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The Assault Weapon Myth

By LOIS BECKETTSEPT. 12, 2014

OVER the past two decades, the majority of Americans in a country deeply divided over gun control have coalesced behind a single proposition: The sale of assault weapons should be banned.

That idea was one of the pillars of the Obama administration�s plan to curb gun violence, and it remains popular with the public. In a poll last December, 59 percent of likely voters said they favor a ban.

But in the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.

It turns out that big, scary military rifles don�t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.

In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows.

The continuing focus on assault weapons stems from the media�s obsessive focus on mass shootings, which disproportionately involve weapons like the AR-15, a civilian version of the military M16 rifle. This, in turn, obscures some grim truths about who is really dying from gunshots.

Annually, 5,000 to 6,000 black men are murdered with guns. Black men amount to only 6 percent of the population. Yet of the 30 Americans on average shot to death each day, half are black males.

It was much the same in the early 1990s when Democrats created and then banned a category of guns they called �assault weapons.� America was then suffering from a spike in gun crime and it seemed like a problem threatening everyone. Gun murders each year had been climbing: 11,000, then 13,000, then 17,000.

Democrats decided to push for a ban of what seemed like the most dangerous guns in America: assault weapons, which were presented by the media as the gun of choice for drug dealers and criminals, and which many in law enforcement wanted to get off the streets.

This politically defined category of guns � a selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns with �military-style� features � only figured in about 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide before the ban.

Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of murders each year, but gun control advocates had failed to interest enough of the public in a handgun ban. Handguns were the weapons most likely to kill you, but they were associated by the public with self-defense. (In 2008, the Supreme Court said there was a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.)

Banning sales of military-style weapons resonated with both legislators and the public: Civilians did not need to own guns designed for use in war zones.

On Sept. 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban into law. It barred the manufacture and sale of new guns with military features and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. But the law allowed those who already owned these guns � an estimated 1.5 million of them � to keep their weapons.

The policy proved costly. Mr. Clinton blamed the ban for Democratic losses in 1994. Crime fell, but when the ban expired, a detailed study found no proof that it had contributed to the decline.

The ban did reduce the number of assault weapons recovered by local police, to 1 percent from roughly 2 percent.

�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,� a Department of Justice-funded evaluation concluded.

Still, the majority of Americans continued to support a ban on assault weapons.

One reason: The use of these weapons may be rare over all, but they�re used frequently in the gun violence that gets the most media coverage, mass shootings.

The criminologist James Alan Fox at Northeastern University estimates that there have been an average of 100 victims killed each year in mass shootings over the past three decades. That�s less than 1 percent of gun homicide victims.

But these acts of violence in schools and movie theaters have come to define the problem of gun violence in America.

Most Americans do not know that gun homicides have decreased by 49 percent since 1993 as violent crime also fell, though rates of gun homicide in the United States are still much higher than those in other developed nations. A Pew survey conducted after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., found that 56 percent of Americans believed wrongly that the rate of gun crime was higher than it was 20 years ago.

Even as homicide rates have held steady or declined for most Americans over the last decade, for black men the rate has sometimes risen. But it took a handful of mass shootings in 2012 to put gun control back on Congress�s agenda.

AFTER Sandy Hook, President Obama introduced an initiative to reduce gun violence. He laid out a litany of tragedies: the children of Newtown, the moviegoers of Aurora, Colo. But he did not mention gun violence among black men.

To be fair, the president�s first legislative priority after Sandy Hook was universal background checks, a measure that might have shrunk the market for illegal guns used in many urban shootings. But Republicans in Congress killed that effort. The next proposal on his list was reinstating and �strengthening� bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. It also went nowhere.

�We spent a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of political capital yelling and screaming about assault weapons,� Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu of New Orleans said. He called it a �zero sum political fight about a symbolic weapon.�

Mr. Landrieu and Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia are founders of Cities United, a network of mayors trying to prevent the deaths of young black men. �This is not just a gun issue, this is an unemployment issue, it�s a poverty issue, it�s a family issue, it�s a culture of violence issue,� Mr. Landrieu said.

