Massachusetts Attorney General Wants To Ban Semi-Automatic Weapons
BY Herschel Smith
8 years, 4 months ago
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said Wednesday she was cracking down on the sale of guns that, she said, were designed to skirt a state law banning assault weapons.
Healey said she had put gunmakers and sellers on notice that they were not allowed to sell the guns, which she said were intentionally designed to circumvent the ban by incorporating “small tweaks that do nothing to limit the deadliness of the weapon.”
The attorney general said at a morning news conference that the law remained the same, but her office would change the way it enforced it.
While manufacturers have deemed certain weapons in compliance with state law, she said, her office had looked at the issue and concluded that they weren’t.
“The gun industry does not get to decide what’s compliant,” she said during the event, where she was flanked by law enforcement officials, community leaders and anti-violence activists. “We do.”
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Healey spoke after penning an opinion piece in Wednesday’s Boston Globe, in which she said the gun industry was taking advantage of a legal “loophole of potentially horrific proportions.”
She said her office had begun looking at the law in the wake of the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, where a gunman killed 49 people.
Healey said the recent killing of police in Baton Rouge and Dallas, along with the fatal shootings of black men at the hands of police, have only added to the urgency.
She described her action as “a step” toward reducing gun violence.
“It is not a total panacea, I recognize that, but it is a step,” Healey said.
She said her office had notified dealers in the state that they cannot sell guns whose “operating system is essentially the same as a banned weapon.”
Operating system. Got that? That means semi-automatic weapons of all kinds. She doesn’t mean DI systems as designed by Eugene Stoner for the AR-15. All semi-automatic weapons can discharge one round for every pull of the trigger.
Ms. Healey has declared herself the only sovereign potentate who gets to adjudicate on everything and anything she wishes. She’s queen. And gun owners should willingly bypass, smuggle, and disobey this edict however and whenever they can.
On July 21, 2016 at 8:53 am, Douglas Mortimer said:
This woman has a screw loose and a corn cob up her rear-end. What authority exactly does she have to do this? To heck with the expensive lawsuits, tar and feathers are far cheaper.
On July 21, 2016 at 8:56 am, Ironwolf32 said:
I am still amazed that I learned all about the 2nd Amendment, being born and raised in MA. I am not there now and I don’t miss it.
On July 21, 2016 at 9:22 am, Fred said:
“The gun industry does not get to decide what’s compliant,” she said during the event, where she was flanked by law enforcement officials, community leaders and anti-violence activists. “We do.”
Who gets to decide? Officials, community leaders and activists, that’s who. Outside of law, no due process, against the rights of men, and against a Holy God our mob rules. Under threat and at gun point, by color of law, you will comply or else. Got that?
The rule of law is dead.
On July 21, 2016 at 10:53 am, Archer said:
“The gun industry does not get to decide what’s compliant,” she said during the event, where she was flanked by law enforcement officials, community leaders and anti-violence activists. “We do.”
Maybe. But what you do NOT get to do is take a firearm already deemed compliant, and decide it’s not. You do NOT get to label a firearm objectively manufactured in accordance to your law, and say that it’s not.
Not if you want to maintain the illusion of credibility, anyway.
She said her office had notified dealers in the state that they cannot sell guns whose “operating system is essentially the same as a banned weapon.”
And what is the working definition of “operating system” we’re to base this on? Are we talking semi-auto via direct impingement? Semi-auto in general?
Or might it be something user-experience focused, like, “you point, click, and it goes ‘BANG’,” which as an “operating system” pretty much describes all firearms dating back a few hundred years.
I’d say she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but I believe she’s being intentionally obtuse and vague, so as to prohibit as many guns as possible.
On July 21, 2016 at 11:06 am, Fred said:
Right, It’s the injection of an arbitrary “standard” that allows “enforcement” sometimes, err, in the times and against the people we don’t like, whenever we feel like it.