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The National Rifle Association is using a Justice Department memo it obtained to argue in ads that the Obama administration believes its gun control plans won't work unless the government seizes firearms and requires national gun registration ââ¬â ideas the White House has not proposed and does not support.
The NRA's assertion and its obtaining of the memo in the first place underscore the no-holds-barred battle under way as Washington's fight over gun restrictions heats up.
The memo says requiring background checks for more gun purchases could help, but also could lead to more illicit weapons sales. It says banning assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines produced in the future but exempting those already owned by the public, as Obama has proposed, would have limited impact because people now own so many of those items.
It also says that even total elimination of assault weapons would have little overall effect on gun killings because assault weapons account for a limited proportion of those crimes.
It says there were an estimated 1.5 million assault weapons before the 10-year ban on those firearms began in 1994, so their sheer number would weaken a new ban exempting existing weapons. Such guns accounted for just 2 percent to 8 percent of crimes before the 1994 ban, so eliminating assault weapons would not have a large impact on gun homicides, the memo said.
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