Assault Rifle Ban: Weapon Control

Assault weapon control is becoming an unavoidable topic in the United States. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation more than nine hundred people have died from mass shootings in the past seven years and an assault rifle was used in twelve of the forty-three mass shootings in the past four years. The U.S. Department of Defense has long defined assault rifles as fully automatic rifles used for military purposes. The National Firearm Act of 1934 prohibited fully automatic weapons in the United States. The 1994 Assault Weapon Ban prohibited semi and fully automatic weapons and any weapon with military style characteristics. California Senator, Dianne Feinstein, is leading the charge in the American government to pass a bill that will limit the capacity of ammunition in a magazine and ban assault weapons that are too dangerous for public use. It is time for the American government to act swiftly and acknowledge the dangers assault rifles pose.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an assault rifle as any various automatic or semiautomatic rifles with large capacity magazines designed for military use. An assault weapon might have characteristics like a pistol grip, a silencer, a bayonet mount, a grenade launcher or a flash suppressor. The Violence Policy Center, a non-profit organization based in Washington D.C., provided a study that listed the top ten points about what assault weapons are and why they are so deadly. This document stated, “semiautomatic assault rifles (like AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles) are civilian versions of military assault rifles and there are virtually no significant differences between the two.” Machine guns or military style assault rifles are fully automatic, which means as long as you ho...

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