Eric Holder, Obama’s Attorney General, said that the president will seek to reinstate and make permanent the ban on so-called assault weapons, despite Obama promising on the campaign trail that he would not be a gun-grabber. Candidate Obama told voters “I’m not going to take your guns away”, and “Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I think people can take me at my word.”

Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca) was the champion of the 1994 assault weapons ban, and claimed these guns are “more deadly” and are the main weapon of gangs. But she is wrong on all counts. ‘Assault weapons’ are no more deadly than any other firearm, as all guns are potentially lethal. Furthermore, gangs and drug cartels obtain their guns on the black market and from foreign sources. Taking guns away from the average citizen accomplishes nothing against crime.

The U.S. Department of Justice conducted two studies on the consequences of the 1994 assault weapons ban. In 1999, Bill Clinton’s Justice Department looked exhaustively at the ban’s effects. It concluded that “the public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated.” In 2001, a second Justice Department review similarly found no evidence that the ban had a statistically significant effect on violent crime. A congressionally mandated study by the Urban Institute reached comparable conclusions.

So-called assault weapons are used only in a tiny fraction of crimes compared to handguns and cheap ‘Saturday night specials’. Data compiled by criminologist Gary Kleck put the frequency of ‘assault weapons’ use in all violent crime at 0.5 percent. Most criminals do not prefer these types of weapons because they are more difficult to conceal and more costly to obtain. More people are killed each year by drowning compared to ‘assault weapons’.

Their new tactic is to claim that by banning these types of guns it will help Mexico with their drug cartel violence. Aside from the fact that robbing Americans of a constitutionally protected right to aid a foreign government is ludicrous, there is no evidence to suggest that banning these semi-automatic firearms will help Mexico’s problems. And even if some guns were coming from the U.S. into Mexico, it’s not a gun issue, but a border issue. Secure the borders and you won’t have to worry about illegal guns or drugs crossing the border (not to mention illegal people crossings).

Most of the people get their news and information from the mainstream media, which is manifestly anti-gun. People need to be educated about the myths surrounding guns in general and ‘assault weapons’ in particular. Why is there this scary word ‘assault’ attached to certain guns? Can’t you assault someone with any gun, or a knife or just about anything else for that matter? So that word is meaningless, aside from its usage as a buzzword to help demonize certain semi-automatic firearms.

‘Assault weapons’ are NOT machine guns. Fully automatic guns are called machine guns and cannot be owned by the general public (with extremely rare exceptions). When you pull and hold the trigger of a machine gun, multiple bullets are fired. If you pull and hold the trigger of an ‘assault weapon’, a single bullet is fired, which is no different than any hunting rifle. In fact, one of the rifles that would be banned is the common AR-15 Sporter rifle, which is commonly outfitted for hunting.

So how then do they define ‘assault weapon’? It is defined purely by cosmetics and nothing more. This irrational gun-banning crusade is based only on the appearances of certain guns. Some look like their military counterparts, but are NOT the same thing; internally and functionally they are different. Therefore there is no rational basis to ban these types of firearms.

The political, academic, and media elites hate the idea of the people being armed because they do not trust the people. These immoral and arrogant 21st century aristocrats see the American people as small-town rubes to be subjugated and controlled. But they do trust government agents to have ‘assault weapons’, as well as full machine guns, because they have direct control over them.

Gun control is always a road that leads to banning all firearms. The anti-liberty crowd is devious in their tactics and uses what has been called incrementalism. Meaning, they will slowly take away rights piece by piece so you don’t notice the infringement all at once, while claiming they just want ‘common sense’ restrictions with every seemingly small step.

Tyrants, criminals, and the political left all prefer their victims unarmed. Only an immoral person would deny a citizen the right to exercise one of the most fundamental aspects of liberty imaginable. The right to keep and bear arms has been an integral part of our nation since its inception, and We The People should not allow the erosion of that valuable right.