Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Assault Weapons Ban has begun - House Bill #HR1022

Well it didn't take long but on 021307, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D. NY) authored and put into motion the re-introduction of the assault weapons ban. This includes a list of semi-automatic rifles and pistols with such things as folding stocks, shrouded barrels and magazines over 10 round capacity. Included in this list is the Sturm Ruger "ranch rifle". If someone more talented than me can post a link to the House Bill #1022, I am sure many others would like to read it.
In all probability this will move quickly with the Democrat controlled House and Senate.
I also read somewhere recently that Pelosi doesn't like semi-auto shotguns, especially for duck hunting.

My first reaction was that I need to go right out and buy a bunch of stuff.

But I bought a bunch of stuff already when the ban sunset. I've got at least ten mags apiece for all my "assault weapons."

Maybe I should go see if I can find an off-paper FAL or two. That's a direction I might enjoy going.

My reaction too. Really have other stuff I should spend the money on but if this is going to pass I'm going to lay out the cash for at least one "no-ban" AR and maybe a few plastic pistols while the high cap mags are cheap. Maybe pick up a few 25 rd Steel Lips for my 10/22 also. Should have known this wouldn't last...

They (the libs) NEVER rest!

I see that Rep. C. McCarthy (D-NY) has been working on a new version of the 'Assault Weapons Ban'. Why does this not surprise me? The AWB was a bad idea in the first place. It did nothing but infringe on gun owners. After this misguided piece of legislation expired nothing happened to the chagrin, I'm sure, of the liberal left. The streets did not run red with blood as was the dire predictions spouted from the likes of Boxer, Feinstein, McCarthy and others. This new bill will be the same unneeded, ineffective and ridiculous piece of garbage that is only promoted in yet another back-door attempt at gun control. I urge you to vote against HR1022 at every step of the way. Please reply with your intentions regarding this bill.
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The above is what I just sent to my (democrat, unfortunately) district's representative in Congress, the Honorable Ron Kind. At times he's shown some common sense. Maybe this will be one of those times..

Thought 1 � For all you G.W. Bush fans: Remember, he promised that if congress delivered it to his desk, he�s sign it.

Thought 2 � Barak: What do you hope to gain by having an �off paper� gun? If they start knocking on doors, on paper/off paper will mean nothing. If you�ve ever bought a firearm legally through normal channels, you�ll get the knock whether your guns are on paper or off paper. The benefit of �off paper� is imaginary.

When they knock, you�ll either turn in your guns or you won�t�Paper will be meaningless.

Redneck it is just H1022, if you look up HR 1022 on the House web site, it comes up with something totally different, I post the written bill in a another area. Les

Oh, if you're on the list as having purchased guns, then you're right: it would be silly for you not to surrender any guns when the confiscators come knocking.

But I have careful listings of which of my guns are on paper and which aren't. On paper, I have a couple of tube-fed 22LR Semiautomatic Assault Weapons, a POS Argentine 22LR high-capacity (9rd) Assault Revolver, and an equally POS French MAS 49/56 Semiautomatic Assault Weapon.

When the confiscators come, I'll put up some half-hearted token resistance, then pull a long face and sullenly turn in everything they have me registered for.

By that time, the rest of them will be elsewhere.

The front page of USA Today has an article on police chiefs asking for assault type weapons for their departments "due to the increase of assault weapons use in crime since the assault weapons ban ended". The Houston,TX chief said the increase in crime since the residents of NOLA were moved there is his reason for the request.

If or when it comes to the "knocking at the door"I will have already reported a robbery where someone has stolen all my guns.Dont ya just hate thieves?

Wierd.. I just checked again. From the House of Representatives home page, I clicked on 'find a bill' and an entire list came up. The AWB is listed as H.R.1022IH...

I clicked on that and 9 pages of crap from McCarthy came up. I printed it out and gave it to the local sporting goods store for their perusal..

Silly? Barak, of all people, surely you jest... You have never seemed like a guy who'd bend over for the gov't...

Well, I'm sure I'm on the 'list'.. But, if it ever gets to that it will be 'decision time'. Before even that, I will have gladly forfeited my FFL and then, being a private citizen again, I will make that decision as to whether to defend my Second Amendment rights to the last bullet, or bend over like the dems are hoping....

I'm sure they'll get me. But they better bring some extra body bags.. I'm at the age where I don't give a damn..

Kevin

Sorry but I miss your point about Bush? I know he'd sign it. But is there or was there a better option out there that was electable? Or am I reading something there I shouldn't be seeing?

Jeff

I "jist writ" my House Critter. She's a really staunch supporter and ex-NRA officer so there's no worry with her. Nor with our Senators either.

