The wicked witch of the West is making noise again.
June 26, 2005, 12:48AM
Expired gun ban still worries some
Sen. Feinstein wants law reborn, despite no proof of increased crime
By DAVID WHITNEY
Mcclatchy News Service
WASHINGTON - It's been 10 months since the federal assault weapons ban expired, and for an idea of what's happened since then, pick up a copy of a gun magazine.
ADVERTISEMENT
There you will find ads for semiautomatic rifles and pistols looking like something out of a war zone, with clips holding 30 or 40 cartridges "” many features that 11 months ago U.S. manufacturers could not include and gun stores could not sell.
"Since the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire, it has been open season for criminals who want the most dangerous types of military-style assault weapons," declared Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who in March introduced legislation to revive the old ban.
Feinstein said the expiration of the ban she fought for in 1994 "will have deadly consequences on the streets of America."
Hard to measure
But has it really made much of a difference? Are the streets less safe?
There is no hard evidence, one way or another.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has no statistics that would show whether there's been an increase in sales of assault-style weapons, and the Justice Department has no statistics that would show whether there's been an increase in their use in crimes.
Gunmakers say their shops are busy, but only because the ban created pent-up demand.
"It's changed our market a bit," said Mark Westrom, president of Armalite, an Illinois company that produces the military-style weapons. But Westrom said the company is not selling anywhere near the volume that many gun-control advocates forecast.
Sandy Abrams, a board member of the National Rifle Association who owns Valley Gun of Baltimore, said he's seen a drop in sales of the guns at his urban store.
"It's not like there was this groundswell of demand," he said. Abrams said manufacturers never stopped making what are commonly called assault weapons. They just made guns that got around the ban.
Even among advocates of gun-control legislation, there is no agreement on whether the expiration of the ban is a disaster in the making, as Feinstein claims, or the quiet death of a law that had no teeth.
Eric Howard, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said that just because there are no statistics to prove it does not mean the expiration of the ban hasn't had a negative effect.
What's most disturbing, he said, is that the free-flowing U.S. marketplace for military-style rifles comes as gang violence is reaching horrific levels.
"Now manufacturers are kicking it up and we're seeing things like fingerprint-proof resistant grips," he said. "That's clearly to attract a niche that's not your regular duck hunter."
Hard to enforce
The federal ban outlawed U.S.-built ammunition clips holding more than 10 bullets and a handful of specific models. But mostly it prohibited the manufacture and sale of guns with a combination of specified features, such as a flash suppressor, a folding stock and a bayonet lug.
In the months after the ban's expiration, gun-control advocates took heart that several states began to look at enacting their own laws, patterned after California's, to keep military-style weapons out of gun shops.
Feinstein says there is little support in Congress to strengthen an assault weapons law. So she has reintroduced the old ban on the theory that something is better than nothing. She has the endorsement of many organizations, including police officers associations.
Yes, tard, but she'll say the latest drop occured after and during the AWB. Remember, we have murders in this country because of machine guns, not scumbag criminals. Feinstein says so.
Published Tuesday, June 28, 2005, in Los Angeles Times
The Big Lie of the Assault Weapons Ban: The death of the law hasn't
brought a rise in crime -- just the opposite.
By John R. Lott, Jr.
This wasn't supposed to happen. When the federal assault weapons ban ended on Sept. 13, 2004, gun crimes and police killings were predicted to surge. Instead, they have declined.
For a decade, the ban was a cornerstone of the gun control movement. Sarah Brady, one of the nation's leading gun control advocates, warned that "our streets are going to be filled with AK-47s and Uzis." Life without the ban would mean
rampant murder and bloodshed.
Well, more than nine months have passed and the first crime numbers are in. Last week, the FBI announced that the number of murders nationwide fell by 3.6% last year, the first drop since 1999. The trend was consistent; murders kept on
declining after the assault weapons ban ended.
Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assault weapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders than the 43 states without such laws, suggesting that doing away with the ban actually reduced crime. (States with bans averaged a
2.4% decline in murders; in three states with bans, the number of murders rose. States without bans saw murders fall by more than 4%.)
And the drop was not just limited to murder. Overall, violent crime also declined last year, according to the FBI, and the complete statistics carry another surprise for gun control advocates. Guns are used in murder and robbery more frequently
then in rapes and aggravated assaults, but after the assault weapons ban ended, the number of murders and robberies fell more than the number of rapes and aggravated assaults.
It's instructive to remember just how passionately the media hyped the dangers of "sunsetting" the ban. Associated Press headlines warned "Gun shops and police officers brace for end of assault weapons ban." It was even part of the
presidential campaign: "Kerry blasts lapse of assault weapons ban." An Internet search turned up more than 560 news stories in the first two weeks of September that expressed fear about ending the ban. Yet the news that murder and other
violent crime declined last year produced just one very brief paragraph in an insider political newsletter, the Hotline.
The fact that the end of the assault weapons ban didn't create a crime wave should not have surprised anyone. After all, there is not a single published academic study showing that these bans have reduced any type of violent crime.
Research funded by the Justice Department under the Clinton administration concluded only that the effect of the assault weapons ban on gun violence "has been uncertain." The authors of that report released their updated findings last August, looking at crime data from 1982 through 2000 (which covered the first six years of the federal law). The latest version stated: "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence."
Such a finding was only logical. Though the words "assault weapons" conjure up rapid-fire military machine guns, in fact the weapons outlawed by the ban function the same as any semiautomatic "” and legal "” hunting rifle. They fire the same
bullets at the same speed and produce the same damage. They are simply regular deer rifles that look on the outside like AK-47s.
For gun control advocates, even a meaningless ban counts. These are the same folks who have never been bashful about scare tactics, predicting doom and gloom when they don't get what they want. They hysterically claimed that blood would
flow in the streets after states passed right-to-carry laws letting citizens carry concealed handguns, but that never occurred.
Thirty-seven states now have right-to-carry laws "” and no one is seriously talking about rescinding them or citing statistics about the laws causing crime.
Gun controllers' fears that the end of the assault weapons ban would mean the sky would fall were simply not true. How much longer can the media take such hysteria seriously when it is so at odds with the facts?
John R. Lott Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "More Guns, Less Crime"
(University of Chicago, 2000) and "The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong"[/align]
if i hear about flash suppressors making it harder to see the guy shooting, i'm going to beat somebody wiht one of them. it's not just gun control groups, but even Maxim magazine. A flash suppressor does nothing more but keep the flash from distracting the shooter, not the shootee(who cares if its not a word...)....
Feinstein wants assault weapon ban back
[/blockquote]
And I want an assault weapon, but my wallet is empty. So I guess it's just TS for both of us.
Diane/chucky(shumer,hilery,kennedykerrybarny....need to be smacked repeadly with rocks tied to a stick with flexablewire
Ak,s are like thecoke a cola ?of firearms(many made & even givin away).
More common them toylets, socks& underware in many places worldwide( .
But its those bayonet" lugs" whatever rifle there on that is the big problem maybe? - knifes on sticks.
Everyone in America should have a assult weapon(American made/taxpayer funded)- taken home after serving 2 yrs in the homeguard border police.
__________________
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.-- Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18)
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~Will Rogers
Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.
"Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's 'bold new imaginative program' with its proper age?" "Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago.
There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. R.Reagan-1960
Feinstein wants assault weapon ban back