More than 20 years of research funded by the Justice Department has found that programs to target high-risk people or places, rather than targeting certain kinds of guns, can reduce gun violence.

David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, argues that the issue of gun violence can seem enormous and intractable without first addressing poverty or drugs. A closer look at the social networks of neighborhoods most afflicted, he says, often shows that only a small number of men drive most of the violence. Identify them and change their behavior, and it�s possible to have an immediate impact.

Working with Professor Kennedy, and building on successes in other cities, New Orleans is now identifying the young men most at risk and intervening to help them get jobs. How well this strategy will work in the long term remains to be seen.

But it�s an approach based on an honest assessment of the real numbers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/s...-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

Holy schit.

I just saw a pig flying by my house!!!!

who would have thought...

a good news clip from the NY Times

For a thinking man, this all makes sense.

For Democrat shills, it's never been about gun violence and helping disadvantaged people, but rather about votes and control. We'll continue to see the same old song and dance about assault weapons.

[bleep], we already knew this----before they even passed the gawd damned law!

Wild blue monkeys just flew out of my ass!

I keep saying...the MSM is dumping Obama and his agenda...

Miss Beckett penned this article just three days ago.

The morning after the Sandy Hook shootings, Shannon Watts, a mother of five and a former public relations executive, started a Facebook page called �One Million Moms for Gun Control.� It proved wildly popular and members quickly focused on renewing the federal ban on military-style assault weapons.

�We all were outraged about the fact that this man could use an AR-15, which seemed like a military-grade weapon, and go into an elementary school and wipe out 26 human beings in less than five minutes,� Watts said.

Nearly two years later, Watts works full-time as the head of the group, now named Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is a significant player in a coalition financed by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. But while polls suggest a majority of Americans still support an assault weapons ban, it is no longer one of Watts� top priorities.

�We�ve very much changed our strategy to focus on public safety measures that will save the most lives,� she told ProPublica.

It�s not just that the ban proved to be what Watts calls a �nonstarter� politically, gaining fewer votes in the Senate post-Sandy Hook than background check legislation. It was also that as Watts spoke to experts and learned more about gun violence in the United States, she realized that pushing for a ban isn�t the best way to prevent gun deaths.

A 2004 Justice Department-funded evaluation found no clear evidence that the decade-long ban saved any lives. The guns categorized as �assault weapons� had only been used in about 2 percent of gun crimes before the ban. �Should it be renewed,� the report concluded, �the ban�s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.�

With more information, Watts decided that focusing on access to guns, not types of guns, was a smarter approach. She came to the same conclusion that other gun control groups had reached even before the Sandy Hook shootings: �Ultimately,� she said, �what�s going to save the most lives are background checks.�

While many gun control groups still officially support the assault weapons ban � �we haven�t abandoned the issue,� as Watts said � they�re no longer actively fighting for it.

�There�s certainly a lot of public sentiment around high-capacity magazines and assault weapons,� Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in an interview this summer. �It�s easy to understand why people feel so passionate about it.�

But, he said, �when you look at this issue in terms of the greatest opportunity to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and prevent gun violence, background checks are a bigger opportunity to do that.�

Bloomberg�s umbrella group, Everytown for Gun Safety, has also de-emphasized an assault weapons ban. A 10-question survey the group gave to federal candidates to measure their stances on gun policy did not even ask about a ban.

�We acknowledge that assault weapons put the �mass� in mass shootings,� Erika Soto Lamb, the group�s communications director, said. But �we feel like it�s a more productive use of our time, effort, money, voices, and votes [to focus] on the policies that are going to save the most lives.�

The most common criticism of the weapons ban � which was signed into law on Sept. 13, 1994 � was that it focused too much on the cosmetic �military-style� features of guns, like pistol grips or folding rifle stocks, which made it easy for manufacturers to turn banned guns into legal guns by tweaking a few features. During the ban, some manufacturers added �PCR� to the name of these redesigned guns, for �politically correct rifle.�

But the more profound criticism of the ban is that �assault weapons,� a politically charged and imprecise term, have never been the weapons that contribute the most to American gun violence. Gun rights groups have pointed out for years that the campaign against assault weapons ignores the data. (The National Rifle Association did not respond to our requests for comment.)

