Mother Jones takes aim at rifles

The left-leaning Mother Jones wets its literary pants over the "easy availability" of (say it together with me now) "evil assault weapons".

... At a table near the entrance, I found it: a Chinese-made mak-90 semiautomatic rifle, a variation of the Russian AK-47 designed to circumvent federal regulations on the import of assault weapons. "It's the same gun," the dealer told me. "They just eliminated the pistol grip, replaced it with a threaded thumb grip, and took off the flash suppressor." This particular model came with a five-round detachable clip, but the dealer assured me it would accept larger magazines, including a 75-round "ammunition drum." He was uncomfortable trading in handguns, he said, explaining that "there's too much controversy about them," but was willing to sell the mak-90 to anyone with a valid ID and $450.

The reemergence of imported assault rifles on the US market signals a dramatic shift in federal firearms policy. By 1998, four years after a federal ban on assault weapons took effect, gun manufacturers had easily managed to bypass the law by making small alterations to their weapons. To close the loophole, the Clinton administration prohibited the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives from granting import permits for 58 types of assault weapons, adding to an import rule first put in place by George H.W. Bush. These included dozens of AK-47 variants and other high-powered semiautomatic rifles that could accept high-capacity magazines originally designed for military use.

But not only did the current Bush administration allow the 1994 assault weapons ban to lapse, it has also, through the atf, permitted gun manufacturers to game the import rules, effectively reopening American borders to foreign assault weapons. While the import ban remains nominally in force, gun importers are now able to easily skirt it by assembling the guns in the US. Describing the manufacturing process at Florida-based Century International Arms Incorporated, a leading importer of foreign assault weapons, an official in the atf's firearms import branch told me "they import the parts" and combine them with US-made materials specifically prohibited by the import ban. That way, technically speaking, the guns "are made in this country," he said. But according to Kristen Rand, the legislative director at the Violence Policy Center, a Washington-based gun control advocacy group, the atf is simply shirking its responsibility. "They've created this Alice in Wonderland world, where if you take it apart and put it back together then it's no longer an import, but the end result is the same," she says. "They just keep making this their own moving target."

As most of my readers know, the Bush administration didn't "allow the 1994 assault weapons ban to lapse", the ban expired by operation of the same law that created it, which had a ten year automatic "sunset" provision. And last I checked, the President doesn't have the ability to pass laws -- that function rests with Congress. Minor matters to most leftie reporters pushing an agenda, obviously.

Naturally, not a single pro-gun source was cited as far as I can tell (although admittedly I only skimmed the article and may have missed that nugget amongst the sea of fool's gold), but quotes from the usual anti-gun suspects abound. And of course there is a cartoon illustration of a cop getting shot by a bullet from one of these evil assault weapons.

Read the whole thing here, if your blood pressure's a little on the low side. Fortunately there are a lot of comments debunking various aspects of the article.