Mayorkas very wrong on assault weapon ban :: 03/30/2023

As Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas is going to have a lot in common with his boss, Joe Biden. I mean, he wouldn’t have gotten the job in the first place if that weren’t true.

So it’s not surprising to see him make similar comments to Biden when testifying before members of Congress.

For example, he voiced his support for a new assault weapon ban.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Tuesday that he backs a ban on the ownership of “assault weapons” – but declined to provide a clear definition of the type of gun he would like to ban.

Mayorkas was asked at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., whether he agrees with President Biden “that we should ban the private ownership of assault weapons in America?”

“Senator, I do,” Mayorkas replied.

Kennedy then asked him: “What is an assault weapon?”

“It is, for example, an AK-47,” Mayorkas said.

Well…that’s clear as mud.

Mayorkas did, eventually, imply that he supports a ban with a definition similar to the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban, which defined such firearms based on certain superficial features.

Of course, if that’s the case, well, there were plenty of AR-15s still bought and sold lawfully during that decade-long span.

In fact, that’s when the so-called assault weapon became so popular in the first place.

Mayorkas, in defending such a ban, added:

“I want to remind you, the last time we passed the assault weapons ban violent shooting went down. Mass shootings went down … I can’t do anything except plead with the Congress to act reasonably,” he added.

Except, the reduction in violent crime had absolutely nothing at all to do with the ban, a fact Mayorkas should be well aware of.

In fact, the homicide rate was declining for several years before the ban went into effect and continued for a decade and a half afterward. It wasn’t really until 2020 that we started to see a spike in violent crimes.

Further, we also know that such weapons account for only a tiny fraction of the total homicide rate. They’re just not a significant choice for the weapon used in most violent crimes.

As for mass shootings, there’s really not a lot of evidence that the assault weapon ban accomplished anything there, either. In fact, there’s a great deal showing that it accomplished absolutely nothing.

You’d think the Secretary of Homeland Security would be more up on his numbers.

You would be wrong, apparently.

Mayorkas may want an assault weapon ban, but the fact that he also doesn’t really know what an assault weapon is and doesn’t know the relevant statistics about those weapons being used tells you just how clueless the man is about such firearms.

Now, not knowing things isn’t necessarily some great sin. People can’t know everything.

Yet this ignorance does tell us that Mayorkas’s opinions can be summarily discarded as irrelevant because of said ignorance.

Further, getting information blatantly wrong as he did with the impact of the 1994 ban raises questions about his veracity on literally anything else he has said.

https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/03/29/mayorkas-gun-ban-n68998