Posted on 06/03/2003 11:54:25 AM PDT by 45Auto
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the tough conservative liberals love to hate, provoked a mini-furor by declaring that the Republican-controlled House would not renew Congress' 1994 ban on so-called assault weapons.
Only reflexive gun banners and the uninformed can have been disconcerted.
The 1994 ban proved predictably ineffective. Letting it expire on schedule in 2004 would change, well, almost nothing.
The ban, championed by California's formidable Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was sold on a singularly false (if well-intentioned) premise – that the semi-automatic (one shot for each trigger pull), civilian versions of certain military-type rifles were major contributors to crime. These firearms, we were typically told by ban advocates, were the "guns of choice for gang bangers, drug dealers and street criminals."
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
In fact, the truth was exactly opposite.
The U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI, the law enforcement statistics of every state bothering to count and the careful research of criminologists all told the same story:
Rifles of any type are used in only a tiny fraction of gun crimes (the preferred firearm for nearly all criminals being the easily concealed handgun). The criminal use of rifles dubbed assault weapons is rarer still. Indeed, so-called assault rifles are the least likel y firearms to be used in crime.
FBI statistics show that rifles of any description are used in only about 3 percent of homicides each year. Data compiled by criminologist Gary Kleck put the frequency of assault weapons use in all violent crime at 0.5 percent.
In California, a statewide survey of law enforcement agencies by the state Department of Justice found that a mere 3.7 percent of firearms used in homicides and assaults were assault weapons.
A Trenton, N.J. deputy police chief said his officers "are more likely to confront an escaped tiger from the local zoo than to confront an assault rifle in the hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets."
No wonder, then, that banning this arbitrarily defined class of firearms had no discernible effect on crime.
The U.S. Department of Justice conducted two studies of the consequences of the 1994 assault weapons ban. In 1999, Bill Clinton's Justice Department looked exhaustively at the ban's effects. It concluded that "the public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated." In 2001, a second Justice Department review similarly found no evidence that the ban had a statistically significant effect on violent crime. A congressionally mandated study by the Urban Institute reached comparable conclusions.
Banning Feinstein's 19 types of semi-automatic rifles and pistols because they have two or more military-style features – like a bayonet lug, pistol grip or flash suppressor – is irrelevant to crime. When was the last drive-by bayoneting?
The Feinstein ban's prohibition on newly manufactured ammunition magazines capable of containing more than 10 rounds, for rifles or handguns, might seem a prudent public-safety precaution. But, again, there is no conclusive evidence over nearly a decade that smaller-capacity magazines have any crime-reduction or violence-reduction effects.
But isn't there something to be said for the gun banners' chronic plea that any restrictions reducing the numbers of guns Americans own makes society safer?
In a word, no.
The 200 million-plus privately owned firearms in the United States grew by an estimated 37 million during the 1990s. If the simplistic notion that more guns equal more crime and more homicides had any validity, crime rates would have climbed during the decade. Instead, rates for serious and violent crime fell every year from 1991 through the end of the decade. Despite those 37 million more guns, murder rates in many major American cities fell to the lowest levels in 40 years.
Thirty-five states have enacted "right-to-carry" legislation allowing law-abiding citizens a license to carry a concealed weapon. In most if not all of these 35 states, homicide rates declined after ordinary citizens were permitted the means of self-defense.
Most of the 19 rifle and pistol types banned by Feinstein's 1994 amendment were already barred from import into the United States by order of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in 1989. Even if Feinstein's ban expires, the BATF's import restrictions would still be in place. The two domestic manufacturers of assault-style pistols are out of business.
That leaves a possible resumption in production of one domestically produced rifle, the Colt AR-15, on Feinstein's list as the sole likely consequence of the 1994 ban's expiration. Feinstein's magazine capacity restrictions would lapse with the ban's expiration. But they are widely circumvented now anyway by the vast numbers of pre-ban magazines legally available.
The gun banners also miscalculate the political support for more restrictions that limit the firearm-owning rights of law-abiding citizens.
Feinstein would expand her ban if she could but she cannot get 51 votes in the Senate. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat, proposes banning millions more semi-automatic rifles and pistols owned and used by American hunters, sport shooters and collectors. Her bill stands no chance.
A White House aide says President Bush favors extending the Feinstein ban, a position he took with no visible conviction during the 2000 campaign. Bush himself says nothing now, no doubt because he knows the gun-rights vote in swing states Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia made him president. DeLay predicts the House won't vote to make the 1994 ban permanent. He's probably right, and that's no loss to the country.
What is the basis for this? Anyone?
I think there's still a possibility that the ban could be reauthorized. The sunset is not a foregone conclusion by any means. We thought Campaign Finance Reform would never get to the President's desk, either, but it did and was signed, and this could too. I wish the President had taken a principled stand in this matter, rather than an expedient one.
I guess this includes CNN and its ilk.
Rememeber, it was said Brady would not be passed either. But it got the midnight vote when no one was watching and we got the shaft.
My biggest fear is some real idiot shooting up a school/post office/mall/workplace with an AW and then the cry to ban them, PERMANANTLY, will be too loud to overcome.
I hope I am wrong.
..unless you live in the People's Republic of Kalifornia, where an even more restrictive assault weapon ban is in place. I have my defanged Bushmaster XR-15 already, but I can't even legally give it to my son as a inheritance. (No problem; my 15 yr. old son says he will eventually leave California ... he's already made that clear). I paid a 40% premium to get the gun "legally" 2 days before the ban went into effect a few years back.
Hmmm...35 states including Minnisota now have "right-to-carry" laws; Maybe it's time to start a CA referrendum to force the state to issue CCW permits. It'd fail, but watching the liberals scream and shout would be fun worth all the work.
FReegards, SFS
Black powder firearms are used occasionally for criminal purposes. Usually the cheaper revolver kind. I don't know of any 50 cal being used to commit a crime. However, there was a case in Denver a couple of years ago where a grocery store manager was murdered at work by a jealous estranged husband who had a barret (I think) and some other " assault" type firearms with him in his van. He chose to use a hand gun to do the killing. Killed the wrong guy too, the manager wasn't the one involved in an affair with his wife. I blame that killing mostly on the end result of a divorce in progress and infidelity though, not on guns.
Instead of a real idiot, they will need to arrange for it to be done by AQ or other Islamic fanatics using assault guns purchased without a background check at a gun show. They'll kill several birds with one stone that way. You gotta remember: The Republicans are in charge now and pubbies are smarter than rats; they can co-ordinate more efficiently.
I think it goes back to the original bans put in place by Reagan (or maybe it was Bush Sr.). The ones that banned importing genuine military configuration fireams as long as they were in semi auto configuration (no pistol grips, flash hiders, bayonet lugs, etc. But it was only on imports, I think, not domestic manufacture. so d*mn many different laws now, it gets hard to remember exactly which is responsible for what). The ones that resulted in those clunky MAK 90 thumbhole stocks to comply for legal import status.
Interestingly, I've heard of cap and ball revolvers being used by the law abiding in NYC, because at least at one time they were not covered under the obcene licensing laws in NYC. That may have changed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.