Sept 2012 Assault Weapons Ban Briefs

PARADIGM
Research
PUBLIC FORUM POSITION PAPER

2012-2013
CONGRESS SHOULD RENEW THE FEDERAL ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN.
SEPTEMBER
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The Paradigm NFL Public Forum Position Paper September 2012 by Dr. David Cram Helwich
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Paradigm Research 2012-13
September Public ForumAssault Weapons
Assault Weapons Ban: Table of Contents

Assault Weapons Ban: Introduction ................................................................................................... 3 Status Quo: No Ban Renewal Coming Now ...................................................................................... 5
Pro: Assault Weapons Ban Desirable

Ban Desirable: Topshelf ..................................................................................................................... 6 Ban Desirable: General ...................................................................................................................... 9 Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsGeneral ............................................................................. 13 Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsChildren ........................................................................... 15 Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsLaw Enforcement ............................................................. 18 Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsMass Killings ................................................................... 20 Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsOther Countries ................................................................ 22 Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsPublic Health.................................................................... 23 Ban Desirable: Large Capacity Magazines ...................................................................................... 24 Ban Desirable: Law Enforcement Supports ..................................................................................... 26 Ban Desirable: Market Expansion / Militarization Now .................................................................. 27 Ban Desirable: Public Supports........................................................................................................ 29 Ban Desirable: Should Be Strengthened .......................................................................................... 31 Ban Desirable: Terrorism ................................................................................................................. 33 Ban Desirable: Answers to Fails (General)................................................................................... 35 Ban Desirable: Answers to Firearms Ownership Good ................................................................ 37 Ban Desirable: Answers to Gun Control Fails .............................................................................. 38 Ban Desirable: Answers to Illicit Sales / Markets ........................................................................ 39 Ban Desirable: Answers to Insurrection Rights ............................................................................ 40 Ban Desirable: Answers to Legitimate UsesGeneral ................................................................ 43 Ban Desirable: Answers to Legitimate UsesSelf-Defense ........................................................ 46 Ban Desirable: Answers to Other Gun Problems Worse .............................................................. 47 Ban Desirable: Answers to Ownership Levels Decreasing ........................................................... 48 Ban Desirable: Answers to People Kill People ............................................................................. 49 Ban Desirable: Answers to State / Local Laws Solve ................................................................... 50 Ban Desirable: Answers to Unconstitutional / Slippery Slope...................................................... 51
Con: Assault Weapons Ban Undesirable

Ban Undesirable: Topshelf ............................................................................................................... 54 Ban Undesirable: Access Failure ..................................................................................................... 56 Ban Undesirable: CircumventionGeneral..................................................................................... 57 Ban Undesirable: CircumventionLethality Myth / Arbitrary........................................................ 60 Ban Undesirable: CircumventionRenewal Backfires ................................................................... 63 Ban Undesirable: Constitutionality Concerns .................................................................................. 64 Ban Undesirable: Gun Rights ........................................................................................................... 66 Ban Undesirable: Illicit Markets ...................................................................................................... 67 Ban Undesirable: Not Used in Crime ............................................................................................... 68 Ban Undesirable: Polarization .......................................................................................................... 70 Ban Undesirable: Self-Defense ........................................................................................................ 71 Ban Undesirable: Answers to Automatic Weapons ...................................................................... 72 Ban Undesirable: Answers to Criminality Justifications .............................................................. 73 Ban Undesirable: Answers to Gun Violence ................................................................................ 74 Ban Undesirable: Answers to Large Capacity Magazine Bans ..................................................... 77 Ban Undesirable: Answers to Public Supports / Should Strengthen ........................................... 79
Assault Weapons Ban: Introduction

Resolved: Congress should renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Given the recent spate of high-profile public shootings, the opening Public Forum topic for the NFLs 2012-13 season is particularly timely. It is also a resolution that does a pretty good job of dividing ground between the pro and con sides and intersects with an interesting and well-developed literature base. Aside from one wording quirk, which we will address in greater detail in the following paragraphs, the resolution should produce some highly educational and balanced debates. This is a prototypical policy resolutionit suggests that an agent of action, in this case Congress (presumably the United States Congress), should adopt a particular course of action. The pro team thus must defend that the Congress should renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which refers to a series of gun regulations contained in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. A recent report from the advocacy group Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence describes some of the major features and limitations of the legislation: On September 13, 1994, Congress adopted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. That Act amended the Gun Control Act of 1968, making it unlawful for a person to manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon. The term semiautomatic assault weapon was defined to include 19 named firearms and copies of those firearms, as well as certain semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns with at least two specified characteristics from a list of features. The two-feature test and the inclusion in the list of features that were purely cosmetic in nature created a loophole that allowed manufacturers to successfully circumvent the law by making minor modifications to the weapons they already produced. The 1994 Act also banned the transfer and possession of any large capacity ammunition feeding device, defined to include magazines manufactured after the enactment of the Act that are capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. (Additional information about large capacity ammunition magazines is contained in Federal Law on Large Capacity Ammunition Magazines.) The 1994 Act did not, however, prohibit the continued transfer or possession of assault weapons or large capacity ammunition magazines manufactured before the laws effective date. Manufacturers took advantage of this loophole by boosting production of assault weapons and large capacity magazines in the months leading up to the ban, creating a legal stockpile of these items. As a result, assault weapons and large capacity magazines continued to be readily available and legal nationwide, except where specifically banned by state or local law. In addition, the assault weapon ban was enacted with a sunset clause, providing for its expiration after ten years. Despite overwhelming public support for its renewal, Congress and the President allowed the assault weapon ban to expire on September 13, 2004. Thus, semi-automatic, military style weapons that were formerly banned under the federal law are now legal unless banned by state or local law. The 2007 report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police recommended that Congress enact an effective ban on military-style assault weapons. [Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Federal Law on Assault Weapons, 51712, http://smartgunlaws.org/federal-law-on-assault-weapons/, accessed 8-20-12.] As noted by both gun control advocates and critics of the assault weapons ban (AWB), the law did not cover all, or even most semi-automatic weapons. Instead, the law only applied to a discrete list of weapons with what the legislation designated as possessingassault weapon characteristics. Enacted on September 13, 1994, Title XI, Subtitle A of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 imposes a 10-year ban on the manufacture, transfer, and possession of certain semiautomatic firearms designated as assault weapons (AWs). The AW ban is not a prohibition on all semiautomatics. Rather, it is directed at semiautomatics having features that appear useful in military and criminal applications but unnecessary in shooting sports or selfdefense. Examples of such features include pistol grips on rifles, flash hiders, folding rifle stocks, threaded barrels for attaching silencers, and the ability to accept ammunition magazines holding large numbers of bullets. Indeed, several of the banned guns (e.g., the AR-15 and Avtomat Kalashnikov models) are civilian copies of military weapons and accept ammunition magazines made for those military weapons. [Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. 4] These quotes rather effectively summarize the promise and limitations of the law, which was allowed to sunset (expire) on September 13, 2004. Both critics and supporters of an AWB agree that the 1994 regulations were largely symbolic in nature, since the law grandfathered in existing weapons, relied upon largely cosmetic characteristics to define assault weapons, and allowed companies to make minor changes in banned weapons to render them legal for sale. Although there are several advocacy organizations who claim that the AWB played a dramatic role in decreasing gun violence in the U.S., even many of a bans strongest supporters concede that the ban was largely symbolic in nature.
Assault Weapons Ban: Introduction [contd]

Instead, many of these advocates, which include the Violence Policy Center, the Brady Center, and others, claim that Congress should both re-enact the assault weapons ban (using language that closely mirrors that found in the resolution) AND strengthen the law, presumably by closing the loopholes that rendered the 1994 policy largely ineffective. The key question when both assessing and debating this resolution is whether pro teams may defend a renewal of a stronger assault weapons ban, or whether they are limited to simply defending that the government re-institute the deeply flawed regulations in the Violence Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Unfortunately, the term renew does not provide much guidance in resolving this question. A representative set of definitions are available at Merriam Websters website: Definition of RENEW--transitive verb 1: to make like new : restore to freshness, vigor, or perfection <as we renew our strength in sleep> 2 : to make new spiritually : regenerate 3 a : to restore to existence : revive b : to make extensive changes in : rebuild 4 : to do again : repeat 5: to begin again : resume 6 : replace, replenish <renew water in a tank> 7 a : to grant or obtain an extension of or on <renew a license> b : to grant or obtain an extension on the loan of <renew a library book> intransitive verb 1 : to become new or as new 2 : to begin again : resume 3 : to make a renewal (as of a lease) Examples of RENEW When you sleep, your body has a chance to renew itself. This discussion has renewed my hope of finding a solution to the problem. At the start of each school year, we renew our commitment to helping students succeed. She renewed her promise to come see me. They celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary by renewing their wedding vows. They have renewed their efforts to find a peaceful solution. The incident has renewed hostilities between the groups. They recently renewed their acquaintance after more than 10 years apart. If you haven't listened to this music since the 1960s, it's time to renew your acquaintance with these songs. [http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/renew, accessed 8-22-12]
Notably, uses of renew both include a sense of re-institution (to make like new; to restore to existence) and improvement (restore to freshness, vigor, or perfection; to make extensive changes in, rebuild). Generally speaking, the former set of definitions tend to favor the con side, since they seem to indicate that a renewal means simply reinstituting the previous regulations, while the latter definitions leave room for strengthening those regulations. As is the case with many debate arguments, the truth of the matter will likely be determined on a round-to-round basis, and you should be prepared to argue both sides of whether renew permits improvement. From our perspective, the pro side has some fairly compelling fairnessbased arguments justifying their ability to defend, at a minimum, the reinstitution of a ban sans loopholes. However, you should contest this interpretation when defending the con side, both on procedural grounds (such an interpretation is largely unpredictable since we cannot know how the ban could be strengthened) and by pointing to the prevailing use of renew in the literature, which tends to lean towards the re-enactment interpretation. Beyond this procedural question, the merits of the AWB largely depend on whether one believes that gun control measures are effective in decreasing gun violence. Ban advocates maintain that gun crime and fatalities are a serious problem, and that assault weapons are really only useful for criminal purposes. They are able to leverage a large number of powerful examples of very public mass killings in support of this claim, and ban supporters maintain that assault weapons are a menace that both empower terrorists and threaten average citizens. Some of the best evidence, surprisingly, deals with the claim that widespread gun ownership is necessary to check government tyrannyevidence on the insurrection rights block compellingly argues that such a stance threatens public safety and the rule of law while maintaining that citizens in a democracy have numerous non-violent means to voice their grievances. The con side has a number of compelling circumvention arguments, which can be coupled with strongly-worded defenses of the Second Amendment. There are numerous studies contesting whether the AWB was effective in curbing gun violence, with advocates on both sides interpreting the data to support their own perspectives. Much of the evidence available on this topic comes from three distinct periodsthe months around the enactment of the ban in 1994, the period on either side of the bans expiration in 2004, and reports from the recent surge in assaults on civilians. Surprisingly the arguments have remained largely consistent in all three eras. Best of luck!
Status Quo: No Ban Renewal Coming Now

1. There is no chance of an assault weapons ban passing Congress in the near future
Daniel Strauss, Durbin Sees Zero Chance of Passing Assault Weapons Ban, THE HILL, 72612, http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/240451-sen-durbin-says-theres-zero-chance-of-passing-assault-weapons-bansoon, accessed 8-22-12. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Thursday that there was absolutely "zero" chance of Congress passing an assault weapons ban anytime soon. Durbin said he supports a ban on assault weapons, but that he saw no political possibility for moving such legislation. "I am a co-sponsor of the bill that would limit the sale of these high-capacity magazine clips and I also think that we should be careful when it comes to selling guns not to sell them to people with either a terrorist criminal background or mental instability you know, I support all that," Durbin said on the "Bill Press Show." "What are the chances of even the consideration let alone the passage of those measures this year? Zero." Durbin said there could "perhaps" be a debate on an assault weapons ban, "perhaps a vote, but not even close to passing."
2. NRA effectively blocks political action to control guns

Terry Plumb, Ban Assault Weapons, Killers Favorite Tool, HERALD, 72812, www.heraldonline.com/2012/07/28/4143831/plumb-ban-assault-weapons-killers.html, accessed 8-22-12. News coverage of gun violence creates a win-win for the National Rifle Association. Inquiries about concealed-weapons classes reportedly soared in Colorado following news that 12 people were killed and nearly 60 injured at the Aurora multiplex. When violent crime goes up, the firearms industry sells more guns. When crime rates fall as they have in recent years the NRA credits the good news to an increase in concealed-weapons permits. Debate over gun regulation typically heats up after horrific events such as the Aurora shootings or the attack that wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., among others, in Tucson last year. In truth, political debate is practically non-existent. The NRA has seen to that. Any legislator who suggests gun laws need tightening can expect to see his or her opponents campaign coffers overflow.
3. NRA is an enormously powerful lobby

Mike Sharpe, Violent Nation, CHALLENGE v. 54 n. 2, March/April 2011, p. 124. The NRA is the strongest lobby in Washington because it gets most of the money in the gun fight. Politicians who oppose the gun lobby are an endangered species. Business leaders are not notably present in the movement to strengthen gun laws. Sometimes the fight over gun control is depicted as country against city. So dont blame us pro-gun people. Oh, bother the fact that equal numbers are killed by guns in urban areas as in rural areas.
Ban Desirable: Topshelf

