News Article on "Assault Weapons"

[BenW]

An interesting and not overly biased article on the "Assualt Weapons" ban, both federal and California. A couple of nits I have to pick:

Though I belong to, and very much respect the work of the Calif Rifle and Pistol Association, I wish Chuck Michel hadn't used the phrase "Joe Six-Pack" in his quote. It's obvious what he is trying to convey to the reporter, but the phrase makes fence sitters and antis buy into the "drunken Redneck" personification of gun owners.

Secondly, the STUPID Brady Campaign statement that criminals need only, "...drive over to Arizona and fill up their trucks with AK-47s..." Really? CRIMINALS filling up their trucks? And that equates to law abiding citizens how exactly? Idiots.

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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20040320-9999-news_1n20guns.html

 

[morganm01]

There was an awesome anti AWB article in this same paper last year. You would have to go into their archives to find it because they only keep one weeks worth online, actually let me see, ah found it....Same writer?!?


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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20030527-9999_1n27ban.html
Debate rekindled on assault-weapon ban

Law expires in '04; some say, so what

By Dana Wilkie
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

May 27, 2003

WASHINGTON – If Congress allows the nation's decade-old assault-weapons ban to expire next year – which seems likely – then the prospect raises an important question: What would a world without an assault-weapons ban look like?

Brace yourself: It won't look much different.

That's the opinion of many experts about the 1994 ban that enraged gun supporters, elated gun-control advocates, created high drama in Congress and arguably led to the Election Day defeat of some who supported it.

Gun manufacturers have created legal weapons nearly identical to those that were outlawed, and federal studies indicate the law had little effect on crime. This has led gun-control advocates to wonder whether the ban went far enough, and gun-rights supporters to suggest that such laws do little more than boost the profiles of lawmakers such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The California Democrat said she believes the ban she wrote and shepherded through Congress nearly 10 years ago has helped make America's streets safer.

"If you're a drive-by shooter, do you go out with a .38-caliber revolver?" she asked. "I don't think so. You just point (an assault weapon) out the window and pump away . . . and you're bound to hit somebody. What kind of a gun is that for civilian society?"

The assault-weapons ban outlaws the sale and possession of 19 types of firearms by name, and a host of others that have certain characteristics. It will expire Sept. 13, 2004, unless Congress passes a Feinstein bill that would make it permanent.

President Bush said he would support extending the ban, but he is not pressing for a vote from congressional conservatives, who don't want Republicans to weigh in on the politically touchy matter just before the election.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president "is focused on the current legislative agenda" in Congress, rather than lobbying for the ban's extension.

Kristen Rand, legislative policy director for the Violence Policy Center, which supports the ban, said she believes Bush felt comfortable supporting an extension because he knew conservatives would never let it pass.

"Any candidate identified as pro-assault weapon is going to be viewed with skepticism by a big portion of the electorate, and probably most importantly suburban women" and independents who are key voters in next year's election, Rand said.

While polls show a majority of Americans support the ban, the weapons continue to be easily available. That's because gun manufacturers can produce virtually the same type of weapon and still comply with the law.

For instance, the ban outlaws semiautomatic rifles that have detachable magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition, and that have at least two other characteristics.

Among those are: A folding stock, which allows the gun to collapse for easier storage; a flash suppressor, which reduces the muzzle flash that can impede night-time vision; and a pistol grip, which makes it easier to steady the rifle against the shoulder.

Many manufacturers simply got rid of the banned characteristics and created nearly identical guns. Even some gun-control groups say the ban has been largely ineffective for that reason.

California's assault-weapons ban prevents the making of so-called "copy cat" firearms. Feinstein wants a similar law for the nation, but she said she cannot get it passed in the GOP-controlled Congress.

"I clearly don't have the votes for even a straight (extension of the ban) right now," said Feinstein, who plans to pressure colleagues with a binder showing all crimes involving assault weapons in their districts.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms figures show that in 1993, 8.2 percent of guns used in crimes were assault weapons. By November 1996, that figure had fallen to 3.2 percent.

But that doesn't mean the assault-weapons ban reduced crime, gun-owners' groups said. Two studies by the Department of Justice – published in 1999 and 2001 – found no evidence that the ban had reduced the number of gunshot victims or gun incidents involving multiple victims – a chief goal for those who supported the ban.

Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said the ban is superficial but it helped Feinstein win a tough 1994 campaign against former Rep. Michael Huffington.

"This is a purely cosmetic rifle ban," Waldron said. "The features involved have no practical impact one way or the other."

Said Feinstein: "I would pass the strongest possible regulatory law I could, but I can't get it passed. The question is, do we do nothing and allow guns . . . that are designed to be military weapons . . . on our streets?"

If extending the ban would have little effect, as some experts say, why worry if it's extended?

For groups such as the National Rifle Association, it's a matter of getting rid of what it considers a useless law. Every gun-control law is a step toward what the NRA says is the ultimate goal of gun-control advocates: Preventing Americans from owning any firearms.

"The agenda is to incrementally chip away at the rights of all law-abiding Americans, regardless of whether (gun-control laws) have a substantive impact on reducing crime," said Andrew Arulanandam, an NRA spokesman.

 

[morganm01]

Correction, that was the "transition" article. I sent them a copy of gunfacts a few days after that article and their own writer turned out this awesome peice.

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An ineffective 'assault weapons' ban deserves to expire

By Robert J. Caldwell
Caldwell is editor of the Insight section and can be reached via e-mail at

[email protected]

June 1, 2003


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 likely 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.


Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
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As I recall, a bunch of us wrote in to bash/praise these articles and about 4 pro-gun letters were put into print.