Will an Assault Weapons Ban Save Lives?

In fact, the nation had an assault weapons ban between 1994 and 2004 (when a sunset provision allowed it to expire).

So now we have another school shooting, and gun control advocates are calling for a renewal of the ban.

But since we actually had a ban for ten years, it’s not necessary to merely speculate on the effects of such a policy. There is evidence.

And the evidence is negative.

The most specific and thorough evaluation of the ban comes from scholars at the University of Pennsylvania. Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, it was published in June 2004, evaluating the effects of the ban through 2003. It’s long and a bit complicated, but some quotes from the Executive Summary (Key Finding and Conclusions) tell the story:

Because the ban has not yet reduced the use of LCMs (large capacity magazines) in crime, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in 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. AWs were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban. LCMs are involved in a more substantial share of gun crimes, but it is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading.

Reading this report closely, if one wants to tease out the possibility of legislation to reduce gun violence, targeting large capacity magazines is a better idea than outlawing assault rifles. Of course, anybody with any shooting experience can quickly change a magazine, so it’s not clear this would help any. Especially since large capacity magazines will continue to be available in the black market, available for trade among gun buffs, and so on.

Other studies have found the same thing. In 2005 the National Research Council concluded that:

A recent evaluation of the short-term effects of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence outcomes (Koper and Roth, 2001b). Using state-level Uniform Crime Reports data on gun homicides, the authors of this study suggest that the potential impact of the law on gun violence was limited by the continuing availability of assault weapons through the ban’s grandfathering provision and the relative rarity with which the banned guns were used in crime before the ban. Indeed, as the authors concede and other critics suggest (e.g., Kleck, 2001), given the nature of the intervention, the maximum potential effect of the ban on gun violence outcomes would be very small and, if there were any observable effects, very difficult to disentangle from chance yearly variation and other state and local gun violence initiatives that took place simultaneously.

Finally, a 2003 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined “51 studies that evaluated the effects of selected firearms laws on violence“ and concluded:

Evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of these laws . . .

The report went on the explain:

Results of studies of firearms and ammunition bans were inconsistent: certain studies indicated decreases in violence associated with bans, and others indicated increases. Several studies found that the number of banned guns retrieved after a crime declined when bans were enacted, but these studies did not assess violent consequences (16,17). Studies of the 1976 Washington, D.C. handgun ban yielded inconsistent results (18–20). Bans often include “grandfather” provisions, allowing ownership of an item if it is acquired before the ban, complicating an assessment of causality. Finally, evidence indicated that sales of firearms to be banned might increase in the period before implementation of the bans (e.g., the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994) (21).

In the wake of a mass shooting, the natural human reaction is to “do something.” That is a natural response. But there are two problems with it.

First, the moral panic may lead us to embrace policies that feel good, and not ask hard questions about whether we are making things better.

Second, the highly visible outrage over a school shooting may cause us to forget that the vast majority of children and youth killed in shootings are killed in very ordinary domestic disputes, robberies, gang shootouts, accidents, and so on.

Update

Even the New York Times has published an article critical of an assault weapons ban:

OVER the past two decades, the majority of Americans in a country deeply divided over gun control have coalesced behind a single proposition: The sale of assault weapons should be banned.

That idea was one of the pillars of the Obama administration’s plan to curb gun violence, and it remains popular with the public. In a poll last December, 59 percent of likely voters said they favor a ban.

But in the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.

It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.

Who Needs an AR-15?

From, of all places, CNN:



We don’t happen to believe that the Second Amendment protects citizen’s right to own what are essentially military weapons.

On the other hand, the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban was a failure, providing no reduction in gun crime.

As with so many of the things that elitist liberals favor, the desire to ban assault weapons is driven by cultural bias rather than hard-nosed policy analysis. Gun people are, to the liberals, “the other,” who don’t sufficiently obey their “betters,” and need to be put in their place.

Public Opinion on Gun Control: Not What You Think

If you listen to the anti-gun people in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, you might think that there is an overwhelming public consensus for the policies the liberals favor.

But if fact, as a new Gallup Poll shows, the picture is much more complex.

It is true that a clear majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws, or at least say they do if asked that question.

The striking thing here, however, is that support for stricter gun laws has declined sharply since the early 1990s. True, Sandy Hook caused an uptick. But there have been mass shootings before, and any uptick was temporary.

But what about the most commonly mentioned kind of “stricter gun law,” a ban on assault weapons?

Strikingly, Gallup finds a bare majority opposed to an assault weapons ban.

Of course, if you asked the question differently, you might get a different answer. If you said “military-style weapons” you could probably get a majority favoring a ban. But Gallup did use a relatively straightforward question.

Asked about some more modest gun control proposals, majorities were in favor. Gallup showed an overwhelming majority in favor of background checks, including checks at gun shows. Gun shows are exempted under current policy, and for reasons that were good ones at the time: there was no way to process such a check in a timely fashion. But technology should have alleviated that problem — or at least it will if government makes the appropriate data available over the Internet.

A clear majority also favor a ban on large capacity magazines.

None of Gallup’s questions tap the intensity of opinion on these issues. But there clearly is a huge asymmetry of intensity, with pro-gun people being highly intense. The anti-gun people are split between relatively apolitical people who don’t care much, and liberals who are highly political, but are concerned with pretty much every issue under the sun.

Another striking thing in the Gallup poll was the fact that support for a ban on handguns has been dropping over the last two decades, and is at an extremely low point.

So what is going on here?

The public is not necessarily terribly sophisticated in terms of policy. Nuts wanting to get guns can use straw buyers or buy on the black market (or steal weapons) and thus evade background checks. Large capacity magazines would also likely be available on the black market even if banned, and it doesn’t take long to switch out a low-capacity magazine and keep shooting.

The guys who have engaged in mass shootings have been intelligent schemers. Deranged, but intelligent, and capable of mounting elaborate operations. These sorts of people would have both the smarts and the motivation to evade pretty much any gun law.

But it does appear the public increasingly “gets” the Second Amendment. It opposes anything that would excessively burden the right of ordinary law-abiding Americans to have the kinds of guns that ordinary law-abiding Americans have.

And there isn’t even a majority to ban military-style weapons that law abiding gun buffs own, and enjoy shooting.

And the trend of opinion over time favors gun rights.