While assault weapons do appear to be used more frequently in mass shootings, like the ones in Newtown and Aurora, Colorado, such shootings are themselves rare events that are only responsible for a tiny fraction of gun homicides each year. The category of guns that are used in the majority of gun murders are handguns.

Despite this data � and perhaps because many Americans do not have an accurate understanding of gun violence statistics � an assault weapons ban has continued to have broad public and political support.

In January 2014, a Rassmussen poll found that 59 percent of likely voters still favored an assault weapons ban, even after the measure failed in the Senate in April 2013, along with the rest of the White House�s push for tougher gun laws.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the author of the original ban, has repeatedly re-introduced it, most recently in 2013, after the Sandy Hook shootings. Obama made the policy part of his post-Sandy Hook platform for gun violence prevention, though the White House�s central focus was on passing universal background checks.

Experts say that a smarter way to approach the assault weapons ban might be to focus on the ammunition, not the design of the guns themselves. The 1994 gun ban included a ban on magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Unlike �assault weapons,� high-capacity magazines were used in as much as 26 percent of gun crimes before the ban. Limiting magazines to a smaller number of rounds might mean shooters, particularly in mass shooting situations, could not hit as many victims as quickly.

But even this focus on banning high-capacity magazines, rather than guns, suffers from a lack of data. �It is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than 10 shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading,� the 2004 evaluation concluded.

There is some evidence that the ban was preventing violence outside the U.S.: Mexican politicians have long blamed the end of the assault weapons ban for contributing to drug-related violence in Mexico. In a 2013 study, three American academics found that the end of the ban brought about �at least 238 additional deaths annually� in areas of Mexico near the U.S. border.

Meanwhile, as gun control groups have moved their focus away from gun bans, Americans are buying fewer assault weapons than they did when a ban seemed imminent, Bloomberg News reported last month.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/gun-control-groups-moved-away-assault-weapons-ban/

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He's not jumping through hoops for Israel is the reason.

I wish that were true.I think they're too cowardly to dump bath-house Barry.

I also think they're very afraid of getting treated like Sharyl Atkisson or worst yet getting "Breitbarted".

They may have some disagreements,which they will air occasionally, but I don't believe they will dump him altogether.

They are just dumping Barry so they can warm up to Hillary. She will fix everything.

It has always been about power and control by the liberals. Facts be damned.

kwg

Yep he just went by my house as well Jim.

I believe this to be true as well.

When election season rolls around,the liberals will coalesce around whatever vile piece of trash the Demonrat Party will feed them,such as another Clinton.

Summary to OP , more guns less blacks = less BS , who would have thought it

Who,dah thunk it!

Oh, so that explains it.
It's the 20th anniversary? Could have slipped by ME, fer shure.

There is something really interesting here, but it's not that good as news.

The universal background check issue is still very much alive. The anti gun pukes realized Swinestine didn't have the votes, not even close. So, focus on what can pass -- the Center for American Progress just released a report saying AWB is off the table and we are gonna focus on Universal Background Checks and Multiple Sales Blah Blah. Keep in mind the UBC idea is all about getting a paper record of every gun, for the day when the paper gets to be made into a database. So, they get the UBC by some miracle, then they focus again on the "bad guns" which are pretty much registered via UBC. See how that works?

The other thing here, the writer is NOT with the New York Times, but with ProPublica, a pinko news service subsidized by Herb Sandler, who just HAPPENS to be the biggest funder of --- Center for American Progress! So this gives me every indication of a coordinated change in narrative prior to the election and a change in strategy based on current vote availability. The NYT hasn't had a change of heart, they are just playing along with the new game.

Don't ignore this, and above all, don't relax.

Exactly.

Without the MSM bias, the general public would (have) never gave a schitt about banning assault weapons, either in the mid-90's or today.

MM