SJM 201 Urges Congress to Define and Regulate ‘Assault Weapons’

This bill urges Congress to enact legislation to define and regulate semiautomatic assault weapons and rapid fire enhancing accessories in same manner as fully automatic weapons, and to define and regulate partially completed firearms components and kits and firearms that are assembled from them.

Personal Choice and Responsibility
This is another well-intentioned but meaningless attempt to put the gun genie back in the bottle. Full-auto firearms are indeed heavily restricted and devices like ‘bump stocks’ do blur the difference between semi-auto and full auto firearms. But maintaining a list of devices which enable semi autos to fire at near to full auto rate would not be possible as it already includes things as simple as shoelaces (see the 1996 ATF “Blakely Letter”). Further, people can simply practice and develop skills to enable very rapid fire without any add-on device at all. On ‘Partially completed firearms,’ anyone with the tools and skill to finish a firearm from a partially completed component is already able to manufacture a firearm from scratch. Partially completed components only save some time, they do not make something more or less possible.