Trade in Your Old 'Assault Weapon' For a New One, Says Rep. Rosa DeLauro
Thank the nice congresswoman for the new guns!
When the politicos flapped their lips about passing more pointless and intrusive gun laws, did you stretch your available budget to buy an SKS that you now wish was an AR-series rifle? Do you own an AR-15, but what you really want is an FN/FAL? You don't actually have a piece-of-crap TEC-9, do you? I mean, really…? Well, fear not, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct.) wants to give you up to $2,000 on a trade-in of your old "assault weapon" that you can put toward a brand new boomstick!
According to Rep. DeLauro's Website, "The SAFER Streets Act creates a $2,000 refundable tax credit ($1,000 for two consecutive years) for an assault weapon owner who gives their firearm to law enforcement." And you can put that $2,000 tax credit toward a brand new assault weapon of your choice!
Well, OK. Rep. DeLauro doesn't actually intend for you to trade in and trade up on your firearms collection. She's one of those anti-gunners who pees herself at the the thought that the public on which she foists intrusive and authoritarian laws has the means to do something about it should people get sufficiently bent out of shape.
"Assault weapons are not about hunting, or even self-defense," she insists. "There is no reason on Earth, other than to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, that anyone needs a gun designed for a battlefield. These weapons were used in Newtown, Aurora and countless other mass shootings across America. And they have been disproportionately used to kill law enforcement officers in the line of duty. They have no place on the streets or in our homes."
The SAFER Streets Act (and why not the Kittens, Puppies, and Burbling Babies Act? Let's try harder, Rosa.) is supposed "to reduce the number of privately owned weapons" becase they give politicians a sad. In her attempt to disarm us, Rosa and her pals are perfectly willing to spew bullshit about the imaginary dangers of detachable magazines and threaded barrels.
Never mind that the vast majority of "assault weapons" are put to safe, legal, and fun use; that homicides are down again as part of a decades-long decline in such crimes; that mass killings are very much not a growing problem; and that actual criminals don't get their weapons from legal sources anyway. Those inconvenient facts would throw off Rep. DeLauro, and she's on a roll here.
But let's take the opportunity for what it is. If Rep. DeLauro wants to hand out tax credits to people willing trade in a qualifying hunk of junk so they can score sweet new guns, it would be churlish to say "no."
For the record, this law has about zero chance of getting through the current Congress.