Carbajal-Backed Assault Weapons Ban Passes House for First Time in Decades

Source: Office of Rep. Salud Carbajal

[On Friday], the U.S. House of Representatives voted to advance legislation co-sponsored by Congressman Salud Carbajal that would ban the sale, import, manufacture, or transfer of certain semi-automatic weapons.

“As a Marine Corps veteran, I’ve seen firsthand the destruction that assault rifles are capable of. They are weapons of war. They’re designed to do more harm, faster. And they have no place in our communities or on our streets,” said Rep. Carbajal. “But tragically, the vast majority of the deadliest mass shootings that we have seen in recent years have been carried out with one of these deadly weapons. It was wrong of Congress to let the assault weapons ban expire in 2004, and I’ve been fighting to revive it since my first day in office. If we want to end gun violence, we have to crack down on the weapons that mass shooters and criminals prefer.”

The passage of the measure [on Friday] marks the first time either chamber of Congress has approved an assault weapons ban since 1994. The 1994 assault weapons ban expired in 2004. 

Eight of the ten deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history involved an assault weapon that would have been banned for purchase under the 1994 assault weapons ban.

Researchers estimate that if a federal assault weapons ban was still in place, we would see 70 percent fewer mass shooting deaths.

The House [Friday] approved the Assault Weapons Ban of 2021 (H.R. 1808), which would make it unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, or transfer the following:

  • All semi-automatic rifles that can accept a detachable magazine and have at least one of the following military features: (1) pistol grip; (2) forward grip; (3) folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; (4) grenade launcher; (5) barrel shroud; or (6) threaded barrel.
  • All semi-automatic rifles that have a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.
  • Bump fire stocks and any part, combination of parts, component, device, attachment, or accessory that is designed or functions to accelerate the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle but not convert the semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun.
  • All semi-automatic pistols that can accept a detachable magazine and have at least one of the following military features: (1) threaded barrel; (2) second pistol grip; (3) barrel shroud; (4) capacity to accept a detachable magazine at some location outside of the pistol grip; or (5) semi-automatic version of an automatic firearm.
  • All semi-automatic shotguns that have at least one of the following (1) a folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; (2) pistol grip; (3) fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 5 rounds; (4) ability to accept a detachable magazine; (5) forward grip; (6) grenade launcher; or (7) shotgun with a revolving cylinder.
  • High capacity feeding devices (magazines, strips, and drums) capable of accepting more than 10 rounds.           

 

The measure approved [on Friday] would allow for the sale, transfer, or possession of assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices lawfully possessed on the date of enactment of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2021.

It would also specify that its restrictions do not apply to antique firearms, manually-operated firearms, and more than 2,000 specified models of hunting and sporting firearms.

This measure passed today builds on the recent enactment of the first federal gun safety law since the 1994 assault weapons ban: the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

That landmark breakthrough approved earlier this summer included a provision long-championed by Congressman Carbajal to expand the use of ‘red flag’ laws.

The new law includes $750 million set aside for states to create and administer ‘red flag’ laws and other measures that can keep guns out of the hands of those who are deemed to be a threat to themselves or others, something Rep. Carbajal originally proposed in his Extreme Risk Protection Order Act. 

Rep. Salud Carbajal represents California’s 24th congressional district, encompassing Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and part of Ventura County. He sits on the House Armed Services Committee, Agriculture Committee, and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where he serves as the Chair of the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation.

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  1. Lets see, 9.2% inflation, can’t call it a “Recession”, let’s call it an ecocnomic downturn… Even Wikipedia has changed the definition dozens of times over the last 24 hours…LOL!
    Men can now be “Women…”
    The apparent Open Border, which has let over 2 million undocumented individuals from all over the world into our country. but it’s not a crisis…
    So glad Salud is doing such important work.

    • Open Border – yeah – right. It’s so open that restaurants still can’t find someone to wash dishes for minimum wage and every produce field in the North County has huge HELP WANTED or something TRABAJO signs as they desperately hope for those millions you refer too.
      How about this – how about getting your fat larvae of a kid off the couch and away from Tik-Tok and have them go out and apply for these entry jobs that once supported and provided for every non-citizen ancestor of everyone of us on this chatroom.

    • Ooh, I’ll play!!!
      1. Alcohol! Alcohol kills more people! Did I get it right? Did I?
      Now here’s one for you–which is more likely to be used to murder someone? Guns or alcohol? Yeah! GOOD JOB! You got it! Guns!
      You want to kill yourself with alcohol, go ahead. I would like to keep my family safe from being murdered or injured by a lunatic with a gun.
      Okay, okay, second!
      2. What type of round is your imaginary AR-15 chambered for? Oh, yeah, I know, it doesn’t matter. You subscribe to the scary gun theory. How about…..NEITHER. How about….implement the same gun ownership requirements as those in Japan, and watch deaths by firearms plummet.
      How’d I do, teach?

