By: Teresa Mull

President Joe Biden is calling again for Congress to reinstitute a so-called “assault weapons ban” (AWB) and a ban on “high-capacity” magazines.

After suspect Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa killed 10 people in a grocery store in Colorado this week, Biden reiterated his desire to punish millions of law-abiding citizens for the heinous acts of one crazed madman, who reportedly “had a temper like a demon.”

Biden said at the White House yesterday:

“I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save the lives in the future, and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act. We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a senator. It passed. It was the law for the longest time. And it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again.”

During an interview Wednesday morning on CBS, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed:

“Stop pushing the false choice that this means we are coming to take your guns. That is not what this is about. This is not about getting rid of the 2nd Amendment. It’s simply about saying we need reasonable gun safety laws. There’s no reason why we have assault weapons on the streets of a civil society – they are weapons of war, they are designed to kill a lot of people quickly.”

Of course, gun owners know the so-called “assault weapons” the liberals love to demonize are not, in fact, “weapons of war,” and that “assault weapon” is simply a label the left applies to any gun they don’t like and deem to be scary.

Banning “AR-style assault weapons,” the type of gun the mainstream media purports Alissa used to carry out his carnage, and which also happens to be the most popular firearm in America, would make millions of law-abiding citizens in the U.S. in possession of contraband.

Would it be worth it, though? Would banning “assault weapons” make America safer and “bring down” mass shootings, as Biden claims? We tried it before.

Several independent researchers have concluded that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban had no effect on crime. The National Research Council, for instance, reported in 2005 that, “A recent evaluation of the short-term effects of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence outcomes.”

There’s a reason the AWB was not renewed.

What’s more, According to the FBI’s 2019 Uniform Crime Report (UCR), double the number of people were killed with “personal weapons” such as hands and fists than those killed with any type of rifle.

The report shows 364 people died during incidents involving rifles in 2019, whereas 600 were killed in attacks involving feet, fists, and hands.

This latest call to disarm Americans is, of course, just like all their policy initiatives, another ploy to empower Democrats and destroy freedom.

Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.