Sen. Feinstein at Gorsuch Confirmation: NRA an 'Extreme Organization'

During the opening day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called the NRA an “extreme organization” that stands in the way of getting “military-style assault weapons off our streets.”

Feinstein’s NRA comment came after she voiced her expectations that the Supreme Court will have final say on air and water pollution and just before she addressed employers who “[discriminate] against workers.”

CSPAN 2 aired Feinstein’s comments: “It is the Supreme Court that will have final word … [on] whether the NRA and other extreme organizations will be able to block common sense gun regulations, including those that keep military-style assault weapons off our streets.”

Many things are at play in Feinstein’s statement, including the ongoing Democrat animosity toward the fact that the Supreme Court rulings in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010) pose a great hindrance to the future of gun control in this country. Moreover, Feinstein’s statement betrays her continued support of an “assault weapons” ban, such as the one that Democrats enacted during the Clinton administration or the one Feinstein herself unsuccessfully pushed after the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School.

On September 14, 2014, Breitbart News reported a New York Times (NYT) column that described “assault weapons” as a “myth” Democrats created in the 1990s.

NYT pointed out, “In the early 1990s … Democrats created and then banned a category of guns they called ‘assault weapons.’ America was then suffering from a spike in gun crime and it seemed like a problem threatening everyone. Gun murders each year had been climbing: 11,000, then 13,000, then 17,000.” It then showed that the creation of the “assault weapons” moniker was a political contrivance: “This politically-defined category of guns–a selection of rifles, shotguns, and handguns with ‘military features’–only figured in about 2 percent of gun crime before the ban. Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of gun murders each year.”

In the 1990s, the Democrats created a category of guns called “assault weapons,” demonized them, then set out to ban them as a way to keep Americans safe. However, the whole time, such weapons were only used in “about 2 percent of gun crime.” The truth then and now is that concealable weapons are far preferable for criminals than bulky, difficult-to-conceal weapons of any type.

Moreover, FBI crime stats for 2015 show nearly three times more people were stabbed or hacked to death than were killed with rifles and shotguns combined, and those are rifles and shotguns of any type. If we were to specify a certain type of rifle–an AR-15 or AK-47–the ratio of stabbing deaths versus shooting deaths would be even more lopsided.

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.