I don't ever mind emailing or calling these guys, I just hate having to keep on doing it because fools keep on electing these known gun grabbers.

Well, listening to NRA radio after the recent elections, they claim that while the Republicans took a big hit, that the 2nd ammendment did not take a hit, as the dems who were brought in would not be likely to be very anti-2nd ammendment.

I guess we'll soon see just how true this is, but I'm certainly not holding my breath.

Seems like it's time to go out and buy a bunch of normal capacity mags for whatever I currently have or intend to own in the next few years. I'll have to store them at my brother's house until I can get out of Kalifornistan.

Too bad, I was looking at an AR (a.k.a. terrorist rifle) in the near future once I moved back to AZ. I fear if the AWB passes, it will be before I can get back to buy one.

Too bad old Bill Ruger wasn't still around to see that the very same people he sold out to are now listing the Mini among their list of evil "assault weapons".

Did you guys see where USA Today is blaming the increase of criminal use of assault weapons on the assualt weapons ban expiring?

I want to know how that is possible when during the 10 years of the assault weapons ban there was no change in criminal assualt weapons use?

Further, since when do criminals go out and legally buy guns?

Dave R--Please educate me about Ruger selling out...Smith and Wesson, sure? Ruger??

Dave a coworker showed me that article when I walked into work this morning. What really cracks me up is their insinuation that police departments have had to purchase more powerful weapons due to the amount of assault rifles on the street that occured AFTER the sunset of the gun ban. Give me a break, I know for a fact that the MI state police had full auto and select fire weapons in their cruisers over 20 years ago. Most municipal PD's and county sheriffs departments also had rifles in their cars.

William Batterman Ruger, Sr.
Progenitor of the Clinton Administration's High Capacity Magazine Ban
As is common with any controversial issue, there's a great deal of misinformation floating about, and misperceptions held by those affected by the issue.

Nowhere is this truer than with 1994's infamous "Crime Bill," the second significant piece of federal firearms legislation passed that year. Aside from the "assault weapons" (whatever those are) provisions, a significant portion of that bill dealt with magazines (or "clips" by the unknowing, the lazy or the sloppy thinkers)... very simply, if one is a civilian (non-military, non-law enforcement), one may not legally possess any "high capacity ammunition feeding device" of more than ten rounds manufactured after that date. Centerfire, rimfire... makes no difference.

Now it would not be unreasonable for anyone in the firearms community to assume that the author of this particular provision was someone like then New York Democratic Congressman (now Senator) Charles Schumer, Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum, or one of the "Boxstein Senatorial babes" from California, Barbara Boxner or Dianne Feinstein, or any number of gun-grabbing legislators or appointees of the Clinton Administration.

But, sad to say, it was none of those, or anyone even associated with them. It was Bill Ruger, "one of our own" who, for whatever his motives (and you'll get a lot of heated opinions on just what those motives might have been), became a Vidkun Quisling1 to Second Amendment stalwarts.

In view of what has transpired in the intervening years, few will remember 17 January 1989 as being being a critical juncture for American firearms owners, but just as the Miami Firefight of April 1986 was a catalytic moment in the development of handgun ammunition, drug-abusing drifter Patrick Purdy's malevolent depredations in a school yard in Stockton, California, was a milestone that galvanized anti-gunners and put the firearms community in a defensive posture from which it is still operating two decades later.

Purdy, a criminal in possession of a Kalashnikov (quickly identified in the news media as an "AK-47 deadly assault rifle"{sic}) and a Browning High Power pistol, went into a school yard in Stockton, California, and unleashed a hail of 7.62 X 39mm rounds at a bunch of grade school children, killing five of them before dispatching himself with a single 9 X 19mm round from the handgun. (Ahhhh!, but that he'd tried to reverse the process!)

This terrible event, seized upon by national broadcast and print media, played right into a scenario envisioned by anti-gun wunderkind Josh Sugarmann and privately circulated in September 1988, so the antigunners were thoroughly prepared to launch a well-coordinated propaganda campaign designed to confuse the general population and to fractionalize the firearms community ... the operative phrase being "assault rifle."

The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons�anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun�can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.2
Gun people, and the author was no exception, were immediately put on the defensive, and were kept busy lamely pointing out that Purdy didn't have an "assault rifle," which type of firearm had been tightly regulated since the National Firearms Act of 1934, but that he had a perfectly legal (in most jurisdictions) semi-automatic weapon. (Not that it matters that much, but the long gun involved was a Norinco SKS-56, 7.62 X 39mm semi-automatic carbine.)

