23 AGs Tell Holder “No” on Semi-Auto Ban

A list of those attorneys general is included below, and surprisingly, it does not include Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna.

This is a remarkable letter, made public by the National Rifle Association. It follows three months after 65 House Democrats sent a similar letter to Holder, admonishing him for remarks made earlier this year suggesting that the Obama administration would like to see the ban renewed. That March 17 letter took issue with Holder, and others, who at the time were using the drug cartel wars in Mexico as an excuse to push for renewal of the ban, which expired in September 2004 after having accomplished pretty much nothing.

As the states’ top law enforcement officials, we share the Obama Administration’s commitment to reducing illegal drugs and violent crime within the United States. We also share your deep concern about drug cartel violence in Mexico. However, we do not believe that restricting law abiding Americans’ access to certain semi-automatic firearms will resolve any of these problems.

McKenna is not generally thought of as an anti-gunner. His office did, after all, advise Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels – poised to be elected president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Monday – that his blustery promise to ban legally-carried handguns from Seattle city property by executive order would be illegal. Nickels has some other problems as he heads into another campaign for re-election (the guy has never held a job in the private sector), and it will be interesting to watch whether he tries to bully people with his new national status, or make good use of his new position to address such pressing needs nationally as municipal infrastructure at times of economic downturn, public transportation, and urban decay.

It is not “bullying” in which the pro-gun attorneys general are engaging with Holder, but frank conversation about a subject that should be dead and buried. All 23 of these chief law enforcement officers concur that “additional gun control laws are unnecessary” and that the individual right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment “should not be encroached upon without sound justification – and a clear law enforcement purpose.”

Because fully automatic machine guns have already been banned, we do not believe that further restricting law-abiding Americans’ access to certain semiautomatic firearms serves any real law enforcement purpose.