You've been spun by the repubs at the Brady Campaign, and badly.
(1) All rifles COMBINED, including all SKS's, civilian AK lookalikes, AR-15's, hunting rifles, .22's---ALL of them---account for less than 3% of murders annually, per the FBI.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_20.htmlTwo point nine one percent. For all rifles put together. That is less than half as many people as are murdered with shoes and bare hands, for pete's sake. This is the same type of baseless scaremongering that the Bush administration pulls regularly when it plays the "Terrah!" card. We are better than that.
(2) SKS's and civilian AK lookalikes do indeed define one end of the rifle power spectrum---the LOW end. They are among the least powerful centerfire rifles on the market.
http://www.tribtalk.com/showthread.php?t=164667.62x39mm (.30 Russian Short): 1,495 ft-lb kinetic energy
.30-30 Winchester (1800's vintage): 1,902 ft-lb
.243 Winchester (small deer rifle): 1,946 ft-lb
.30-06 (most popular deer rifle): 2,900 ft-lb
.375 Holland & Holland: 4,230 ft-lb
.416 Remington Magnum: 5,115 ft-lb
.585 Nyati: 10,130 ft-lb
.700 Nitro Express: 11,150 ft-lb
.50 BMG: 13,971 ft-lb
Don't take my word for it, LOOK IT UP. I suggest the Ballistics page at Remington.com for starters.
(3) The 1994 Feinstein law didn't ban any guns, didn't restrict AK or AR-15 magazines, and didn't require civilian AK's to have 19th-century style stocks. What it did was to require post-'94 civilian AK's to have smooth muzzles or pin-on brakes instead of screw-on brakes. Point of fact, far more civilian AK's were sold in 1994 and shortly after than in the previous decade combined.
Here's what the idiotic 1994 Feinstein law did:
![](http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/uploads/1132600920/gallery_260_23_74799.jpg)
Were those minor cosmetic changes (which only cognoscenti would even notice) REALLY worth twelve years of repub rule? I didn't think so.
(4) Your perception of gun-owner demographics is stuck in the 1950's. More Americans lawfully and responsibly own "assault weapons" than hunt; the SKS is by all accounts the most popular centerfire rifle in U.S. homes, bar none; and the AR-15 dominates competitive and recreational centerfire target shooting in the United States and is the most popular civilian defensive carbine in this country. You'd have less of a backlash at the polls if you tried to outlaw hunting.
(5) Fully half of U.S. gun owners are DEMS AND INDIES, but you'd never know it from the mainstream progressive press. Progressives own guns in this country---including many that the repubs at the Brady Campaign wish to ban---and we're keeping them, modern styling and all.
(6) The "Dems'll-take-yer-guns" meme is FINALLY dead, after Howard Dean successfully got gun bans dropped from the agenda in '06. Let's let it STAY dead, please.
Reanimating the "assault weapon" bait-and-switch doesn't do a THING about criminal gun violence, and helps no one but the repubs.