1. Ban should be strengthenedcover more weapons, better definitions, prohibit grandfathering
Violence Policy Center, ILLINOIS: LAND OF POST-BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS, 304, p. 2-4. Legislation to address the industrys subversion of the law has been introduced in the 108th Congress by Representatives Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and John Conyers (D-MI) in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senator Frank Lautenberg (DNJ) in the U.S. Senate. The Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2003" would: Expand the list of named, banned assault weapons. The limited list of banned assault weapons contained in the original law is expanded to address new, post-ban weapons marketed by the industry as well as assault weapons not covered by the 1994 law. * Improve the definition of assault weapons to cover all assault weapons. The definition is refined to include firearms that accept a detachable ammunition magazine and incorporate one other assault weapon characteristic such as a pistol grip or folding stock. Current law requires the presence of two such characteristics before a gun is labeled an assault weapon. The narrowness of this definition has resulted in a proliferation of post-ban assault weapons, including legal versions of gunssuch as the TEC-9 and AR-15banned by name by the 1994 law. * Revise the list of assault weapon characteristics to delete some extraneous characteristics and better define others. Some assault weapons characteristics used to define such weapons in current law actually have no bearing on whether the firearm functions as an assault weapon. For example, the ability to attach a bayonet to the barrel of a gun has no bearing on whether the firearm functions as an assault weapon. In addition, the term pistol grip is clarified to include so-called thumbhole stocks, or other design features that perform the same function. * The term firearm as used in the assault weapons ban is clarified to include the frame or receiver of a prohibited gun. The receiver of any firearm is its major working part. Receivers and frames are defined by the Gun Control Act of 1968 as firearms. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, however, has adopted a different interpretation of this basic federal gun law in the case of assault weapons, determining that the term firearm as applied to assault weapons does not include receivers or frames. This interpretation allows gun dealers and wholesalers to sell new receivers of otherwise banned guns. Furthermore, all of the other parts necessary to make an assault weapon are readily available, often sold as parts kits. Compounding this problem is the fact that it is legal for an individual to manufacture a firearm for personal use. * Prohibit manufacturers from using pre-ban, high-capacity ammunition magazines in post-ban assault weapons. Under the 1994 law, no new firearm may be manufactured or sold in the United States with an ammunition magazine that has a capacity greater than 10 rounds. Assault weapon manufacturers are circumventing the law by equipping new guns with grandfathered high-capacity magazines of 10 rounds or more. * Ban the Importation of high-capacity ammunition magazines. Currently, ATF regulations allow for the importation of foreign-made high-capacity magazines manufactured prior to the 1994 ban. This not only ensures that there will always be a supply of high-capacity magazines available for sale in the United States, but also dramatically increases the possibility that the manufacture date of new high-capacity magazines can be falsified. As seen by the product lines of Illinois gunmakersArmalite, Inc., D.S. Arms, Inc., Eagle Arms, Les Baer Custom, Inc., Rock River Arms, Inc., and Springfield Armory, Inc.and numerous others across the nation, the firearms industry has successfully evaded the 1994 ban. Therefore, simple renewal of the existing ban will do nothing to address the severe danger that assault weapons pose to public safety. Reauthorization of the ban must include substantial improvements to prevent the gun industry from continuing to flood Americas streets with these deadly weapons.
2. Should ban assault weapons to protect both police officers and civilians
Jake Matthews, For Lives and Liberty: Banning Assault Weapons in America, HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW, 813 12, http://hpronline.org/united-states/for-lives-and-liberty-banning-assault-weapons-in-america-3/, accessed 8-22-12. In 2004, Congress failed to renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban originally passed in 1994 under President Clinton. Since the laws expiration, police deaths from gunshot wounds have increased substantially. In 2009, 49 police officers died from gunfire, a 24 percent increase from 2008. In 2010, 61 officers were shot and killed, a 37 percent increase from 2009. And in 2011, 68 officers died from gunfire. In fact, 2011 represents the first year of the past 14 years when the leading cause of onduty police officer death was from gunfire and not from traffic fatalities. As a society, we choose to arm our police officers. Yet, if we allow both officers and criminals to obtain high-powered weaponry, were simply asking for death and instability. Banning assault weapons would not only save civilian lives, but also would help protect police officers on duty. The move would allow for tighter, more aggressive enforcement of the law. The fight against assault weapons should be framed not as a limitation of rights, but as a stand against criminality and criminal violence. The net benefit to society is positive. On multiple levels, a renewed ban on assault weapons seems a commonsense approach to curtailing gun violence. Would all mass killings stop and the crime rate drop instantly? Likely not. Public education efforts would help further, as would improved techniques to identify and treat mentally disabled individuals. Nonetheless, banning assault weapons is a step forwardits a measure against crime, against homicide, against terrorism, against fear. Its a measure in favor of personal liberties for all Americans.
Ban Desirable: Topshelf [contd]

3. We should ban assault weaponsworked when it was in place
John Rosenthal, President, Meredith Management, Shame on Congress Renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, HUFFINGTON POST, 8112, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-rosenthal/gun-control-laws_b_1730567.html, accessed 8-25-12. The problem is clear. And the solution should be just as clear. But with the dust settling from the Aurora tragedy, and both presidential candidates eager to return to safe campaigning grounds, it seems that the message might again be lost, and gun laws will remain an untouched political issue. We shouldn't be surprised that the presidential candidates are calling for a time of mourning, not a time of reform, or that Congress is ducking its cowardly head and waiting for the media spotlight to pass. We shouldn't be surprised that this incident, like every other mass shooting in the past decade, has failed to spark progressive changes in gun laws. In fact we shouldn't be surprised that this incident occurred at all. What can we expect in a country that allows a person to legally acquire an arsenal of weapons and ammunition of a murderous magnitude? No one should be surprised that unrestricted access to guns leads to unimaginable violence. With military combat-style weapons and highcapacity ammunition clips readily available to virtually anybody without even a background check or ID, unnecessary deaths become routine and fear becomes the norm. And when Congress doesn't lift a pen or even acknowledge the need for change, it sends the message that this is an acceptable reality and leave many Americans feeling that public safety means being prepared to open fire whenever they feel threatened. But what if Congress did have a spine and it did value public safety over private interests and its political future? What kind of regulation would reduce gun violence? And where is the evidence? The data is clear and strongly confirms any common sense hypothesis. Easy access to guns equals more violence. 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 crimes. It's simple: assault rifles are often the weapon of choice for gang members and mass murderers, so remove them from the legal gun trade.
4. Governments need to check military-style weapons to protect themselvesis important for public safety, protection of democracy
Josh Horwitz, Executive Director, Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Casey Anderson, attorney, Taking Gun Rights Seriously: The Insurrectionist Idea and Its Consequences, ALBANY GOVERNMENT LAW REVIEW v. 1, 2008, p. 514-515. A monopoly of force does not mean that the government should disarm every citizen or prohibit armed self-defense, but the government must prevent the accumulation of arms for insurrectionary purposes or of arms especially suited for war. The monopoly on force simply means that a government must have enough strength to enforce its own laws. Robert Spitzer points out that nothing about the government's legitimate use of force "precludes justifiable personal use of force, such as in the case of self defense[,] or the questioning of government authority." On his blog, staunch pro-gun Professor Eugene Volokh makes the point that the classical Weberian view of a monopoly on the legitimate use of force tells us little about self-defense, especially in the United States. There has always been a strong American presumption that reasonable self-defense is justifiable. Moreover, there are plenty of private security guards and firms that are authorized by the state to augment individual self-defense. Weber prefigured these concerns and explained that in many instances the state delegates the use of force, for instance, to a parent to discipline a child, or to the military to enforce discipline among its troops. Weber's concern is with a challenge to the authority of the state, and it is not a public health claim, but an argument concerning civic health. States that lose the ability to carry out democratic actions lose their status as states, which is unhealthy wherever it occurs. While many people disagree with Eugene Volokh, a staunch defender of an expanded right to bear arms, on a variety of issues related to gun rights, his blog remarks on Weber are a reminder that the monopoly on force is not a call to ban the private ownership of guns. As he puts it, "my point is simply that this Weber quote [regarding the monopoly on force] is of no relevance to the question of private gun possession for self-defense." We agree, and we believe the debate over gun control should center on the values and pragmatic considerations underlying the use of firearms for self-defense and recreation, rather than overheated claims about the purported need to arm citizens against their government. The plaintiffs in the Heller case originally argued that their concern was gun possession for personal defense, yet the court of appeals went well beyond that issue, finding that the Second Amendment protects guns for personal protection as well as for taking on the government, should it become tyrannical. As we have shown, these are radically different questions, and should the Supreme Court take such a broad-brush approach, it will create a dangerous precedent that will embolden domestic terrorists who already feel that the government is tyrannical, and who may read such a decision as a license to act on their violent and anti-democratic impulses.
Ban Desirable: Topshelf [contd]

5. Semi-automatic weapons are killing machines with no valueare only used to slaughter civilians
Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator, Sen. Kennedy Issues Statement on Reauthorization of Assault Weapons Ban, US FED ENWS, 9804, lexis. Semi-automatic assault weapons are killing machines with utterly no redeeming value in any sane community. They are intentionally designed to maximize their killing power by using a rapid rate of fire. They are intended to be spray-fired from the hip, so that the killer can fire many times in rapid succession. They are domestic weapons of mass destruction. We know what renewed sales of these weapons will do. They'll facilitate more crime, just as they did before. Not long ago, assault weapons were the weapon of choice for drug traffickers, gangs, and other criminal groups across the nation. Their power and their ability to penetrate body armor exposed police officers to great danger. Many innocent bystanders were killed in indiscriminate shoot-outs by criminals with assault rifles. We know that assault weapons were also used in a series of massacres: * In an attack at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California in 1989, Patrick Purdy used an assault weapon to kill five small children and wound 29 others. Purdy fired 106 rounds in less than two minutes. o In 1993, two CIA employees were killed outside the entrance to CIA headquarters by a Pakistani national using an AK-47 assault rifle with a 30-round magazine. * Also in 1993, eight persons were killed and six others were wounded at a San Francisco law firm by an assailant using two assault pistols with 50-round magazines. That's the kind of country we'll return to if President Bush and the Republican leadership of the House and Senate allow the current ban on assault weapons to expire.
Ban Desirable: General

1. The federal government should ban the weapons of mayhem-serve no legitimate purpose, expiration has only led to many senseless deaths
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. iv. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has called assault weapons mass produced mayhem.7 They have been weapons of choice for gangs, drug dealers, and mass killers. They have been used to slaughter innocents in numerous high-profile shootings, and have been used to outgun police officers on the streets. They are of no use for hunters and are counterproductive for lawful defense of ones home. Law enforcement throughout the nation has called for them to be banned. Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush did not agree on much, but they all supported an assault weapons ban. For ten years, from 1994-2004, federal law banned these weapons of war. Although this now-expired law was limited in scope, and was circumvented by many gun manufacturers, it reduced the use of assault weapons in crime. The experience suggests that a stronger, more comprehensive law would enhance public safety even more. In the four years since the federal ban expired, hundreds of people have been killed in this country with military-style assault weapons. This report lists incidents in which at least 163 people have been killed and 185 wounded in with assault weapons, including at least 38 police officers killed or wounded by them. Moreover, as these incidents are only those that we could find reported in the press, the actual tally of fatalities and injuries is almost certainly much higher.
2. We need to renew the assault weapons banwill help end the violence
Josh Sugarmann, founder and executive director, Violence Policy center, President Obama Needs to Ban Assault Weapons, US NEWS, Debate Club 72612, http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/does-the-colorado-shooting-prove-the-need-formore-gun-control-laws/president-obama-needs-to-ban-assault-weapons, accessed 8-25-12. Few Americans are aware of what America's gun industry has turned into: vendors of military-style weapons who market their products' lethality and combat-derived features in an effort to sell, and resell, to a dwindling customer base. The fact is that household gun ownership in the United States is on a steady decline. One person who was aware of the hyper-militarization of the gun industry was James Holmes, the accused Colorado mass killer. His Smith & Wesson M&P15 assault rifle demonstrates the clear and present danger of a gun designed for war and ruthlessly marketed for profit to civilians. In America today, virtually anyone with a grudge and a credit card can outfit themselves in a fashion fit to lead their own army. Assault rifles, assault pistols, and assault shotguns are as plentiful as they are lethal. Ammo? Shop on the Internet for the best price and most lethal variant and have it shipped to your front door. Body armor to protect yourself from law enforcement? Back to the Internet. There is absolutely no limit on the number of assault weapons or the amount of ammo that you can own. Could gun control have stopped the Aurora shooting or the inevitable shootings that will follow? Of course it could have. Countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom have acted aggressively in response to similar mass shootings and have spared their citizens the endless repetition of gun carnage that has become a uniquely American phenomenon. An effective assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazine ban would have eliminated the Smith & Wesson M&P15 assault rifle and 100-round drum ammunition magazine Holmes used in the attack. The rifle wasn't even manufactured until 2006, when Smith & Wesson decided to jump on the assault weapons bandwagon. Right now, without any action by Congress, President Barack Obama could ban the import of foreign-made assault rifles and assault pistols, the most prevalent of which are AK-47 rifle and pistol variants that feed violence not only here at home, but are often illegally trafficked to Mexico to fuel that country's carnage. Congress could reinstate the ban on interstate ammunition sales by common carrier to private individuals and restore the recordkeeping of such sales, thereby eliminating the ability to stockpile ammo through the Internet. These measures were repealed by Congress in 1986 by the NRA's flagship bill, the McClure-Volkmer Firearms Owners' Protection Act. And today's NRA now makes millions from online sales of ammo, high-capacity magazines, and other shooting accessories. Mass shootings in America are as predictable as they are tragic. Just as predictably, those who celebrate this lethal shift to militarizationthe NRA and its gun industry partnersremain mute when families and communities suffer the consequences. And when attention fades, they'll once again resume their lethal trade, unless we stand together as Americans to stop them.
3. We need to renew the ban

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 19. In response to mass shootings and mounting public pressure, Congress finally passed a nationwide ban on assault weapons in 1994. In hearings on the bills, the Senate Judiciary Committee explained the need to: address the carnage wrought by deadly military-style assault weapons on innocent citizens and the law enforcement officers who seek to protect us all. Recent events illustrate again, and with chilling vividness, the tragedy that results from the wide and easy availability of guns with fire power that overwhelm our police, of weapons that have no place in hunting or sport and whose only real function is to kill human beings at a ferocious pace. Those factors are just as prevalent today. Indeed, after 9/11, the need may be greater. 9
Ban Desirable: General [contd]

