Letter: An assault rifle ban will make you less safe

Posted 1/28/25

To the editor:

This is the most dangerous time of year for Rhode Islanders. It is when the legislature is back in session and the politicians gather to play their games.

Every year, our …

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Letter: An assault rifle ban will make you less safe

Posted

To the editor:

This is the most dangerous time of year for Rhode Islanders. It is when the legislature is back in session and the politicians gather to play their games.

Every year, our state’s legislators waste their time and our taxpayer dollars pushing bills that restrict firearms rights, falsely claiming they will make us safer. Facts and common sense show they are more likely to make us less safe.

Take the top bill on the gun control advocates’ wishlist this session: a ban on what they purposely misidentify as “assault rifles.” Assault rifles are machine guns. Existing law makes it all but impossible for Rhode Islanders to own them. The rifles the bill would ban are not substantially different from ones legally owned by the public since the latter part of the 1800s. Gun control lobbyists purposely mislabel these rifles as assault weapons to frighten the public into wanting them banned. They lie because they don’t have the truth on their side.

These rifles are used in less than 2 percent of all homicides. They are almost never used by those who commit most homicides: urban gangs and career criminals. But they are favored by many in the public to defend themselves against robberies and home invasions. These rifles are light weight, affordable, compact and have very mild recoil. This makes them especially popular with women. 

Connecticut and New York State have banned the sale of AR-15 style rifles for years. Ones owned prior to the ban have to be surrendered or registered. The latest statistics show that fewer than 15 percent of the people who own these firearms have complied with the law. With these rifles seldom used in homicides and their owners refusing to register them, how does banning them make the public safer? But what the ban has “accomplished” is create more than a million felons and prevented the public from owning a popular and effective self-defense firearm. 

Gun control enthusiasts claim the national AR ban from 1994 to 2004 resulted in fewer homicides. Not true. None of the credible studies of the ban could find any connection between it and a reduction in homicides.

Who wins from an AR ban? The knee-jerk gun-control crowd gets to feel smugly virtuous. Cynical politicians benefit by stoking and preying on exaggerated fears for votes to keep themselves in office.

It is us, the public, that loses. An AR ban gains us no increase in safety, while an effective means for self-defense will be taken away — likely forever. 

Every assertion in this letter can be verified online from reputable sources. It isn’t easy because search engines like Google put anti-firearm propaganda from the likes of Giffords, Everytown and Violence Policy Center at the top their search list. You have to dig for it, but honest information from unbiased sources can be found. 

If we don’t stand up for our Second Amendment firearms’ rights to protect ourselves and our loved ones, we will surely continue to lose them.

Tell your legislators if they support an AR ban you won’t support them for reelection.

David C. Huth

Portsmouth

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