From: dbetz@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Drew Betz)
Subject: Gun Grabbers vs. Assault Rifles: The Big Lie (by Neal Knox)
Keywords: Lying gun-grabbers, assault rifles 
Organization: SigSauer Fan Club 
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 19:23:07 GMT

This was taken from the Bullet-N-Board (703) 971-4491. 

                                  Combat Arms
                                2869 Grove Way
                         Castro Valley, CA 94546-6709
                        Telephone: Store (510) 538-6544
                        Computerized BBS (510) 537-1777
                                 April 8, 1992

                        GUN GRABBERS VS. ASSAULT RIFLES

                                  THE BIG LIE

The following article was extracted from pages 6-9 of "Assault Rifles," Guns
& Ammo Action Series, Col. 10, No. 2, published by Petersen Publishing
Company (tele: 310-854-2222) and was typed by my wife, Flora.

Richard Bash
-Your SysOp-
                               -=-=-=-=-=-=-
 
Semi-auto military-styled "assault" rifles are not now nor have they ever
been a threat to society. These facts have been determined by the government
- but never released to the public!

by

NEAL KNOX

Patrick Edward Purdy carried a Chinese Type 56 semi-auto version of the
Kalashnikov AK-47 onto a crowded Stockton, California schoolyard on January
17, 1989. In a couple of minutes, he killed five students and wounded 29
others, then killed himself with a new Taurus 9mm pistol.

It is "common knowledge" that the Stockton schoolyard tragedy triggered a
still-continuing drive to ban or restrict the private purchase and possession
of "assault rifles." It also caused the Roberti-Roos-Van de Kamp ban and
registration law in California, and New Jersey's and New York City's
confiscatory laws prohibiting such guns, or so they say. "They" and the
"common knowledge" are wrong!

Patrick Purdy's murderous schoolyard attack-and the copycat shooting of 20
Louisville, Kentucky printing plant employees with another AK-47S 8 months
later - merely fueled a carefully prepared fire that had been lit by anti-gun
organizations and their legislative allies many months before. Those events
were perfectly timed - too perfectly to be happenstance, some contend -
turning smoldering sparks into a prairie fire that proved unstoppable in two
states and has swept through the U.S. Senate.

But other than the horrible events themselves, the main fuel has been a
series of myths perpetrated by politicians, police administrators and the
press. The myths are that "assault rifles" are the choice of criminals, that
their existence and availability allows criminals to decimate outgunned
police and that "regulating" - read prohibiting - "these weapons of war" will
deal a body blow to criminals and the crime rates.

When California State Senate President David Roberti (D-Hollywood) first
called for a ban on undefined "assault rifles," he said he would be satisfied
with putting them under the state's 15-day handgun waiting period/background
check law. But Purdy wouldn't have been prevented from obtaining his semi-
auto AK-47, for he had just obtained the 9mm Taurus with police approval. He
had purchased the gun December 28, 1988, obtaining it after the 15-day
background check on Friday, January 13-and went on his killing rampage the
next school day.

Even if he hadn't had the Kalashnikov-pattern Type 56 semi-auto rifle, either
his 15-shot Taurus or the 32-shot 9mm MAC-10 pistol he had purchased with
police permission the previous year were capable of an equally deadly attack.
George Hennard proved that with two 9mm pistols at Luby's cafeteria on
October 16, 1991 in Killeen, Texas - the worst mass shooting in history.
Contrary to press reports, the worst mass murder was when Julio Gonzales
killed 87 people with a dollar's worth of gasoline at a New York social club.

Purdy undoubtedly would have killed far more than five of the 34 he hit if he
had used a common shotgun, as James Huberty did in the McDonald's massacre in
San Ysidro, California, July 18, 1984. (Huberty killed 21 people, 11 with a
conventional Model 12 pump shotgun, 10 with 9mm's from either a Browning
pistol or an Uzi carbine.) But Purdy ignored his most lethal weapon, a car,
which could have wreaked havoc if driven onto a schoolyard jammed with some
400 kids.

