Sen. Kamala Harris: Past Time to Ban Private Ownership of ‘Assault Weapons’

Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) tweeted on Thursday that it is “past time” to ban private ownership of “assault weapons.”

Harris suggested public safety is her motivation, which is strange when one considers that “assault weapons” are used so infrequently by criminals that the FBI reports nearly three times more people are stabbed to death than are killed with rifles (of any kind) and shotguns combined.

The FBI’s 2015 Uniform Crime Report (UCR) showed the number of people killed with rifles (of any kind) and shotguns in 2015 totaled approximately 548. Nearly three times that many, approximately 1,573, were stabbed or hacked to death.

And do not miss the fact that the number of “assault weapon”-related deaths would have been but a fraction of the 548 total deaths from rifles (of any kind) shotguns combined. Yet Sen. Harris is pushing an “assault weapons” ban for the benefit of public safety.

She tweeted:

The United States had a federal “assault weapons” ban from 1994 to 2004 without any noticeable impact on crime. Moreover, it is evident that most Democrats who call for the reimplementation of such a ban do not realize that the ban did not even ban “assault weapons.” Rather, it banned “assault weapons” with certain cosmetic features–i.e., it was all a ruse; another example of the Democrats claiming they did that which they did not do.

Even the New York Times detected this and ran a column explaining that the very term “assault weapons” is a myth the Democrats created in the 1990s.

According to the NYT, the United States was “suffering from a spike in gun crime…in the early 1990s” so “Democrats created and banned [an entire] category of guns.” The ban lasted from 1994 to 2004 and although crime fell during that time, a “detailed study found no proof” the decline was due to the ban.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.