Sugarmann had devised a scathingly brilliant strategy, for all any of us wound up doing was getting the mainstream media to adopt his term "assault weapon," while on 5 April 1989 President Bush and his "drug czar," William Bennett (brother of President Clinton's attorney during the Lewinski scandal) temporarily suspended3 further importation of a whole bunch of semi-automatic long guns by means of an Executive Order. And at the same time, a great many rank 'n' file gun owners began to rationalize that "Well, we really don't need those awful military-style assault weapons for hunting or target-shooting anyway."

William B. Ruger, Sr.
speaks on gun control

"A constant problem the industry has is that you can't compromise with gun prohibitionists."

June 1998 The American Rifleman, page 60, in a profile of the man who had just donated $1,000,000 to NRA.Bill Ruger's Dirty Little Secret
William Batterman Ruger, Senior is not a stupid man... he might be somewhat na�ve politically, but he's no dummy! Figuring that unless he took action, the jig was soon-to-be-up for a number of firearms, including his Mini-14 and perhaps even his extraordinarily popular Model 10/22 rimfire repeater. Unfortunately the lessons of Munich and Neville Chamberlain seemed to have been lost on the senior Ruger in the post-Stockton madness, for his creative approach was to toss the high capacity magazine "baby from the sleigh" in the desperate hope of appeasing the pursuing legislative wolves. Reasoning that the public was probably more concerned about the high volume of fire which Purdy was able to generate, than the speed at which he delivered same, Papa Bill proposed that Congress enact legislation limiting the capacity of magazines to fifteen4 (15!) rounds.

He had his Sturm, Ruger braintrust prepare model legislation centered around this high capacity magazine prohibition with the fervent hope that "the guns [would be] saved." He even consulted with some others about this approach, including Neal Knox who attempted to dissuade him in the strongest possible terms (for Neal, anyway) from his foolhardy initiative. Papa Bill slept on Knox' council... and then on 30 March 1989 had his proposed legislation delivered to 535 members of the House and the Senate. A portion of his document read:

The best way to address the firepower concern is therefore not to try to outlaw or license many millions of older and perfectly legitimate firearms (which would be a licensing effort of staggering proportions) but to prohibit the possession of high capacity magazines. By a simple, complete, and unequivocal ban on large capacity magazines, all the difficulty of defining "assault rifles" and "semi-automatic rifles" is eliminated. The large capacity magazine itself, separate or attached to the firearm, becomes the prohibited item. A single amendment to Federal firearms laws could prohibit their possession or sale and would effectively implement these objectives.
Shortly thereafter, the Sporting Arms and Ammunitions Manufacturers Institute (SAAMI) endorsed the 15-round limitation in a position paper issued on 2 May 1989. It read, in part:

The possession of any "extra capacity" magazine in combination with the possession of a semi-automatic firearm, other than .22 caliber Rimfire, should be regulated. "Extra capacity magazines" are detachable magazines which hold in excess of 10(!) centerfire rifle cartridges or shotgun shells, or detachable pistol magazines which hold in excess of 15 centerfire cartridges.

"Semi-automatic firearms as such should not be the object of any legislative prohibition. It is actually the large magazine capacity, rather than the semi-automatic operation, which is the proper focus of this debate."
But then SAMMI and NSSF (National Shooting Sports Foundation, which shares quarters with SAAMI) were always little more than adjuncts of Sturm, Ruger anyhow.

It is instructive to note that in addition to Sturm, Ruger & Company, SAAMI was then comprised of Winchester Ammunition division of Olin, Browning Arms, Federal Cartridge, Hercules, Hornady Manufacturing, Marlin Firearms, O.F. Mossberg, Omark Industries, Remington Arms, Smith & Wesson, Thompson/Center and Weatherby.

Serious mis-step by the "All-American" gun-maker
Within months of the Stockton schoolyard shooting, President George Bush, midway through his first year in office, had a proposed crime bill which contained the Ruger-inspired limitation on magazine capacity, but which did not find favor on Capitol Hill. As Executive Editor Joe Tartaro noted in his 7 July 1989 Gun Week column entitled "A Fistful of Cartridges:"

If the President's proposal had not included the 15-round magazine bite, the whole crime package would probably already be law.
In his final syndicated column of 1989, Neal Knox discussed the implications of Bill Ruger's actions the previous Spring, and addressed some remarks aimed at him by Steve Sanetti, Sturm, Ruger's general counsel and the only person other than Papa Bill authorized to issue statements for the company:

Steve Sanetti says "I know better" than to ascribe Bill Ruger's magazine ban proposal to business considerations. Maybe so; I don't think Bill is by any means "anti-gun," nor do I think he really wants a ban on either guns or magazines (after all, he got his start as a machine gun designer).

