Alex Seitz-Wald has done an excellent job in Salon of
organizing and evaluating statistics that relate to the success of the 1994
Assault Weapons Ban. Having expired in
2004, the question was whether or not it had helped reduce gun violence while
in effect. The answer is that it did,
especially when you consider the main obstacle the results were up
against. In 1996 Congress passed a law
limiting the use of gun violence data collected that could be used to analyze
this issue. Naturally, this was backed
and promoted by the National Rifle Assn. (NRA).
Although Obama has issued a memorandum directing the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other agencies to conduct more gun
violence research in the future, fortunately one group did not wait for this to
happen and compiled their own data on the success of the 1994 Assault Weapons
Ban. In the Salonarticle, it accuses the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) of misleading the
American public on assault weapons. It’s
full of loopholes, Seitz-Wald says, and there are studies confirming that the ban
was effective.
Congress required an assessment of the law in 1999 which was
paid for by the National Institute of Justice, a research arm of the Department
of Justice. Conducting the investigation
were two criminologists, Christopher Koper and Jeffrey Roth. The report was updated in 2004, evaluating
everything from homicides to gun prices.
To start, it was found that banned guns and magazines were used in up to
25% of gun crimes before the ban.
Assault pistols were used more than assault rifles also finding
large-capacity magazines were the biggest problem.
Comments on 2013 assault weapons ban:
I did a blog back in January, “NRAafraid of gun violence statistics,” that examined this issue of the
missing gun violence data. I came to the
conclusion that, although the NRA made sure we can’t use the numbers, we still
know that the gun violence is caused by guns.
No matter who is doing it or where they got the weapon, it was a gun
that caused the injury or death. Without
the “death data” the gun manufacturers continue to sell more firearms and pour
more money into the coffers of Wayne LaPierre and the NRA. It is truly a vicious circle.
Not in the defense of assault weapons but more facing the
reality of just what kind of gun control legislation might pass a much
prejudiced Congress, my blog, “Would banning highcapacity magazines and requiring universal background checks be a good start tostricter gun control?” asks whether limiting these magazines to no more
than ten rounds would at least be a start.
The Salon article reported that assault weapons accounted for only a
fraction of the total gun deaths overall.
It was the high-capacity magazines that really caused the mayhem.
 |
| The infamous AR-15 |
As an example, Seitz-Wald says, “the same .223 Bushmaster
AR-15 assault rifle was used in the
Aurora, Colo., theater massacre, the shooting at the Clackamas Mall in Oregon,
the Newtown elementary school shooting, and, just a few days ago, the killing
of two firefighters in upstate New York.”
Jared Loughner in Tucson used a 33-round high-capacity magazine,
Seung-Hui Cho used a 15-round magazine at Virginia Tech. The big question here is whether curbing the
size of the magazine would limit the effectiveness of the assault weapon?
Following are additional factors found in the recent independent gun violence research:
· An October 2012 study from Johns Hopkins concluded that “easy access to firearms with large-capacity magazines facilitates higher casualties in mass shootings.”
· Data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) also shows a significant drop (66%) in assault weapon usage in gun crimes following the 1994 ban.
· The 10-year ban was also complicated by the fact that millions of pre-ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines meant that any progress in stopping the violence would be gradual. The real results of the ban may not be known for years.
Seitz-Wald concludes with a comparison between American gun
violence and our lack of gun control and Australia’s enactment of an assault weapons
ban following a 1996 massacre killing 36 people. Gun-related homicide plummeted by 59 percent. In my 2012 blog, “Australia: Another gun control successstory,” I wrote about this
carnage where the shooter also used an AR-15 assault rifle. Are the citizens of Australia and some European
countries with tough gun control laws more intelligent than the U.S. or do they
just love life more?
I urge you to read the Salonarticle.
