Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [ACUS 10] at [WACCVM.SPS.MOT.COM] (Mark Fuller)
Subject: WSJ: The Guns of Clinton
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 1994 19:27:50 GMT

[From The Wall Street Journal,
 Jan. 6, 1994; page A12]

                          The Guns of Clinton

        There was an important gun control lesson missed during
President Clinton's recent bird-shooting trip to Maryland's eastern
shore. The President used a borrowed Benelli M1 Super 90 Field Auto
Shotgun to bag his quarry. That's a very handsome, upscale Italian
shotgun, popular among collectors and perfectly legal. But under Senator
Dianne Feinstein's "assault weapons" legislation passed in the Senate
last year, the President could have found himself on the wrong side of
the law. How? By merely making cosmetic changes to the gun.

        For example, if the President had used a Benelli altered with a
collapsible stock and a pistol grip, he'd have tripped over two of the
Feinstein amendment criteria that make a previously legal automatic
shotgun illegal. A collapsible stock is typically a light alloy or
plastic frame, much lighter than the solid wooden stocks traditional
with most shotguns. The collapsible stock makes the gun lighter, easier
to lug through the woods and helps the shooter follow through with his
swinging motion when tracking the flight of, say, Mr. Clinton's bird.
Add to this a pistol grip which some bird shooters believe gives them
more control, and the shotgun is illegal.

        In short, if Mr. Clinton's shotgun had these accessories added,
which have nothing to do with the firepower of the shotgun, it would be
banned. But an unaltered version of the Benelli, which fires the same
slug at the same velocity at the same rate, would remain legal. It
should also be noted that the term "automatic" refers to the loading
mechanism, not the firing mechanism.

        In fact, much gun control legislation is based on appearance,
rather than function, as described nearby by James Bovard. Take Senator
Feinstein's home state of California. Under that state's much celebrated
"assault weapons" ban, the Colt AR-15 is deemed illegal, but the Ruger
Mini-14 remains legal. Both weapons fire the 5.56mm NATO round. Both
come standard with a five-round clip, but magazines of up to 50 rounds
are readily and legally available for both. Both guns are
semi-automatics, which simply means they can be fired only as fast as
the operator can pull the trigger, not fully automatic. Automatic
weapons of any kind have been illegal in this country since 1934. [ed:
not illegal, but regulated].

        Also readily and legally available for both the Colt and the
Ruger are various  paramilitary  accessories, such as flash suppressors,
folding stocks, tripods, bipods, you name it. So, with so much in
common, why is the AR-15 illegal and the Mini-14 legal? Looks. The AR-15
comes with a pistol grip and has a black plastic stock, giving it a
military look, much like the M-16. The Ruger, on the other hand, has a
traditional wooden stock.

        The real point here bears on the way liberals typically think
about a problem such as violent crime. They'll turn themselves inside
out to get a gun ban, which in fact is likely to have minimal impact on
the problem it's supposedly going to remedy. But no way will their
tortured politics allow them to then devote the same ferocious energy to
toughening the laughable juvenile justice system or unwrapping the
bureaucracy and proceduralism with which they've strangled courts and
criminal justice agencies.

        As to Mr. Clinton and his fellow shotgunners, we wouldn't be too
surprised if the first people arrested under the Feinstein provisions
are shooters sitting in blinds in desolate, snowy marshes, rather than
the gun customizers running around Senator Feinstein's ban on the
streets of our cities.