But I do think Bill Ruger is pushing a plan that would protect his business while affecting only his competitors, and I think he's damaging the efforts of those of us attempting to stop all proposed bans. Further, I don't think his actions on this issue, and other issues in the past, allows him to be described as "the strongest supporter of our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms."

What I know is that about 9 p.m. the night before Bill sent a letter to certain members of Congress calling for a ban on high-capacity magazines he called me, wanting me to push such a ban. His opening words, after citing the many federal, state and local bills to ban detachable magazine semi-autos, were "I want to save our little gun" -- which he later defined as the Mini-14 and the Mini-30. I'm not ascribing Bill's motives as "expedient from a business standpoint;" Bill did.

While I agree that a ban on over-15-round magazines would be "indefinitely preferable" to a ban on the guns that use them, that's not the question. Neither I, nor the other gun groups have ever believed that we were faced with such an either/or choice. Early last year the NRA legislative Policy committee discussed various alternatives to the proposed "assault weapons" ban, and wisely decided that magazine restrictions wouldn't satisfy our foes, but would make it more difficult to stop a gun ban.

I was particularly shocked when I realized Bill was talking about a ban on possession of over-15-round magazines, rather than a ban on sales (which is bad enough). I told him that such a law would make me a felon, for not only did I have standard over-15-round magazines for my Glock pistol (a high-capacity which has sharply cut into Ruger's police business), I have many high-cap mags for guns I don't even own, and don't even know where they all are. As I told Bill, after a lifetime of accumulating miscellaneous gun parts and accessories, there's no way I could clean out all my old parts drawers and boxes, then swear -- subject to a five or ten-year Federal prison term -- that I absolutely didn't have an M3 grease gun mag or 30-round M-2 magazine lying in some forgotten drawer.

Bill said (and all these direct quotes are approximate).

No, there'd be amnesty for people like you. We have to propose a ban on possession before they could take us seriously.
He contended that the public's problem was with "firepower," which could be resolved by eliminating high capacity mags.

I told him Metzenbaum and Co. would gladly use whatever he offered, but they weren't about to willingly agree to eliminate high-cap magazines as a substitute for banning guns; that their intention isn't to eliminate "firepower" but "firearms."

Bill finally said, "Neal, you're being very negative about it." He got angry, then said "Well somebody's got to do it; by God I will." And the next day he sent his letter to the Hill; the evidence indicates a few weeks later he talked SAAMI into supporting undefined "regulation" of magazines over-15-rounds -- a vote that might have gone a little differently if any produced high-capacity magazines as standard for either rifles or pistols.

I suspect that Ruger and SAAMI's actions are responsible, directly or indirectly, for the Bush administration's proposal to ban high-cap mags, but that proposal has been ignored -- except as evidence that "the Bush administration and the American firearms industry recognize there's a problem -- that Americans shouldn't be allowed to have such guns."

Of course, that isn't what Bill Ruger and SAAMI are saying, but that's the message they're sending. Perhaps it isn't business expediency to propose banning only that which they don't make, in an effort to protect what they do make; but it sure can't be claimed to be in defense of the Second Amendment.
"Enjoy your retirement, friend."

"The legendary William B. Ruger has retired as chairman, treasurer and chief executive of Sturm, Ruger & Co. after 51 years at the company's helm.

He recently was honored by being unanimously elected as an Honorary Life Member by the NRA Board of Directors."

January 2001 The American Guardian, p17.Five years later William B. Ruger Sr.'s model legislation served as the basis of the "high capacity ammunition feeding devices" section of the Clinton Administration's "Crime Bill," save one major detail... the 15-round capacity had been dropped to 10-rounds by the time it had passed and been signed into Law on 13 September 1994! (The antigunners not only stuck it to "us," but stuck it to their Quisling as well.)

Why were we not surprised?!

What was surprising was that within four years the NRA would celebrate the man so enthusiastically. For many, this is one wound which has not healed, and the author has not only not purchased a Ruger product since that time, but subsequently sold at distress prices, his Mark II pistol and prized Model 77/22 rifle.

Aside from his million dollar donation to the NRA Museum, William B. Ruger, Senior, should be remembered as the man who embraced the investment casting process very early on, and whose Pine Tree is one of the most respected investment casting enterprises in the world, the man who gave us the Mini-14, the 10/22 and the first American-made production firearm chambered in 7.62 X 39mm... and the man who told NBC News' Tom Brokaw that:

"No honest man needs more than 10 rounds in any gun."
"I never meant for simple civilians to have my 20 or 30 round magazines or my folding stock."
"I see nothing wrong with waiting periods."
And, sadly, that too must be part of the Ruger legacy.

by Dean Speir,

Blaine you must have missed the latest episode of CSI Miami......