If the total use of these weapons were just under 2% (don't remember the exact number but this is close enough for an example) and it dropped to a little under 1% that is a 65% reduction.
What Lugar and all of the antis don't seem to realize is that the AWB didn't take any semi-auto rifles "off the street." Thus, all of the rifles that were somehow or other "responsible" (using the famed anti-gun "logic") for the original amount of crime pre-AWB are
still out there. Oh, and in the intervening 9 1/2 years, there have been annual sales of probably 500,000 functionally-identical semi-auto rifles with slightly different cosmetic features. So now in 2004 you have the original stock of these rifles, plus nearly 5 million additional ones, and the rate of crime involving these guns has still DECLINED by nearly 2/3. ***? How can more guns = less crime, if the claim is that the AWB choked off the supply of these guns? First, it didn't, and second, even if it did you would expect that the crime rate would have remained at about the same level.
Of course, you could always take the position that the antis DO understand, and that they're just flat-out lying their assets off. Thus, the choice is between stupid or evil - not a very flattering choice, is it?
Another possibility is that somebody was playing games with the crime rate stats, either in '94 or at the present time. Given the nature of the occupants of the White House at those times, I'll give you one guess who's the one that had his Dept. of Justice mess with the figures.
Yet another factor is that the population of those in their late teens and twenties has declined as a percentage of the population over the last 10 years. Since these people commit the most crimes, crime rates per 100,000 population almost HAD to decline. Given that, I'd expect a decline in the rate of crime using semi-auto rifles.
Either way, Lugar is a moron. I'm very happy that he's not my Senator (though I've suffered worse in the past, having lived in the PRNJ for my whole prior to 3 1/2 years ago - I had to put up with Harrison Absam Williams, Bill Bradley, Lousyberg I, and Torrecelli).