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> The original proposals had none of that silliness. They targeted tactical rifles: short to be light, portable, and effective indoors and at close quarters, wi
by wl 7y ago
> The original proposals had none of that silliness. They targeted tactical rifles: short to be light, portable, and effective indoors and at close quarters, with detachable magazines to maximize sustained ability to engage targets.
This doesn't match up with my understanding of the history of assault weapon legislation. Roberti-Roos in California (1989) banned weapons by name, not by how light they were or how useful they'd be in close quarters combat. I can't find any early drafts of alternative proposals. By the time the Federal Assault Weapons ban came around in 1994, this approach was exposed as unworkable because manufacturers would make minor changes, change the model number, and get around the ban list. That's how you got the feature tests, which were added to Roberti-Roos in 1999.
If you know of any early assault weapon ban proposals that banned based on functionality, I'd really appreciate some citations. I've seen more recent proposals to ban all semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines, but nothing that dated to the 1980s.
- tptacek 7y agoWill track down! It'll be somewhere in my pile of bookmarks.
- tptacek 7y agoHere you go: https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/senate-bill/386/text?r=1187&s=4 https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/senate-bill/386... This was Metzenbaum's reaction to the Stockton massacre; it was covered in the NYT (both at the time and in retrospectives about how we ended up with our batty FAWB). Note that in addition to definitionally regulating AR-15s, it also bans them outright by name. (The definitional criteria here is --- this is from a skim and from memory, so correct me but don't jump on me if I have this wrong --- any semi-automatic rifle with a detachable magazine that accepts more than 10 rounds).
- nl 7y agoAccording to Wikipedia the 1994 law banned both by name and by functionality: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban#Criteria_of_an_assault_weapon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban#...
- wl 7y agoThe 1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban was the source of the irrational feature tests under discussion. These feature tests originated here because California's experience showed that name bans were easily subverted. The 1994 FAWB did not contain a functionality ban aside from the feature tests only applying to semiautomatic pistols and rifles with detachable magazines and semiautomatic shotguns. Semiautomatic pistols and rifles with detachable magazines and semiautomatic shotguns remained legal.