September 2004
The End of the "Assault" Weapons Ban: Safety Threat or a Law That Failed to Produce Any Benefits?
The federal assault weapons ban (AWB) expired after midnight on September 13, and the average American is once again able to purchase and/or use a range of guns that had been banned since September 1994. The AWB has been a cornerstone of the gun control movement for the last decade, with many claiming that the law has had a huge impact on reducing crime. Still others assert that the elimination of AWB will not represent any risk to Americans. These critics believe that "assault weapons" are a contrived category of guns that has been mischaracterized to scare people. How important was the federal assault weapons ban in actually reducing crime? What is the evidence for it? Assuming that the coming year will give us evidence to clearly see who is correct, what do the next twelve months hold for Americans? At a September 13 AEI conference, James Kessler, research director for Americans for Gun Safety, and John R. Lott Jr., the author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws (University of Chicago Press, 2000), debated the end of the Assault Weapons Ban.
John R. Lott Jr.
AEI
Violent crime has obviously been falling in the United States since mid-1991, but the question has been whether crime rates in states that have adopted the assault weapons ban have been falling relative to other states nationally or to their neighbors. Did you generally see a faster decline in certain types of violent crimes nationally afterwards than you did before?
I think the answer among academics has been that violent crime rates have fallen nationally, but there has not been a statistically significant difference either across states or nationally. One study funded by the Clinton administration's Department of Justice in 1998 from the Urban Institute, written by Chris Koper and Jeff Roth (now at the University of Pennsylvania), concluded that "the assault weapons ban's impact on gun violence has been uncertain." They could find no statistically significant evidence that it produced a drop in any kind of violent crime, murder being the main one. Recently updated in June 2004 to look at the first six full years of the ban, Koper said that "we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence."
While researching my book, The Bias against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong (Regnery Publishing, 2003), I was unable to find anything statistically significant. Breaking it down on a state-by-state level showed randomness across the different states in terms of the laws that they passed. The only impact was on gun shows. States that adopted the Assault Weapons Ban experienced a 20-percent drop in the number of gun shows as a result of the law.
What is unique about these guns? When we see polls showing overwhelming support for extending the ban, how many people know what types of guns we are talking about? We refer to the civilian versions of AK-47 and Uzis that are used in militaries around the world. The guns fire one bullet per pull of the trigger. Their insides are the same as any semiautomatic hunting rifle. You have an AK-47 that fires .30 caliber bullets; some deer hunting rifles fire primarily .30 caliber bullets. With a semiautomatic hunting rifle, the insides, the rapidity of firing, and the damage done are all essentially identical. There are no functional differences in the weapons.
We should focus on the term "military style." Style refers to the outside of the gun. (These weapons are banned on the basis of the name and the features.) Features that can be attached to the weapons include pistol grips, bayonet mounts, folding rifle stocks, flash suppressors, and grenade launchers, with the bayonet mount the most common one to be eliminated. Gun shows are impacted by the ban because people who attend gun shows are usually collectors who want guns that look a particular way, and guns with a bayonet mount seem to be the ones most likely to be affected.
Political changes have taken place in recent months. In looking at op-eds and comments to the press, the Violence Policy Center, one of the strongest groups on gun control, has continuously said how important this law is to reducing violent crime. In March of this year, a week after the Assault Weapons Ban died in the Senate, Tom Diaz, spokesman for Violence Policy Center, said that "if the existing Assault Weapons Ban expired I personally do not believe that it will make one bit of difference one way or another in terms of our objective, which is to reduce death and injury and getting a particularly lethal class of firearms off the street. So if it does not pass, it does not pass." The Assault Weapons Ban brought only minor changes in appearance that did not affect the function of the weapons.
What happened in one week? Why wait until after the Senate vote? The reason is pretty clear: they do not believe there will be a big increase in violent crime after the law expires. The Violence Policy Center has been making extremely strong statements for ten years and wanted to be on the record saying that we do not expect there to be any change. This is not big news to us; the law did not have any impact.
Rarely is there a chance to see anything that happens in the overall aggregate crime rate, or a net change in murders relative to what you have seen before. I do not think you will see any change.
James Kessler
Americans for Gun Safety
The Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Act came about after a steady rise in crime, about which many said nothing could be done.
Then representative Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and a couple of others took the best ideas, liberal and conservative, and put together a bill to see if anything could be done about the crime problem. They made the first concerted federal effort to reduce local crime. Laws included the Three Strikes law for violent crimes, reinstating the death penalty, 100,000 cops on the streets, the Brady law (gun shows), after school programs for kids, and the Assault Weapons Ban. Maybe crime started dropping at the end of 1991, but after those laws passed in 1993-1994, you really saw a huge drop in the crime rate--so much so that except in certain concentrated areas, the crime issue is off the table. The crime rate is at low enough levels that it is not even considered a national campaign topic and has ceased to become a subject of national debate.
The assault weapons ban does not deserve credit for historic drops in crime any more than any other law previously mentioned. Crime reduction occurred due to a series of changes.
Since the ban passed, the number of banned weapons traced to crime has dropped 66 percent. The Assault Weapons Ban came about not just because of the rise in crime all across America, but because of the increase in crime with certain types of semiautomatic assault weapons with military-style design. Rather than seeing the Saturday night specials popular in the late 1970s and 1980s, we started to see designer types of guns such as the Tech-9--now banned--and other semi-automatic weapons during the mid-to-late 1980s as financial resources increased for criminals. As overall usage of these guns increased, criminals used them in some very high-profile shootings.
There was a real call from police to get these guns off the streets because they just did not have the firepower to battle against these guns. It is not just that they look different or look bad; these guns are designed to be fired differently and are able to shoot a large number of rounds in a very short period of time in part because they have a threaded barrel to keep from heating up.
Every major police organization in America, including the very conservative ones, supported the Assault Weapons Ban back then, and they support it now. There have been over one thousand local police chiefs and sheriffs who have signed letters saying we need to renew this ban.
There have not been great academic studies done on this issue either way, and I am not confident that any academic study can really capture what has been the effect of this law. The law is not perfect; it was however, a grand compromise.
I do not know if we will see a huge increase without the assault weapons ban. I doubt it.
This law will have a marginal impact--but it will have an impact. I think it will make a difference in the lives of police officers in particular. I think there will be, just like in the past, high profile mass killings with this.
AEI staff assistant Jill Mitchell prepared this summary.
