Assault weapons - The ban, the myth

By Joe Waldron and Dave Workman

Touring the country in an effort to renew the 10-year-old ban on so-called assault weapons, the numerically challenged Million Mom March has been conducting a campaign built largely on fiction.

As far back as 1988, gun prohibitionists figured they could fool the public into supporting a ban that, as history has shown, has been essentially symbolic. Sixteen years ago, Josh Sugarman with the Violence Policy Center put the campaign in its proper perspective, admitting, "The weapons' menacing looks coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semiautomatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."

Contrary to myth, guns affected by this ban are not machine guns. They fire one shot with each press of the trigger, the same as any shotgun used by duck hunters or rifle used by big-game hunters.

Another myth pandered by the MMM is that these rifles use powerful ammunition. In fact, they are chambered for cartridges that are near the low end of the energy scale, on a par with a deer hunter's .30-30 Winchester. That bullets from these guns will penetrate a police officer's protective vest is no secret. Virtually every centerfire hunting rifle bullet sold today will go through such vests, which are designed to stop handgun bullets.

Prohibitionists argue these firearms have no legitimate purpose. Thousands of competitive shooters who participate in registered matches with these rifles all over the country almost every weekend would disagree. Most of these guns are suitable for home defense. Many are legitimate collector's items. And others are used for hunting.

These guns are not the weapon of choice among criminals. Studies at both the state and federal levels, before and after the ban took effect, have shown that so-called assault weapons are used in less than 2 percent of violent crimes.

Anti-gunners note that crime-gun traces on the banned firearms have plunged by 66 percent in the past 10 years. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Congressional Research Service say trace data are not a reliable indicator of guns used in crimes. Such traces are conducted for a variety of reasons, only one of which is to establish the trail of guns used in crimes. A significant number of traces are used to track recovered stolen guns.

Ban proponents claim that after the ban expires Sept. 13, America's streets will be flooded with these guns. The ban only placed a freeze on production. Those rifles are still out there legally for sale -- albeit at premium prices because of all the media hype -- and most of them are in the gun safes and cabinets of law-abiding gun owners. Banning their production did not eliminate them and had nothing to do with a drop in homicide rates -- as, apparently, neither do any other gun-control laws.

Last October, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a review of 51 previous studies of gun-control laws. Their conclusion? None of these laws reduced crime. The CDC report said "the Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence." That includes gun and ammunition bans, waiting periods, school zero-tolerance laws, safe storage statutes and licensing or registration.

Just days ago, the Washington Times had a story on a report from the National Institute of Justice that says, "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of this nation's recent drop in gun violence. É Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement."

In March, the Violence Policy Center's Tom Diaz said on National Public Radio, "If the existing assault weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe it will make one whit of difference one way or another in terms of our objective, which is reducing death and injury and getting a particularly lethal class of firearms off the streets."

Anti-gunners want to eliminate private gun ownership, period, no matter how they mask it, how they accomplish it or which guns they get first. They should cut out all the hype and just be honest about it.

Joe Waldron is executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Dave Workman is senior editor at Gun Week, a publication owned by the Second Amendment Foundation.