    • Hey Al, So is your belief that a person bent on killing others will decide not to if they can’t get an AR or any firearm per lovely Japans rules? I mean someone made a gun and killed their prime minister… It’s the crazy people who need to be dealt with! Anyone can go to Homedepot and make a bomb if they want to kill a bunch of school kids… Listen, I’m all for the background checks and most of the other things (not for having to get a background check to buy more ammo), but banning my shotgun because it takes a magazine?

    • OGSB–see this is the problem. One person makes a firearm and kills someone in Japan and your conclusion is that it their ridiculously low death by gun rate has nothing to do with their highly restrictive gun ownership laws. The self inflicted inability to think rationally is literally jaw dropping.
      And firearms aren’t banned in Japan, they just have rational licensing requirements for someone to be able to purchase a weapon.
      And the BS argument about how you can kill people with cars or hammers or bla-bla-bla, if that’s the case why buy an AR or any other semi-automatic rifle to do the job? You know the answer pal.

  2. You mean shot by a .223 or a .22 at equal velocity and weight?
    The difference of course would be negligible but that is physics and breaks the rules about getting sciencey on an emotional topic., which is why we are also not allowed to talk about the fact that you are 2X more likely to be beaten to death in the USA by hands and feet than shot to death by a rifle of any kind.

  3. “The measure approved [on Friday] would allow for the sale, transfer, or possession of assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices lawfully possessed on the date of enactment of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2021.”
    Yes!!
    You Go Salud!!
    Ummm, Wait a minute?
    Guns, magazines etc owned now are not banned from transfer or resale? That’ll show ’em!!!
    More than 2000 specified models are excluded from the ban?
    Got news for you? There are way more than “2000 models” most of which are not as scary visually to politicians of a stripe as the AR or AK, but equally as deadlly. This is why gun people think gun grabbers who learn about firearms watching Hollywood depictions are idiots and ignorant. The firearms on the exclusion list are just as deadly in the wrong hands as an AR or AK.
    Since Mr. Carbajal brought it up, what did he do in the Marines?
    I see from his biographies that a an 8 year reserve, during the Gulf war he shipped out on active duty to Jacksonville, NC for what looks like administrative tasks and probably wasn’t issued a firearm at any point after basic training. So unless one of his fellow Marines managed to shoot his or herself in a unit on base not issued weapons, he has no first hand knowledge of GSW by the M16 platform.
    Salud could have visited the VA and seen people wounded by AK variants, but you could go to a trauma hospital in any major US urban area on a Saturday night and see the same things from firearms excluded from the list of banned weapons

  4. Guns have become a fetish item for many in the country. Once a person becomes emotionally mated for life to something, it is almost impossible to break that attraction.
    There are three guys on my crew who between them, own 24 guns. Handguns of various calibers, shotguns, assault style rifles, you name it , at least one of them owns it.
    They don’t hunt, they don’t live in Beirut, none are mercenaries or belong to a militia. Heck, not a one of them has ever been in any branch of the military. They live in gated communities so the likelihood of some random junkie stealing their 55 inch Samsung TV is non-existent. Yet, all three are convinced that a day will come where they will have play Call of Duty for real and want to be “prepared”.
    Somehow this fear has infiltrated a portion of our society about the “coming of them” that has lead these types to arm themselves with enough munitions to support a Ukrainian neighborhood and not a one of them has any idea what it is really like to be shot at by intent or to shoot back with intent. It ain’t like the video games or the movies people. Shooting in a life or death situation is very real, very chaotic and should you succeed in the fight, be prepared to be haunted for life even if you were right in doing so.

  5. Parvo?
    Makes a case for large capacity magazines and lots of ammunition?
    US military doctrine for “self defense” or ‘workplace safety ” involves shooting a crap ton of ammunition to get the opponents head down, because it works.
    In a nutshell, if someone shoots at you, you’ve well regulated militia’d yourself to learn to safely shoot a bunch as accurately as circumstances allow ,while moving to a better spot while they are ducking.
    Hard to do if you are carrying a legal permanently fixed 10 round magazine while they are carrying an illegal replaceable 30 round magazine

  6. My suggestion for those of you who are afraid of guns or 2nd Amendment deniers is to take an NRA-approved gun-safety course. You don’t have to like the course, but after taking the course there’s a good chance that you’ll be much less afraid of guns. Our POTUS is surrounded by guns 24/7. Our VPOTUS is surround by guns 24/7. Pelosi…24/7 armed guards. Newsom….24/7 armed guards. I think you get the point, which is “they” get protection and do not want us to be able to protect ourselves and family. I don’t know how anyone can be okay with that, and reminds me of the old saying, “What’s good for the geese is good for the ganders.” I hate to break it to you folks, but the “anti-gun” lobby is selling you a pack of lies/lies/lies. If it’s good enough for Joe, Kamala, Nancy, and Gavin….then it’s not good enough for me? How does that work?