4. A ban now is necessary to check gun violence
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 22. Assault weapons are weapons of war that are sought after and used by street gangs, drug dealers, and terrorists, but are of no use to law-abiding persons who own guns for sporting purposes and self-defense. Law enforcement and an overwhelming majority of the American public realize that these guns have no place in civilian hands, and should be banned. For 10 years, America attempted to limit the mayhem caused by assault weapons and the high-capacity ammunition magazines that they utilize. Although the gun industry worked hard to evade the federal ban by marketing assault weapons stripped of enough features to get by, gun makers were not wholly effective at neutralizing the federal bans effect. Even accounting for the industrys evasive efforts, the use of assault weapons in crime declined substantially. Unfortunately, President Bush and the 108th Congress allowed it to lapse. We need to enact a new, stronger federal assault weapons ban to keep these dangerous guns off the streets a law that will ban all military-style weapons and with no sunset provision. The lives of our law enforcement officers and our citizens hang in the balance.
5. Congress should act

International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), TAKING A STAND: REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE IN OUR COMMUNITIES, 907, p. 26-27. 33. Congress should enact an effective ban on military-style assault weapons. A 2003 analysis of Federal Bureau of Investigation data found that at least 41 of the 211 law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2001, were killed with weapons that can be defined as or classified as assault weapons. Anecdotal evidence from law enforcement leaders around the country suggests that military-style assault weapons are increasingly being used against law enforcement and by drug dealers and gang members; unfortunately, current restrictions on the release of ATF trace data make it impossible to know how often these firearms are being used in crimes. Law enforcement officials, municipal officials and public health and safety officials should support and promote an effective ban on military-style assault weapons.
6. Assault weapons remain a threatCongress should renew the ban

Violence Policy Center, TARGET: LAW ENFORCEMENTASSAULT WEAPONS IN THE NEWS, 210, p. 13. Assault weapons are a discrete class of firearm that pose a continuing threat to the general public and law enforcement. As detailed earlier in this report, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives currently has the authority to prohibit the importation of any firearm or ammunition that is not generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes. Such an action can be taken at the direction of the President without the need for federal legislation. For more than four decades, this provision has been used to prohibit the importation of many types of non-sporting firearms, including: ultra-concealable Saturday Night Special handguns; riot shotguns; and, semiautomatic assault rifles. This provision of law could be used by the Obama Administration to immediately halt the import of AK-47s, FN Herstal PS90s, and other foreign-made assault weapons currently being imported into the U.S. To ensure that the threat posed by all assault weaponswhether imported or domestically manufacturedis addressed, Congress should enact a new federal assault weapons ban modeled on Californias successful state law passed in 1989 and updated in 1999. The success of Californias assault weapons ban lies in its more stringent definition: defining as an assault weapon a semiautomatic firearm able to accept a detachable ammunition magazine that incorporates one other assault weapon characteristic, such as a pistol grip or folding stock. This one characteristic test is a significant improvement over the expired federal law originally enacted in 1994 that was easily evaded by the firearms industry.
7. Failure to act only ensures that the levels of violence will increase
Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 43. More than anything else, the news media, public interest groups, and especially policymakers must come to grips with a deadly reality. That reality is that the gun industry is not todayif it ever wasa sporting industry. It is a highly militarized and increasingly cynical industry that has cast all restraint aside to generate profit from military-style firearms. Like an injured predator, the industry is particularly dangerous as it sinks further into its inevitable decline. The gun industrys desperate marketing campaigns underwrite mass shootings in the United States, increasingly lethal confrontations with law enforcement, and armed violence abroad. Most insidiously, the gun lobbys exploitation of fearracial, ethnic, and political encourages resort to armed violence among the most impressionable and ill-equipped to function in a complex society. This is truly an era in which to do nothing is to invite unthinkable violence.
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8. We have an individual obligation to speak out in favor of gun control
John P. Flannery, former Special Counsel, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Students Died at Virginia Tech Because Our Government Failed to Act! GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY CIVIL RIGHTS LAW JOURNAL v. 18, Spring 2008, p. 302303. We must consider what may be done to correct this policy disaster that endangers our children. While there are battles in court, and hearings in our legislatures, this wrong will not be set right without educating the public in the wake of Virginia Tech and exhorting them to lobby their elected officials to make our children safer. Thomas Jefferson once said that "the people are the only censors of their governors." He added that, "the spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive." Jefferson was concerned, if the people were inattentive that the officers of government, including himself, would become wolves. We have seen the Commission report recommending that the Commonwealth cure the failure to report Cho's mental condition. It was this failure that allowed Cho to obtain guns that he should never have had. It should be our hope that the next time we report mental incompetence or incapacity, it is in fact forwarded to the FBI so that a gun will not be sold to that troubled person, and innocents may be spared.
9. Congress should renew the banthe weapons serve no purpose

Patricia Frazier, Federal Ban on Assault Weapons Should Be Renewed, SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE, 82004, p. B4. When Congress returns from summer recess on Sept. 7, members will have only four days to renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which will expire on Sept. 13. This 10-year federal ban on the production of semiautomatic assault weapons was established in 1994. These weapons are modeled after military firearms -- spraying a target with massive amounts of bullets in seconds. They serve no legitimate civilian or hunting purpose. Assault weapons have military characteristics. They can be handguns (like the Uzi or TEC-9) or long guns (like the AR-15 rifle or the Street Sweeper shotgun). After a string of mass killings committed by criminals with assault weapons, Congress passed a law banning certain assault weapons. The 1994 law named 19 specific models, and also banned "copies or duplicates" of those models. However, some gun companies made minor design changes and renamed the guns, putting them out of reach of the law.
10. Ban has been blocked by the gun lobby, not any good argument
Diane Feinstein, U.S. Senator, Feinstein Presses for Assault Weapons Ban, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 72912, www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Feinstein-presses-for-assault-weapons-ban-3741632.php, accessed 8-22-12. Nearly two decades later, a similarly armed gunman entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., shooting 70 people, of whom 12 have died. This was the largest attack of its kind in American history. Along with the sadness and grief, Americans across the country are asking themselves: Why has so little been done to stop this seemingly endless cycle of violence? Are we helpless in the face of these horrible tragedies, doomed to witness these scenes of carnage again and again? The answer is as frustrating as the question. Over and over, commonsense measures to protect the American public have been stymied by a powerful gun lobby that has a stranglehold on many in Congress. The 101 California Street shooting helped galvanize Congress to pass the 1994 crime bill, which included a federal assault weapons ban that I was proud to have authored. But just a decade later, proponents of the ban were unsuccessful in extending it. That was deeply frustrating. Contrary to gun-lobby propaganda, the assault weapons ban worked. The 101 California Street attack involved two TEC-9 semiautomatic handguns. The Aurora shooting involved an AR-15-style semiautomatic assault rifle with a 100-round ammunition drum. The manufacture and sale of these weapons, along with the 100-round drum, would have been prohibited under the assault weapons ban.
11. We should re-institute the federal assault weapons ban

Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 6. Reinstituting the ban on assault weapons. The federal Assault Weapons Ban, signed into law in 1994, banned the manufacture and sale of 19 types of semi-automatic military style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that contained more than 10 rounds of ammunition, but it expired in 2004. Legislation now pending in Congress, The Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act, H.R. 308 and S.32, would reinstitute the ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines. These high capacity magazines were used in the mass shootings in Tucson, Arizona and at Virginia Tech. Congress must restore the ban on both high-capacity assault clips and on assault weapons.
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12. There is no rational reason for blocking an assault weapons ban
Diane Feinstein, U.S. Senator, Feinstein Presses for Assault Weapons Ban, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 72912, www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Feinstein-presses-for-assault-weapons-ban-3741632.php, accessed 8-22-12. Who needs these military-style assault weapons? Who needs an ammunition feeding device capable of holding 100 rounds? These weapons are not for hunting deer - they're for hunting people. Would these massacres have been prevented if the powerful weapons used were still banned? Maybe not. But it's hard to imagine a gunman using a handgun with a maximum of 10 rounds causing the wholesale slaughter that resulted from a 100-round, semiautomatic assault rifle. We should be outraged by how easy it is for the perpetrators of these horrific crimes to purchase powerful weapons. As a nation, it's time we engage in a sane conversation about the proliferation of guns in our society. Let me be clear: If an individual wants to purchase a weapon for hunting or self-defense, I support that right. But a semiautomatic assault rifle with a 100-round ammo drum - or a handgun with a 30-round magazine like the one used to shoot former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona - has but one purpose: to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible. I challenge anyone who claims that prohibiting the purchase of military style assault weapons infringes on American freedoms. No sane person would argue that an individual should be free to own a nuclear weapon - we set limits and we abide by them. And we need to set limits on assault rifles.
13. We need a bananecdotal evidence proves

Carl Levin, U.S. Senator, Need for a Common Sense Assault Weapons Ban Continues, US FED NEWS, 3205, lexis. Despite the National Rifle Association's assertions that the ban is ineffective, unnecessary, and that guns labeled as assault weapons are rarely used in violent crimes, the need for the assault weapons ban is clear. Just last week, AK-47 assault rifles, like the ones included in the original assault weapons ban, were reportedly used in two separate shootings in Texas and California that left four people dead and four others seriously injured, three of whom were police officers. In Tyler, Texas, a gunman armed with an AK-47, wearing a military flak jacket and a bulletproof vest, opened fire outside a courthouse, killing his ex-wife and wounding his son. In the ensuing shootout with police, the gunman was reportedly able to fire as many as 50 rounds at police and innocent bystanders before fleeing in his truck. He was finally shot in another gun battle with police a few miles away. The same day in Los Angeles, a man reportedly armed with an AK-47 walked into his workplace and shot two of his coworkers to death following a dispute. He later turned himself in at a Los Angeles police station. Unfortunately, assault weapons like the ones reportedly used in these two shootings as well as many other similar assault weapons are once again being legally produced and sold as a result of the expiration of the assault weapons ban. I again urge my colleagues to act to help prevent tragedies like these by enacting a common sense ban on assault weapons.
14. We need the ban to curb gun violence

Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator, Sen. Kennedy Issues Statement on Reauthorization of Assault Weapons Ban, US FED ENWS, 9804, lexis. Congress passed the ban in 1994 to stop such crimes, and there's no question that the law has worked. In Boston alone, the number of assault weapons used in crime fell by 24 percent in the next two years. From 1993 to 2001, arrest rates for violent juvenile crime declined by more than two-thirds. We're still enjoying the benefits of this low crime rate today. The reduction in crime is explained in large part by the sensible measures that Congress took on gun safety in the early 1990's, including the ban on assault weapons. In 1999, the National Center for Juvenile Justice concluded that all of the increase in homicides by juveniles between the mid-1980's and mid-1990's was related to firearms. The Surgeon General concluded that guns were responsible for both the epidemic in juvenile violence in the late 1980's and the decrease in violence after 1993. "It is now clear," the Surgeon General wrote, "that the violence epidemic was caused largely by an upsurge in the use of firearms by young people... Today's youth violence is less lethal, largely because of a decline in the use of firearms." With these proven results, it is shameful that anyone in Congress opposes the continuation of the current ban.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsGeneral

1. Gun violence hurts all of us
Marian Wright Edelman, President, Shooting Deaths of Children Rose for Second Straight Year, CHILD WATCH, Childrens Defense Fund, 10209, http://www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/child-watch-columns/child-watchdocuments/shooting-deaths-of-children-rose.html, accessed 8-25-12. Among the young people killed by firearms, 2,225 were homicide victims, 763 committed suicide and 196 died in accidental or undetermined circumstances. The overwhelming majority, nearly 90 percent, were boys. More preschoolers63were killed by firearms than law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty48. The death toll among Black children is growing at an alarming rate. Black males ages 15 to 19 are almost five times as likely as their White peers and more than twice as likely as their Hispanic peers to be killed by a firearm. The destructive impact of firearms affects all of us by increasing health care costs, overtaxing social services and decreasing national productivity. And the deaths from guns are causing widespread emotional instability and traumatizing survivors, leaving families and communities in distress. Gun violence is so pervasive in some Black communities that it constitutes a serious health risk. It's come to the point where many of the cases of posttraumatic stress disorder in Black neighborhoods are not only of veterans returning from war zones but also include children whose goals are merely to walk to the corner store in safety. Too many of them speak of the future in terms of "If I grow up" instead of "When I grow up."
2. Gun violence is a serious problemmany of our citizens live in fear, 30,000 die every year
International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), TAKING A STAND: REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE IN OUR COMMUNITIES, 907, p. 8. A troubled student goes on a rampage at a university and by early afternoon 33 people are dead. An angry father shoots his wife and then himself, leaving his children orphans in an instant. A 13-year-old boy, the son of a police officer and a firefighter, is shot and killed on a bus riding home from school. A lonely old man, mourning the loss of his wife, uses a rifle and kills himself. Nearly 30,000 American lives are lost to gun violence each yeara number far higher than in any other developed country. Two to three times that many suffer non-fatal injuries. Since 1963, more Americans died by gunfire than perished in combat in the whole of the 20th century (statistics cited in Private Guns, Public Health, University of Michigan Press, 2004). And the overall impact goes much farther. Gun violence reaches across borders and jurisdictions and compromises the safety of everyone along the way. To understand its impact, recall the events of 2002 in the region surrounding the nations capital. For 23 days, the citizens of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area lived in a state of growing fear because of the random and senseless violence wreaked by an anonymous and elusive sniper. Many, if not most, outdoor activities and weekend sporting events were canceled. Schoolchildren were no longer allowed to go outside during their afternoon recess. It was not uncommon to see parents escorting their children into their school buildings and trying to ensure that their bodies were between their children and any potential sniper locations. Citizens waiting for buses could be seen crouching behind automobiles trying to limit their exposure. Some gas stations and other commercial businesses erected large screens to shield their customers from view so that they could complete their transactions without fear. Some businesses even reported a sudden increase in customers after a shooting; people who had been hiding in their homes felt that it was now safe to make a quick trip. An entire region of our country was brought to a virtual standstillall due to one gun and two men. Far too many of our citizens live with similar fear each day. They live in communities where the level of violence means they cannot sit on their porches at night. Many have reason to be afraid even inside their own homes because of the real possibility that bullets may come flying through their windows. All too often innocent children are the victims of drive-by shootings and retaliatory gunfire.
3. Gun violence is a particular problem in urban areas

Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 18. Urban residents bear the brunt of gun-related violent crime. In a special report examining violence-related gun deaths in metropolitan areas and cities in 2006 and 200716 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 67 percent of 25,423 gun homicides took place in the 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas17 in America. The problem is even more pronounced in central cities, which experienced 9.7 gun homicides per 100,000 people compared to the national per capita average of 4.2. Nearly three-quarters of all gun homicides among youth ages 10 to 19 in 2006 and 2007 occurred in the 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas. The plight of youth in cities is even more serious. Cities had a per capita rate of gun homicide among children and teens that was nearly three times as high as that for the country as a whole. The gun homicide rate for the 50 largest central cities was 14.6 deaths per 100,000 youth ages 10 to 19 compared to 5.0 nationally.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsGeneral [contd]

4. Gun violence remains a significant problemhigh number of deaths, overall social costs
Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. i. Gun violence continues to be one of Americas most serious crime problems. In 2000, over 10,000 persons were murdered with firearms and almost 49,000 more were shot in the course of over 340,000 assaults and robberies with guns (see the Federal Bureau of Investigations annual Uniform Crime Reports and Simon et al., 2002). The total costs of gun violence in the United States including medical, criminal justice, and other government and private costs are on the order of at least $6 to $12 billion per year and, by more controversial estimates, could be as high as $80 billion per year (Cook and Ludwig, 2000).
5. U.S. is much more heavily armed and violent than are other countries
International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), TAKING A STAND: REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE IN OUR COMMUNITIES, 907, p. 10. Contrary to popular belief, gun violence is not simply an urban problem, a gang problem or a criminal problem. The yearly toll of deaths includes more than 16,000 suicides by firearms, plus shootings involving young children, the mentally ill and domestic violenceall the tragic situations that turn lethal because of the easy availability of firearms. The United States is the most highly armed country in the world. There are 90 guns for every 100 citizens, according to 2007 figures from the Small Arms Survey; in the rest of the world, the rate is ten firearms for every 100 citizens. The U.S. rate of lethal violence is correspondingly higher than other developed countries. A study of crime in the 1990s by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put the U.S. firearm homicide rate for children at 16 times that of other developed countries.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsChildren

1. Gun violence against children is increasingcaused in large part by lack of adequate gun controls
Marian Wright Edelman, President, Shooting Deaths of Children Rose for Second Straight Year, CHILD WATCH, Childrens Defense Fund, 10209, http://www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/child-watch-columns/child-watchdocuments/shooting-deaths-of-children-rose.html, accessed 8-25-12. I'm deeply disturbed that after a decade of decline, the number of firearm deaths among children and youths has increased for the second year in a row. Our 2009 Protect Children, Not Guns report released in September reveals that almost nine children and teens die from gunfire every dayone child death every two hours and 45 minutes. The report, based on the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), states that 3,184 children and teens died from gunfire in 2006, a six percent increase over 2005, a total of 17,451 were victims of non-fatal firearms injuries, a seven percent increase from the previous year. When people from other industrialized democracies learn of America's child gunshot death rates, they're equally troubled. A major reason for these tragic young deaths is the prevalence and proliferation of guns. Americans possess more than 270 million privately owned firearmsthe equivalent of nine guns for every 10 men, women and children. The United States is one of the few industrialized countries without common sense controls on gun sales. We regulate toy guns but not the real ones that snuff out tens of thousands of human lives every year.
2. African American children are particularly targeted by gun violence

Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 14-15. Black youth are at greater risk of gun homicide compared to their White and Hispanic peers. The leading cause of death among Black youth ages 15 to 19 in 2009 was gun homicide. Among White teens this age, the leading cause of death was motor vehicle accidents followed by gun suicide and then gun homicide. Black males ages 15-19 were eight times as likely as White males of the same age and two-and-a-half times as likely as their Hispanic peers to be killed in a gun homicide in 2009.
3. Gun violence is a serious problem among children

International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), TAKING A STAND: REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE IN OUR COMMUNITIES, 907, p. 15. From 2000-2004 in the United States, more than four children (aged 0-14) were murdered with a gun in an average week, and another three were unintentionally killed or committed suicide with a firearm. A CDC study of the 1990s put the U.S. firearm homicide rate for children at 16 times that of other developed countries. Once children reach adolescence (aged 15-19), the death rates from firearms skyrocket. From 2000-2004, an average of 30 American adolescents were murdered with a gun each week, and another 15 committed suicide with a firearm. An average week saw 48 adolescents die from firearm wounds. (Statistics from the Harvard School of Public Health.) The African-American community has seen the greatest toll on its youth. Young African-American males are killed by guns at a much higher rate than any other segment of the U.S. population, according to Black Homicide Victimization in the United States (Violence Policy Center, 2007). Such events end young lives and devastate families. They also traumatize children who lose friends and classmates, and leave parents and communities unable to offer children the most basic assurance of safety. A May 2007 investigation by the Chicago Tribune reported that 27 Chicago Public School students were murdered during the 2006-2007 school year, most of them by firearms. After one student (the son of a police officer and a firefighter) was shot on a city bus coming home from school, Chicago School Superintendent Arne Duncan reacted angrily to a remark that the student was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was in exactly the right place, on the bus, coming home from school!, Duncan said. How can he not be safe there? Shootings on school grounds, while rare, are extremely disturbing. Nearly a decade after Columbine, we are still seeing deadly gun violence in our schools, including the shootings in the Amish school house, tribal school shootings in the Red Lakes area, and other tragedies. Clearly, protecting young children from guns and addressing problems of youth violence must be major concerns for law enforcement, elected officials and communities across the country. In addition to the recommendations here, several recommendations in previous sections can also help reduce the risks to children and young people.
4. The U.S. is a world leader in gun deaths

Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 30. America leads a group of 23 industrialized nations in gun deaths. The United States has more guns per capita, more handguns per capita, and has the weakest gun control laws of these 23 high-income countries. Among this group of nations, 80 percent of all gun deaths occurred in America, and 87 percent of all children under 15 killed by guns were in the United States. The gun homicide rate in the United States for teens and young adults ages 15 to 24 was 42.7 times higher than the rate for the other countries combined. The United States accounts for less than five percent of the global population, yet Americans own an estimated 35 to 50 percent of all civilian-owned guns in the world. Of the estimated eight million new guns manufactured annually across the world, about half are purchased by Americans. 15
Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsChildren [contd]

5. Gun violence against children remains a serious problem
Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 2. In 2008, 2,947 children and teens died from guns in the United States and 2,793 died in 2009 for a total of 5,740one child or teen every three hours, eight every day, 55 every week for two years. * The 5,740 children and teens killed by guns in 2008 and 2009: Would fill more than 229 public school classrooms of 25 students each; Was greater than the number of U.S. military personnel killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan (5,013). * The number of preschoolers killed by guns in 2008 (88) and in 2009 (85) was nearly double the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2008 (41) and 2009 (48). * Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths in 2008 and 2009 but were only 15 percent of the total child population. * Black males 15-19 were eight times as likely as White males of the same age and two-and-a-half times as likely as their Hispanic peers to be killed in a gun homicide in 2009. * The leading cause of death among Black teens ages 15 to 19 in 2008 and 2009 was gun homicide. For White teens 15 to 19 it was motor vehicle accidents followed by gun homicide in 2008 and gun suicide in 2009. * The most recent analysis of data from 23 industrialized nations shows that 87 percent of the children under age 15 killed by guns in these nations lived in the United States. The gun homicide rate in the United States for teens and young adults ages 15 to 24 was 42.7 times higher than the combined rate for the other nations. * Of the 116,385 children and teens killed by a gun since 1979, when gun data by age were first collected, 44,038 were Black nearly 13 times more than the number of recorded lynchings of Black people of all ages in the 86 years from 1882 to 1968. Even so, more White than Black children and teens have died from gun violence.
6. Gun injuries remain a serious problem among children

Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 2. Six times as many children and teens34,387suffered nonfatal gun injuries as gun deaths in 2008 and 2009. This is equal to one child or teen every 31 minutes, 47 every day, and 331 children and teens every week. * The 34,387 children and teens injured by guns in 2008 and 2009: Would fill more than 1,375 public school classrooms of 25 students each; Was more than the number of U.S. military personnel wounded in action in Iraq (32,223) and more than double the number wounded in action in Afghanistan (15,438). * The rate of gun injuries was 10 times higher among Black children and teens than it was among White children and teens. In 2009, the gun injury rate was 51.1 per 100,000 for Black children and teens; for White children and teens it was 5.0 per 100,000. * Boys are far more likely to be injured in gun assaults or accidents than girls; girls are far more likely to be injured in gun suicide attempts than boys.
7. Both rural and urban kids are threatened by gun violence

Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 32. Myth 1: Gun deaths and injuries are mostly an urban problem. The Truth: While the majority of teen gun homicides occur in large urban areas, rural and urban children and teens are equally likely to die from gun injuries. Rural children and teens are more likely to be victims of suicide or accidental shootings; urban children and teens are more likely to be homicide victims.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsChildren [contd]

8. Gun violence is decimating our youth
Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 4-5. Next month, April 16th, marks the fifth anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 students and faculty were killed by a gun, 25 others were injured, and many more were traumatized. Each year since then has seen shootings with multiple victimsyoung children, teenagers, young adults, a Member of Congress, a federal judge and many more. Days, weeks, months and years go by and little or nothingexcept fleeting headlines, tears, trauma and talkis done to protect children. * A total of 5,740 children and teens died in 2008 and 2009, the two years after the Virginia Tech shooting, according to the most recent data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the equivalent of one child or teen being killed by a gun every three hours, or eight each day over those two years, or 229 public school classrooms with 25 students each. * Gun homicide continued as the leading cause of death among Black teens 15 to 19. White teens the same age were more likely to die from motor vehicle accidents, followed by gun homicide in 2008 and gun suicide in 2009. * Black males 15 to 19 were eight times as likely as White males the same age and two-and-a-half-times as likely as their Hispanic peers to be gun homicide victims in 2009. * Non-fatal gun injuries and the physical and emotional trauma that follows afflicted 34,387 children and teens over two years, 20,596 in 2008 and 13,791 in 2009. * Taking a 30-year snapshot when child gun death and injury data collection began,116,385 children and teens were killed by firearms between 1979 and 2009enough to fill 4,655 public school classrooms of 25 students each. Since 1979, America has lost nearly three times as many children and teens to gunfire as the number of U.S. military personnel killed in action during the Vietnam War, and over 23 times the number of U.S. military personnel killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan (5,013). Where is our anti-war movement here at home? Why does a nation with the largest military budget in the world refuse to protect its children from relentless gun violence and terrorism at home? No external enemy ever killed thousands of children in their neighborhoods, streets and schools year in and year out. By any standards of human and moral decency, children in America are under assault, and by international standards, America remains an unparalleled world leader in gun deaths of children and teensa distinction we shamefully and immorally choose! The most recent analysis of data from 23 high-income countries reported that 87 percent of children under age 15 killed by guns in these nations lived in the United States. And the U.S. gun homicide rate for teens and young adults 15 to 24 was 42.7 times higher than the combined gun homicide rate for that same age group in the other countries.
9. Gun violence has killed tens of thousands of children

Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 13. 116,385 children and teens in America have died from gun violence in the 30 years since 1979. * The number of children and teens killed by guns since 1979 would fill 4,655 public school classrooms of 25 students each or Bostons Fenway Park three times over. * Since 1979, America has lost nearly three times as many children and teens to gunfire as the number of U.S. military deaths during the Vietnam War and over 23 times the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. * Of the 116,385 children killed by guns since 1979, 59 percent were White and 38 percent were Black. * The majority of gun deaths among children since 1979 have been homicides (57 percent) while nearly one-third have been suicides (31 percent). * The number of Black children and teens killed by gunfire in the 30 years since 1979 is nearly 13 times greater than the number of recorded lynchings of Black people of all ages in America in the 86 years between 1882 and 1968.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsLaw Enforcement

1. Police are a primary target of assault weapons
Violence Policy Center, OFFICER DOWNASSAULT WEAPONS AND THE WAR ON LAW ENFORCEMENT, 503, http://www.vpc.org/studies/officeone.htm, accessed 8-22-12. A primary stimulus for the 1994 law was the severe threat that assault weapons pose to law enforcement officers. Police and other law enforcement personnel were some of the first victims of the assault weapon trend that emerged in the 1980s. For example, in October 1984, a San Jose, California, police officer was gunned down with an UZI carbine. In a high-profile shootout in April 1986, two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were killed by robbery suspects wielding a Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle. Five other agents were wounded in the gun battle. As high-capacity assault weapons became more commonplace, police routinely complained that they were being outgunned by suspects. As a result, major law enforcement organizations supported passage of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban. In 1995, the first full year in which the ban was implemented, police continued to be victims of assault weapons. Approximately one in 10 of the 74 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 1995 was slain with a banned assault weapon.
2. Threat posed by assault weapons to law enforcement is increasing

Violence Policy Center, TARGET: LAW ENFORCEMENTASSAULT WEAPONS IN THE NEWS, 210, p. 6-7. Police are increasingly likely to be involved in assault weapon incidents. Those incidents are likely to involve shots being fired, with injuries to law enforcement personnel, gunmen, and bystanders. More than one out of four assault weapons incidents involve police (Figure 1.) A total of 235 separate incidents were reported during the two years examined. These incidents were almost equally divided between the first period (March 1, 2005 to February 28, 2006) and the second period (March 1, 2006 to February 28, 2007). There were 117 incidents in the first, and 118 in the second. Police were involved in 64 (27.2 percent) of the total incidents. The number of assault weapons incidents involving police grew significantly between the two periods. Police were involved in 29 incidents (24.8 percent) in the first period and 35 incidents (29.7 percent) in the second period, an increase of 20.7 percent between the two periods. Shots were fired from assault weapons (other than police weapons) in three out of every four reported incidents involving police (Figure 2). Among 64 reported incidents involving police, shots were fired from assault weapons other than police weapons in 48 incidents (75 percent). There were 14 incidents (21.9 percent) in which shots were not fired. These often involved brandishing of assault weapons. In two cases it could not be determined from the media reports whether shots were fired.
3. Gun market militarization is increasingly putting law enforcement officers at risk

Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 41. The widespread availability of militarized firearmsincluding especially high-capacity semiautomatic pistols and assault weaponshas substantially raised the level of lethality of armed encounters in the United States. Criminal street gangs, drug traffickers, and militant extremists are all drawn to the military-style firepower of these weapons. Two trends are remarkable. Increasing Attacks on Law Enforcement with Assault Weapons. A recent Violence Policy Center study of reported incidents showed that more than one out of four assault weapons incidents involve police. Moreover, the number of assault weapons incidents involving police grew significantly between the two periods studied (March 1, 2005 to February 28, 2006 and March 1, 2006 to February 28, 2007). A typical more recent incident is that of Richard Poplawski, who is accused of shooting to death Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, police officers Paul J. Sciullo II, Stephen J. Mayhle, and Eric G. Kelly on April 4, 2009. Among the guns Poplawski fired at police was an AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifle.
4. Assault weapons place law enforcement officers at particular risk

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 3. Law enforcement has reported that assault weapons are the weapons of choice for drug traffickers, gangs, terrorists, and paramilitary extremist groups. As Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said: There is a reason that these weapons are so appealing to criminals. They are designed to be easily concealed and kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Congress must act and act now to protect the American public and our police officers from these deadly weapons. This is about public safety and law enforcement. Law enforcement officers are at particular risk from these weapons because of their high firepower, which often leaves them outgunned by criminals. A researcher for the Department of Justice found that: [A]ssault weapons account for a larger share of guns used in mass murders and murders of police, crimes for which weapons with greater firepower would seem particularly useful. Indeed, numerous law enforcement officers have been killed with high-firepower assault weapons. In black sidebars on the following pages, we list ten cases of officers down since the federal assault weapons ban expired in September 2004. Unfortunately, there have been many more.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsLaw Enforcement [contd]

5. Assault weapons are responsible for 1 in 5 law enforcement deaths
Violence Policy Center, WHY MERELY RENEWING THE CURRENT ASSAULT WEAPON BAN WILL NOT STOP THE SALE OF ASSAULT WEAPONS, 2004, p. 3. The May 2003 Violence Policy Center report Officer DownAssault Weapons and the War on Law Enforcement (http://www.vpc.org/studies/officecont.htm) revealed that, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data, one in five law enforcement officers (41 of 211) slain in the line of duty from January 1998 through December 2001 was slain with an assault weapon, many of which were post-ban models that will remain untouched by a renewal of current law.
6. Ban is necessary to protect police officers

William Bratton, Chief, LAPD, Assault-Weapons Ban Has Made America Safer, DAILY NEWS OF LOS ANGELES, 8 1504, p. V3. The nation's law enforcement agencies will face a tremendous threat on the streets if Congress fails to renew the federal assault-weapons ban. If the gun lobby succeeds and President Bush and Congress allow the law to expire, then we can expect the return of military-style assault weapons such as the AK-47 and Uzi to our streets. This would be a crushing setback to the record-breaking reduction of violent crime in this country over the past decade.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsMass Killings

1. Ban would have covered the weapons used in the Aurora massacre
Matthew Dolan and Steve Eder, Rifle in Shooting Once Was Federally Restricted, WALL STREET JOURNAL, 72212, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443295404577543262884887188.html, accessed 8-25-12. A federal ban on assault weapons went into effect in 1994, under President Bill Clinton, including a restriction on sales of the AR-15. But in 2004, the ban expired and it was not re-enacted. The federal ban targeted weapons with specific features, including a device that hides the flash from a gun shooting in the dark. It is unclear whether Mr. Holmes' rifle had those features which would have then qualified the weapon for the federal ban. Indeed, stripped-down versions of the AR-15 were sold legally during the federal ban, experts say. In the Aurora shooting, "this shooter was planning a military style assault and he chose a rifle that was designed for just such an attack," said Dennis Henigan, vice president of the Brady Campaign to Reduce Gun Violence. He added that the impact of the violence was widened by the rifle's large stock of ammunitiona 100round drum magazine, said Colorado authoritieswhich would have been restricted to only 10 rounds per weapon under the previous federal law.
2. Lack of action on high-volume clips is responsible for things like the Virginia Tech massacre
John P. Flannery, former Special Counsel, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Students Died at Virginia Tech Because Our Government Failed to Act! GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY CIVIL RIGHTS LAW JOURNAL v. 18, Spring 2008, p. 285286. Thirty-two students and faculty died and twenty-five others were wounded at Virginia Tech in the largest handgun bloodbath in our nation's history, which left the 2,600-acre university campus "desolate and preternaturally quiet". The students and their instructors died or suffered serious injuries because elected officials in the federal and state government have been recklessly indifferent to the deathly danger of high-powered handguns and the availability of high capacity ammunition clips. In essence, these elected officials cared too little about who got to have and use these treacherous weapons. It is undisputable that that the introduction of a gun into any act of aggression makes the resulting violence lethal and at a distance that protects the assailant. What better illustration could we have that our government is failing us than to have students shot dead in a classroom where they expected to learn and not to die.
3. Assault weapons are featured in many horrific attacks

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. iv. Assault weapons are military-style weapons of war, made for offensive military assaults. It is no accident that when a madman, Gian Luigi Ferri, decided to assault the law offices at 101 California Street in San Francisco, he armed himself with two TEC-9 assault weapons with 50-round magazines, which enabled him to kill eight people and wound six others. Or that the Columbine high school shooters, who killed 12 students and a teacher, included a TEC-9 assault pistol in their arsenal. Or that the BranchDavidians at Waco, Texas, accumulated an arsenal of assault weapons to prepare for battle against the federal government, including 123 AR-15s, 44 AK-47s, two Barrett .50 calibers, two Street Sweepers, an unknown number of MAC-10 and MAC11s, 20 100- round drum magazines, and 260 large-capacity banana clips. Or that James Huberty used an UZI assault pistol and a shotgun to kill 21 people and wound 19 others at a McDonalds in San Ysidro, California. Or that Patrick Purdy used an AK47 assault rifle to kill five children and wound 29 others and a teacher at an elementary school in Stockton, California. Equipped with a 75-round drum magazine, Purdy was able to shoot 106 rounds in less than two minutes. The list of horrific attacks goes on.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsMass Killings [contd]

4. Virginia Tech slayer would not have had access to the ammunition if the assault weapons ban had been in place
John P. Flannery, former Special Counsel, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Students Died at Virginia Tech Because Our Government Failed to Act! GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY CIVIL RIGHTS LAW JOURNAL v. 18, Spring 2008, p. 291292. Cho would never have been able to get his hands on that kind of ammunition if a critical gun control law had not been allowed to expire. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (the Assault Weapons Ban) of 1994 banned not only automatic weapons, but also high-capacity ammunition magazines that held more than ten rounds (except for military or police use). The Act made the magazines unlawful to transfer or possess. Law enforcement "credited the [assault weapons] ban with helping drive down the crime rate to record-low levels" and "several dozen police chiefs from around the country converged on Washington ... to lobby members of Congress to reauthorize the ban" when it was due to expire. "We cannot afford a repeat of the carnage on our streets in the '70s and 80s," Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton reportedly said, "We need sanity in our gun laws." The Consumer Federation of America added that, if the ban did lapse, "assault weapons [would] be more lethal and less expensive" and police might "be forced to adopt a more militaristic approach" as greater numbers of firearms flooded the market. However, the National Rifle Association ("NRA") insisted that the ban be allowed to expire: "We have come too far in the past 10 years not to pull out all the stops in the next week and a half to ensure this ban expires as Congress intended, and becomes nothing more than a sad footnote in America's history." NRA Spokesman Andrew Arulanandam reportedly said, "Politicians remember history, and they remember that a number of high-profile politicians lost their jobs as a result of this ban." Congress allowed the weapons ban to lapse in October 2004. Thus, the magazines were not outlawed in 2007 when Cho bought several high capacity magazines. When Cho entered Norris Hall, he had almost 400 bullets in magazines and loose ammunition.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsOther Countries

1. Should re-institute the banthe weapons spur violence that spills over into Mexico
David Corn, Obama Puts a Silencer on Assault Weapons Ban, MOTHER JONES, 52110, http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/obama-puts-silencer-assault-weapons-ban, accessed 8-25-12. When Mexican President Felipe Calderon addressed the US Congress on Thursday, he called for the United States to reinstate the ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004 under the Bush administration. Calderon noted that a ban on these weapons, which are flowing south across the border to violent drug cartels, could help Mexico reduce the horrific violence that has seized parts of that country. Calderon might be forgiven for assuming that this would be a reasonable request to make to the Obama administration. While campaigning for the presidency, candidate Barack Obama backed permanently reinstating the ban. After he assumed office, his administration quickly announced it would proceed on this front. On February 25, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder declared, As President Obama indicated during the campaign, 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. Holder specifically noted that resurrecting the ban would reduce the number of guns pouring into Mexico and fueling the violence there.
2. Gun market militarization escalates violenceour weapons are spreading throughout the Western Hemisphere
Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 1. Militarization has baleful consequences beyond the routine toll of murders, suicides, and unintentional deaths. Military-style weapons are a favored tool of organized criminals such as gangs and drug traffickers, and violent extremists. Semiautomatic assault weaponsespecially inexpensive AK-47 type importsare increasingly used in attacks against law enforcement officers in the United States. The pernicious effects of the militarized U.S. civilian gun market extend well beyond the borders of the United States. Lax regulation and easy access to these relatively inexpensive military-style weapons has resulted in their being smuggled on a large scale from the U.S. to criminals throughout the Western Hemisphereincluding Mexico, Canada, Central America, the Caribbean, and parts of South Americaas well as to points as far away as Afghanistan, the Balkans, and Africa.
3. U.S. military-style weapons are being increasingly exported

Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 42. Trafficking of Military-Style Weapons from the United States. According to both United States and Mexican officials, large numbers of military-style firearms from the U.S. civilian gun market fuel criminal violence in Mexico. Congressional hearings and public policy reports have made clear that the U.S. gun industry is instrumental in making readily available to illegal gun traffickers the types and numbers of weapons that facilitate drug lords confrontations with the Mexican government and its people. U.S. and Mexican officials report that, based on firearms tracing data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the cartels obtain up to 90 percent of their firearms from the United States.
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Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsPublic Health

1. Gun violence imposes substantial medical costs on society
International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), TAKING A STAND: REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE IN OUR COMMUNITIES, 907, p. 8. Beyond the personal tragedies and emotional wreckage, gun violence also imposes extraordinary societal burdens and financial costs. It results in more than $2.3 billion in medical costs every yearof which taxpayers pay $1.1 billion. There are other costs as well: the money we pay for law enforcement to combat gun violence; the lost productivity of the killed and wounded; the lost economic opportunity in communities plagued by gun violence; and the devastation to the fabric of civil society.
2. Gunshot wounds strain our public health system

Jeffrey Y. Muchnick, Legislative Director, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Violent Crime Control and the Law Enforcement Act of 1994: The Assault Weapons BanSaving Lives, UNIVERSTIY OF DAYTON LAW REVIEW v. 20, Winter 1995, p. 650. Gunshot wounds put a tremendous strain on the health care system in the United States. This threat is especially acute to the nation's trauma centers. Many gunshot victims, most estimates say over half, cannot pay their medical costs. This leaves the burden on the taxpayers and on the hospitals and other care givers themselves. There is no way to determine how many of the gunshot victims are treated for assault weapons injuries as opposed to wounds resulting from other types of firearms. At this time, no national reporting system exists to determine which guns are used in any particular shooting. However, we can make some assumptions. According to the ATF report on imported assault weapons, their most deadly feature is their ability to fire multiple rounds without reloading. An increase in the use of assault weapons then is likely to result in an increase in the number of people shot during a single incident as well as an increase in the number of wounds suffered by each victim. As Dr. Howard R. Champion of the Washington Hospital Center told the Detroit News, "these chaps are coming in with more bullet holes in them, and they are being shot with more powerful weapons." Several other pieces of evidence point to an increase in the use of assault weapons. For instance, the U.S. army now trains its doctors in urban hospitals to prepare for injuries they are likely to see in a war. Further, more and more "innocent bystanders" are being shot. Doctor C. William Schwab of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital's trauma center estimates that ten percent of Philadelphia's gunshot victims are innocent bystanders. The cost of treating gunshot victims is tremendous. In a typical month, according to the office of the District of Columbia Commissioner on Public Health, approximately $ 10 million in medical care is needed to treat gunshot wounds in just Washington. This includes ambulance care and other services such as emergency room bills. Because more than half of the victims are uninsured, either the government or the care provider picks up most of the costs.
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Ban Desirable: Large Capacity Magazines

