NPR, February 2018= In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an assault-weapons ban, which outlawed the AR-15 and other similar semiautomatic rifles.
Mass shootings were down in the decade that followed, compared to the decade before (1984-94) and the one after (2004-14), but they did not end entirely.
After the assault-weapons ban expired in 2004, gun makers quickly reintroduced them and sales were brisk.
"One of the things that we have seen in recent years after the assault weapons ban ended in 2004 was this really huge explosion of these boutique kind of rifle companies that are producing these very high-end rifles that are very customizable," said Alain Stephens, who's part of NPR's criminal justice team and a former member of the military.
Newsweek, April 2018 -A federal court ruled that AR-15 rifles, the high-powered rifle used in the Parkland mass shooting, as well as similar military-style rifles and high-capacity magazines are not protected under the Second Amendment.
"AR-15s and [large capacity magazines] are most useful in military service, they are beyond the scope of the Second Amendment [...] and may be banned," wrote Massachusetts District Court Judge William Young. The case was first brought in January 2017 by several gun owners, the nonprofit group Gun Owners' Action League, and gun stores On Target Training and Overwatch Outpost.
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In other words, according to that Massachusetts judge (Massachusetts has a very slick scheme for limiting our Second Amendment right), we can be functionally disarmed.
The purpose of the RKBA was to make sure the citizenry always could have parity in weapons with any enemy--foreign or domestic--that we might have to face.
Until 1934--when Smedley blew the whistle on the planned fascist takeover, and the Depression was making unemployed people think carefully about socialism--we did have parity.
Of course, the possible abandonment of Capitalism in favor of socialism had nothing to do with the politicians passing the first of the bills to disarm us, and of course SCROTUS permitted it, since they too are members of the ruling and owner class that gets rich off of our labor rather than their own.
We really are going to have to get busy and do something about our rights before we're so powerless that even Jefferson's "convulsion" is beyond our reach.
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