A Federal crime bill ban on assault weapons has lapsed; La Voz examines gun control with a special opinion

By Vadim Yaport
October 04, 2004

The Federal Crime Bill, a law which banned 19 types of firearms from the American market for the past ten years, expired earlier this month. This, like many other laws arising from the gun-control debate, ignored one fundamental point: no gun control law has ever caused an overarching decrease in gun violence.

Every year the Million Mom March in partnership with Handgun Control Inc., an organization dedicated to the banning of all handguns and “assault rifles,” releases a grade sheet for each individual state based on its gun control laws.

In 2003, Maryland received an A-, as did California. Vermont and Texas both got a D-. A cross-check with the FBI’s 2003 statistics on crime show that violent crime rates are essentially independent from HCI’s gun-control grades.

This lack of correlation between gun control and violent crime rates would indicate that gun control on the whole does not do what HCI, Million Mom March, and the Brady Campaign, an influential gun-control advocacy group, says. It doesn’t reduce violent crime rates.

A report by the Brady Campaign states there has been a decrease in the amount of gun traces of “assault weapons” since the passing of the Federal Crime Bill. It also claims this decline is “extremely significant to law enforcement and has clearly enhanced public safety, especially since these military-style weapons are among the deadliest ever sold on the civilian market.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that after it became illegal to manufacture or sell particular kinds of firearms, they became less common. “Assault weapons,” however, are not inherently more dangerous than hunting rifles, hunting shotguns, and handguns.

The term “assault weapon” was invented to describe guns that looked scary to average people and has little meaning to those familiar with firearms. Examples include the AR-15 and AK-47, which are loosely based on weapons used by The American and Russian militaries.

But to arbitrarily restrict weapons based on their appearance is frivolous at best. Former President Bill Clinton argued, “You do not need an Uzi to go deer hunting and you do not need an AK-47 to go skeet shooting.” You also don’t need a Ferrari to drive to school, but this does not mean we should ban sports cars to cut down on speeding.

“Assault weapons” aren’t necessarily the weapon of choice for criminals or gang members. According to Guncite.com, Gary Kleck, in “Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their control,” summarizes the findings of 47 such studies.

The summary indicates that less than 2 percent of guns used in crimes were assault weapons. Kleck cites Bureau of Justice Statistics which states that offenders were armed with a firearm in 10 percent of all violent crimes meaning less than 0.2 percent of violent crime offenders used an assault weapon.
The definition of “assault weapon” varies widely. The actual Federal Crime Bill’s definition included numerous features that were largely irrelevant to how dangerous a weapon is.

Folding and telescoping stocks, for example, are purely for convenience in a civilian context. They simply make the gun easier to store and transport by folding up to save space.

A bayonet is a knife attached to the end of a weapon, and its functionality even in the military is now largely questionable.

A flash suppressor hides the flash at the end of a barrel when a gun fires, and is primarily used so that the person firing the weapon isn’t blinded by the first shot and unable to continue firing effectively, particularly at night.

Pistol grips stabilize a firearm while firing from the shoulder, making a firearm more accurate and hence less likely to create stray shots that could wound innocent bystanders.

Then there’s the ominous grenade launcher. Grenades and grenade-related accessories are heavily regulated and hard to get at; a launcher wouldn’t make them any easier to find.

According to Dr. David Kopel, a leading expert and published author on the issue of gun control, neither the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms nor the Department of Justice was able to indicate a single instance of a grenade launcher or a bayonet attached to a rifle being used in a crime in the United States.

The bill also states, “a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device manufactured after the date of enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than ten rounds of ammunition” has a “large capacity ammunition feeding device.”

Virtually any gun that accepts a magazine can accept a high-capacity magazine, including many hunting rifles and handguns. The magazine is an individual component. It doesn’t make sense to regulate firearms based on the size of the magazines when the size of magazines can be regulated separately, but the bill did it anyway.

A common misconception among those who don’t understand ballistics and general firearms design is that weapons deemed to be “assault weapons” are more dangerous than other weapons because of their military nature.

Sarah Brady of the Brady Campaign wrote a letter to President Bush on Sept. 14 stating, “these guns, designed by military scientists to inflict the maximum level of damage to human beings, are back on our streets.”

In fact, the opposite is true. For example, some common “assault weapons” are the Tec-9 and Uzi, both infamous for being used by gangs. Both are semi-automatic like any conventional handgun, which means pulling the trigger will only fire a single cartridge, unlike a fully automatic weapon. The Tec-9 and Uzi also use the same 9 mm cartridges as normal handguns, so the individual bullet doesn’t have any additional power.

Statistically, “assault weapons” aren’t used in a disproportionate amount of crime. Criminals don’t favor them because they don’t provide the power of hunting rifles and shotguns or the compact design of handguns.

Trying to patch serious problems by arbitrarily banning specific firearms isn’t going to reduce crime any more than throwing pot dealers in jail reduces drug use. Instead of limiting our second-amendment right to bear arms with ineffective bans like the Federal Crime Bill, we might reexamine how we can combat crime more effectively. Murder, robbery and assault are all illegal, no matter what weapons are used.