The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was in place banning purchase of all major assault rifles and high capacity magazines from 1994 to 2004. Columbine (using both high capacity magazines and assault weapons) occurred in 1999. More importantly, gun related deaths (adjusting for suicide) have decreased mildly since the ban was lifted in 2004. Why is everyone so set on pursuing a course of action as a “practical solution” despite its proven ineffectiveness?
It would take many years for assault weapon ownership to decline following a ban on sales. Even if the sale of such weapons was banned in 1994, many people will still own usable guns in 1999. But if we had waited until say… 2020, many of the 1994 guns would probably have fallen into disrepair. Also, obvious things that people will point out, but I will mention anyway… single incidents don’t establish trends, causation is not correlation, etc. Suicide rates are probably most unrelated to assault weapon ownership.
When I said “adjusting for suicide” I meant removing it from the statistics. When the trend involves four major incidents over 13 years, then you can use a single incident to point to the ineffectiveness of the law. Secondly, the decrease in gun violence in the 8 years following the lifting of the ban IS in fact both a trend and a meaningful statistic. Lastly, the AR15 used in the Connecticut incident was legal under Connecticut laws which in fact ban assault rifles and are modeled on the Federal Ban that may be put back in place. The fact is, defining an assault rifle is hard since a large majority of firearms in circulation today are semi-automatic, including those used for hunting in several states. Only a portion of those are considered assault rifles, but defining them would be difficult. How would the guns fall into disrepair? Most people keep their assault rifles well oiled and stored in safes. These things are designed to shoot hundreds of thousands of rounds throughout the course of their life and most privately owned ones might cycle 5000 rounds in 10 years.
Whats the quote, “nobody blames cars for drunk driving, so why blame guns for murder”?
Personally, if this gets banned, I want to see sports cars that exceed 70 mph banned and increased restrictions on alcohol.
The sad part is that ban or not, unfortunately nothing is going to change and the children’s tragedy will likely be in vain. It wouldn’t surprise me if the next nutjob or sect believing in the Mayans story decides to go off on Friday. Hope I’m wrong.
Assault weapons are not banned because the next time such a school shooting or terrorist attack happens, people will be able to stop it with their own assault rifles.
With the alternative being that otherwise shooters wouldn’t have assault rifles? Because last I checked, assault rifle sales were banned in Connecticut and were banned in the United States when Columbine happened. Oh, and so were the bombs used in Columbine and the actual crime of shooting other people.
So I guess we should just legalize bombs too… because you know… people will just get them anyway.
Or knives on airplanes…?
Knives are illegal on airplanes just like guns are illegal in public schools nationwide. It would be like banning knives. If you’re going to try to be cute, at least get it right.
Bombs play no role in self defense.
AR-15s are also legal in Canada as well, but if you get caught with a magazine that has a capacity higher then five rounds thats two years in jail. Magazine size makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of the weapon though.
I heard Mayor Bloomberg the other day who wants to make gun control his legacy. If I were him, instead of donating his wealth to charity or to his children at death, he could create a foundation that gives $200 for a gun owner to hand over his weapon.
It’d take more than $200 if you’re focusing on higher end guns like most semi-autos. But he did more or less ban guns in NYC right? By the way, I have no problem with states and cities enacting firearm bans, it’s the federal stuff that I’m uncomfortable with.
The Deadliest School Attack in American History - Bath School Disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster Guess, what, it was a bomb. Even if we can ban guns, bombs, or something else, will replace them. Find and eliminate the root cause. Not the medium.
That’s a cool idea from Bloomberg, but $200? Any decent hand gun is likely to cost at least $500 to $1,000.
I can’t see Congress authorizing the funding to buy assault weapons from people for $1,000 a pop.
The answer to your question, which I think you already know, is that it sounds good to the general public (which often don’t put adequate thought into the issues and have about a 2 second memory capacity that makes sound bites the perfect solution). That is why the politicians are taking this position. Any rational person that thoroughly considers this issue will come to the conclusion that banning assault weapons is not going to stop these radical school killings. As someone said earlier, we need to get to the root cause. Gun ownership is not the reason that a lunatic enters an elementary school and kills a bunch of kids and their teachers.
Root cause = loneliness Humans are social animals and when we as society fail to engage everyone, the loners are bound to snap. This didn’t happen in the past because we were more social back then and used to hang out after school with our friends. Unfortunately technology, as great as it is, has made us asocial. Think about it… why are all these shootings caused by ‘loners’? We have yet to encounter a ‘cool’ kid do this.