From: andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Subject: re: clinton's S.S. (was National Police Force)
Followup-To: talk.politics.guns
Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 01:35:25 GMT

In article <sd6mm_a.crisp@netcom.com> crisp@netcom.com (Richard Crisp) writes:
>All of this talk about Clinton's National Police Force and his plans for
>disarming us of our assault weapons,

This is a particularly effective attack on Clinton, because it reminds
us that wrt gun control, Clinton is either deceptive (because he
realizes that his real position is extremely unpopular) or ignorant.

While Clinton uses the term "assault rifles", the guns under
discussion are not military-definition assault weapons; they're not
machine guns.  (Machine guns have been strictly regulated, to no
avail, since 1934, and those controls include anything that can be
easily converted.)  Apart from their current military appearance and
their use of reasonably low-power ammo (by hunting standards), there
are NO functional differences between them and other semi-auto guns
that have been commonplace in the US for decades.

Josh Sugarmann, one of the most effective gun-ban advocates,
recommended a media campaign to exploit appearance confusion in order
to ban guns.  It's a lot like a campaign to ban cars using the fact
that many cars look like race cars, even though they're very different
underneath.

Crisp is reminding us that either Clinton agrees with Sugarmann's
goals, but isn't honest about it (because it is political suicide), or
he doesn't know what's going on.

Which is it, Clinton advocates?  Is Clinton lying about guns, or is he
ignorant?

BTW - Clinton's support for the Brady Bill has similar problems.  The
only records available for background checks are on-line and are used
instantly for lots of other purposes right now.  There are no
technical or economic obstacles to using them for instant background
checks for gun purchases.  However, the demo leadership prefers
waiting periods with NO background checks.  (They're rather alone on
this.  The only survey that asked Americans to choose between
background checks and waiting periods found overwhelming support for
background checks and little support for waiting periods beyond that
required for background checks.  That even translated into
overwhelming support for instant checks if technically possible, and
they are.)

Thus, Clinton can't consistently support "waiting periods long enough
to conduct background checks", which happens to be instant checks as
proposed by the NRA, and the Brady Bill, which has NO background
check, but a waiting period far longer than that needed to conduct
background checks.

Clinton's position has another problem.  The Brady Bill allows a
police chief to arbitrarily delay or deny gun purchases in his/her
jurisdiction.  (If the chief fails to acknowledge receipt of the
required information, the gun can't be delivered, no matter how much
time has passed, and the bill specifically states that the chief
doesn't have to do anything, so there's no legal recourse if s\he
fails to do so.)  Yet, Clinton claims that he doesn't want to take
guns away from law-abiding Americans.

So, wrt the Brady Bill, is Clinton lying or ignorant?

-andy
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