California’s Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla have revived one of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s worst ideas: a ban on so-called assault weapons.
“The assault weapons ban was a vital tool in the struggle to reduce gun violence and mass shootings. It saved lives. Today, I’m honored to carry on the legacy of Dianne Feinstein, and work to ban these weapons that have led to the most terrible mass casualty events in our communities,” Schiff said on Wednesday as he introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2025.
To that claim, we’d refer Schiff to the findings of the RAND Corporation, which concluded in a 2020 report on assault weapons bans, “Assault weapon bans have uncertain effects on mass shootings. Evidence for this relationship is inconclusive.”
We’d also point out the findings of a 2004 Department of Justice study on the impact of the 1994 assault weapons ban, which concluded, “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”
We must also point out that the firearm of choice in the vast majority of homicides are handguns. They’re also the weapon of choice in most mass shootings as well.
“According to a recent National Institute of Justice report on public mass shootings from 1966 through 2019, 77 percent of the perpetrators used handguns,” noted Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum in a 2022 assessment of a prior assault weapons ban bill.
And ultimately, we’d have to point Schiff and Padilla to the United States Constitution.
Whether they like it or not, the Bill of Rights is clear that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
They might not like the arms people are choosing to bear, but adults in America generally have the right to own firearms.
This is also not to mention that there’s generally not much of a difference from what politicians would call an “assault weapon” and other types of weapons. As evidenced by the fact that non-assault weapons are the weapons of choice for most killings and mass shootings, we’re not sure what the point really is.
Instead of railing against certain types of firearms, Padilla and Schiff would better focus on preventing crime than turning the law-abiding into criminals.
