Anti-gunners love assault weapon bans. 

In their minds, such bans take the worst and most dangerous guns out of circulation and leave guns appropriate for approved activities like hunting or target shooting alone.

Of course, the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting or target shooting, necessarily, but about defending yourself and your nation, but let’s be real here, folks who are talking about any kind of gun ban aren’t exactly the people who are that worried about the Second Amendment, no matter what they claim.

Further, what a lot of people believe about guns just isn’t so, as our friends over at The Truth About Guns pointed out.

Recently, CBS News Chicago was invited to Guncology, a gun store and shooting range in Lockport, Illinois, owned by firearms expert and private detective Sergio Serritella. Serritella demonstrated the arbitrary differences in design used by lawmakers to determine what they think an “assault weapon” is. 

One example in this demonstration was the Taurus TX22, a handgun chambered in .22 LR, a caliber more commonly associated with fun, inexpensive plinking and training new shooters who may take to learning more easily with a light recoiling less powerful handgun. However, because the firearm had a threaded barrel, the state labeled it an “assault weapon,” making it illegal to purchase in Illinois. Conversely, a Smith & Wesson 500, one of the most powerful revolvers on record, is perfectly legal to buy. 

Another example shared was a series of Benelli 12-gauge shotguns. All were of the same model and fired the same ammunition, but those fitted with a pistol grip, a feature that in no way alters how the firearm functions, are considered “assault weapons” and are banned. However, those with a more traditional-style shotgun grip are perfectly legal. 

“Things like whether a stock has a thumb hole, things like whether a weapon has a pistol grip on it, has as no effect on the form or function of the weapon otherwise—just strictly cosmetic design differences … The definition is so broad, and covers things that have no bearing on the mechanical function of firearms or the ballistic performance of ammunition, so a lot of the criteria that the State of Illinois uses to define something as an assault weapon strains logic,” according to Serritella.

Of course, those cosmetic features not impacting the function of a firearm is part of why we get bills proposing to ban all semi-automatic firearms in general, because then the “evil features” become irrelevant.

However, comparing the S&W 500 to the Taurus TX22 is a much more useful comparison in combatting some of the assault weapon ban proposals out there.

One is an evil semi-automatic with a threaded barrel. The other will do all kinds of awful things to a human body.

See, the problem with all assault weapon bans, besides the constitutionality or lack thereof, is that they’re all predicated on fear. Semi-auto rifles with detachable magazines are terrifying because some people did some very awful things, but a semi-auto pistol that lacks some evil feature isn’t because people just aren’t as afraid of them.

Never mind that numerous mass shootings were carried out by people with handguns, including Virginia Tech, which is still the most deadly school shooting in American history.

Yet people aren’t as scared of handguns. It doesn’t even matter that most homicides in general are committed with handguns. People own them and see them and don’t have the same terror levels.

No one is afraid of the Smith & Wesson 500 because most of them have never seen it and what it can do to a target. Instead, they just see a revolver and those are so old school no one could be afraid of them.

The fear is illogical because fear is rarely rational. Especially when it’s fear that’s driven by people who don’t understand firearms in any meaningful way, which is 99 percent of anti-gunners.