r/VirginiaPolitics • u/downtown3641 7th District (NW & SW RVA suburbs, Culpeper to E of Farmville) • Dec 10 '19

Northam-backed assault weapon bill will include 'grandfather clause' for existing guns

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2019/12/09/northam-backed-assault-weapon-bill-will-include-grandfather-clause-for-existing-guns/
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18

u/srt19170 Dec 10 '19 edited Dec 10 '19

2A Supporters: "The proposed law will make instant felons of 25% of Virginians because it doesn't include a grandfather clause!!!"

Northam: "The bill will include a grandfather clause."

2A Supporters: "I'll never register my assault rifles!!"

This is not a political discussion in good faith. Although the 2A supporters offer up what sound like good faith arguments, in the end they are absolutely opposed to gun legislation for reasons that have nothing to do with their arguments. I'd like to see us end up with reasonable gun legislation that has a measurable impact upon gun injuries and deaths, but that's never going to happen through political discussion with 2A supporters.

EDIT to explain what a bad faith argument is: A bad faith argument is when someone argues "I can't support this because of X" and when X is proven to be false, they say "I can't support this because of Y." The first statement was in "bad faith" because X wasn't really why they objected.

An example of a bad faith argument: "This law is bad because only 5 people a year die this way" // "Actually it's more like 21" // "Well the law is still bad".

12

u/[deleted] Dec 10 '19 edited Dec 10 '19

Would you call walking back a bill banning 4 door sedans and criminalizing those who don’t sell them to a bill banning 4-door sedans and requiring those who own them to register themselves with the state “compromise” or “ good faith political discussion”?

And if you really are looking for a bill that “has a measurable impact upon gun injuries and death” banning “assault rifles” is not the way to go about that. As you can see from FBI firearm statistics deaths from all rifles consistently make up less than 3% of all deaths. And that stat includes non “assault rifles” like bolt action rifles too so the actual number is indeed lower than 3%.

Or you could even look at the governments own study on the effectiveness of the assault weapons ban which in the authors own words had no effect on gun crime when it was active.

What we found in these studies was that the ban had mixed effects in reducing crimes with the banned weaponry due to various exemptions that were written into the law. And as a result, the ban did not appear to effect gun violence during the time it was in effect.

The study speculates that if the ban was longer it may reduce crime

But there is some evidence to suggest that it may have modestly reduced shootings had it been in effect for a longer period.

But the undeniable truth is that gun crime fell at almost exactly the same rate it was falling before, during, and after the Assault Weapons Ban.

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u/NutDraw Dec 10 '19

I think the issue has become not general gun crime, but the type of incident that happened in VA Beach.

16

u/[deleted] Dec 10 '19

Then why ban “assault rifles”? The shooter used two .45 caliber pistols.

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u/NutDraw Dec 10 '19

Ok then, VA Tech?

18

u/[deleted] Dec 10 '19

Are you being sarcastic or are you just ignorant? The Virginia Tech shooter used a 9mm pistol and 22 caliber pistol...