1. The ban covered large-capacity magazines
Violence Policy Center, ILLINOIS: LAND OF POST-BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS, 304, p. 1. In 1994, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, a ban on the production of certain semiautomatic assault weapons as well as high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. The law banned specific assault weapons by name and also classified as assault weapons semiautomatic firearms that could accept a detachable ammunition magazine and had two additional assault weapon design characteristics.
2. There is no justification for the sale of high-volume clipsturn semi-automatic weapons into mass killing machines
Michael Nutter, Mayor, Philadelphia, Why Congress Should Ban High-Volume Ammo Clips, US NEWS, 21411, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/02/14/why-congress-should-ban-high-volume-ammo-clips, accessed 8-24-12. Since Congress allowed the federal assault weapons ban to lapse in 2004, we've seen tragedy after tragedy as deranged killers unleashed deadly firepower, murdering dozens of innocents. At Fort Hood, Texas, on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, and at a workplace shooting in Manchester, Conn., the killers all had weapons with large-capacity magazines. And then came Tucson last month. A 9-year-old girl and a federal judge were among six people killed. Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was among the 13 injured. [Photos from the aftermath of the Giffords shooting.] We as a society will always confront evil in the heart and sickness in the mind. Bad people will do bad things, but we can and must take steps to deny these criminals the weapons of mass destruction that have ripped apart families across the country. While the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that Americans have a right to keep a gun in the home for self-defense, the court has also upheld laws prohibiting possession of guns by felons or the mentally ill. President Obama has called for "common sense" regulation. Regulating magazine size is surely common sense. Large-capacity magazines can turn a semiautomatic pistol into a weapon of mass destruction, with some spitting out six shots per second. These are not a hunter's weapons. They are meant to hurt or kill as many people as quickly as possible. Only law enforcement and the military should have access to this kind of firepower.
3. Assault weapons ban was narrowly definedbetter at controlling high capacity magazines
Michael Gerson, Gun Policys Slippery Slope, TAUNTON GAZETTE, 72812, http://www.tauntongazette.com/newsnow/x920141942/MICHAEL-GERSON-Gun-policy-s-slippery-slope, accessed 8-22-12 The assault weapons ban in place from 1994 to 2004, however, was not particularly successful. In prohibiting 19 specific brands of weapons (along with copycats), the laws judgments seemed arbitrary. A gun that resembles a military rifle is not inherently more lethal than an aesthetically innocuous weapon. But the laws prohibition of high-capacity magazines capped at 10 rounds strikes me as prudent. A 100-round, drum-style magazine the kind the alleged Aurora murderer had in his AR-15 is highly useful to someone intent on mass murder. It is less useful for an average citizen intent on self-defense, unless they fear home invasion by a foreign army.
4. Should ban high-volume magazinessupported by law enforcement, no real use for them
NBC Southern California, LAPD Chief Backs Ban on Some Ammo Magazines, 3211, www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/beck-lapd-ammunition-ban-nra-117261943.html, accessed 8-20-12. LA's police chief said Wednesday he supports a proposed federal ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines. If passed, the ban would prohibit the sale or transfer of any magazine that holds more than 10 rounds, though possession of magazines legally purchased before the ban's start date would be allowed. "There is no reason that a peaceful society based on rule of law needs its citizenry armed with 30-round magazines," Police Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference, adding that the clips transform a gun "into a weapon of mass death rather than a home-protection-type device.'' Jared Loughner, the suspect in the shooting that wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people in Arizona, legally bought the 9 mm handgun he's accused of using at a Tucson grocery store. Authorities say he was carrying extended magazines that hold 30 rounds of ammunition. The federal bill was authored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., whose husband was killed and son seriously wounded in a 1993 shooting. The sale of high-capacity magazines is already banned in California. Several law enforcement officials have endorsed the proposed ban, but Beck, who heads the nation's third-largest police force after New York and Chicago, has the highest profile.
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Ban Desirable: Large Capacity Magazines [contd]

5. Many crimes involved large-clip magazines pre-ban
Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. 18. Relative to the AW issue, criminal use of LCMs has received relatively little attention. Yet the overall use of guns with LCMs, which is based on the combined use of AWs and non-banned guns with LCMs, is much greater than the use of AWs alone. Based on data examined for this and a few prior studies, guns with LCMs were used in roughly 14% to 26% of most gun crimes prior to the ban (see Chapter 8; Adler et al., 1995; Koper, 2001; New York Division of Criminal Justice Services, 1994). Baltimore (all guns recovered by police, 1993): 14% Milwaukee (guns recovered in murder investigations, 1991-1993): 21% Anchorage, Alaska (handguns used in serious crimes, 1992-1993): 26% New York City (guns recovered in murder investigations, 1993): 16-25% Washington, DC (guns recovered from juveniles, 1991-1993): 16% National (guns used in murders of police, 1994): 31%-41% Although based on a small number of studies, this range is generally consistent with national survey estimates indicating approximately 18% of all civilian-owned guns and 21% of civilian-owned handguns were equipped with LCMs as of 1994 (Cook and Ludwig, 1996, p. 17). The exception is that LCMs may have been used disproportionately in murders of police, though such incidents are very rare.
6. Even if assault weapons were rarely used, large capacity magazines were common
Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. 2. The Banned Guns and Magazines Were Used in Up to A Quarter of Gun Crimes Prior to the Ban AWs were used in only a small fraction of gun crimes prior to the ban: about 2% according to most studies and no more than 8%. Most of the AWs used in crime are assault pistols rather than assault rifles. LCMs are used in crime much more often than AWs and accounted for 14% to 26% of guns used in crime prior to the ban. AWs and other guns equipped with LCMs tend to account for a higher share of guns used in murders of police and mass public shootings, though such incidents are very rare.
7. Ban covered most large-capacity magazines

Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. 6. In addition, the ban prohibits most ammunition feeding devices holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition (referred to hereafter as large capacity magazines, or LCMs). Most notably, this limits the capacity of detachable ammunition magazines for semiautomatic firearms. Though often overlooked in media coverage of the law, this provision impacted a larger share of the gun market than did the ban on AWs. Approximately 40 percent of the semiautomatic handgun models and a majority of the semiautomatic rifle models being manufactured and advertised prior to the ban were sold with LCMs or had a variation that was sold with an LCM (calculated from Murtz et al., 1994). Still others could accept LCMs made for other firearms and/or by other manufacturers. A national survey of gun owners found that 18% of all civilian-owned firearms and 21% of civilianowned handguns were equipped with magazines having 10 or more rounds as of 1994 (Cook and Ludwig, 1996, p. 17). The AW provision did not affect most LCM-compatible guns, but the LCM provision limited the capacities of their magazines to 10 rounds.
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Ban Desirable: Law Enforcement Supports

1. Law enforcement community strongly supports the ban
Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator, Sen. Kennedy Issues Statement on Reauthorization of Assault Weapons Ban, US FED ENWS, 9804, lexis. It's no surprise that the law enforcement community strongly supports the ban. The extension is supported by: o the International Association of Chiefs of Police o the National Association of Police Organizations o the National Organization of Black Police Officials o the International Brotherhood of Police Officers o the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association o the American Probation and Parole Association o the United States Conference of Mayors - and countless other organizations.
2. Major law enforcement organizations support a ban

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 20. The law enforcement community has long supported strong assault weapons bans. Every major national law enforcement organization in the country supported the Federal Assault Weapons Act and urged its renewal, including the Law Enforcement Steering Committee, Fraternal Order of Police, National Sheriffs Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Major City Chiefs Association, International Brotherhood of Police Officers, National Association of Police Organizations, Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association, National Black Police Association, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, Police Executive Research Forum, and Police Foundation.
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Ban Desirable: Market Expansion / Militarization Now

1. The U.S. domestic gun market is increasingly dominated by military-style weapons
Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 1. The civilian firearms industry in the United States has been in decline for several decades. Although the industry has enjoyed periods of temporary resurgence, usually primed by fear marketingencouraging people to buy guns by stoking fear of crime, terrorism, violent immigrants, or government control, for examplethe long-term trend for the manufacturers of guns for civilians has been one of steady decline. Selling militarized firearms to civiliansi.e., weapons in the military inventory or weapons based on military designshas been at the point of the industrys civilian design and marketing strategy since the 1980s. Today, militarized weapons semiautomatic assault rifles, 50 caliber anti-armor sniper rifles, and armor-piercing handgunsdefine the U.S. civilian gun market and are far and away the weapons of choice of the traffickers supplying violent drug organizations in Mexico. The flood of militarized weapons exemplifies the firearms industrys strategy of marketing enhanced lethality, or killing power, to stimulate sales. The resulting widespread increase in killing power is reflected in the toll of gun death and injury in the United Statesa relentless count that every year takes 10 times the number of lives as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
2. Gun industry uses fear to drive sales of military-style weapons

Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 32. The gun industry, the NRA, and the gun press have exploited every real and imagined public fear since the 1980sincluding the terror attacks of September 2001, Hurricane Katrina, spillover of border violence, and concerns about violent illegal immigrants. The industry's propaganda added fuel to the militia movement in the 1990s. Lethal confrontations occurred between federal law enforcement and civilians heavily armed with military-style weapons at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Barack Obamas election, and fears that he would push an anti-gun agenda, ignited growth in the militia movement and a disturbing trend of open display of assault weapons near Presidential speaking engagements.
3. Military weapons dominate the market

Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 40. Military-style weapons today define the U.S. civilian gun market. As Shooting Wire summarized the gun industrys situation in December 2008: The net of all the numbers is that if you're a company with a strong line of high-capacity pistols and AR-style rifles, you're doing land office business. If you're heavily dependent on hunting, you are hurting.
4. Gun industry has been militarizing the market as a means of boosting sales
Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 7. In spite of the gauzy imagery of its advertising, the gun industrys militarization is simply a business strategy aimed at survival: boosting sales and improving the bottom line. The hard commercial fact is that military-style weapons sell in an increasingly narrowly focused civilian gun market. True sporting guns do not. Here, for example, is an informed industry assessment of the importance of assault (often euphemistically called tactical) weapons to the gun industry from October 2008: If there is an area of good news, it's still the tactical segment. In the past week, storefront owners and catalog retailers are unequivocally saying that, with the exception of the tactical categoriesfrom AR-style rifles to the polymer pistols increasingly found in the holsters of law enforcement across the country, sales are slow. Here is another from an article titled, Industry Hanging Onto [sic] A Single Category The net of all the numbers is that if you're a company with a strong line of high-capacity pistols and AR-style rifles, you're doing land office business. If you're heavily dependent on hunting, you are hurting.
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Ban Desirable: Market Expansion / Militarization Now [contd]

5. Firearms industry is increasingly militarizing the domestic gun market
Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 2-5. The verb militarize means to give a military character to something. The gun industry has given a military character to guns in the U.S. civilian market by * Selling on the civilian market guns that are identical to guns used by the armed forces of the United States and other countries. These firearms include such sophisticated weapons as the Barrett 50 caliber anti-armor sniper rifle and the FN Herstal Five-seveN 5.7mm pistol. * Designing and manufacturing, or importing, civilian variants of military firearms that would otherwise be illegal to sell on the civilian market. These are principally semiautomatic versions of military assault weapons. (Military assault rifles are capable of fully automatic fire. They are thus barred, as machine guns, from sale to civilians in the United States.) They include many variants of the AR-15 (the civilian version of the U.S. military M-16 assault rifle) and numerous semiautomatic versions of the Kalashnikov assault rifle, popularly known as the AK-47. * Heavily promoting military-style products through images, slogans, print, video, and other electronic media that link the features, capabilities, and uses of military weapons with firearms available on the civilian market. In addition to this direct product promotion, the industry relies heavily on suggestive patriotic and heroic imageryboth historic and contemporaryto identify ownership of military-style weapons with grand themes of patriotism and homeland defense. In short, the gun industry designs, manufactures, imports, and sells firearms in the civilian market that are to all intents and purposes the same as military arms. It then bombards its target market with the message that civilian consumersjust like real soldierscan easily and legally own the firepower of militarized weapons.
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Ban Desirable: Public Supports

1. Public majority supports an assault weapons ban
Diane Feinstein, U.S. Senator, Feinstein Presses for Assault Weapons Ban, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 72912, www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Feinstein-presses-for-assault-weapons-ban-3741632.php, accessed 8-22-12. I reject the assertion that these massacres are simply a fact of life, that there is nothing we can do about them. For too long, Washington has bowed to the wishes of the gun lobby, even though numerous surveys show that substantial majorities of gun owners, among many other Americans, support a renewed assault weapons ban. California has banned the sale of assault weapons. President George W. Bush supported the assault weapons ban. Even Mitt Romney signed an assault weapons ban into law as governor of Massachusetts. To break the stranglehold of the gun lobby, people from across the political spectrum must stand up and say, "No more." No more will we allow these weapons of war to create carnage in our movie theaters, office buildings, schools and playgrounds. We must not allow another tragedy to occur before we get serious about fixing our nation's gun laws. The assault weapons ban meant fewer Americans were killed. That's a result that Republicans and Democrats alike should embrace.
2. Public both supports the right to bear arms and sensible limits on that right
Brannon P. Denning, Professor, Law, Samford University, In Defense of a Thin Second Amendment: Culture, the Constitution, and the Gun Control Debate, ALBANY GOVERNMENT LAW REVIEW v. 1, 2008, p. 429. First, almost as many Americans polled that regard the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right simultaneously support "reasonable" restrictions on the right, though the public is divided over whether simple enforcement of existing laws is sufficient or whether new laws are needed. In the past, reasonable restrictions have included support for banning things like machine guns or "assault weapons," for which supporters of a ban claimed there was no legitimate sporting or self-defense use.
3. Public, including gun owners, strongly support the ban

Patricia Frazier, Federal Ban on Assault Weapons Should Be Renewed, SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE, 82004, p. B4. Many gun violence prevention advocates and some congressional members believe the ideal legislative actions would be to renew, strengthen, and permanently institute the ban. However, these options are highly unlikely to be enacted before the election in November. Conventional wisdom on the Hill dictates that a simple renewal (Senate bill 2498/House Resolution 3831) is the only acceptable measure in Washington. Nearly every national law enforcement organization (as well as hundreds of religious, civic, and professional organizations) supports banning assault weapons as a public safety measure. Advocates have cited polls showing that nearly 70 percent of the American public and more than 60 percent of gun owners support banning assault weapons. In 2003, Field & Stream magazine conducted a survey of its readers and found that 67 percent do not consider assault weapons to be legitimate hunting guns.
4. Public strongly supports a ban

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 20-21. In poll after poll, the American people, regardless of party affiliation, have consistently supported a federal ban on assault weapons. In an ABC/Washington Post poll conducted in August-September 1999, 77% of adults supported a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons. That same percentage held firm through the end of 2003 when an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 78% of adults nationwide expressed support for renewing the federal ban. In September 2004, just after the assault weapons ban expired, a Harris poll found that a substantial majority of Americans, 71%, favored reinstatement of the ban. As more time has passed without a federal assault weapons ban in effect, support for a ban has grown. For example, a 2007 poll from Illinois found that 80% of voters favored banning semiautomatic assault weapons. Newspaper editorial boards have also continued their strong support for getting assault weapons off our nations streets.
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Ban Desirable: Public Supports [contd]

