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Effort to confiscate ex-military arms fails
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Effort to confiscate ex-military arms failsPROPOSAL: Defense bill loses controversial language, becomes law. The Associated Press (Published: January 7, 2002) Fairbanks -- A proposed law that would have allowed the federal government to confiscate and destroy former military rifles and other military equipment died in a House-Senate conference committee last month.Gun owner groups objected to the proposal, saying it would have outlawed private possession of everything from hunting rifles to antique military aircraft.A gun control advocate, though, said Thursday that the proposed law would have justifiably curbed access to military-style weapons. The language would have made possession of "significant military equipment" illegal unless it had been "demilitarized" -- basically rendered useless as a weapon.For a definition of "significant military equipment," the proposal's authors referred to a Department of State list. The list includes all military "nonautomatic, semiautomatic and fully automatic firearms" that fire bullets in calibers of half an inch or less.That would cover numerous former military rifles used as hunting rifles, Mike Hawker, a board member of the Alaska Gun Collectors Association, said in an interview last fall. Examples include the Model 1903 Springfield .30-06, the standard World War I-issue bolt-action rifle that holds half a dozen shells, and the M-1, the standard World War II semiautomatic rifle.The language outlawing such weapons appeared in the Senate version of a bill giving the Defense Department authority to spend money in this fiscal year. The Senate passed the bill Oct. 2. The House passed a similar bill, without the demilitarization language, Oct. 17.The bill went to a conference committee to work out differences. When the final version appeared publicly in mid-December, the weapons language was gone. Both chambers approved, and President Bush signed the final bill Dec. 28.Defense authorization bills are written in the Armed Services committees in each chamber of Congress.Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is chairman of the Senate committee. However, his spokeswoman, Tara Andringa, told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner's Washington bureau that the demilitarization language was not Levin's idea; it came from the Bush administration's Department of Defense.Levin, she said, was willing to include the language as long as the various concerns about it were addressed to everyone's satisfaction."He was aware of the concerns and hopeful they would find a solution," she said. A solution was not reached, though, so Levin agreed to drop the language, she said.Gun control organizations wanted the new rules.Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center in Washington, said former military weapons turn up in crimes "in fairly significant amounts."Some weapons can also be easily converted to fully automatic machine guns. "The M-1 carbines in particular are easy to convert to full auto," she said.People who use such weapons for hunting should consider the greater good of eliminating them, Rand said. "They represent a real threat to public safety and law enforcement." http://www.adn.com/alaska/story/748439p-801091c.html
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