Virginia Gun Rights

So, I get my daily email from National Journal giving me the low down on the goings on around Washington and I see this:

THE ASSAULT-WEAPONS VOTE WAS A HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE SHAM.

Now, when you go to the article the title is not quite that provactive but the point is still the same.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote Thursday approving an assault-weapons ban was a sham—if you think the purpose was to ban assault weapons. If you think the committee’s vote offered an opportunity for lawmakers to parse and deliberate complicated and unresolved questions about the Constitution, guns, and violence, then it was a highly productive 90 minutes.

You can’t read an article about Feinstein’s bill without reading that it is doomed to failure.  If I was a tin foil hat type of guy, I would swear the fix is in to lull gun owners to sleep then surprise the crap out of them when a ban passes. 

But National Journal does have a point that we got to see what a sham the proposed ban really is.  Take amendments sponsored by Texas Senator John Cornyn:

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, made a point of highlighting the “absurdity” of Feinstein’s bill by offering several amendments carving out exceptions—for rural residents, residents near the U.S.-Mexico border, women victims of domestic violence, and recipients of protection orders. Even if any of Cornyn’s amendments had passed (they didn’t), he still would have had no intention of voting for the assault-weapons ban. His theatrics in committee were “designed to show the flawed logic in their bill,” said Cornyn spokeswoman Megan Mitchell. “Why have exemption for retired police officers, but not for veterans? Why not victims of domestic violence, et cetera?”

And of course there was the great questioning by Texas Senator Ted Cruz that really got under Senator Feinstein’s skin.

So, while I might not call it a sham, the vote was useful to see which of our representatives stand for Liberty and which stand for statism.

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