Assaulting our liberties.

ITEM: Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry rebuked President Bush on Monday for letting a ban on assault weapons expire, reported Reuters for September 13. The senator said in part: "So, tomorrow for the first time in 10 years when a killer walks into a gun shop, when a terrorist goes to a gun show somewhere in America, when they want to purchase an AK-47 or some other military assault weapon, they're going to hear one word: 'sure.'"

ITEM: Following the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban, contended the Associated Press on September 12, "manufacturers look for a boom in business as people buy up previously banned weapons like AK-47s, Uzis and TEC-9s...."

BETWEEN THE LINES: The arguments for extending the so-called assault weapons ban were as specious as those used when it was implemented: cosmetic, symbolic and blatantly fraudulent. The real target remains the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) admitted as much when the ban was instituted, saying: "If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America turn them all in, I would have done it." Another gun-control advocate, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, acknowledged in 1996 that the only real justification for such a move was "not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation."

The ban was helped by propaganda that purposely confused frilly automatic weapons with semi-automatics and made bogus claims about their use by criminals. The legislation was aimed at 19 specific military-style semi-automatic weapons--which fire only one bullet per trigger pull--and ammunition magazines capable of carrying 10 or more rounds. It prohibited the production (not existing ownership) of such weapons, including those that had more than one demonized feature such as a bayonet lug, pistol grip or flash suppressor. Real automatic Uzis and AK-47s--not semi-automatic look-alikes--won't be flooding U.S. streets, as gun-controllers claim, in part because they are covered by other legislation (a 1989 firearms importation law) and because they simply aren't the weapons favored by many criminals.

Many so-called assault weapons covered by the law that just expired are not even particularly powerful compared to hunting dries, using amino of smaller caliber and lower velocities. Such weapons, as shown by numerous studies, were never used in more than one or two percent of violent crimes. Nationwide, according to government data, murders committed with knives, clubs and hands are over 20 times more frequent than those committed with the formerly banned firearms.

However, those who would assault our liberties will go to ludicrous extremes, then claim it is for our own good. Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) preposterously called the assault weapons ban one of "the most effective measures against terrorism that we have." Similarly, John Kerry maintained with a straight face that the lapse of the law would benefit al-Qaeda. President George Bush, siding with the most radical Democrats, supported the ban in his 2000 campaign and publicly favored its extension this year. None will acknowledge that restricting the rights of the law-abiding does not prevent a single criminal or terrorist from breaking the law.

The Second Amendment was meant to protect the God-given right of individual and collective self-defense as "being necessary to the security of a free state." That defense can be against a home intruder, a foreign army or a tyrant in one of our own political offices. As Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) once noted, the Founding Fathers designed our government to be a servant, not a master, of the American people: "The muskets they used against the British Army were the assault weapons of the time."