The Assault Weapons Ban was a sorry excuse for gun control that didn’t do what it was intended to do and disregarded the Second Amendment.
Scott Withycombe
Perspectives Assistant
Two weeks ago, Congress allowed a very weak attempt at gun control to expire without much serious protest. The expiration of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was met with minimal media coverage and almost no discussion by the two presidential candidates.
Perhaps this is because the ban contained very little in terms of actual gun control substance and produced very little in terms of actual effect on gun crime.
The ban outlawed the “manufacture, transfer and possession” of 19 semi-automatic firearms, a number of which, being foreign, had been barred from import since 1989. Many of the banned guns were simply replicated with slight modifications to make them fit within the terms of the legislation. These modified weapons use the exact same ammunition and have the exact same rate of fire as those banned in 1994. Other loopholes simply allowed gun manufacturers to change the names of the guns. The result of the ban was really one of cosmetic rather than functional significance. Rather than being a sound attempt to control guns, it was a politically motivated attempt to appease the anti-gun community.
When the ban passed in 1994, a Congressional report found that only 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide were committed by criminals using semi-automatic weapons. Handguns, however, accounted for 13 to 15 percent of such crimes. It seems that if Congress was serious about preventing gun crimes they would at least attempt to control the guns that are most likely to be used in such crimes.
Not surprisingly, in a survey of convicts the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that of those involved in gun crimes, 80 percent obtained the guns in an unconventional or illegal transaction. It is also important to note that the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban does not affect the background check requirement associated with the Brady Bill. Perhaps public safety would be better served if Congress expanded the means by which guns could be kept from entering the hands of criminals, including more intense background checks and more serious punishments for illegal gun trade and possession.
Considering that guns are readily available to criminals in an illegal market even with a weapons ban, how did the ban measure up to its expected results?
Not well.
Although there has been a drop in national gun crime, an extensive study by the National Institute of Justice in 2004 found that the ban’s effect on gun violence was minimal, especially considering assault weapons are rarely used in gun crimes. It also determined that if the legislation were to be renewed, it is unlikely that it would have any further significant effect.
Interestingly, along the same lines, a 1998 Congressional study on firearm regulations in foreign countries found “no correlation between the existence of strict firearms regulations and a lower incidence of gun-related crimes …” In fact, Switzerland, where every citizen is issued a fully-automatic rifle, has one of the lowest crime rates of any nation. Switzerland has become a model state for Second Amendment activists, especially when its crime picture is compared to some of its more restrictive European neighbors. Germany, for example, which has one of the most stringent policies in Europe, saw a 76 percent increase in gun-related murders between 1992 and 1995.
Aside from all the facts, there is also the little problem of the Second Amendment, which undeniably, both in linguistics and intent, protects the individual’s “right to keep and bear arms.” It is sickening to watch the extent to which so-called civil liberties groups and activist judges will go to fight for all Constitutional protections except the Second Amendment. It would be nice if, for a change, liberal civil libertarians would support all our rights not just the ones that fit neatly into their political ideology and gel with their associated voter groups. A transgression against one of our rights is a transgression against all of them. It is the government’s duty to protect all of the individual rights of the people. Let us not allow them to deny the people of the very important right to protect themselves.
09-23-2004