http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lott10sep10,1,3271412.story
COMMENTARY
Assault Weapons Ban Was Useless Anyway
By John R. Lott Jr.
September 10, 2004
With the federal assault weapons ban sunsetting on Monday at midnight,
the gun-control movement has a lot to fear, but not what most people think.
Despite claims that letting the 10-year-old ban on some semiautomatic
weapons expire will result in a surge in gun crimes and police killings,
the fact is that letting the law expire will probably just show the uselessness
of gun-control regulations. A year from now it will be obvious to everyone
that all the horror stories about the ban — a cornerstone of the
gun-control movement — were wrong.
Life without the ban is being painted as a frightening state of affairs.
Sarah Brady, one of the nation's leading gun-control advocates, warns
that "our streets are going to be filled with AK-47s and Uzis."
Ratcheting up the fear factor to an entirely new level, Sen. Charles E.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) claims the ban is one of "the most effective measures
against terrorism that we have."
Yet, despite the rhetoric, there is not a single published academic study
showing that the ban has reduced any type of violent crime. Even research
funded by the Justice Department under the Clinton administration concluded
only that the ban's effect on gun violence "has been uncertain."
When those same authors released their updated report in August looking
at crime data up through 2000 — the first six full years of the
law — they stated, "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any
of the nation's recent drop in gun violence."
The reason for these findings is simple: There is nothing unique about
the guns that are banned under the law. Though the phrase "assault
weapon" conjures up images of the rapid-fire machine guns used by
the military, in fact the weapons covered by the ban function the same
as any semiautomatic hunting rifle; they fire the exact same bullets with
the exact same rapidity and produce the exact same damage as hunting rifles.
The firing mechanisms in semiautomatic and machine guns are completely
different. The entire firing mechanism of a semiautomatic gun has to be
gutted and replaced to turn it into a machine gun. This law had nothing
to do with machine guns.
In recent weeks, at least one gun-control group has begun to change its
tune. A spokesperson for the Violence Policy Center said, "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. So if it doesn't pass, it doesn't pass."
The center argues that the law involved only "minor changes in appearance."
Why the sudden conversion? Probably because the group knows its credibility
is on the line.
A year from now, when it becomes obvious to everyone that all the hype
about a resurgence of "assault weapons" was wrong, gun-control
advocates want to be able to claim that they never thought the law really
mattered.
Too bad they didn't admit this a decade ago.
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John R. Lott Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,
is the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago,
2000).
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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
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