By Greg Campbell
TPNN Contributor
Americans have been hearing the back-and-forth between gun rights activists and anti-gun rights activists for months now. President Obama and Vice President Biden have campaigned in several parts of the country to drum up support for stricter gun control measures that could come in the form of legislative actions or executive orders made unilaterally by the president.
Throughout it all, however, gun rights activists have been vocal in their opposition to both outright bans and calls to strengthen record-keeping on firearm purchases.
Bans on firearms will likely be an uphill battle, but anti-gun rights advocates have attempted to be reassuring in their assertions that bans and universal registry of firearms will not affect “grandfathered-in” firearms that are already owned.
However, a recent memo by the Obama Justice Department claims otherwise.
According to a January 4th, 2013, memo from the Obama Justice Department entitled, “Summary of Select Firearm Violence Prevention,”
“Fatalities from mass shootings (those with 4 or more victims in a particular place and time) account on average for 35 fatalities per year. Policies that address the larger firearm homicide issue will have a far greater impact even if they do not address the particular issues of mass shootings.”
After stipulating that gun buybacks are largely ineffective, the memo reports,
“In order to have an impact, large capacity magazine regulation needs to sharply curtail their availability to include restrictions on importation, manufacture, sale, and possession. An exemption for previously owned magazines would nearly eliminate any impact. The program would need to be coupled with an extensive buyback of existing large capacity magazines. With an exemption the impact of the restrictions would only be felt when the magazines degrade or when they no longer are compatible with guns in circulation. This would take decades to realize.”
With regards to an assault weapons ban, the memo concluded,
“Since assault weapons are not a major contributor to U.S. gun homicides and the existing stock of guns is large, an assault weapon ban is unlikely to have an impact on gun violence.”
The memo ultimately flies in the face of the rhetoric put forth by the anti-gun rights advocates as it notes that so-called “assault weapons” are not a major factor in gun violence. Further, the memo, in several instances, stresses that the proposed legislation would be, ultimately, ineffective unless coupled with mandatory “gun buybacks” that allow for “no exemptions” and the requiring of gun registry.
The NRA released a video explaining the memo. Chris Cox, the Executive Director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action noted that though the Obama Administration has claimed that their proposals are “reasonable,”
“The Obama Administration believes that a gun ban will not work without a mandatory gun confiscation and universal background checks will not work without requiring national gun registration. Still think President Obama’s proposals sound reasonable?”
At a time when the Obama Administration is working to assuage fears amongst Americans that gun confiscation is a possibility, the Justice Department seems to reveal that such action would be the only possible means of seeing results for policies that will likely cost politicians considerable political capital to enact.
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