Democrats Can't Even Define What They Want to Ban

When President Joe Biden called for another federal ban on so-called "assault weapons" following last week's shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee, Christian elementary school, not only would it do nothing to curb gun violence, but he can't even define what he wants to ban.

Transgender Audrey Hale, 28, who identifies as a male, shot and killed three nine-year-old students and three staff members, each in their '60s, at The Covenant School in what police called a "targeted attack."

While media and the left blamed everything under the sun, the biggest culprit, most believed, was the guns.

"It's heartbreaking, a family's worst nightmare," Biden said. "We have to do more to stop gun violence."

Observing that the shooter carried two so-called "assault-style" weapons and a handgun, he renewed his demand that Congress ban such weapons.

"So, I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban. It's about time that we begin to make some more progress."

But actual "assault weapons" aren't generally available to the public for civilian use, according to Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, a national gun rights nonprofit based in Bellevue, Washington.

"The official 'Jane's Military Guide to Weapons' defines an assault weapon as a firearm that will fire fully automatic or selective fire," he told Newsmax.

Nationally syndicated radio host Dana Loesch, a former spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, spoke several years ago about opponents lumping semi-automatic rifles in with fully-automatic as a reason to ban them.

"This was always about the start of banning all semi-auto," she said. "It's why they conflate semi with full auto and throw around terms like 'assault weapon'" (a term only used once in an Army field guide from the '60s specifically describing full-auto).

But the true definition seems to have gone right over the heads of so-called "experts," including nominees for director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Two years ago Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asked David Chipman, who'd spent two decades in the ATF, to define "assault weapon."

"I got 35 seconds left, define it for me, would you please, sir. What's an assault weapon?" the Louisiana Republican asked Chipman during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings.

"There's no way I could define an assault weapon," he replied.

When Chipman failed to make the grade, last year Biden nominated Steve Dettelbach.

Not only did Dettelbach have the benefit of Chipman's fail, but he was something of an expert on "assault weapons" — he supported an assault weapons ban during a 2018 campaign for Ohio attorney general.

Under questioning by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., he admitted: "When I was a candidate for office, I did talk about restrictions on assault weapons," but added, "I did not define the term. And I haven't gone through the process of defining that term."

Despite his own limited knowledge, the Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed him as the first ATF director since 2015.

Gottlieb said the problem is that today's modern AR-style sporting rifles bear a physical resemblance to a fully-automatic military weapon, but that's about all.

"Basically the media runs wild with anything that looks like a military-style firearm," he said. "They call it an assault weapon."

Gottlieb explained what the real culprit of last week's shooting was.

"Firearms don't have a brain to hate with, or a finger to pull their own trigger," he said. Accordingly, "America has a mental health crisis, not a firearms crisis."

Gottlieb said that bad actors with serious mental health issues all too often don't make it into the federal firearms background check system, whereas others who have done nothing wrong often do.

"Our background check system is a mess," he observed, "bad data in, bad results out, and Joe Biden wants to keep it that way. There are thousands of people in the system who don't belong there, while someone like Audrey Hale probably should have been. Even her parents reportedly believe she couldn't be trusted with a firearm."

Australian gun-maker Lance French, agrees, and says that banning one type of weapon isn't the end — it's the start of an avalanche of yet more bans.

"Gun control doesn't stop at a particular gun. It just keeps going. It's relentless. It doesn't stop," French told The Epoch Times. "They're making these false claims that certain items are dangerous when what's dangerous is a person, and it's a very low percentage of people."

In the 1964 case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart confessed that while he couldn't define pornography, "I know it when I see it."

In this instance not only can't the president define "assault weapon," but neither can his "experts." But they want to ban them anyway.

Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.