Incredibly, considering the adulation given to a criminal background check,
Purdy obtained his guns despite a lengthy criminal record (though never con-
victed of a felony). Also, he was on parole from an assault conviction in the
adjacent county, with a specific prohibition against acquisition or possess-
ion of any type of firearm. Van de Kamp's eventual report, in October 1989,
excused the failure of the check to detect that probationary prohibition
because no system existed for checking "conditions of probation... That
situation is in the process of changing."

The fact is, regardless of the specific details that disrupt the Purdy myth,
what he did was not the cause of the "assault weapon" prohibition movement.
More than a half-year before Purdy loosed his perverted fury on those
defenseless grade-schoolers, strategists from Handgun Control, Inc. and
offshoots of the since- renamed National Coalition to Ban Handguns had
identified military-style firearms as a "target of opportunity."

Three months before the Stockton murders, Josh Sugarman, formerly communi-
cations director of NCBH, published a smugly forthright strategy paper,
"Assault Weapons and Accessories in America." He wrote that because military-
style semi-autos were commonly called "assault rifles," they were ideally
suited for a public relations campaign (like "Cop-Killer Bullets"). It was a
simple matter to twist that misused name into "assault weapons," as he did in
the title of his piece.

That allowed the effort to encompass the handguns, which were the primary
target, bringing a fresh flavor to the well-worn arguments against handgun
ownership, he wrote. Because military-pattern semi-auto rifles have a smaller
constituency and many gun owners could be counted upon to ignore anything
that did not affect them directly, fewer legislators would be upset. Further,
the public could be easily deceived into thinking the intimidating military-
pattern guns were as evil and dangerous as they looked, because "anything
that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun."

If the National Rifle Association was to embark upon a cynical campaign based
upon an acknowledged attempt to confuse and deceive the public, the national
news media would crucify the organization. Yet there's never been a word in
the press about Sugarman's deception - other than a smattering of letters to
the editor and a rare op-ed protest.

If even a few guns could be banned, Sugarman correctly argued, it would be
infinitely easier to ban more commonly owned guns in future legislative
rounds. (That had long been NCBH's strategy, arguing for prohibitions on
"Saturday Night Specials," waving about the rudely made, cheap handguns of
the 1960s, while drafting legislation to prohibit as many expensive,
high-quality guns as possible.)

In the fall of 1988, HCI circulated model legislation to key anti-gun law-
makers who pre-filed "assault weapon bans" in several state legislatures. In
Maryland, the principal sponsor of one of those bills, which triggered large
protests at the state capital, was openly angry at HCI staffers who had told
him, "No one owns these guns, and no one cares about them."

The most far-reaching effort was in California, where there was a major
debate within the state's Justice Department long before Patrick Purdy
"started" the "war on assault rifles." An October 31, 1988 memo from S.C.
Helsley, the then-Assistant Director of the California DOJ Investigation and
Enforcement Branch, states: "Last year, I surveyed the firearms used in
violent crimes... assault-type firearms were the least of our worries. It's
really the .22 and .38-caliber handguns and 12-gauge shotguns that inflict
the majority of carnage."

Nevertheless a month later, on December 5, the Director of the DOJ Law
Enforcement Division sent out a memo for Attorney General John Van de Kamp to
"All Police Chiefs and Sheriffs" stating that the Justice Department and "a
number of individual agencies" were "drafting legislation to prohibit
'assault rifles'..."

The Director's memo asked the agencies to report the number of so-called
"assault rifles" confiscated and crimes committed with them, using a generic
definition based on capacity and configuration plus a three-page list of
specific models. That sweeping definition included even such common hunting
guns as the Browning Auto-5 shotgun and the Winchester Model 12 pump shotgun.

The Director stated: "If we are to have any hope of success next year, it is
essential to document the extent of the problem as quickly and comprehensive-
ly as possible." Instead, the survey documented that there was no problem!

Long after the California legislature eventually enacted the Roberti-Roos
ban, according to documents that have since trickled out from within the
California Justice Department, so-called "assault weapons" were clearly such
a minor ingredient in crime that Van de Kamp almost scrapped his gun ban
plans - until the Stockton shooting changed the political climate.

