Guns: AG"s proposed assault weapon ban is phony

Re: “Ban assault weapons, AG urges Legislature,” (TNT, 9/8).

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson is a savvy politician. He knows people will confuse the made up term “assault weapons” with real military select fire assault rifles. Those have been under strict federal control since 1934. He knows that the Hillary Clinton gun ban that he plans to emulate would target ordinary semiautomatic rifles that only have cosmetic features in common with military rifles and would have no impact on crime.

He knows that rifles of all types are used less often in homicides than are blunt objects or fists. In addition, he knows that arbitrary restrictions on the number of rounds a magazine can hold are meaningless. He can’t have missed the fact that the gun homicide rate is down an astonishing 49 percent since its peak in 1993. This during a time that the number of firearms (AR style being the most popular rifle) in civilian hands has reached an all-time high.

By his own admission, Ferguson knows that such an arbitrary and capricious law has no chance of passing the Legislature. So what’s his game? It’s simple. He’s just trying to set the stage for anti-gun extremists, like the astroturf group Washington Ceasefire, to mount an initiative campaign.

This story was originally published September 12, 2016 at 2:48 PM with the headline "Guns: AG"s proposed assault weapon ban is phony."