- According to the 1998 Illinois State Legislative National Political Awareness Test of July 2, 1998, Obama also supports the banning of all semi-automatic weapon sales and transfers.
When most people hear “semi-automatic weapon” they picture a machine gun pouring out hundreds of rounds per minute, killing untold thousands of children, elderly, and puppies. But the phrase “semi-automatic” simply means “one round fired for every one trigger pull”.
Here is your quiz. Of the guns pictured below can you name the ones that are semi-automatics, those that have one round fired for every one trigger pull, those that Obama says should be banned?
The correct answer? All of the guns pictured are semi-automatics.
The only reason to try to ban a whole technology of gun, with such a wide stroke as “all semi-automatics”, is to start the progression of banning all guns eventually.
- From the January 2008 Democratic debate:
RUSSERT: Senator Obama, when you were in the state senate, you talked about licensing and registering gun owners. Would you do that as president?
OBAMA: But here’s the broader context that I think is important for us to remember. We essentially have two realities, when it comes to guns, in this country. You’ve got the tradition of lawful gun ownership, that all of us saw, as we travel around rural parts of the country. And it is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot. And then you’ve got the reality of 34 Chicago public school students who get shot down on the streets of Chicago.
This is a weak arguments that gets used a lot. First let’s review the actual text of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
OK, all you really smart Liberals out there, find any of the following words by Obama in the text of the Second Amendment:
- hunt
- fish
- take kids out
- teach them how to shoot
No, Obama, the authors of the Second Amendment were concerned about being able to live in a free state, the legal citizens being de facto members of a volunteer militia, in a bloody struggle against Great Britain. They were not concerned with bringing down a deer or being able to plink a tin can off a fence post. The authors were talking about armed revolt against the world’s most powerful army using any and every weapon we could get our hands on. The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting.
And no matter what types of guns or ammunition you attempt to ban, the horrible truth is that those same 34 Chicago public school students are still going to die at the hands of criminals that can get any weapon and ammunition any time they wish. After all, those guns used to shoot people down on the streets of Chicago were not purchased lawfully anyway, and no law would have made any difference. And if Obama simply wants to take certain guns and certain ammunition from law-abiding gun owners, like the Assault Weapons Ban, how in the world will that have any effect on crime and the criminals that do crime?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Mike // Jun 28, 2008 at 10:27 am
Good piece but I do have a minor flaw to point out, the flintlock in your photo is not a semi-automatic.
2 Stephen P. Wenger // Jun 29, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Actually, only three appear to be semi-automatic. While the “semi” part distinguishes a semi-automatic firearm from a fully automatic firearm in that the former only fires one shot for each stroke of the trigger, there is still the “automatic” part. The automatic part is the replacement of the fired case with a fresh cartridge by the use either of recoil generated in the firing process or gas presure generated in the firing process. Thus, most revolvers, whether single- or double-action are not semi-automatics, nor are the derringer and percussion pistol pictured.
It does us no good to further muddle the issues with incorrect statements.
3 Shamalama // Jun 29, 2008 at 3:55 pm
True. Semi-autos fire only once when the trigger is pulled. Energy from a fired round of ammunition is used to cycle the firearm’s loading mechanism.
But the most commonly reported “fact” used to describe a semi-auto is “one shot per trigger pull.” Even Wikipedia, the “world’s encyclopedia”, states, “A semi-automatic, or self-loading firearm is a gun that requires only a trigger pull for each round that is fired, unlike a single-action revolver, a pump-action firearm, a bolt-action firearm, or a lever-action firearm, which require the shooter to manually chamber each successive round. For example, to fire ten rounds in a semi-automatic firearm, the trigger would need to be pulled ten times (once for each round fired), in contrast to a fully automatic firearm, which can continue to fire as long as the trigger is held or until it runs out of ammunition.” You have to read down into the article before you read “Semi-automatic function uses the recoil force generated by the last fired cartridge combined with spring action in the firearm to ready the next round to be fired.”
Both of you are quite technically correct. My argument was far more political, in that most Leftists try to confuse an un-learned public with an emphasis on “automatic” while dismissing the “semi”. Just try to imagine self-defense, in most situations, without the legal ability to keep and bear an auto-loader (a far more descriptive term).