Gun control in the U.S. has been a heated topic for decades. In the 90’s, under President Clinton, the “Assault Weapons Ban” was passed and became law. During that ban, certain weapons were no longer legal to buy or sell.
To start things off, lets examine the 1994 assault weapons ban and the impact it had. The law’s purpose was to lower the number of mass shootings and all around gun violence.
Before the ban, so called “assault weapons” accounted for around 2% of gun crimes. Koper, an associate professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, said:
“Koper, Jan. 14: What we found in these studies was that the ban had mixed effects in reducing crimes with the banned weaponry due to various exemptions that were written into the law. And as a result, the ban did not appear to effect gun violence during the time it was in effect. But there is some evidence to suggest that it may have modestly reduced shootings had it been in effect for a longer period.”
Regardless of how gun control advocates talk about how horrible “assault weapons” are, the number of gun crimes committed with them has always been extremely low. The percentage is still somewhere around 2%.
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in 1991 the U.S. murder rate was 9.8 per 100,000 people. In 2011, that number dropped to 4.7, which is almost a 54% drop in our murder rate. During that same period the U.S. violent crime rate dropped from 758.2 per 100,000 to 386.3 (a reduction of almost 50%)
Americangunfacts.com points out that:
“With just one exception, every public mass shooting in the USA since 1950 has taken place where citizens are banned from carrying guns. Despite strict gun regulations, Europe has had 3 of the worst 6 school shootings.”
Sources: Factcheck.org, fbi.gov, policymic.com, Americangunfacts.com