by Eric Davis
Re: President Joe Biden’s claim that the 1994 assault weapons ban reduced lethal gun crime: this is a common misdirection tactic used by those who seek to restrict access to firearms. It is cherry-picked data, specifically taken out of context to confuse the issue. Those who invoke this claim usually boast that violent crime fell after the 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” enacted by the Clinton administration. While this is technically true, proponents of gun control purposely neglect to mention that violent crime was already on a downward trend in the US at the time the ban was enacted, and even so, there is no solid data linking this trend to the legislation in question.
From the United States Department of Justice Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence:
“We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And indeed, there has been no discernable reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death, or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury, as we might have expected had the ban reduced crimes with both [assault weapons] and [large capacity magazines].”
Banning some semi automatic guns based on arbitrary aesthetic characteristics, when there exists other guns, which fire the same bullets, with the same rapidity, cannot be expected to have much of an impact on anything. The gun control crowd knows this and purposefully muddies the water with these sorts of misdirection techniques and political doublespeak.
They know that an “assault weapon ban” will have no discernable effects on mass killings in a country so deeply troubled and addicted to violence. Banning certain types of firearms one at a time is a conscious strategy of incrementalism with the ultimate goal of complete civilian disarmament; where one has a “right” to own a gun, as long as it’s an antiquated relic from centuries gone by and has been rendered completely useless for the purposes of defending one’s life, liberty, and property.
Straying from my lane a bit here, and offering my personal thoughts on the matter: if the gun control crowd could wave their magic wand and ban all the things that might ever be used to hurt anyone, and effectively “bubble wrap” our society, they still refuse to even address the question of why we continue to raise children (and adults) in this country who think it’s ok to kill children.
The “gun violence epidemic” in America is a biproduct of the irresponsibility epidemic that we have nurtured and cultivated through a combination of compulsory factory schooling and parental apathy. It parallels the obesity epidemic, the drug abuse epidemic, and is a direct reflection of the entitled, cynical, and nihilistic view held by a large chunk of Americans. When no one is held responsible for their actions, and words mean whatever we want them to, chaos and entropy will rule the day.
The author is a Northfield business owner and president of Gun Owners of Vermont, a Second Amendment gun rights advocacy organization.