Time to end ten-year-old ‘Assault Weapon’ fraud

By Dave Workman

Newspaper editorial pages have lately become a choir in support of renewing the ban on so-called “assault weapons.” The authors of those emotional appeals should research the issue a bit more, so they can at least get their stories straight..

       Take, for example, an April 30 editorial in the South Bend, Ind. Tribune in which that newspaper stated, “In 1993, prior to the ban, assault weapons accounted for 8.2 percent of all guns used in crime. After the ban had been in effect for three years, the proportion had dropped to 3.2 percent.”

       Two days later, the New York Daily News editorialized, “Before the federal ban, assault weapons were used in almost 5% of crimes. After the ban, that number dropped to 1.6%.”

       Well, which is it? Statistical surveys compiled by David Kopel with the Independence Institute, a Colorado-based think tank, revealed the following:

       In 1990 in California – four years before the ban – only 58 of the 1,979 guns seized from drug dealers were classified as “assault weapons.” Between 1985 and 1989 in Chicago, only one murder was committed with a rifle firing a military-caliber cartridge, and in 1989 Chicago police seized 17,144 guns, only 175 of which were “military-style weapons.” Also in 1989, New Jersey authorities reported not a single homicide involving a rifle of any kind.

       Incidentally, in Chicago, according to FBI data, the chance of being stabbed or beaten to death is 67 times greater than being murdered with a so-called “assault rifle.”

       Between Jan. 1, 1989 and Dec. 31, 1993 – again prior to the ban – Miami, Fla. police seized 18,702 firearms, of which only 3.13 percent were considered “assault weapons,” according to Kopel. Nationally, he noted, less than four percent of all homicides involve any kind of rifle, and no more than 0.8 percent of these guns fire a “military caliber” cartridge.

       Bottom line: There was not a major problem with these firearms before the ban. The ban was symbolic fluff. It demonized cosmetic features. When gun makers eliminated these features and sold modified firearms, the gun control crowd screamed, proving they wanted to ban the guns no matter what manufacturers did to comply with their demands.

       Kopel noted that “from 1975 through 1992, there were 1,534 police officers feloniously murdered in the United States. Of these, 16 – slightly over 1 percent – were killed with ‘assault weapons’.”

       But look at 1992 through 1996, as Kopel did. During that period, “there were 276 officer homicides, of which 20 (seven percent) were verified to have involved an ‘assault weapon’.” It was during this period the ban took effect. How does one explain this?

       Proponents of the ban might also explain how it is that more police officers – by some estimates as many as 25 percent – are murdered with their own guns. That figure certainly trumps the 16 percent killed with “assault weapons” claimed by the Miami Herald in a May 4 editorial.

       Only the Washington Times seems to get it right, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study late last year that essentially said there is “no evidence to prove gun control laws are effective in preventing violence.”

       Ignore Kopel and listen to retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Dwight Van Horn, who was a firearms examiner for South-Central Los Angeles County. He told Kopel: “I can tell you that the claim that AK-47s or something called an ‘assault weapon’…is widely used by criminals, isn’t true and never has been true.” Van Horn says the term “assault weapon” is “a fabricated political and media term meant to vilify firearms that look like military arms.”

       Sometimes television news reports disingenuously substitute fully-automatic machine guns on camera for semi-auto firearms because their rate of fire is much faster, and therefore, more impressive to people who don’t know the difference.

       Specially-licensed private citizens can own machine guns. These law-abiding citizens do not commit crimes. The only case I could find involving the illegal use of a registered machine gun since the National Firearms Act was passed in 1934 involved an off-duty Dayton, Ohio police officer who killed an informant in September 1988. Ironically, a ban on the purchase of new machine guns that took effect in 1986 exempted police officers, who may still obtain these guns.

       In its editorial supporting an extension of the ban, the Seattle Times argued, “These weapons aren’t necessary for hunting or self-defense. They are for drug dealers, gang leaders and other criminals. They don’t belong on America’s streets.”

       The Times missed the point. It’s the “drug dealers, gang leaders and other criminals” who don’t belong on the street. Law-abiding citizens should be able to own any old gun they want, even so-called “assault weapons,” because such people are not criminals, and should not be treated as though they were.

       Dave Workman is senior editor of Gun Week, a newspaper owned by the Second Amendment Foundation.