Banning "Assault Weapons" vs Racial Profiling

Quick, which is good and which is bad? Both good? Both bad? Make up your mind and read on...

Let's do a side by side, issue by issue comparison of the two practices, both of which are by their nature discriminatory. It's the merits of the discrimination that I'd like to examine, as well as the effectiveness at bringing about the desired outcome.

In both circumstances, we're talking about treating one class of items/individuals differently than another class. What criteria are used to place an item/individual in its class? In the case of racial profiling, physical appearance is the only information available to one who is doing the profiling. I suppose that in some instances speech patterns could also be used, but I think it's safe to say we're talking about classifying people based on how they look. Additionally, I suppose that if you knew the person's name, that could be used to profile him or her. It is much the same with so-called "assault weapons". The former federal law, as well as several current state laws classify guns as assault weapons either based specifically on their make and model, or on cosmetic appearance. The only way to determine whether or not a rifle is an assault weapon or not (if its name isn't on the list) is to check for a detachable magazine and two or more of the following:

• A "pistol grip "
• A "flash hider" (muzzle device used to prevent damage to eyes when fired in darkness, not rendering the shooter invisible at night)
• A "bayonet lug" (used for the attachment of a fixed blade knife under the barrel)

You could of course make a similar list of "features" that might (to you) help classify a person into a particular ethnic group.

But why go to the work of doing all this "classification"? That question gets more to the heart of the matter. Let's say that in both cases, the goal is to reduce or prevent crime. These are two methods of attempting to reach that goal.

The method's effectiveness is directly related to how well the classification criteria demonstrate a causal (not casual) relationship to the crime that is being "prevented". To put it another way, let's look at how well the "features lists" correlate to the actual perpetrators of the crimes.

The first and most obvious problem encountered with banning assault weapons (or any other "class" of firearms) is that firearms are not the perpetrators of the crimes. If firearms don't commit crime, does it make any sense to restrict them? Can it be demonstrated that restricting any kind of guns leads to a reduction of crime (which is the point, right)?

Anti-gunners won't let rational thought get in the way of a good plan though, so let's press on and evaluate the effectiveness of classifying and treating differently certain groups based on the identified superficial features.

I'm going to tread lightly here, so please do your best to not be offended. I'll start with racial profiling. IF it could be shown that crime was disproportionately often a result of black, white, arabic, or asian criminals, would it make sense to focus investigative efforts on that group of people? It at least makes sense on surface. If 3/4 of a crime is perpetrated by members of group X, and group X only represents 1/4 of the population, it would make sense to focus investigative efforts on members of group X when attempting to solve or prevent that crime. It at least makes logical sense, whether or not you believe it to be constitutional.

On the other hand, classifying and restricting firearms by their cosmetic features doesn't make any sense at all. "Hold it right there! The assault weapons ban applied to weapons of warfare. It wasn't about how the gun looked!" I beg do differ, and would happily lay that little lie to rest:

• Cosmetic/ergonomic feature #1: Pistol Grip - Antis will contend that a pistol grip allows the gunman lawful firearm owner to "spray from the hip". Anyone who takes 10 seconds to think about this would realize the absurdity of the claim. Stand up. Hold your right arm at your side, so that your hand is near your hip. Now give a "thumbs-up" while leaving your arm straight. Kinda hard, huh? That's what you'd have to do to hold a pistol gripped rifle at your waist and point it ahead of you. Now do the same thing, except point your thumb straight ahead. Lots easier, right? That's how you'd hold a conventionally-stocked rifle or shotgun. All of this assumes that your goal is to find a gun that you can "spray from the hip". Why would anyone ever want to do that? Contrary to Hollywood dogma, spraying wildly from the hip will not magically kill everything in a 180 degree arc in front of you. Controlled, aimed fire is effective. Wild lead spraying is not.
• Cosmetic/ergonomic feature #2: "Flash Hider" - Once again, the antis would like to mislead you. They'd have you believe a "flash hider" makes a firearm fire invisibly at night. Not so. It does keep from disabling the eyesight of the shooter when firing at night, but the muzzle flash is still quite (QUITE) visible to onlookers.
• Cosmetic/ergonomic feature #2: "Bayonet Lug" - This one is just silly. How many bayonet slayings have you ever heard of? We need a law against guns with this feature?

So as you can see, classifying guns based on these features has nothing to do with their likelihood of or effectiveness at being used in crime. So-called "assault weapons" function identically to common hunting rifles and other firearms not covered by the ban because they don't "look menacing" or couldn't pass as "military-style".

The reason I brought this whole thing up is that amazingly there are people who would contend that racial profiling is abhorrent and yet support restrictions on the law-abiding such as the "assault weapons" ban.

I merely wanted to point out that one is at least logically (not necessarily morally or constitutionally) defensible, while the other is utterly absurd.