In a February 14, 1991 memo, Helsley wrote that as the Roberti-Roos bills
neared passage, "we experienced what I would describe as a 'feeding frenzy'
as it became clear that the NRA was in retreat... (T)he list had become an
odd collection of firearms, which range from the long out of production, to
exorbitantly expensive, to the 'evil' AK-47. As no specifically defined
problem drove our efforts, such an odd collection should not be surprising."

The final law was also a legal mess. In June 1991, Republican Attorney
General Dan Lungren warned local law enforcement representatives that the law
was so technically flawed that "enforcement is not practical." Instead of
reviewing both the faulty law and the faulty premise on which it was based,
Lungren's minions set about making the law enforceable, without regard as to
whether it would be useful.

The following month the California Justice Department's Criminalistics
Institute conducted a survey of all the crime labs in the state, trying to
determine how many so-called "assault weapons" were seized and how many were
used in violent crimes during 1990. Those forensic labs, which include 22
state-run units, have all the data concerning the guns used in crimes in the
state.

According to the 1991 Helsley internal memo, those involved in pushing the
"Roberti-Roos" bill - including some of the state's highest-ranking police
administrators, the Senate President, one of the most powerful members of the
assembly, and the Attorney General himself - had made the deliberate decision
not to seek information from the crime labs.

Helsley wrote: "Information on assault weapons would not be sought from
forensic laboratories as it was unlikely to support the thesis on which the
legislation would be based."

The current Justice Department apparently wishes it hadn't asked the labora-
tories for hard information either, for the data - with responses from labs
covering two-thirds of the state's population - shows there is no significant
problem. The DOJ has refused to provide their draft summary of the results,
but has released the raw data in compliance with the state's freedom of
information law.

According to reliable sources, the survey showed that of all firearms
confiscated, less than 5 percent were guns on the Roberti-Roos list. And of
guns involved in violent crimes, only six-tenths of one percent were "assault
weapons."

The reported findings in the unreleased California study are entirely consis-
tent with every other piece of statistical evidence about the criminal misuse
of rifles in general and "assault rifles" in particular. The FBI Uniform
Crime Reports don't break down to firearms by type, but total rifle misuse in
violent crime has been under 5 percent for many years.

Some big-city firearms seizure reports show a blip of increased confiscations
of "assault weapons" from drug dealers and crack houses after Purdy's
massacre. That apparently resulted from the media's theme that the guns were
the choice of drug dealers, and every self-respecting would-be drug kingpin
rushed to obtain one - with as little regard to legality as they display for
the handling of their primary product.

(One of the funniest lines in the "assault weapon" debate, though she didn't
intend to be funny, was when Handgun Control, Inc. Sarah Brady solemnly
declared on national television: "We've got to take these guns out of the
hands of drug dealers.")

Streetwise cops told me that the reason AR-15s and AK-47s and the like were
showing up in crack houses was for the intimidation of their customers - to
make sure they didn't shorten their dope acquisition chain by robbing the
dope dealers instead of robbing honest citizens, then paying the dope
dealers. We've never heard of a single case of a crack house "assault weapon"
used against police.

The street cops also told me that such full-size rifles fell out of favor for
drive-by shootings after a few instances of gangs shooting up their own cars
while trying to get the cumbersome things off the floorboards - and one
rumored report of a blown-off toe in LA.

The U.S. Congress has its own research arm, the Congressional Reference
Service of the Library of Congress, which prepared a January 25, 1991 report,
"Semi-automatic Military-Style Firearms: Statistics and Issues." Unlike the
California study, it hasn't been buried, only ignored.

