Dianne Feinstein – LonelyMachines

Dianne’s Back

Senator Feinstein just won’t let go. She tried to play the Newtown tragedy for all it was worth, but Harry Reid wouldn’t let her new version of the Assault Weapons Ban reach the floor. Despite her constant pleas that President Obama make gun control a leading issue in 2014, he seems reluctant to discuss the issue.

Now she’s trying to convince the President to expand the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 925(d)(3) (also known as the “sporting purposes” clause) to ban the import of all “military-style” firearms.

She singles out the Romanian WASR-10 (a cheap AKM clone) for whole heap of ire:

An analysis by the Violence Policy Center found that more than 700 Romanian AK-47 variant rifles were identified in 134 federal gun trafficking prosecutions involving illegal smuggling from the United States to Mexico and other Latin American countries. (…) For example, one imported Romanian AK firearm, the WASR-10, was carefully designed to exploit the sporting purposes test and has become a favorite of the gun traffickers that profit by arming Mexican drug trafficking organizations.

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Civil Rights

Twenty Years with the Brady Act

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Yep, it was 1993. Sarah Brady is making a big deal of the anniversary. Dianne Feinstein has an op-ed running today in which she takes credit for everything short of rescuing puppies from a burning orphanage. It’s a shame it’s full of half-truths and outright lies.

Let’s take them one by one.

Background checks on gun purchases work. The law has stopped more than 2 million convicted felons, domestic abusers and individuals with serious mental illnesses from purchasing firearms.

A cursory review of the data shows that one has to do real violence to the numbers to even imply such a thing. The rate of erroneous denials is 94%. Furthermore, the few that might have merit are almost never referred for prosecution. Either the Brady Act is hopelessly broken in its implementation, or someone is lying.

Civil Rights

Feinstein’s Last Hurrah

Negotiations are still underway in the Senate for a unified package of gun-control bills to be introduced next month. One conspicuous piece of legislation that will not be part of it is S. 150, Dianne Feinstein’s revised Assault Weapons Ban.

Majority Leader Harry Reid excised S. 150 in a meeting on Monday. His rationale was,

Right now her amendment, by the most optimistic measures, has less than 40 votes. I am not going to put something on the floor that can’t succeed.

Does that mean it’s dead? No. Feinstein can still reintroduce it as an amendment to another bill. Though it’s doubtful she’ll get the votes for it, she’s sworn to bring it to a vote one way or another.

What’s becoming obvious is that Reid has an eye on the 2014 midterms, and he’s feeling the heat. He can push a more “moderate” bill to appease the Democratic base while pointing out that he opposed more “extreme” bills like S.

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Civil Rights

Feinstein’s Charity

Govtrack and Thomas haven’t posted it yet, but the full text of Dianne Feinstein’s proposed Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 is posted here. It appears to be numbered S. 150.

The list of prohibited weapons is pretty much what we saw on Thursday, and the list of weapons she deigns to let us keep begins on page 23. We would be granted the privilege to keep historic “assault” rifles like Garands and M1 carbines so long as they don’t have folding stocks or extended magazines. Beyond that, it’s more or less deer rifles and turkey guns. On her reasoning for this, she had this bit of sage insight:

Military-style assault weapons have but one purpose, and in my view that’s a military purpose, to hold at the hip, possibly, to spray fire to be able to kill large numbers.

How very conciliatory of her to leave a few crumbs on the table for the lowly civilians.

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Civil Rights

Now the Bad News

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Senator Feinstein proposed the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 today. There was a big ceremony in which she had a clergyperson speak, and she trotted around with guns that are illegal to possess in the District. I bet there was cake and everything.

Though we haven’t seen the actual bill yet, we’ve seen the list, and it’s bad. For Pete’s sake, she wants to ban the Linda Carbine. Outside of Hawaii Five-0 (the one with Jack Lord’s magnificent hair, not the new one), I think I might be one of six people in the western hemisphere who’s ever even handled one.

You know, even though I don’t care for remakes, I’d probably watch the new version just to see Grace Park run around on the beach. For some reason, she won’t respond to my phone calls, emails, fan letters, or the poetry I scrawled on her driveway. Her eyes say yes, but her bodyguards and lawyers say no.

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Civil Rights

Feinstein’s Boondoggle

So, here’s the draft for Dianne Feinstein’s new gun control bill.

We’re looking at a ban on 120 specific weapons, as well as a ban of “certain other semiautomatic rifles, handguns, shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and have one or more military characteristics.” I’m guessing STANAG 2324 rails will be one of those “military characteristics,” which will pretty much cover most modern handguns. She also made sure to add thumbhole stocks to the list of banned features (I can’t say I’ll particularly miss those).

The interesting part is the clause for grandfathering. Under her bill, I’d be able to keep pre-existing specimens of banned firearms, but I’d have to register them through the NFA. Who covers the payroll for that? We’re talking about millions of weapons.

And for what? I’d be surprised if we had anything close to the compliance rates of similar initiatives in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, all of which were around 20%.

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Civil Rights

And Here We Go

It’s one day after Christmas, and we’re off to the races. Carolyn McCarthy is pushing to get her high-capacity magazine ban out of committee, where it’s been wallowing in obscurity since January of 2011. Bobby Rush is trying to revive the Blair Holt gun registration bill, as he’s done every year since 2000.

I don’t give either bill good odds of progressing, but if you’ve got a Representative on the Judiciary Committee, it’s worth dropping them an email. If yours is a Democrat, it’s even more important, since most of those on the committee have a history of supporting gun control.

In other news, Dianne Feinstein is proposing a national buyback program on so-called assault weapons. In case you’re not familiar with the idea, several major cities offer financial incentives for gang members and drug dealers to turn their guns in for gift cards or pittances of cash.

Never mind that those initiatives are a big expense to taxpayers and that they don’t work.

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