Do they actually think the general public has the IQ of freshly cut lettuce, or is it that they actually believe the vapid tripe they spew day after day in hopes that their vague emotionalism, vacuous rhetoric and unbridled fanaticism will triumph over logic and facts?

In recent news from the People's Republic of Maryland, it appears legislators have implemented a new strategy to push the so-called "assault weapons" ban in the state. In a frothing state of hoplophobic frenzy, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan addressed a crowd of freedom's enemies, who waved a replica of a Bushmaster rifle outside the Montgomery County Courthouse. "A real version of that weapon terrorized our community. I can think of no greater memorial to the sniper victims than to get this law passed."

Any rational human being would immediately question the sanity of such comments.

What about the two men who pulled the trigger on that rifle, Mr. Duncan? Do they bear any responsibility for terrorizing your community, or did the evil gun make them do it?

Are you aware that they obtained this weapon illegally, despite laws already in place designed to prevent them from doing so?

How many criminals do you know who will obey your already ineffective gun laws?

And how is violating the Constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms a fitting tribute to those killed by criminals in a mad shooting spree last year?

But hey -- People like Duncan don't care about logic. They don't care about common sense, constitutional rights or freedom. They want to hurl inane emotional statements and scare the citizenry into trusting them, into believing that they, the politicians, know how to protect them, how to safeguard them against violence and how to keep them from harm. They want to increase terror in hopes that the mindless children who cast votes in their direction year after year after year, grow ever more reliant on them and their ineffective laws. And they want to appeal to the people's sense of justice, hero-worship and anger to foster an ever-growing dependence on the politicians' sense of right and wrong, instead of their own.

Nowhere is this more clear than Maryland's recent push for a ban on "assault" weapons. Not only are the politicians using a strategy of emotional blackmail to bring about their desired tyrannical agenda, but they are also using lies. The latest idiocy pushed by the enemies of freedom is that FBI statistics show that one out of every five police officers killed between 1998 and 2001 was killed by an "assault" weapon.

I accessed the FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2001. I found that in 2001 there was a total of 142 police officers killed in the United States and its territories. Handguns were used in 42 of these killings, 11 were shot by rifles and 4 were killed by shotgun fire. In total 61 police officers were killed by gun fire of any kind in 2001 - less than half. Rifles accounted for 7.7 percent of those killings.

The period between 1992 and 2001 saw a total of 643 police officers killed. Of these killings, 594 were slain with firearms of any kind, and 111 were killed using a rifle of any kind - 17 percent. It's not one in five, as the gun grabbers claim, and, of course, as usual, they fail to paint a complete picture.

When the UCR refers to rifles, it does not differentiate between .22 Caliber, .223 Caliber, 30 Caliber, .30-06 Caliber, or 7.62x39 Millimeter. It does not differentiate between the type of rifle, its manufacturer or any of the attributes that might make this weapon into an "assault" weapon by the anti-gunners' definition. There is no distinction. The gun grabbers are apparently happy to simply lump every rifle into the "assault" weapon category. And why not? It helps their cause, doesn't it?

David B. Kopel, also addressed this issue in a 1997 article entitled, Are so-called "Assault Weapons" a Threat to Police Officers? Kopel also found evidence of mass distortion, misinformation and panic-mongering among the gun grabbers' claims.

"Using the FBI’s annual report, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, I found several incidents in 1994 for which the HCI data was inaccurate: the wrong model gun was listed, and the real gun was not banned by the 1994 federal 'assault weapon' law; the gun was taken from a police officer; or the murder was perpetrated by a police officer against another officer".

"The logical implication of HCI’s counting crimes by polices or crimes with guns taken from police," Kopel continues, " is that police officers should not be allowed to own guns with magazines of more than 10 rounds."

Facts are these:

In the period from 1992 to 2001, the vast majority of police officers were killed by handgun fire.

"Assault" weapons are not the primary weapon of choice for criminals, as they are not easily concealable - a major consideration for those who are intent on committing crimes.

Further, a 1996 study by Jeffrey A. Roth and Christopher S. Koper of the Urban Institute of the Urban Institute in Washington, DC "found no strong evidence to date that licensed dealers have increased 'off the books' sales of assault weapons in secondary markets and concealed them with false stolen gun reports. Stolen gun reports for assault weapons did increase slightly after the ban took effect, but by less than reported thefts of unbanned large-capacity semiautomatic handguns, which began rising well before the ban."

"The lack of an increase in stolen gun reports," Roth and Koper continue, "suggests that so far, the large stock of grandfathered assault weapons has remained largely in dealers’ and collectors’ inventories instead of leaking into the secondary markets through which criminals tend to obtain guns."

"At best," the study states, "the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders. Our best estimate is that the ban contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders between 1994 and 1995, beyond what would have been expected in view of ongoing crime, demographic, and economic trends. However, with only one year of post-ban data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this decrease reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a true effect of the ban."

Additionally, consider the following: in 1992, two years prior to the insidious "Assault" weapons Ban of 1994, there were no police homicides using "assault" weapons. None.

Furthermore a November 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics report states that less than 2 percent of federal and state inmates reported carrying a fully automatic or military-style semi-automatic firearm. This is after the implementation of the 1994 ban.

Meanwhile, a similar study done in 1991, prior to the "Assault" weapons ban, states that less than one percent of inmates reported carrying such a weapon.

What does the above information tell you? It tells you that not only has the "Assault" Weapons ban of 1995 been woefully ineffective, but that from the time of its inception, crimes with "assault" weapons actually increased slightly, instead of having the desired effect of a downward trend.

And what of the lying, whining, petulant politicians who consistently push these inane measures upon an unsuspecting, ignorant populace?

They would do well to remember that eventually, their policies will come home to roost. There are millions of us who know the truth, who understand their insidious goals, who read, study and spend our lives exposing these lying, misleading, power-hungry scum. We, the proverbial frogs, are getting smarter by the day. We are beginning to realize that the water temperature in our little pools is rising, and many of us are jumping out. Let's just hope it's not too late.

Nicki Fellenzer

Nicki is a US Army veteran, who spent nearly four years in Frankfurt, Germany on active duty at the American Forces Network. She is a former radio DJ and news anchor and a Featured Writer and Newslinks Director for Keepandbeararms.com. She is also a former contributing editor to the National Rifle Association's newest monthly magazine, Women's Outlook and writes occasionally for the Libertarian Party. She resides in Virginia with her family. We are also proud to have Nicki as regular contributor to Armed Females of America.

Copyright © 2003 by Armed Females of America. All rights reserved. Permission to redistribute this article for noncommercial purposes is hereby granted, provided that it is reproduced unedited, in its entirety and appropriate credit given.

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