-=Continued from previous post=- 
     This past Monday, the first business day after Congress
recessed for its spring break, Clinton signed an Executive Order
making the ban permanent on 58 of those guns -- refusing even to
allow their licensed importers to take delivery on 5,000-10,000
legally authorized guns which were in transit, or in customs
warehouses.
     If it stands (and I see little eagerness in this Congress to
overturn it) the ban accomplishes the announced intention of
White House official Jose Cerda, who told the Los Angeles Times
last fall that they intended "taking the law and bending it as
far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns."
     
     In his favorite "gun control" setting -- a Rose Garden
ceremony with uniformed police officers on risers behind him
(some of whom appeared to be bored, on-duty White House guards)
- -- Clinton repeated much the same speech he delivered when
announcing the freeze last November, again saying:  "You don't
need an Uzi to go deer hunting.  You don't need an AK 47 to go
skeet shooting."
     Never mind that the relative pipsqueak 9mm pistol cartridge
used by the Uzi is illegal for deer hunting in every state, and
that skeet is shot with shotguns, not rifles.  
     The banned guns are variants of just five models, leaving
the door open for a lot more guns to be banned if the same
criteria are used to review other guns -- as it will be.
     Of even greater significance, the ban paves the way for the
Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) next bill: prohibiting
domestic manufacture of "non-sporting" guns.
     Most of the guns banned are derivatives of the semi-auto
AK-47S, but they also include Uzis, the FN-FAL  rifle  and the
SIG SG550 and HK-91 and -93 design types.
     The guns complied with the 1994 ban -- despite the wail of
Sen. Feinstein  and 34 of her colleagues that the modified guns
didn't follow "the spirit" of the 1994 law.  
     The BATF did a tailored review which showed that relatively
few of the guns are used for "sport" -- by their definition of
sport as only hunting or formal competition.  Most guns,
including the banned guns, are used for informal recreational
shooting (though NRA has a "military rifle" class in Metallic
Silhouette, a competition based on hunting).
     But the key criteria was whether a gun was "capable of
accepting" a magazine over 10 rounds, which was the basis for
allowing one gun -- the AK-47VEPR -- off the list.  
     The basis for the ban was the provision in the 1968 Gun
Control Act prohibiting importation of guns not "particularly 
suitable or readily adaptable to sporting purposes."   
     That provision was intended to prevent importation of
undefinable "Saturday Night Specials," which were "defined" by an
arbitrary, never-challenged "point system" based on size, weight
and physical characteristics.  
     Some years ago BATF used that "sporting purposes" language
to prohibit importation of the "StreetSweeper" shotgun, a gun
designed for defense not sport.  A legal challenge failed.
     President George Bush used that provision in 1989 to ban 43
so-called "assault weapons."  Again the courts upheld the ban,
making a successful legal challenge to the new ban unlikely.
     After the 1994 Feinstein ban prohibited domestic manufacture
and importation of 19 named models, the importers modified their
guns by removing offending features like bayonet lugs, which the
President correctly stated were merely cosmetic differences --
which is the only difference between the banned gun and any other
gas-operated, box magazine fed semi-auto.  
     But the gun-banners in this Administration know almost
nothing about guns, as indicated by Clinton's skeet rifle
comments.  Consider an exchange during the press briefing on the
ban with a "senior administration official" (I think former
Boston police commissioner Ray Kelly).
     "QUESTION:  Are large-capacity magazines and smaller
magazines the same size, or is it something about the mechanism
in the weapon that makes it capable of taking more than 10 rounds
in rapid fire?
     "SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  It's something about the
aperture and the mechanism of the weapon, because you have to be
able to have enough power to pump out these number of rounds, is
my understanding."
======================================================================
Copyright (c) 1998 by Neal Knox Associates
               7771 Sudley Rd., No. 44
               Manassas, VA  20109
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