5. Strong public majority wants the weapons bannedviolence is still a serious problem
Mike Sharpe, Violent Nation, CHALLENGE v. 54 n. 2, March/April 2011, p. 122. We are acutely aware of the gun culture at the moment. The mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, and the fight of Representative Gabrielle Giffords to survive a bullet that went in one side of her head and came out the other has left us in shock. We are aware of her daily effort to return to a normal life. Everybody knows that the Tucson rampage followed others at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and a several-page-long list. Everybody knows how we were shaken each time. Then the rampages recede with nothing done to prevent them from happening again. Every massacre is followed by the same refrain: Lets do something. Over 30,000 men, women, and children are shot dead every year and 66,000 wounded. Eighty lives a day are terminated by gunfire. Not that we are indifferent. Forty-six percent of us favor stricter gun control laws. Sixty-three percent want to ban assault weapons and high-capacity clips. Odd. We the people dont have the clout to get the government to do much of anything.
6. There is strong public support for a weapons ban

Jennifer Dlouhy, Odds Stacked Against Renewal of Ban on Assault Weapons, CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY WEEKLY, 9404, npg. The expiration of the assault weapons ban would represent a stunning blow to the gun control movement, in part because, on paper, reauthorizing the law appears to be a simple task. White House officials have repeatedly said President Bush supports reauthorizing the existing ban, which outlaws the manufacture, sale or possession of large-capacity ammunition clips and 19 specific semiautomatic guns. Recent polls indicate that as many as 77 percent of Americans would like to see the law reauthorized. And a majority of senators -- at least 52 -- support renewing the assault weapons ban, as evidenced by a March vote on language that would have extended the 1994 law for another 10 years.
7. Public supports an assault weapons ban

Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 471. Few issues evoke such passionate public and political support as assault weapons bans. Polls show public approval for banning such weapons at sixty-eight percent. Both 2004 presidential candidates favored renewing the existing Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB). The Senate voted in March 2004 to renew the ban. Yet Congress allowed the AWB to expire in September 2004. The conventional account calls the ban's expiration a failure of election-year politics.
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Ban Desirable: Should Be Strengthened

1. Assault weapons ban workedcut their use in crime, proves that we should enact a stronger ban
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 19-20. According to a study published by the Brady Center in 2004 entitled On Target: The Impact of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Act, the federal assault weapons ban reduced the incidence of assault weapons use in crime. In the five-year period (1990- 1994) before enactment of the ban, assault weapons named in the Act constituted 4.82% of the crime gun traces ATF conducted nationwide. In the post-ban period after 1995,107 these assault weapons made up only 1.61% of the guns ATF has traced to crime a drop of 66% from the pre-ban rate. Moreover, ATF trace data showed a steady year-by-year decline in the percentage of assault weapons traced, suggesting that the longer the statute was in effect, the less available these guns became for criminal misuse. Indeed, the absolute number of banned assault weapons traced also declined. An initial report issued by the Department of Justice supported these findings. These findings were further supported in a later report by one of the same researchers. This analysis was based on crime gun trace data compiled by ATF of more than 1.4 million crime guns recovered across the United States between 1990 and 2001. If the ban had not been enacted, and had the banned assault weapons continued to make up the same percentage of crime gun traces as before the Acts passage, it was estimated that approximately 60,000 more of the banned assault weapons would have been traced to crime in the 10 years the law was in effect. Former ATF officials at Crime Gun Solutions, LLC, including the former Special Agent in Charge of ATFs National Tracing Center, analyzed the data for the Brady Center. On Target also looked at the problem of copycat assault weapons developed by the gun industry to enable the continued sale of high-firepower weapons. The study found that industry efforts to evade the federal ban through the sale of these copycat weapons was able to diminish, but not eliminate, the 1994 Acts beneficial effects. Even including copycats of the federally banned guns, there was still a 45% decline between the pre-ban period (1990-1994) and the post-ban period (1995 and after) in the percentage of ATF crime gun traces involving assault weapons and copycat models. The lesson to be drawn from this study is that a new assault weapons ban should be passed to reduce criminal use of these dangerous weapons, but it should be stronger and more comprehensive than the original federal ban to reduce indirect evasion through the manufacture of copycat weapons. One model for a strong assault weapons ban is the law California enacted in 2000 that bans military-style weapons capable of accepting high-capacity ammunition magazines that have even a single combat feature. Representative Carolyn McCarthy has introduced similar strong assault weapons legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
2. Ban needs to be strengthenedmanufacturers evaded it with largely cosmetic changes

Violence Policy Center, OFFICER DOWNASSAULT WEAPONS AND THE WAR ON LAW ENFORCEMENT, 503, http://www.vpc.org/studies/officeone.htm, accessed 8-22-12. Immediately after the 1994 law was enacted, the gun industry moved quickly to make slight, cosmetic design changes in their "post-ban" guns to evade the law, a tactic the industry dubbed "sporterization." Of the nine assault weapon brand/types listed by manufacturer in the law,5 six of the brand/types have been re-marketed in new, "sporterized" configurations. In fact, gunmakers openly boast of their ability to circumvent the assault weapons ban. Their success is described in an August 2001 Gun World magazine article about the new Vepr II assault rifle, a "sporterized" version of the AK-47: In spite of assault rifle bans, bans on high capacity magazines, the rantings of the anti-gun media and the rifle's innate political incorrectness, the Kalashnikov [AK-47], in various forms and guises, has flourished. Today there are probably more models, accessories and parts to choose from than ever before. Equally blunt was an article in the May 2003 issue of Gun World reviewing the LE Tactical Carbine, a post-ban, "sporterized" AR-15 clone: Strange as it seems, despite the hit U.S. citizens took with the passage of the onerous crime bill of 1994 [which contained the federal assault weapons ban], ARs are far from dead. Stunned momentarily, they sprang back with a vengeance and seem better than ever. Purveyors abound producing post-ban ARs for civilians and pre-ban models for government and law enforcement agencies, and new companies are joining the fray. Just such a post-ban AR, the Bushmaster XM15 M4 A3 assault rifle, was used by the Washington, DC-area snipers to kill 10 and injure three in October 2002. The Bushmaster is the poster child for the industry's success at evading the ban. The snipers' Bushmaster is even marketed as a "Post-Ban Carbine."
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Ban Desirable: Should Be Strengthened [contd]

3. Renewing the ban is inadequateloopholes allow manufacturers to circumvent the ban, must be strengthened if it is to have any effect
Violence Policy Center, UNITED STATES OF ASSAULT WEAPONS: GUNMAKERS EVADING THE FEDERAL ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN, 704, p. i. On September 13, 2004, the federal ban on assault weapons is scheduled to end. As this date approaches, increasing attention has focused on the gun industrys almost complete success in evading the ban. Based on the research conducted for this report, the Violence Policy Center (VPC) estimates that there are more assault weapon manufacturers and assault weapons available for sale in America than ever before. Contained in this study are more than 40 companies that are currently marketing new assault weapons for sale legally in the United States. Many of these companies either did not exist, or did not manufacture assault weapons, prior to the 1994 ban, a Semiautomatic assault weapons manufactured by these gunmakers include: copycat AK-47s, AR-15s, UZIs, Galils, MP5s, and FN/FALs; semiautomatic versions of classic weapons such as the Tommy Gun and Sten; and, various hybrids. New AK-47s equipped with high-capacity ammunition magazines that can hold 20, 30, 40, or more rounds are common and can be purchased for less than $300. At the same time, new assault weapon models that did not exist when the 1994 law was passed, such as the $199 Hi-Point Carbine used in the 1999 Columbine massacre, have been introduced and are selling briskly. The VPC estimates that more than one million new assault weapons have been manufactured for sale in the United States since passage of the 1994 law. If the 1994 ban is simply renewed, and not strengthened, every single one of the assault weapons pictured in this study will remain on the market, legal for sale to the American public. Simple renewal of the ban will do absolutely nothing to address the threat posed by these weapons.
4. Renewing the law sticks us with a weak interpretationshould renew AND strengthen it
Violence Policy Center, Senate-Passed Assault Weapons 'Ban' Will Do Little to Keep Assault Weapons Off Our Streets, Violence Policy Center (VPC) Warns, PR NEWSWIRE, 3204, lexis. By simply renewing existing law, Congress also adopts and endorses the weak interpretation of the law promulgated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). As a result, any hoped-for legal efforts to "fix" the ban in the courts after the fact -- by arguing that "post-ban" models of restricted weapons violate the "copies and duplicates" provision of the law -- are unlikely to succeed. Legislation (the "Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2003," S. 1431 and H.R. 2038) based on California law that would effectively renew and strengthen the assault weapons ban, so that it actually works to ban all assault weapons, remains pending in the U.S. Senate and House. Adds Rand, "Over the past decade, the gun industry has eviscerated the assault weapons ban to the point where evasion of the law has become an open, cynical joke among gunmakers. Today's action will, unfortunately, only continue this charade."
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Ban Desirable: Terrorism

1. Terrorists want access to these weaponsneed a ban
William Bratton, Chief, LAPD, Assault-Weapons Ban Has Made America Safer, DAILY NEWS OF LOS ANGELES, 8 1504, p. V3. Renewing the assault-weapons ban is more important now than ever, since we have evidence that it is exactly these kinds of weapons that are used and sought out by terrorists. In fact, an al-Qaida training manual uncovered in Kabul underscores their preferred usage among terrorists in the following instruction to terrorist cells overseas: "In countries like the United States, it's perfectly legal for members of the public to own certain types of firearms. If you live in such a country, obtain an assault rifle legally, preferably an AK-47 or variations." We know that the best defense of our homeland security will depend on the front lines of local law enforcement officers. We need our lawmakers' help by putting obstacles, such as the assault-weapons ban, in the path of terrorists. It is time for the president and Congress to support our nation's law enforcement professionals in their fight against crime and terrorism by showing their leadership on this issue. Now is the time to take the easy step of renewing the federal assault-weapons ban before it is too late. Failure to do so may prove to be a mistake that our nation will never forget.
2. Terrorists will exploit weakness in our gun laws to do us harm

Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator, Sen. Kennedy Issues Statement on Reauthorization of Assault Weapons Ban, US FED ENWS, 9804, lexis. Even before 9/11, renewal of the assault weapons ban should have been a no-brainer. After 9/11, to even consider letting the ban expire is absurd. We know that terrorists are now exploiting the weaknesses and loopholes in our gun laws. A terrorist training manual discovered by American soldiers in Afghanistan in 2001 advised al Qaeda members to buy assault weapons in the United States and use them against us. The failure to renew the ban this year would drastically undermine the safety of our streets, our neighborhoods, and our schools, and strengthen terrorists and other criminals. It would be a tragic and senseless blow to the security of our homeland. How can we possibly allow this essential protection against crime and terrorism to expire? How can we deliberately put the security of our communities in such new and needless jeopardy? The need for presidential leadership has never been greater. We know that we have the votes for renewing the assault weapons ban here in the Senate, because we passed just such an amendment in March, by a bipartisan vote of 52 to 47. The Republican leadership in the Senate, however, refuses to bring the ban back up for another vote, and the House Republican leadership refuses to act at all.
3. Assault weapons have a strong appeal to terrorists, have no place in our society
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 3. Since the federal assault weapons ban expired in September 2004, assault weapons have again flooded our streets, causing mayhem. Law enforcement agencies throughout the United States have reported an upward trend in assault weapons violence, forcing many police departments to invest in expensive assault weapons to keep from being outgunned by criminals. However, even with greater firepower and the availability of bulletproof vests, many officers have lost their lives to assault weapon attacks. Hundreds of civilians have also been victimized by assault weapons, many of them in multiple-victim attacks. In an appendix to this report, we list more than 200 assault weapons shootings and attacks that have occurred since the federal ban expired and the list does not purport to be comprehensive. Assault weapons may not be used in the majority of crimes handguns are but they are disproportionately used in crime compared to their numbers in circulation. Moreover, assault weapons have special appeal to terrorists. They have no place in a civilized society.
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Ban Desirable: Terrorism [contd]

4. Assault weapons are very useful for terrorists
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 10-11. As our nation wages a war on terrorism at home and abroad one salient fact is especially unassailable: terrorists and assault weapons go together. The assault weapons capacity to mass-murder within a matter of seconds makes it an ideal weapon for domestic and foreign terrorists alike. The oft-seen file footage of Osama Bin Laden, aiming his AK-47 at an unknown target, is now a familiar reminder of the incontrovertible connection between terrorism and assault weapons. After Americas bombing of terrorist camps in Afghanistan after 9/11, the Chicago Tribune reported that, among the mounds of rubble found at a training facility in Kabul for a radical Pakistan-based Islamic terrorist organization, was a manual entitled How Can I Train Myself for Jihad containing an entire section on Firearms Training. Tellingly, the manual singles out the United States for its easy availability of firearms and advises al-Qaeda members living in the United States to obtain an assault weapon legally, preferably AK-47 or variations. Further, the manual sets forth guidelines for how would-be terrorists should conduct themselves in order to avoid arousing suspicion as they amass and transport firearms.
5. Assault rifles are nothing more than terror weapons

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 17. A long-standing writer for Outdoor Life magazine, Jim Zumbo, created a huge controversy within the gun lobby when he admitted in an online blog that assault rifles have no place as hunting weapons. Zumbo wrote: I must be living in a vacuum. The guides on our hunt tell me that the use of AR and AK rifles have a rapidly growing following among hunters, especially prairie dog hunters. I had no clue. Only once in my life have I ever seen anyone using one of these firearms. I call them assault rifles, which may upset some people. Excuse me, maybe Im a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity. Ill go so far as to call them terrorist rifles. They tell me that some companies are producing assault rifles that are tackdrivers. Sorry, folks, in my humble opinion, these things have no place in hunting. We dont need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them, which is an obvious concern. Ive always been comfortable with the statement that hunters dont use assault rifles. Weve always been proud of our sporting firearms. This really has me concerned. As hunters, we dont need the image of walking around the woods carrying one of these weapons. To most of the public, an assault rifle is a terrifying thing. Lets divorce ourselves from them. I say game departments should ban them from the prairies and woods.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Fails (General)

