It is about power and nothing else. The Democratic Party has control of the Government and they want to yield the power they feel they are entitled to do.

    The military command has moved left. The Jr Officers and Jr NCOs are our only hope. After 0-4 and E-7 it is a political game for promotion. The most powerful ranks are E5 and E6 as they are directly leading soldiers and have great influence. I have some former battle buddies still in uniform and the political ranks are getting worse.

  10. Don’t know why the original author feels that it won’t pass, not like its going to get vetoed.

    • a lot of politicos lost their jobs because of that ’94 bill…let’s hope they have long memories…

    • The main thing is whether or not the filibuster is killed. It will pass on a 50/50 tie due to Harris’ tie breaking vote. It will NOT, however, pass a 60/40 vote, if the filibuster holds.

      We shall see.

  11. It’s hard to imagine a conversation between Biden and Feinstein, two drooling superseniors who are clearly in cognitive decline (that’s a polite way of saying that they’re both demented).

    • Diane “Joe ,I smell something, is it you or me? One of us shit our pants I think.”
      Joe ” Well bend over I will look, ,,,,,,,, gee your hair smells purdy, but yes you’ve shit yourself again. How about me?”
      Diane ” No you’ve not,but your balls are turning brown.”
      Joe ” Oh that’s just because Nancy doesn’t wipe.”

  12. the only good thing is that she’s not as highly regarded as she once was…still remember her sitting right next to Trump…and smiling gleefully when he slammed the NRA….

  14. You’re god damn right, Bill. The US should just outlaw all guns, because then I’ll have an acceptable moving target when they come and try and get ’em. I can’t wait to murder some democrats in cold blood. 45 FOR LIFE. DONALD TURMP!

    • Well if you could murder a few close to my place I’d appreciate it, I’m getting hungry and the cats hit the dumpster last nite.

  15. Has anyone ever noticed how much in common our so called “leaders” like DiFi have with the old Soviet Politburo? They’re a bunch of crabby, octogenarian lifelong political hacks who have never done anything other than order people around and tell them how to live, while never having to abide by the same rules they force everyone else to live by. They seem to think of themselves as a sort of aristocracy who have been put on Earth to save us from ourselves.

    DiFi is irrational. Her gun control laws aren’t based on actually keeping guns out of criminal’s hands (to the extent that’s possible) but to address her phobia that those of us in the great unwashed masses might hurt ourselves – or have too much power to make trouble for her and her kind.

    I don’t know when it started, but certainly in my lifetime there has been a continual erosion of my personal liberties coupled with an increase in the control government has over my life. Somehow, we’ve transitioned from being citizens to becoming wards of the State. It’s exactly the sort of government the Founders tried to prevent. I truly believe the Founders were freer as subjects of George III than we are under the boot of political machine that runs the Country now.

    • As for when it started, I believe I know the answer: In 1909, with the passage of the 16th Amendment, which allowed the federal government to collect *and* spend taxes instead of apportioning them to the states by population.

      The 17th Amendment, in 1918, didn’t help either. The amendment was ostensibly to reduce corruption in states where senate seats were basically for sale to political donors and to correct the “problem” of voters electing state legislators based on which party they preferred in DC. What it did instead was turn the entire Congress into creatures of DC and destroy the states’ ability to directly influence the central government.

      Put those together with the 19th amendment (1920) opening the vote to women, who tend to see government as a benevolent nanny — and then cross-pollinate them with a couple of gigantic expensive wars, some additional idiotic pseudo-wars on ingestible substances, and a hundred years of Marxist infiltration and propaganda, and here we are.

      The Republic envisioned by the founding fathers is dead — killed by American voters who effectively (if unintentionally) answered Ben Franklin’s “if you can keep it” with “we don’t want it.”

      • Well said, but I would modify your final quote to “yes, we want a Republic, but those stimmy checks are nice, too, so can we have both…Mother may I?”

  16. She and Joe should be sharing a room in the Dementia wing of the Karl Marx Home for Washed up Socialists.

  20. Man o’ man, some of the comments here, particularly about Feinstein’s appearance, make me laugh to the point that my sides hurt…comedic talent abides on TTAG.

  21. Bravo to the person who took the close up picture of Dianne Feinstein. Now I know she is related to Emperor Palpatine! 🤣 🤣 🤣

Comments are closed.