{"id":828,"date":"2007-05-17T05:06:17","date_gmt":"2007-05-17T11:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/05\/17\/note-to-hugh-hewitt\/"},"modified":"2007-05-17T13:21:03","modified_gmt":"2007-05-17T19:21:03","slug":"note-to-hugh-hewitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=828","title":{"rendered":"Note to Hugh Hewitt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of notes, so that you are able to speak credibly on the issue that so many conservatives are holding against Mitt Romney:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A &#8220;machine gun&#8221; is an &#8220;automatic weapon&#8221; (fires like a machine gun &#8211; blasting away as long as one holds the trigger) &#8211; not a &#8220;semi-automatic&#8221; weapon (fires <em>one and only one <\/em>round every time you pull the trigger).<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s been illegal for citizens to own <em>automatic weapons<\/em> in the US since\u00a01934 (one of my commenters noted the legislation:\u00a0 <em>The National Firearms Act (NFA), cited as the<\/em> <em>Act of June 26, 1934, Ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236, as amended, currently codified as Chapter 53 of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. \u00a7 5801 through 26 U.S.C. \u00a7 5872<\/em>) unless they get a &#8220;Class III&#8221; license from the BATFE; these require a stringent background check, equal in most respects to a &#8220;Top Secret&#8221; security clearance.\u00a0 In the 70 years this has been the case, there has been <em>one <\/em>crime committed by a Class III licensee.\u00a0 It was a cop.<\/li>\n<li>The 1994 Crime Bill, with the &#8220;Assault Weapon Ban&#8221; which Romney (and apparently you) support, had nothing to do with &#8220;machine guns&#8221; &#8211; but with &#8220;assault weapons&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Which are not to be mistaken for &#8220;Assault Rifles&#8221;.\u00a0 An &#8220;assault rifle&#8221; is a rifle capable of &#8220;selective fire&#8221; (full or semi-automatic), and fires either a small-caliber or low-power rifle round (so they don&#8217;t buck out of the shooter&#8217;s grasp when firing full-automatic).<\/li>\n<li>No, indeed, an &#8220;assault weapon&#8221; has <em>no technical definition whatsoever <\/em>recognizable to any gunsmith, armorer, or anyone else in the firearms industry.\u00a0 They are, for lack of a better definition, guns that someone in Congress thought looked like Army Guns back in 1994.<\/li>\n<li>You asked yesterday on your show &#8211; what would I think about my neighbors owning &#8220;machine guns&#8221; (apparently not knowing that &#8220;machine guns&#8221; were <em>never <\/em>part of the 1994 Crime Bill&#8217;s &#8220;assault weapon&#8221; ban.\u00a0 Simple answer &#8211; if my neighbor had my criminal, chemical or mental-illness record (i.e., none), I wouldn&#8217;t care if she had a machine gun, a flamethrower, or the keys to a nuclear submarine &#8211; because merely <em>possessing <\/em>a big nasty army gun doesn&#8217;t magically make a good person go bad.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Let&#8217;s try to bone up on this, Hugh.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE:\u00a0 A comenter corrected me on the National Firearms Act, of <em>1934<\/em>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of notes, so that you are able to speak credibly on the issue that so many conservatives are holding against Mitt Romney: A &#8220;machine gun&#8221; is an &#8220;automatic weapon&#8221; (fires like a machine gun &#8211; blasting away as long as one holds the trigger) &#8211; not a &#8220;semi-automatic&#8221; weapon (fires one and only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}