  7. Why do you need any of the guns/attachments/accessories that they’re trying to ban? “Second Amendment” is not an answer. What, specifically, to civilians need these types of weapons for? Answers please, no deflections, non sequiturs, whatabouts or any other illogical responses. Truth only please.

    • Sac, I will start by first saying that I do not believe it is appropriate to evaluate a constitutionally recognized right based on need. Second, the proposed law is written by people with little knowledge and experience with firearms and there are aspects of it that make little sense. To get to the thrust of your question, it boils down to the old saying “sic vis pacem, para bellum” which means “if you seek peace, prepare for war.” The idea is for the population to be empowered by being heavily armed. A heavily armed population makes a country less susceptible to foreign invasion. The swiss provide a great example of how effective this philosophy can be, having managed to avoid fighting in two world wars despite being located between the warring powers. Being armed also empowers people to protect themselves rather than depending on law enforcement. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, an armed population is empowered to protect itself against its own government. The government remains subordinate to the people, as it should be. That is the real reason for the second amendment. Before a population can be persecuted, they must first be disarmed. Based on these reasons, I believe every responsible adult should equip themselves with the most advanced modern firearms and accessories they can afford and should undergo at least a basic level of training in their use. The purpose is to maintain peace and freedom for our population.

    • Ok, respectable answers I suppose. So, defense against what? How many home invasions or assaults are carried out by large groups of people? Sport? Haha, some smoke crack for “sport,” so hardly a reason to keep producing and selling something with the sole purpose of killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
      I just feel the “need” for these types of firearms isn’t pressing enough to continue to allow them to be LEGALLY purchased by unstable young men for the purpose of mass shootings. These guns are DESIGNED, MARKETED and SOLD for the sole purpose of shooting many people quickly….. mass shootings. Yeah, they’re fun as heck to shoot but Joe six pack doesn’t need them.

    • CHIP – I really am here for answers, not to argue. I quit all that with you guys. So, I apologize, I won’t engage much further, but I’m curious now. You think we should be even more armed than we are? Will more availability of military style weapons (you know, so we can fight the US military when it comes for us), be beneficial?
      How does having more machine guns (yes, we’ll need fully auto to fight our own military) make our children safer?

    • I think most anti government people are not about fighting the US military, but about possibly resisting entities like FBI SWAT. Like in Waco or Ruby Ridge The military is contitutionally prohibited from fighting US citizens on US soil and even the dumbest of “militia” men are aware of that

    • ” The purpose is to maintain peace and freedom for our population.”
      Oh yeah, that’s really working out.
      Some day you might read the Constitution or a book or the Federalist Papers or the transcripts of the First Federal Congress and learn about standing armies, militias, and what the Founders said about these things.

  8. Idiots can deflect from the issue by citing the lethality of individual ammunition types, but the real issue here is the overall firepower of the weapons involved, and that has a time dimension – how rapidly they can send projectiles downrange. That is the real reason military-style weapons have no place in a civilized society. Of course, the gun-worship proponents have done a lot in the past couple of decades to erode civil society, but we shouldn’t let that continue. Enough is enough.

  9. SacJon: You ask:
    “Why do you need any of the guns/attachments/accessories that they’re trying to ban?”
    We need the guns/attachments because there’s talk about banning them. When you try to “ban” something, it’s human nature to need it even more. Try telling a teenager to not date someone….said teen is now even more K-rAz-eD for the banned undesirable.
    Nothing wrong with asking about why someone needs something. But, the bottom line is that it really is no one’s business for anyone else to know why someone else needs something. My dad would ask my brother why he needed another surfboard (because he wanted another stick). My grandmother asking my father why he needed another bottle of fine Scotch whisky (because he like that kind of sauce). My friend asking me why I needed to go back to travel in New Zealand for the fourth time (because I wanted to).
    Talk of ammo and gun bans = huge gun sales. No doubt.

