“How does banning something nobody can define when banning it once before didn’t accomplish anything constitute ‘doing something’?”

We are discussing, of course, “assault rifles.”

The mantra from Democrats, social media hysterics, tearful community members and President Biden is that a ban on “assault weapons” (you know: “weapons of war”) is an obvious, “common sense” measure that would save lives. One would think, would one not, that if that is really a serious proposal, one backed by statistics and facts, that its advocates would be able to clearly define what an “assault weapon” is.

Uh, no. On the Hill yesterday, Steve Dettelbach, President Biden’s hand-picked head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, was asked by Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-TX) to give a brief definition of the term “assault weapon” during his testimony in the House Appropriations Committee’s hearing focused on the ATF’s FY2024 budget. This wasn’t a “gotcha!” question: the guy heads the agency that oversees gun law enforcement, and he’s a members of the party that blathers on about deadly “assault weapons” at every opportunity. Nevertheless, Dettelbach couldn’t answer the question, instead huminahumina-ing,

“I’ll go shorter than that because I, honestly, if Congress wishes to take that up, I think Congress would have to do the work, but we would be there to provide technical assistance. I, unlike you, am not a firearms expert, to the same extent as you maybe, but we have people at ATF who can talk about velocity of firearms, what damage different kinds of firearms cause, so that whatever determination you chose to make would be an informed one.” 

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