Reply #66: Ummm, considerably more Americans lawfully own "assault weapons" than hunt.

[benEzra]

Replace the loaded term "assault weapons" with "small-to-intermediate-caliber, non-automatic civilian rifles" and you might see the hole in your logic. And replace it with "the most popular civilian rifles in the United States" and you might see where the backlash comes from.

I don't particularly care if "hunting rifles" are legal; like most gun owners, I don't hunt. I DO choose to own small-caliber rifles with handgrips that stick out, and I'd darn sure like to keep them, continue to be able to buy ammo and magazines for them, and replace them or buy spare parts if they break.

But Obama is smart, this time there won't be a sunset date and manufacturers won't be able to evade the ban by making simple cosmetic changes. Furthermore, the loophole of allowing these weapons to continue to be sold if they claim to be manufactured prior to x will be addressed by either creating a assault weapon registry (that is closed after a year) like we have with machine guns, or just a simple ban on trading them.

This will eliminate the issue as a wedge issue. In 4 years the nutters will have forgotten and given up, just as they have forgotten and given up on fully automatic machine guns that were given a similiar treatment in the 1980's

Nice script, there.

If you really want to put the gun issue front-and-center and create another 1994 in 2010, keep shoveling that bullshit. Unless that's what you really want.