Gun control is a moving target
I served as a counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, attached to a U.S. senator who was one of the original co-sponsors of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. I worked in the Senate when the act was up for renewal. The law was not re-enacted. With the recent media coverage of several incidents of tragic firearms violence, questions of gun control have risen again. Answers are complex.
The positions of those who oppose any restrictions and those who are against civilian gun ownership are relatively simple. The former tend to blanket themselves in the Second Amendment, notwithstanding that no court has said that the federal or state governments cannot restrict some forms of ownership — such as the current prohibition on general civilian ownership of machine guns. The latter face perhaps an even bigger hurdle: the explicit language of the Constitution coupled with the U.S. Supreme Court's two recent rulings cementing individuals' gun-ownership rights.
For those in between, the discussion is difficult and often clouded by misinformation. Take, for example, the guns and accoutrements used in the vicious and cowardly Aurora, Colo., slaughtering. The assailant used three different guns: an AR-15, a pump-action shotgun and a Glock .40-caliber handgun. Let's look at each one and the legal issues that surround them.
The AR-15 is the civilian version of the well-known military M-16. The most important distinction between the two is that it is not automatic — what some would slightly inaccurately call a machine gun. That is, it shoots like many other rifles used for hunting and target fire: Each time the user pulls the trigger, one — and only one — bullet is shot. This gun, under the now-expired assault-weapons ban, was illegal — for sure. However, its virtual copy, the "matchpoint," was not. Also, under the assault-weapons ban, owners of any guns on the prohibited list who purchased their guns prior to the law's enactment could continue to own their guns and, indeed, sell them. (And they did so during the ban at a nice premium.) In other words, the ban was not a ban, but a prohibition on the manufacture and sale of new versions of guns on the list.
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202571381816&Gun_control_is_a_moving_target&slreturn=20120815100839
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