Assault Weapons Debate Shifts From Complete Ban to Who Can Have Access
I’ve been having discussions regarding more restrictive regs with my relatives in Alaska, they are opposed to these types of regulations on principle. However that’s the influence of Libertarian politics that pretty much owns the rural West — mostly due to land and land use. I’ve countered their every argument with good reason, however they are not going to budge.
Instead, the fight in Congress is shaping up not over whether to outlaw assault rifles – a losing proposition since there are more than 3 million AR-15 rifles alone in American homes – but over who should have access to them, what gun control advocates call the “terror gap.”
“If we had closed it already, we might have prevented the Orlando shooter from getting guns,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.
Most of the political dialogue since the Orlando shooting has revolved around improving background checks and barring people who are on the terror watch list from purchasing such weapons.
In large part that is because in those 12 years since the expiration of the federal ban, assault weapons – semiautomatic guns that can fire dozens of rounds a minute – have become a deeply ingrained part of America’s gun cultur