This week Senate Democrats reintroduced a ban on so-called "assault rifles," and "high-capacity" magazines, an effort that has no chance of success, and even if approved would do nothing to bring down gun violence in the United States.
Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California, and Chris Murphy of Connecticut announced Wednesday that they were spearheading the bill, which is called the "Assault Weapons Ban of 2025."
The bill provides that "It shall be unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon." It includes a similar provision for magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds.
The proposal has virtually no chance of being approved in either chamber of Congress, which Republicans both control by a narrow margin. Even if Congress approved the bill, chances are President Trump would veto it.
AR-style rifles are perhaps the most common long gun in the United States, with an estimated 23 million legally owned AR-15s as of 2024.
This, however, creates a constitutional problem for the bill.
District of Columbia v. Heller is a landmark 2008 Supreme Court case where the court held that the Second Amendment protects the right of the people to possess weapons "in common use at the time."
Subsequent court decisions have only reaffirmed Heller, and with 23 million legally owned AR-15s in the United States, what could be more "in common use"?
During a news conference about the legislation, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., claimed that "This is not about the Second Amendment. This is about saving lives."
But it's not about that either — not really.
We had a federal "assault weapon" ban, signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994, and which had a 10-year expiration date. Two years ago the subject of that ban came up during a White House daily briefing,
"If you think about assault weapons ban, we know, when we saw — when the president [Biden] was involved in 1994 to get that done, we saw. We saw gun violence go down and when it sunset 10 years later, it went back up," said then-White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre. "So we know what could work and that's why you continue to hear the president calling on Congress to take action."
But that claim was totally false, and nationally syndicated talk radio host Dana Loesch immediately called her out on it.
"This literally never happened," she said, and attached links proving that the Justice Department, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the RAND Corporation, and The New York Times all confirmed that the 10-year ban had no effect whatsoever on gun violence.
Loesch added, "The [assault weapon ban] had zero, none, nada effect on the gun homicide rate. You can lie about this all you want and I'll continue publicizing the actual facts of the matter every single time."
The reason the previous ban had no effect on homicides is pretty clear. So-called "assault rifles" are seldom used in homicides for the simple reason that they're not easily concealed.
Handguns are the weapon of choice, followed by sharp, cutting instruments like knives and blunt objects such as hammers.
As the largest-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 earned the name "America's rifle" by the National Rifle Association. Despite that, or more likely because of it, AR-style rifles have been in the crosshairs of liberals and Democrats.
The "Assault Weapons Ban of 2025" is the latest example of that. But Congress won't approve it, the president won't sign it into law, and it wouldn't change the violent crime rate in the country if he did.
Democrats are just spinning their wheels, making noise and going nowhere on this.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and is a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He's also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.