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Friday, February 23rd, 2018

The Real Reason Congress Banned Assault Weapons in 1994 – and Why It Worked

Author:     Christopher Ingraham
Source:     Reader Supported News/The Washington Post
Publication Date:     22 February 18
 Link: The Real Reason Congress Banned Assault Weapons in 1994 – and Why It Worked
Stephan:   Lost in a lot of what I am hearing and reading is this very important fact: Assault rifles are carefully and expensively designed to put into the hands of a single soldier in battle a weapon giving them the ability to put out of combat a large number of opposition individuals. The weapon calibre, the round, and its speed produces a very different impact profile than a round from an ordinary hand gun. Opponents hit by a round from one of these weapons do not get up, even if they are not killed immediately. From a military perspective that makes very good tactical sense. But it doesn't make any sense being commercially available. This report expands on this very important point, ands provides accurate data, of what the now-lapsed ban was all about.

Last week’s horrific massacre of 14 students and three staff members in Parkland, Fla., has reinvigorated the national debate over assault weapons. A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday, for instance, found that 67 percent of Americans, including 53 percent of gun owners, say they favor such a ban — the highest level of support seen on this question since 20 children and six educators were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Critics of bans on assault weapons, however, say they do little to save lives. The NRA correctly points out that assault weapons are used only in a tiny fraction of gun crimes. The gun rights group also notes that a federally funded study of the previous assault weapons ban, which was in place from 1994 to 2004, concluded that “the ban’s impact on gun violence is likely to be small at best, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” Similar points have been made in arguments against a new ban in publications running the ideological gamut from Breitbart to the New York Times to HuffPost.

But […]

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