When Congress was considering a ban assault rifles in 1994, three presidents signed a letter supporting the ban.
The bill passed and assault weapons were banned from 1994-2004, over the objections of the Pro-Death lobbyists in the NRA.
Ford, Carter, and Reagan said, among other things:
While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals. We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
be sure to get some sleep — don’t work ALL night!
Linda McNeil lmcneil@rice.edu http://educatingallourchildren.blogspot.com/
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If this were a sane country not enamored with guns to an alarming degree, these weapons of mass destruction would have been banned ages ago. The gun fetishism is off the charts and insane. It’s just deplorable that so many Americans feel that they must have these semi-automatic weapons and tough luck on the rest of the American populace. It’s not as if they can’t own any number of other types of guns. Sorry, I don’t get why someone has to own a small arsenal of guns with thousands of rounds of ammunition. We have a whole army of gun promoters/propagandizers like Wayne LaPierre, Dana Loesch, John Lott, Alex Jones, most of the GOP, etc., who are shameless and hypocritical. It’s not about freedom, it’s about the money.
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Walmart stop selling AR 15 in 2015 but sells the AR 15 accessories.
https://www.thetrace.org/2015/09/walmart-ar-15-gun-custom/
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Interesting development:
PITTSBURGH, PA – Dick’s Sporting Goods, the nation’s largest sporting goods retailer, is halting sales of selling assault-style weapons like the one used in the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting.
Dick’s also no longer will sell firearms to anyone under the age of 21 and is stopping the sale of high capacity magazines, the company said on Wednesday.
https://patch.com/new-jersey/princeton/s/gd6t7/dicks-sporting-goods-ends-sale-of-assault-style-weapons
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News story:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cops-teacher-in-custody-after-barricading-self-in-classroom-with-gun/
Clearly, this teacher needed to be allowed to have a gun in the classroom.
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Once again Joe Kloc of Harper’s Magazine sum up everything we know in a way that makes it even more obvious. Magic Bullets:
Following the year’s 30th mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 17 people at a school in Parkland, Florida, lawmakers debated the best way to stop gun violence in American schools. As the 31st, 32nd, 33rd, 34th, and 35th mass shootings occurred, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, which has repeatedly passed amendments to federal funding bills that prevent the Centers for Disease Control from directly researching the causes of gun violence, said the killings could not be addressed with a “magic bullet”; and US president Donald Trump, who has previously expressed a fear of sharks, blood, stairs, watching prostitutes urinate, collecting rent in Cincinnati, and holding a 27-year-old bald eagle named Uncle Sam, said that an officer who did not intervene in the Parkland shooting was a “coward,” that he would have stopped the shooter himself even if he “didn’t have a weapon,” and that “highly trained” teachers should be armed in the classroom. A school board in Kentucky voted to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons, police in Louisiana raided the home of a student who observed that the symbol for a square root resembled a gun, and a high school in Pennsylvania suspended a teacher for discussing the Parkland shooting in class. The governor of Kentucky said the country needed to have “an honest conversation” about violent music and pornography “in the hands” of “young people”; congresspersons in Florida rejected a ban on assault rifles and then passed a resolution that declared pornography a public heath risk; a former Pennsylvania senator blamed “absent dads” for mass shootings; and the National Rifle Association, which in combination with its self-described “lobbying arm” paid $5 million to lobbyists last year, announced through its chief spokeswoman that it wasn’t “a lobby group” for gun ownership. Trump said the country must “do something” about how “young people’s thoughts” are shaped by “violence on video games”; and the NRA’s president said that “socialists” wanted to take away American’s handguns and semi-automatic rifles so that citizens wouldn’t be able to defend themselves against an attack by the US government, which employs a total of 1,373,650 active-duty personnel; owns 5,884 combat tanks, 41,062 armored vehicles, 1,934 self-propelled artillery guns, 19 aircraft carriers, 63 destroyers, 70 submarines, 2,296 fighter planes, and 947 attack helicopters; maintains a stockpile of 6,800 nuclear bombs, including some that are 80 times more powerful than the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima during World War II; and operates on a budget of about $600 billion, which congressional Republicans said should be increased, and which the military used in part to fund Army-themed video games designed to recruit teenagers.
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Meanwhile in Norway: Already known for its tough gun control laws, Norway is reportedly taking steps to further tighten its firearm legislation. Quoting a Norwegian lawmaker, AFP reported Tuesday that the Scandinavian nation is planning to ban semi-automatic weapons by 2021 — a year that also marks the 10-year anniversary of the 2011 mass shooting on Norway’s Utoya island.
Peter Frolich, a member of parliament who sits on the judicial affairs committee, told AFP that “it has become clear that there is a parliamentary majority in favor of” the ban, which was first proposed last year by the country’s minority right-wing government.
“Semi-automatic weapons will therefore be banned in Norway,” Frolich said. AFP noted that the law would go into effect in 2021. [snip] Norway has a relatively high rate of gun ownership, mostly for hunting and use in outdoor sports; but save for Breivik’s rampage in 2011 — which was the country’s deadliest attack since World War II — the nation boasts low levels of gun violence.
The rate of gun deaths in Norway was 1.22 per 100,000 people in 2014, compared with 10.54 per 100,000 in the United States. The country has not had a mass shooting since the 2011 attack.
Norway has some the world’s strictest firearms legislation, including robust background checks and laws mandating the secure storage of guns and ammunition. According to an earlier Guardian report, many categories of guns, including automatic weapons and certain handguns, are also banned.
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Link for the above quote:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/norway-semi-automatic-weapon-ban_us_5a9652cee4b0e6a523029513
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That’s Norway for you.
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I hear the roar of a big machine
Two worlds and in between
Love lost, fire at will
Dum-dum bullets and shoot to kill, I hear
Dive bombers, and
Empire down
It seems not only the pop culture is returning to 1980-ies themes.
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I also support a ban on these types of weapons. Bring it on.
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Our so-called president really is a moron of the highest level. In his White House gun “discussion” today, he claimed the Parkland shooter should have had his guns taken away whether or not he had the right to own them. Let that sink in. This isn’t some drunk sitting at a bar (who would likely be more coherent than this idiot). He’s a freaking president who literally does not understand the most basic elements of the law making and enforcement process. The time to differentiate between respect for the office and the holder of the office is over.
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There was a time when the NRA supported gun control: http://www.vnews.com/Column-Gun-Laws-Do-Make-a-Difference-15716743
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