Only due to a series of senseless mass killings (including Sandy Hook, CT) that have finally dragged gun control out of its hiding place and back into the spotlight can I now deliver a few thoughts on the matter:
I feel the effects of 9/11 have been much more socially damaging to the National psyche over the long-term by dragging the nation wholesale this far to the right. So much so that things like the 2nd Amendment seem sacrosanct and beyond debate. YET, even recently thats not been the case: in 1994 the Assault Weapons Ban went into place for a decade, removing a deadly assortment of weapons off store shelves. By 2004, in a completely different and charged political climate, one of paranoia and fear, one where we now surveil ourselves with newly created government agencies, weapons seem like the only thing we can rely on against the faceless threats of terrorism: "Self-reliance and the 2nd Amendment."
The divisiveness of this American mythology / identity is that guns either prevent problems or don't cause any (the "people kill people" argument). If you've noticed lately people have NOT been very good at solving problems in our politics, and on our streets people are resolving their problems with guns. We would best be served by remembering we are citizens and neighbors and that it indeed takes a village to raise children, create civil society, and improve our collective well-being through positive collective action. Holing up in your survivalist shack is cowardice and anti-American. Being an informed citizen, an advocate, a voter, a volunteer and a good neighbor takes real courage. If you love this country, you care enough tend its gardens and by doing so you shall reap the fruit of your labor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) (or Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act) was a subtitle of theViolent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law in the United States that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms, so called "assault weapons". The 10-year ban was passed by Congress on September 13, 1994, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day. The ban only applied to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment.
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired on September 13, 2004, as part of the law's sunset provision. There have been multiple attempts to renew the ban,[1] but no bill has reached the floor for a vote.
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[edit]Criteria of an assault weapon
Assault weapon (semi-automatic) refers primarily (but not exclusively) to firearms that possess the cosmetic features of an assault rifle (which are fully-automatic). Actually possessing the operational features, such as 'full-auto', is not required for classification as an assault weapon; merely the possession of cosmetic features is enough to warrant such classification as an assault weapon. Semi-automatic firearms, when fired, automatically extract the spent cartridge casing and load the next cartridge into the chamber, ready to fire again; they do not fire automatically like a machine gun; rather, only one round is fired with each trigger pull.
In the former U.S. law, the legal term assault weapon included certain specific semi-automatic firearm models by name (e.g., Colt AR-15,TEC-9, non-select-fire AK-47s produced by three manufacturers, and Uzis) and other semi-automatic firearms because they possess a minimum set of cosmetic features from the following list of features:
- Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
- Folding or telescoping stock
- Pistol grip
- Bayonet mount
- Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
- Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally).
- Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
- Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
- Threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, orsuppressor
- Barrel shroud that can be used as a hand-hold
- Unloaded weight of 50 oz (1.4 kg) or more
- A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm.
- Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:
- Folding or telescoping stock
- Pistol grip
- Fixed capacity of more than 5 rounds
- Detachable magazine.
[edit]Provisions of the ban
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was only a small part (title XI, subtitle A) of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
The Act created a flowchart for classifying 'assault weapons' and subjected firearms that met that classification to regulation. Nineteen models of firearms were defined by name as being 'assault weapons' regardless of how many features they had. Various semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns were classified as 'assault weapons' due to having various combinations of features.
The Act addressed only semi-automatic firearms, that is, firearms that fire one shot each time the trigger is pulled. Neither the AWB nor its expiration changed the legal status of fully automatic firearms, which fire more than one round with a single trigger-pull; these have been regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934 and Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.
The Act also defined and banned 'large capacity ammunition feeding devices' in the ban, which generally applied to magazines or other ammunition feeding devices with capacities of greater than a certain number of rounds, and that up to the time of the Act were considered normal or factory magazines. Media and popular culture referred to these as 'high capacity magazines or feeding devices'. Depending on the locality and type of firearm, the cutoff between a 'normal' capacity and 'high' capacity magazine was 3, 7, 10, 12, 15, or 20 rounds. The now defunct federal ban set the limit at 10 rounds.
During the period when the AWB was in effect, it was illegal to manufacture any firearm that met the law's flowchart of an assault weaponor large capacity ammunition feeding device, except for export or for sale to a government or law enforcement agency. The law also banned possession of illegally imported or manufactured firearms, but did not ban possession or sale of pre-existing 'assault weapons' or previously factory standard magazines that were legally redefined as large capacity ammunition feeding devices. This provision for pre-ban firearms created a higher price point in the market for such items, which still exist due to several states adopting their own assault weapons ban.
[edit]Compliance
The National Rifle Association has referred to the features affected by the ban as cosmetic,[2] as has the Violence Policy Center.[3]
In addition, in March 2004, Kristen Rand, the legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, criticized the soon-to-expire ban by stating, "The 1994 law in theory banned AK-47s, MAC-10s, Uzis, AR-15s and other 'assault weapons'. Yet the gun industry easily found ways around the law and most of these weapons are now sold in post-ban models virtually identical to the guns Congress sought to ban in 1994."[4]
[edit]Expiration and Effect on Crime
Opponents of the ban claimed that its expiration has seen little if any increase in crime, while Senator Diane Feinstein claimed the ban was effective because "It was drying up supply and driving up prices." [5]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the "assault weapon" ban and other gun control attempts, and found "insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence."[6] A 2004 critical review of research on firearms by a National Research Council panel also noted that academic studies of the assault weapon ban "did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence" and noted "due to the fact that the relative rarity with which the banned guns were used in crime before the ban ... the maximum potential effect of the ban on gun violence outcomes would be very small...."[7]
The United States Department of Justice National Institute of Justice found should the ban be renewed, its effects on gun violence would likely be small, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement, because rifles in general, including rifles referred to as "assault rifles" or "assault weapons", are rarely used in gun crimes.[8]
That study by Christopher S. Koper, Daniel J. Woods, and Jeffrey A. Roth of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania found no statistically significant evidence that either the assault weapons ban or the ban on magazines holding more than 10 bullets had reduced gun murders. However, they concluded that it was "premature to make definitive assessments of the ban's impact on gun crime," and argue that if the ban had been in effect for more than nine years, benefits might have begun to appear.[9]
Research by John Lott in the 2000 second edition of More Guns, Less Crime provided the first research on state and the Federal Assault Weapon Bans.[10] The 2010 third edition provided the first empirical research on the 2004 sunset of the Federal Assault Weapon Ban.[11]Generally, the research found no impact of these bans on violent crime rates, though the third edition provided some evidence that Assault Weapon Bans slightly increased murder rates. Lott's book The Bias Against Guns provided evidence that the bans reduced the number of gun shows by over 20 percent.[12] Koper, Woods, and Roth studies focus on gun murders, while Lott's looks at murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assaults. Unlike their work, Lott's research accounted for state Assault Weapon Bans and 12 other different types of gun control laws.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence examined the impact of the Assault Weapons Ban in its 2004 report, On Target: The Impact of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapon Act. Examining 1.4 million guns involved in crime, "in the five-year period before enactment of the Federal Assault Weapons Act (1990-1994), assault weapons named in the Act constituted 4.82% of the crime gun traces ATF conducted nationwide. Since the law’s enactment, however, these assault weapons have made up only 1.61% of the guns ATF has traced to crime."[13] A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) stated that he "can in no way vouch for the validity" of Brady Campaign's claim that the ban was responsible for violent crime's decline.[14]
[edit]Efforts to renew the ban
Since the assault weapons ban expired on March 2, 2004, legislation to renew the ban has been proposed a number of times unsuccessfully.
On March 2, 2004, the Senate voted down the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (a bill to bar firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable for crimes committed with their products) after a ten-year extension of the assault weapons ban was attached to it, sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was subsequently passed in 2005 without an assault weapons renewal.
In the 108th Congress, Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, introduced H.R. 2038, the Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2003, on May 8, 2003, before the assault weapons ban expired. It had 111 co-sponsors. The Bill would have renewed the assault weapons ban for an additional ten years and revise the definition of 'semiautomatic assault weapon'. The Bill never got out of committee to come up for a floor vote and died at the end of the 108th Congress.[15]
In the 109th Congress, McCarthy reintroduced the same bill, on March 15, 2005. The Bill, H.R. 1312, the Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2005, which had 94 co-sponsors, never got out of committee and died at the end of the 109th Congress.[16]
In the 110th Congress, McCarthy reintroduced the same bill, on February 17, 2007. The Bill, H.R. 1022, the Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2007, which had 67 co-sponsors, never got out of committee and died at the end of the 110th Congress.[17]
Shortly after the November 4, 2008 election, Change.gov, the website of the office of then President-Elect Barack Obama, listed a detailed agenda for the forthcoming administration. The stated positions included "making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent."[18] This statement was originally published on Barack Obama's campaign website, BarackObama.com.[19] The agenda statement later appeared on the administration's website, WhiteHouse.gov, with its wording intact.[20][21] As of October 9, 2012, the statement appeared within the Urban Policy section of Change.gov, under the heading "Address Gun Violence in Cities".
Also in the 110th Congress, Representative Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, introduced a bill on June 12, 2008, to reinstate the assault weapons ban for ten years and expand the list of banned weapons. The Bill, H.R. 6257, the Assault Weapons Ban Reauthorization Act of 2008, had four co-sponsors, all Republicans: Michael N. Castle of Delaware, Mike Ferguson of New Jersey, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen ofFlorida, and Christopher Shays of Connecticut. The Bill never got out of committee and died at the end of the 110th Congress.[22]
On February 25, 2009 newly sworn-in Attorney General Eric Holder repeated the Obama administration's desire to reinstate the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.[23] The mention came in response to a question, about 20 minutes into a joint press conference with DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, discussing efforts to crack down on Mexican drug cartels. Attorney General Holder said: "[...] there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons."[24]
Senator Diane Feinstein announced she would introduce a Federal assault weapons ban bill in the U.S. Senate[25] following the 2012Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also called for a renewed ban[26].
[edit]Assault weapons ban in New York politics
See also: Gun laws in the United States (by state)
New York's version of the law is very similar to the Federal version, but New York's version does not have a sunset provision. According to the laws of the State of New York, a magazine with a capacity of more than 10 rounds manufactured after September 14, 1994 cannot be legally possessed by anyone other than a law enforcement officer. A provision of the Federal law required that gun makers stamp the date of manufacture on every newly manufactured 'large capacity' magazine. Because that requirement is no longer in effect, the New York magazine ban becomes potentially unenforceable, except with respect to those magazines manufactured during the ban and marked according to federal regulations then in effect.
NYS Penal Law § 265.02(6) makes it a class D felony to possess "a large capacity ammunition feeding device," which is defined in Penal Law § 265.00(23) as "a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device, manufactured after [September 13, 1994], that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than ten rounds of ammunition." Possession of unmarked "large capacity" magazines made after the sunset of the federal ban thus subject New Yorkers to felony charges. Police and prosecutors may be able to determine actual manufacture dates of seized magazines from information not generally available to consumers, such as the dates of magazine design changes and parts assembly numbers. The New York ban thus leaves possessors of unmarked post-ban magazines at risk of felony charges since they may not know the magazines were manufactured post-sunset and not pre-ban. However, the prosecution must be able to prove that the subject in possession of the magazine had knowledge that it was in fact a post-ban magazine.
During the period of the federal ban, ATF would issue rulings as to whether attachment of a given muzzle device on a post-ban rifle was permissible because it acted only as a brake, or impermissible because it acted as a flash suppressor. As with magazines, the New York regulatory scheme implicitly relied upon such federal regulatory determinations for enforcement of the state's ban. With the sunset of the federal ban, ATF is no longer concerned with classifying muzzle devices. New York residents now may acquire or modify rifles, attaching what they believe to be muzzle brakes, but which, at some point, New York police or prosecutors may deem to be flash suppressors, resulting in arrest or prosecution for unwitting possession of a banned rifle. [See NYS Penal Law § 265.00(22) defining "Assault Weapon" to include "a semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least two of the following characteristics... (iv) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor." There is no definition of 'flash suppressor' in § 265.00, which contains all definitions for the ban, thus leaving grounds for arrest and prosecution uncertain until what is or is not a 'flash suppressor' is resolved by state courts or clarified by statute.]
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