On the Federal Assault Weapons Ban

                Back in 1994 Congress enacted a law known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. This ban prohibited the production of certain assault weapons for a ten year period. When the ban expired in 2004, Congress decided not to renew it. Now, in the wake of the Aurora shooting and other crimes, many people are arguing for increased gun control. The question now is should Congress renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban?

                Well let’s look at the facts. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, between the years of 1994 and 2004 under the federal ban on assault weapons, there was a 66 percent reduction in assault weapons being linked to shootings [1]. The reasoning behind this being that criminals found it harder to obtain assault weapons under the ban. Furthermore, studies by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence show that if the Act had not been passed and the banned assault weapons continued to make up the same percentage of crime gun traces as before the Act’s passage, approximately 60,000 additional assault weapons would have been traced to crime in the last 10 years—an average of 6,000 additional assault weapons traced to crime each year [2].

                These stats prove that assault weapons were used less in crimes, but they don’t necessarily prove that lives were saved. According to Christopher S. Koper in his study entitled: Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, crimes will just be committed with other guns. The study points out that the decline in assault weapon use was offset throughout at least the late 1990s by rising use of other guns equipped with LCMs [3]. So if Congress were to renew this ban, then criminals will simply use other guns instead. Also, since the ban only prohibits the production of assault weapons, people will still be able to legally buy and sell previously manufactured guns. Though, one can argue that the rise in demand for these weapons caused by the ban would increase prices for assault weapons and thus make it harder to obtain them.

                In the end the Federal Assault Weapons Ban is inefficient because it still makes it possible for criminals to obtain assault weapons legally. If the government truly wants to regulate gun control, renewing the FAWB is not the right choice of action. 

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-rosenthal/gun-control-laws_b_1730567.html

[2] www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/on_target.pdf   

[3] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf