Thursday, September 18, 2008

Obama and guns, Part 2,979

From NRA-ILA, on Senator Obama's vote to ban "semi-automatic assault weapons" while in the Illinois Senate. The bill, if it had become law, would also have banned many non-semi-autos as well:

Fairfax, Va. - At a rally in Lebanon, Virginia in front of a crowd of rural voters, Barack Obama made another one of his empty election-year promises not to take away shotguns, rifles or handguns if elected President. However, Obama's words on the campaign trail do not match his long record of opposing lawful gun ownership.
...
In 2003 while serving in the Illinois State Legislature, Obama voted in favor of a bill in the Judiciary Committee that would have made it illegal to "knowingly manufacture, deliver or possess" a so-called "semi-automatic assault weapons." Under this bill, a firearm did not actually have to be semi-automatic to be banned. According to definitions in the bill, all single-shot and double-barreled shotguns 28-gauge or larger, and many semi-automatic shotguns of the same size, would be banned as "assault weapons." This definition would have banned a large percentage of the shotguns used for hunting, target shooting and self-defense in the United States. The bill also would have banned hundreds of models of rifles and handguns. [emphasis added]

Any Illinois resident who possessed one of these commonly used guns 90 days after the effective date would have had to "destroy the weapon or device, render it permanently inoperable, relinquish it to a law enforcement agency, or remove it from the state." Anyone who still possessed a banned gun would have been subject to a felony sentence.

Article here, with links to sources.

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