All you bayonet-affixing, grenade-launcher-applying gun enthusiasts can rest easy. The sunset has arrived on Clinton-era legislation banning the domestic sale of nineteen specifically named assault weapons. As of midnight Sept. 12, Americans have the liberty to flex their second-amendment muscles. They are now within their legal right to go out and purchase Christmas stocking stuffers such as the TEC-9. Many critics of the legislation view the sunset as irrelevant because it was easy to maneuver around the specifics of the weapons ban. These critics are missing the symbolic point of a bill aimed at decreasing the proliferation of dangerous arms.
A gruesome shooting in San Francisco during the summer of 1993 fueled the passing of the weapons ban. Gian Luigi Ferri, a disgruntled employee, stormed into the 34th-floor offices of a Bay Area law firm and used semi-automatic weapons to indiscriminately kill eight people before turning the gun on himself. In September of the following year, President Bill Clinton outlawed nineteen such weapons as part of the larger 'Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.'
Aficionados of semi-automatic weapons use the claim that such firepower constitutes only a small percentage of violent crimes, and revert back to the antiquated adage of Guns don't kill people
people kill people. They are accurate that gun deaths generally are not attributed to this sort of weaponry, but is that really the objective trying to be reached by outlawing these rifles of mass destruction?
The ban on semi-automatic weapons never intended to keep guns out of the hands of the American public. Rather, it elucidated the point that boundaries must exist to the second amendment -gun control in action. Sport-hunting and home protection do not necessitate unloading a thirty-round magazine in less than five seconds.
The weapons ban that expired late Sunday night was not an irrelevant piece of legislation, nor was it a manacle around the hands of American gun owners. The ban shed light on keeping gun ownership within reason and exercising responsibility with such dangerous possessions. One can only hope that the burgeoning generation of semi-automatic gun owners will conduct themselves with such reason and responsibility as they unwrap their brand-new TEC-9s this holiday season.
-Elliot Field is a graduate student majoring in international affairs. Send him an e-mail at elliot.field@ohiou.edu. 17
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Elliot R. Field