The CRS paper shows that of all police officers who died in the line of duty
during the 1980s, only 4 percent were killed with semi-auto rifles. Of all
officers killed with firearms, 5 percent were killed with a total of seven
rifle models (Mini-14, 6; AR-15, 2; commercial M1 Carbine, 2; one each with
the H&K 93, Norinco 56, "Ruger carbine," Remington 742); another 1 percent
were killed with so-called "assault handguns" (Tec-9, 2; MAC-10, 11). If
those numbers represent a valid argument for banning such guns, there is a
far greater argument for totally disarming police, for four to five times as
many officers are killed with their own guns.

The closest thing to a "national statistic" supporting the theory that
military-style firearms (not just rifles) are "the weapons of choice of
criminals" is an Atlanta Constitution study of the 40,000 guns per year
traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms at police request. From
7 to 11 percent were military-style rifles and pistols. Because there are
fewer such guns in the total firearms population, the Constitution arbitrar-
ily decided such "assault weapons" are "20 times more likely to be used in a
crime than conventional firearms." Handgun Control, Inc. and their shills
convert that to "used in violent crime."

In fact, all the "study" showed is that exotic-appearing "assault weapons"
are more likely to be traced than more-common guns. BATF has estimated that
less than 10 percent of all guns coming into police custody are traced. As
the Congressional Reference Service study reports: "ATF traces may be
requested for a variety of reasons not necessarily related to criminal
incidents." Accordingly: "The data compiled through the tracing program are
not appropriate for statistical analysis of the makes and models of firearms
that have been used in crimes."

Florida's legislature established an Assault Weapons Commission that surveyed
state and federal law enforcement agencies in the state, attempting to
determine criminal misuse from 1986 through 1989. Of 415 surveys sent out,
only 136 responded; two-thirds of those reported no experience at all with
such guns. The 29 departments with some experience reported negligible
totals.

As the Chairman, former New York Judge Michael Saporito, testified to the
House Crime Subcommittee in July 1991: "The good news is: There is no assault
weapon problem." A few days later Rep. Charles Schumer's committee approved
a draconian bill banning both guns and magazines over seven rounds. It was
stripped out of the still-pending crime bill October 176, 1991, but it will
be back.

A lot of California's officials and former officials are in a box. Not only
is there hard evidence that the "assault rifle" law is a fraud and a sham,
hundreds of thousands of normally law-abiding Californians are thumbing their
noses at the government by refusing to register their prohibited guns. The
politicos and bureaucratic ideologues have a vested interest in keeping the
facts from the public.

The same is true in New Jersey and New York City, which have followed
California's lead. Again, there is massive civil disobedience, though every
legal New Jersey owner has firearms licensed, and every New York City rifle
and shotgun is individually licensed and registered, making the now-contra-
band guns easy to locate.

In early 1992, registered New York City owners of prohibited "assault rifles"
received a letter advising them to surrender their guns, send a certified
statement from a gunsmith who had permanently disabled them or provide the
name and address of the out-of-city buyer. For years, opponents of gun
registration laws have argued that the lists could and would be used just as
they are now being used in New York City. We were told we were paranoid.

There's yet another side effect of these registration laws: We've had three
reports of police in California being cautioned by their dispatchers because
of registered "assault rifles" in residences. In one case an officer was
checking a person asleep in a car in front of a house where an "assault
rifle" was registered; in another, an officer made a traffic stop and the car
pulled over at the address of an AR-15: in the third, an officer was alerted
due to the "special hazard" of a registered AR-15 "in the area."

The attorney general's office is providing the names and addresses of
registered owners for local departments' "special hazard" computers. With
this kind of caution for a mere traffic stop in the area of a registered gun
owner, what's going to happen the first time an officer has an arrest warrant
for a law-abiding AR-15 owner who is behind on his child support payments or
has too many traffic tickets? Will they send in a SWAT team or "knock" one
time with a battering ram?

A Colt AR-15 or Ruger Mini-14 is no more dangerous than a quail gun, and
under some circumstances less dangerous. Yet after more than three years of
conditioning by the media, more than three years of lying by politically
motivated police administrators and more than three years of posturing by
gun- hating politicians, the silhouette of a military-pattern rifle evokes a
Pavlovian fear and loathing in many, perhaps most, people.

                           -= END OF ARTICLE =-