« Ich bin ein Immigrant | Main | Unfit for Command »
August 17, 2004
And the Winner of the "We Told You So" Category is:
The federal assault-weapons ban, scheduled to expire in September, is not responsible for the nation's steady decline in gun-related violence and its renewal likely will achieve little, according to an independent study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
Told you so. Or rather, gun owners like me have been saying this for years. We know perfectly well that "assault weapons" are hardly the weapons of choice for criminals.
The Washington Times has obtained a copy of the yet to be officially released report. The National Institute of Justice is part of the federal Department of Justice. They are to the DOJ what the Bureau of Labor Statistics is to the Department of Labor; a non-partisan bureau tasked with data collection.
"We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence," said the unreleased NIJ report, written by Christopher Koper, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania."It is thus premature to make definitive assessments of the ban's impact on gun violence. 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," said the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.
The report also noted that assault weapons were "rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban."
Not exactly what Sarah Brady and her cohorts told us would happen.
The March 1999 Study
None of this is new. A study by the NIJ in March of 1999 told us exactly the same thing. The studies conclusion:
The public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated.
The study did note that not enough time had passed to provide a definitive conclusion, hence the "yet" in the above sentence. However, with the new report, it should be clear that the "assault weapon" ban was largely an exercise in politics.
What is an "Assault Weapon" anyway?
This touches on one of the most controversial aspects of the gun-control debate.
Some will tell you that an assault weapon is "basically a semi-automatic firearm with a military appearance."
Others are a bit more clear in making sense of the current situation.
A genuine assault weapon, as opposed to a legal definition, is a hand-held, selective fire weapon, which means it's capable of firing in either an automatic or a semiautomatic mode depending on the position of a selector switch. These kinds of weapons are heavily regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934 and are further regulated in some states. (See machine guns.)
However, current "assault weapon" legislation defines certain semi-automatic weapons as "assault weapons." A semi-automatic weapon is one that fires a round with each pull of the trigger, versus an automatic weapon which continues to shoot until the trigger is released or the ammunition supply is exhausted. These kinds of "assault weapons" are sometimes referred to as military-style semi-automatic weapons.
The Bottom Line
Still confused? Here's the bottom line: "Assault Weapon" is a term used to scare people. It has little real meaning today. The original definition was to describe fully-automatic shoulder fired weapons, commonly called "machine guns". In the early '90's the gun-control lobby redefined the term to mean any "military looking" weapon. In other words, any weapon they didn't like got redefined as an "assault weapon". They used it in an attempt to frighten people into agreeing with their proposed legislation. The media gladly parroted their words, and liberal legislators, knowing the effectiveness of words, picked up on this new definition of "assault weapon". The Brady Bill became law.
Posted by Tom at August 17, 2004 1:46 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.theredhunter.com/mt/refer.cgi/109
