If Your name Is Margolis, You'd Better Stick to Modeling

Florida state senator Gwen Margolis is proposing Senate Bill 500, a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines that would not only to attempt to resurrect the flawed and failed 1994 Crime Bill on a statewide level, but would also seek to make the ban retroactive. She advocates nothing less than the confiscation of the very arms our Founding Fathers would most protect, and it is all based upon a series of lies.

Let us go through the fallacies perpetuated by Margolis, shall we?

Her bill states, starting on line 29 of the first page, "WHEREAS, the United States Congress passed, and the President of the United States signed into law, the Federal Assault Weapons Act on September 13, 1994, which prohibited the use and possession of assault weapons, and-"

And let's start right there.

The last I checked, there has never been a "Federal Assault Weapons Act." There was, however, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Perhaps if Senator Margolis is going to try and reinstate and expound upon a law, she should at least see if that law has ever existed.

But her lack of knowledge of the law neither starts nor ends with the name of the law, but extends into the most basic content of the law as well.

"-which prohibited the use and possession of assault weapons, and-"

And which did no such thing. Margolis is either ignorant of the law, or is exaggerating it to the point of outright fabrication.

The possession and use of assault weapons was never prohibited in the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (which from now on, we will simply call the "1994 Crime Bill" as it is commonly referred).

The fact sheet of the 1994 Crime Bill specifically states the fact that the law "bans the manufacture of 19 military-style assault weapons, assault weapons with specific combat features, 'copy-cat' models, and certain high-capacity ammunition magazines of more than ten rounds.'"

The 1994 Crime Bill did not, in letter or in practicality, ban the use or possession of assault weapons, or of their semi-automatic clones. As a matter of fact, it specifically protected existing lawfully-owned assault weapons, and allowed the manufacture of assault weapons throughout the entire period of the failed ban with only slight cosmetic and zero functional change to the basic design of the firearms whatsoever.

Shall we continue?

Margolis continues on line 6 of the second page of the proposed bill "WHEREAS, as a result of the expiration of the ban, UZI's, AK-47's, and other semiautomatic weapons are now available for purchase and possession in this state, -"

I have a news flash for Senator Margolis: semi-automatic weapons were available for legal purchase and possession every single minute of every single day that the 1994 Crime bill was in effect, not only in Florida, but in every state in the Union.

In fact, hundreds of new models and variants of semi-automatic rifles came to the public market in the past ten years, including, but hardly limited to, models from manufacturers such as Armalite, Benelli, Beretta, Browning, Bushmaster, etc.

Her contention that these firearms were not for sale during this time period is simply a fallacy. The only question that matters is this; does Senator Margolis spreads fallacies out of ignorance, or out of malice?

In either event, I saw no reason to continue reading a proposed law based upon shoddy research and blatant falsehoods, though there appeared to be far more of this proposed bill that would not stand up to closer scrutiny.

This flawed document should be regarded more as a work of fiction than a serious attempt at legislation.

Perhaps Senator Margolis should try to learn something about her subject matter before she tries to legislate it.

Update: text of email sent to Senator Margolis on 12/21/2004:

Dear Senator Margolis,

It is readily apparent that you lack even fundamental knowledge of a subject on which you are trying to legislate. Perhaps you should at least try to get your basic facts correct before basing legislation on incorrect or misleading information, as you have done with your proposed bill.

A few of your many fact errors have been noted in an article at the web link below.

(link to this article)

Have a Nice Day.

Sincerely,