I keep re-debating this same point over and over again, so I'll just put it into a note and link to it.
The Clinton era Assault Weapons Ban, in effect from 1994 to 2004 was completely ineffective in reducing the homicide rate and the violent crime rate, because it was the wrong solution to the wrong problem, and it had little if any effect on the already established downward trends in both the homicide rate and the violent crime rate.
Gun control advocates point to the Clinton era assault weapons ban and call it a success because the violent crime rate and the homicide rates both declined during the ban. What they fail to mention is that the homicide rate fell faster in the 3 years prior to the ban than it did at any time the ban was in effect. When the ban was set to expire, gun control advocates warned of blood running in the streets. Yet when the ban expired the homicide rate continued to decline. The homicide rate continued to decline for years after the ban expired, had a small bump in 2007/2008, and by 2009 returned to the baseline trend, and has continued to decline ever since. The homicide rate, now long after the ban expired, is the lowest it has been since the FBI started tracking it in 1960. The Assault Weapons Ban had absolutely no effect on the homicide rate.
At the same time, critics of the AWB among the gun control lobby claim that it was a failure because it didn't go far enough, since it allowed people to keep their assault style rifles and the magazines to feed them due to the grandfather clause. There was no mass confiscation program, assault style weapons manufactured before the ban were legal to own, legal to use, and legal to sell. The AWB did not remove a single weapon from private ownership. Despite this failure, both violent crime and homicide continued to decline before, during, and after the ban. So people among the gun control lobby claim that the Clinton era Assault Weapons Ban was at once a success and a failure.
Anyone in favor of a ban on
assault style rifles is going up against a major problem: Reality.
According to figures provided by the FBI, a bit over two thirds of
homicides in the United States are committed with firearms. Of those
homicides committed with guns, 68% of them are committed with handguns.
Not assault style rifles, but handguns. In fact, the category "Rifles"
comprises the smallest category of weapons used to commit homicide.
Even if you assume that every single homicide committed with a rifle is
committed with an assault style rifle that still comes up to only 3% of
homicides committed with firearms. Proponents of a new ban on assault
style rifles must ask themselves one important question: How much
political capital are you willing to spend banning a category of weapons
that are used in the commission of 3% of homicides by firearm, and 2%
of homicide overall?
Consider also that by some estimates there may be as many as 30 Million assault style rifles in private ownership in the United States. 3,750,000 AR-15's alone. Statistically, if you get ten randomly chosen people together in a room, that one of them owns an assault style rifle is a near certainty. With that rate of ownership of assault style rifles in the United States the wonder is not that so many crimes are committed with them, but rather that so fleetingly few crimes are so committed.
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