  10. The second amendment pertains to a “well-regulated militia”, and was formulated in a time when the colonists were opposed to a standing army. The rough equivalent today is the National Guard.
    The 2nd amendment is a complete anachronism, and these days is merely an excuse for gun worship. Just as there are limits on 1st amendment rights to prevent abuse, the 2nd amendment needs rational limits. Sportsmen who hunt and target shoot will survive just fine without large magazine capacity and semiautomatic operation.
    Firepower has a time dimension. We should ban all semiautomatic firearms, allowing only bolt-action long arms (rifles and shotguns) with a minimum barrel length of 32 inches, and fixed box magazines loaded by a stripper clip.
    Handguns would be limited to a minimum barrel length of 6 inches, and be single-action revolvers, or be single-action with fixed-box magazines loaded by stripper clip.
    All magazine/revolver capacities should be limited to 5 rounds maximum. Sound suppressors should be forbidden. No legitimate hunters or target shooters would be the least bit inconvenienced by such restrictions, and mass shootings would be much more difficult.
    Combined with severe mandatory penalties for mere possession of nonconforming weapons, and required training and licensing of firearms owners, we could eventually greatly reduce gun deaths, much as the more civilized countries of the world have already done. Since our country is awash in firearms, it will take a long time, but eventually sanity would prevail over the current stupidity.
    There should be strongly enforced restrictions and high taxes on ammunition, and all propellants, casings, primers, and projectiles should be required to have batch-numbered identifying marks or embedded nanoparticles to aid in post-crime investigations. Reloading equipment and supplies should be strictly limited and closely monitored for compliance. Use of lead projectiles should be eliminated. We should also consider reducing the power of firearms by limiting them to brass rimfire cartridges and/or restricting the bore pressures and diameters. Looking toward the future, guided projectiles should be banned, and duly licensed firearms should incorporate biometric devices that disable them if they are not being wielded by the registered owner. People who wanted to keep existing, but nonconforming firearms would have to modify them to comply or render them nonfunctional, or trade them in for a conforming weapon.

    • @ 9:27, get enough votes to further amend the constitution and you can strike the second amendment and implement all those laws and restrictions. But that isn’t going to happen because most American’s disagree with your rational and/or are aware there is no shoving the genie back in the bottle and confiscating everyone’s semi-auto firearms. Our government has done absouteltly nothing during my adult life to show it is responsible and trust worthy enough for the citizens to give up their weapons. If anything, how they handled covid, with their heavy handed and often unconstitutional restrictions (per many court rulings), only further strengthened peoples resolve that an armed populace is a necessary balance against a tyrannical government.

  11. This bill is a complete waste of time. It’s not likely to make it through the senate, and even if it did its blatantly unconstitutional. California already has similar “gun control” laws on the books, and various legal challenges are in the process of striking them all down in the aftermath of the Bruen ruling (see link below). Whatever anyone thinks about guns, our constitution recognizes the right of the people to keep and bear firearms with few limitations. I suppose one could argue that it’s better for politicians like Carbajal to waste their time working on legislation that is certain to be struck down in court if it actually manages to make it through the legislative process to become law. He could be working on other legislation instead….
    Bruen ruling
    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf

    • Right, the founders were such strong supporters of gun control they were concerned that soldiers might end up getting arrested if they were caught carrying their weapons. They felt like they needed to put the second amendment in the constitution to make sure that wildfires were protected from the convoluted patchwork of gun control led they expected to proliferate among the states. That’s all the second amendment was ever meant for……Does anyone honestly believe that?

  12. Yes Edney. Many people don’t realize that firearms evolved over decades to use much smaller and less powerful cartridges. The old wooden rifles from wwI and wwII pack a much much bigger punch than an AR15. Good body armor can stop a round from an AR15, but a round from a 110 plus year old bolt action rifle will blow right through it and keep on going. Militaries around the world, and the US in particular, were slow to realize that it didn’t make sense to continue fielding such powerful rifles. It wasn’t until the mid 20th century that the US finally transitioned to the low power M16 rifle after about a century of clinging to rifles that were way more powerful than they needed to be. The smaller, lighter, and weaker modern cartridge is still powerful enough for most situations, but the rifle is lighter and easier to handle and soldiers can carry almost double the amount of ammunition. That’s what makes the AR15 such an innovation, lightweight design and the use of a lighter and weaker cartridge. It’s America’s mid-century modern rifle!

  13. 11:43 – Again with the firearms ignorance. There’s no way a 5.56mm (or .223) round as used in modern military weapons is weaker. They are specifically designed to have higher velocities, and thus flatter trajectories, and to deposit massive amounts of energy into their targets by having a relatively high aspect-ratio bullet that tumbles on impact. Only a complete moron would think that such a weapon with a large capacity magazine is appropriate in a civilized society.

  14. Here is a link to the wiki page on 7.62 nato. This is the old school 30 caliber cartridge, similar to why was used in the world wars. Note the velocity of 2,800 FPS and energy of 2,560 ft-lbs.
    7.62 nato (old school cartridge)
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9751mm_NATO
    Now compare that to 5.56 nato, the 22 caliber cartridge used in the ar15. Note the velocity is slightly higher, 3,260 FPS, and the energy is substantially reduced to about 1,300 ft-lbs.
    5.56 nato (ar15)
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56%C3%9745mm_NATO
    That’s a long winded way of saying the ar15 shoots a cartridge that carries about half the energy of the more powerful cartridges used back in the world wars in older rifles.

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