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Friday, September 17, 2004 - 12:00 AM |
HERALD POLL Was the weapons ban effective in reducing crime?
The Daily Herald
The assault weapons ban may be history, but don't expect the debate to end.
The 10-year-old ban expired this week, despite pleas from some law enforcement organizations and gun control advocates to renew it. The law had required limitations on certain rifles with detachable high-capacity magazines and other features associated with military weapons, such as folding stocks, pistol grips, bayonet mounts, flash suppressors and grenade launchers.
What those features ever had to do with crime has never been particularly clear, but they nevertheless formed the heart of an emotional debate.
President Bush said he would have signed legislation renewing the ban, but Congress declined to put it on his desk. This was convenient for the president, who can now play to both sides as the election draws near.
The intention of the assault weapons law was noble: to get rapid-fire weapons out of the hands of criminals. It never accomplished that, since no weapons were ever taken away from anyone, and it was never clearly established that the banned weapons were in fact the weapons of choice for many criminals.
The law was spawned by three shootings in California, beginning with the 1984 shooting rampage at a McDonald's in San Diego County that killed 21 people. Five years later came the notorious Stockton, Calif., school yard shooting, which left five people dead.
But it was a shooting at a law firm in San Francisco in 1993, in which eight were killed and six wounded, that finally persuaded the law's sponsor, California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein to push for an assault weapons ban.
Just over a year after the San Francisco shootings, President Bill Clinton signed Feinstein's bill into law. It banned the sale of 19 specific semiautomatic weapons and ammunition magazines greater than 10 rounds.
Among other things, proponents argued that so-called assault weapons do not have a legitimate sporting use. This isn't actually true, since semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are common in hunting, but it was nevertheless argued in Congress that they are not the first choice for most hunters. Indeed, some states limit the number of rounds hunters' guns can hold, mainly to add a greater element of sportsmanship and safety to hunts.
Further it was argued that accessories like flash suppressors should be banned because they only serve to aid criminals in the same way they aid a soldier on a battlefield. Simply, a flash suppressor makes a shooter's position harder to find. For a sniper shooting from concealment, hiding a muzzle flash would be desirable. Target shooters aiming at paper don't need that.
Other cosmetic features -- such as bayonet lugs and grenade launchers -- were banned even though nobody could think of a crime in which the victim was bayonetted or one in which the victim was blown up by a grenade.
In any case, political forces lined up on one side or the other. Law enforcement, surprisingly, is divided on the questions posed in the debate. Some officers and police chiefs prefer the ban, seeing it as a means of keeping criminals, especially street gangs, from attaining superior firepower.
Rank-and-file officers, however, typically like the idea of an armed population. Officers in Provo said exactly that this week. They know the bad guys are going to have guns one way or another, and it can only be good when more good guys are armed. It's a force multiplier, as demonstrated in Los Angeles during the riot after the Rodney King verdicts. Many point to how Korean shopkeepers used such weapons to keep criminals at bay during that anarchy, and how police were grateful for the assistance.
And so comes a legitimate question: Did Feinstein's ban really accomplish anything meaningful at all?
Crime has declined dramatically in the past 10 years, but that's not because of any ban on so-called assault weapons. In fact, during that period, gun ownership in the U.S. has increased by a million guns per year. Crime is a complex social problem, with countless variables. There can be many reasons for a reduction in crime, ranging from tougher sentences, better police patrols or changes in the economy. It may be a combination of all those factors and more, or none of the above.
The assault weapons ban dealt with cosmetic features of a few firearms. But removing a bayonet lug or pistol grip does not alter the gun's all-important firing mechanism, known as the action. Rifles without bayonet lugs are still as capable of firing a fusillade as rifles with them.
The rifle that John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo used in their shooting spree in the Washington, D.C., area was legal under the weapon ban. Besides, guns manufactured before the ban were grandfathered, and high-capacity magazines could still be purchased at gun shows, military surplus stores or from private parties. These magazines could fit into bayonet- and flash-suppressor-free guns that were manufactured after the ban.
Nor did the law stop criminals from using banned weapons. The infamous Hollywood bank robbery, where robbers armed with semiautomatic rifles they had converted into fully automatic machine guns, took place in 1997 -- three years after the ban.
So-called assault weapons have been used in less than 1 percent of gun crimes in the past decade, and less than 4 percent of all homicides in the United States involve any type of rifle. Government follow-up research, including a study by the Clinton administration, concluded that the assault weapons ban has had no impact on crime. Restrictions mainly affected law-abiding people.
Criminal background checks before gun purchases, on the other hand, have been an effective tool for keeping firearms out of the hands of the wrong people, according to government reports. This argues for a continuation of the instant check program (the so-called Brady Law), which identifies felons and the mentally ill, who are ineligible to purchase a gun.
D.K. Duy, the woman who opened fire in Salt Lake City's Triad Center in 1999, had a history of mental illness yet was able to buy a gun. Most people would agree that such leaks in the system need to be sealed.