1. Expiration of the ban increased the weapons spreadpolice are being outgunned
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 4. In addition, police departments have found that the bans expiration has led to increased criminal access to assault weapons and levels of violent crime, forcing many to outfit their officers with assault rifles of their own. An informal survey of about 20 police departments conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police revealed that since 2004, all of the agencies have either added assault weapons to patrol units or replaced existing weapons with military-style assault weapons. Were in an arms race, said Police Chief Scott Knight, chairman of the firearms committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Indeed, data collected from ATF found that, since 2005, the first full year after the federal ban on assault weapons expired, ATF recorded an 11% increase in crime gun tracings of AK-47-type assault weapons.
2. California proves that an assault weapons ban can be effective

Violence Policy Center, BULLET BUTTONS: THE GUN INDUSTRYS ATTACK ON CALIFORNIAS ASSAULT WWEAPONS BAN, 512, p. 2. Ironically the gun industry is targeting California because of the very success of the states assault weapons ban. As the result of its comprehensive laws, Californians own relatively few assault weapons. One indication of this is the map on the next page, taken from an 80-page 2010 assault rifle marketing report presenting the findings of an on-line survey conducted by the gun industry trade association the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). In the study, assault rifles are euphemistically dubbed modern sporting rifles, the latest rebranding effort embraced by the NSSF and its industry patrons for these militarybred weapons. On the map, the deeper the color red, the greater the number of responses to the NSSF survey per household. Californias light pink shade graphically illustrates the relatively low response rate to the survey, suggesting significantly lower assault weapons ownership. The map helps explain why the gun industry is desperate to access the California market as the demand for assault rifles has slowed since 2008 and the election of Barack Obamawhose election was quickly, and falsely, cited by the industry and gun lobby as heralding an impending juggernaut of federal firearms regulation, including a renewed federal assault weapons ban. For example, production figures from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for five major long-time assault rifle manufacturers including the two manufacturers, Bushmaster and DPMS, that represent the largest and second largest designers and suppliers of modern sporting rifles [assault rifles], components and parts for the commercial market,show that the number of assault rifles manufactured in the United States by these companies dropped from 244,242 in 2008 to 131,706 in 2010 (figures for 2011 are not yet available).
3. Ban expiration has led to the mass slaughter of civilianshundreds of cases

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 7. Assault weapons have been used to perpetrate some of the most horrific crimes, including mass murders, ever committed in the United States. Some of the most infamous ones are cited in the Executive Summary of this report. Unfortunately, this gruesome death toll has grown since the expiration of the 10-year federal ban on assault weapons. As can be seen from the following examples, assault weapons have been used to kill civilians engaged in common activities of life, in all types of circumstances and places. The Appendix lists more than 200 examples from just the last four years.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Fails (General) [contd]

4. Ban expiration increased gun violenceMiami example demonstrates
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 4-5. In 2006, law enforcement in Miami noted the effect of the expiration of the assault weapons ban on the rash of crimes used with these now-legal weapons. County state attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle stated that the AK-47 is the favorite weapon of dangerous gangs gaining influence in Miami. Miami-Dade Police Director Robert Parker stated there was nothing positively gained by the lifting of the ban on assault weapons by the government. Just over a year later, Miami police said that the amount of assault weapons they recovered, and homicides using assault weapons, had continued to increase. While just four percent of homicides in Miami in 2004 were committed with assault weapons, in 2007, it was one in five. It's almost like we have water pistols going up against these high-powered rifles, said John Rivera, president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association. Our weaponry and our bulletproof vests don't match up to any of those types of weapons. The death of Miami police officer Sgt. Jose Somohano - killed by a shooter wielding a MAK-90 three years to the day after the federal ban expired - prompted Miami Police Chief John Timoney for the first time to authorize officers to start carrying assault weapons. The Chief blamed the expiration of the federal ban for the current arms race between police and drug gangs using assault weapons: This is really a failure of leadership at the national level. We are absolutely going in the wrong direction here. The whole thing is a friggin disgrace. He added: Two or three years ago, we had the lowest homicide rate since 1967 in Miami. Then the homicides skyrocketed with the availability of AK-47s. And it went from 3% of all homicides being committed with AKs, up to 9% two years ago, then 18% last year, and this year it is around 20%. And its going up. Were being flooded with these AK-47s. Shootings involving assault weapons were among the reasons U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta set up an anti-gang task force of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials in Florida in 2007. Fifteen federal prosecutors were assigned to the effort. Said Acosta of assault weapons: These bullets are very powerful: they go through walls, they go through cars, and if you just spray the general vicinity you're going to get innocent bystanders. A shooting that might have been an injury previously is now a death.
5. Ban workedsignificantly cut their use in crime

William Bratton, Chief, LAPD, Assault-Weapons Ban Has Made America Safer, DAILY NEWS OF LOS ANGELES, 8 1504, p. V3. Since enactment of the federal assault-weapons ban in 1994, the proportion of banned assault weapons traced to crimes has dropped 66 percent. That's why virtually every federal, state and local law enforcement association supports pending legislation that will reauthorize the current ban. Since its passage, this legislation has been instrumental in increasing public safety, lowering incidents of violent crime and keeping new caches of these dangerous weapons from falling into the hands of criminals, street gangs, drug traffickers and terrorists.
6. Massachusetts proves that gun control works

John Rosenthal, President, Meredith Management, Shame on Congress Renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, HUFFINGTON POST, 8112, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-rosenthal/gun-control-laws_b_1730567.html, accessed 8-25-12. In 2004, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed a permanent state ban on assault weapons and said they "have no place in Massachusetts. These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people." In addition to restricting assault weapons, Massachusetts has some of the most effective laws controlling access to firearms and despite being an urban industrial state, it boasts the lowest firearm fatality rate in the nation. Massachusetts is one of the only states to require gun licensing, registration and training, the first state to require consumer protection standards for firearms, and is one of 17 states that require criminal background checks. In Massachusetts, firearms kill three out of 100,000 people each year, compared to national average of 10 out of 100,000, a difference that can only suggest that restricting access to gun reduces the likelihood of gun violence.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Firearms Ownership Good

1. Assault weapons ban does little to constrain Second Amendment rights
Jake Matthews, For Lives and Liberty: Banning Assault Weapons in America, HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW, 813 12, http://hpronline.org/united-states/for-lives-and-liberty-banning-assault-weapons-in-america-3/, accessed 8-22-12. Proponents of assault rifles may claim a ban on guns violates Americans Second Amendment rights. Other supporters perceive any gun control laws as unnecessary restrictions on American freedom. Some also fear an aggressive ban would spawn the creation of a black market, and have limited impact. The three arguments carry little weight. The Second Amendment of the Constitution stipulates, A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Guns were deemed legal not to secure personal liberties, but to provide for the states collective defense. Yet America no longer maintains statewide militias connected to the federal government; rather, we depend upon a standing army for defense. Even the claim that banning assault weapons would limit Americans freedoms is largely unsubstantiated. If anything, Id argue the reverse. Legalized high-powered weaponry forces public safety agencies, mainly the FBI, to attempt to monitor more civilian activity. On its domestic terrorism homepage, the FBI states that a major part of its job is preventing homegrown attacks before they are hatched. Their mission would involve, in theory, extensive research into the lives of many who purchase assault weapons or massive amounts of ammunition, even if both purchases were made legally, as in the case of Aurora shooter James Holmes. WHAT ABOUT IN PRACTICE?
2. Right to bear arms has strong political support, is unlikely to be threatened

Brannon P. Denning, Professor, Law, Samford University, In Defense of a Thin Second Amendment: Culture, the Constitution, and the Gun Control Debate, ALBANY GOVERNMENT LAW REVIEW v. 1, 2008, p. 429. The evidence suggests, I think, a fairly robust conception of an individual right to private gun ownership that presents substantive barriers to extensive federal gun control efforts over and above the procedural hurdles facing any new federal legislation. No federal proposal for any gun control that even approaches mandatory registration, much less prohibition and confiscation, appears politically viable now or in the near future. Because of the lack of incorporation, states and municipalities have more leeway, but states have their own statutory and constitutional bars to highly restrictive gun control regimes. Further, as the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act demonstrates, Congress will even step in to remedy what it perceives to be serious indirect threats to the right to keep and bear arms.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Gun Control Fails

1. Easy gun access makes the violence inevitablethe U.S. is unique among industrialized countries
Marian Wright Edelman, President, We Must Stem Gun Violence, CHILD WATCH, 42707, www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/child-watch-columns/child-watch-documents/we-must-stem-gun-violence.html, accessed 8-25-12. We must face the hard truth that firearms are so easy to acquire in the United States that lethal mass shootings are mathematically inevitable. Our nation was stunned by Cho Seung Hui's shooting spree at Virginia Tech University where he killed 32 students and professors and wounded 15. As we mourn these deaths, we are left with two unavoidable questions: Could this horrific act of violence have been avoided? and What do we do about it? Neither question is easy to answer in a nation with over 200 million privately owned firearms including 65 million handguns. The gun violence of the United States is an anomaly among most industrialized democracies. Other countries place many more impediments on gun ownership. Here, virtually anyone can obtain a gun, even someone as profoundly disturbed as Cho Seung Hui. In the standard background check, in the form of a call to the state police, Cho was not flagged as a prohibited purchaser. The fact that he had been institutionalized with a mental illness that caused him to present an imminent danger to himself and others did not show up in either the state or federal database.
2. Gun control laws workempirically decrease levels of violence

Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 33. Myth 5: Gun laws are not effective in reducing gun violence and only punish law-abiding citizens. The Truth: According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, states with higher rates of gun ownership and weak gun control laws have the highest rates of gun deaths. The opposite was also true: States with strong gun laws and low gun ownership rates had significantly lower rates of gun deaths. While sensible gun laws may impose a small burden on law abiding citizens they also confer a significant benefit in the form of saved lives. Everyone benefits from fewer gun deaths and increased public safety.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Illicit Sales / Markets

Ban is justifiedpublic safety concerns outweigh any illicit market effects
Jake Matthews, For Lives and Liberty: Banning Assault Weapons in America, HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW, 813 12, http://hpronline.org/united-states/for-lives-and-liberty-banning-assault-weapons-in-america-3/, accessed 8-22-12. In addition, a ban would help public safety agencies root out domestic terror threats more effectively. Instead of worrying about the intent of certain assault rifle owners, agencies could go after all assault weapons, period. Individual privacy and independence would increase, as would Americas collective security. Assault weapons provide a clear and present danger to society which far outweighs the threat of a black market. According to one estimate, assault weapons may be involved in up to 7 percent of homicides. According to the FBIs handbook on gun regulations, an AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle based loosely on the militarys M-16, will fire automatically merely by manipulation of the selector or removal of the disconnector. With relative ease, assault rifles can be made to mimic weapons of war. Their potential for destruction is staggering.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Insurrection Rights

1. Yugoslavia proves that insurrectionism is a disasterrisks massive chaos, violence
Josh Horwitz, Executive Director, Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Casey Anderson, attorney, Taking Gun Rights Seriously: The Insurrectionist Idea and Its Consequences, ALBANY GOVERNMENT LAW REVIEW v. 1, 2008, p. 509-511. Daniel Polsby and Don Kates, in their article, Of Holocausts and Gun Control, correctly remind us that force can and has been abused by dictators, (who of course under the Weberian definition are not legitimate), but they are wrong in believing that the creation of less powerful states or a citizenry armed to the teeth and prepared to use their arms to challenge government decisions they do not like will help to build a more democratic system. As a state-building tool, these ideas have been tried and failed miserably. In support of their argument that the monopoly on force leads to genocide, Polsby and Kates make a number of wild claims, but none more irresponsible than blaming Weber for the civil war in the Balkans. They write, Josip Broz Tito, who ruled that part of the world for thirty five years until his death in 1980, was an enthusiastic practitioner of Max Weber's idea of the state... . When old Yugoslavia came unstuck in the late 1980s, its armies and equipment - the most formidable in the region - devolved to the former nation's ethnic constituents. Because the Yugoslavian army had been mostly Serbian, the Serbians inherited enough munitions to face down the United States. By its own terms, this argument undercuts the claim that arming individuals best protects liberty. In a society based on the idea of every-man-for-himself, there is no guarantee that civilians will be equally armed; in fact, inequality in this regard is inevitable, either in the types of armaments or, of course, in the number of partisans aligned with the competing sides. The real problem is that Yugoslavia, which was moving toward democracy, devolved from a federal system to an ethnicity-based system of republics, and the central government lost the monopoly on force. Once that happened, ethnic rivalries were exploited to create a volatile situation that unleashed a brutal civil war and ultimately required massive foreign intervention to re-establish the monopoly of legitimate force and stop the killing. Mary Kaldor, who watched the war in the Balkans first-hand, and is now a professor and director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science, observed: What happened in Yugoslavia was the disintegration of the state both at a federal level and, in the case of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, at a republican level. If we define the state in the Weberian sense as the organization which "successfully upholds the monopoly of legitimate organized violence', then it is possible to trace, first, the collapse of legitimacy and, second, the collapse of the monopoly of organized violence. In other words, Polsby and Kates have it exactly backwards. The monopoly on the legitimate use of force is one requirement of a successful state. It is not the only requirement, but without it, no country can flourish. Threatening that monopoly by arming civilians with enough firepower to counter the government has been tried and has failed, with disastrous results all over the world. One need only look at the conditions in Afghanistan after the collapse of the legitimate government. As one scholar noted, "Afghanistan has been characterized since the beginning of the 1990s as a country in a 'Hobbesian state of nature' which paved the way for the infamous Taliban regime; this country represents one of the cases of a total disintegration of the state and where therefore the monopoly of legitimate violence, that might have existed before, has broken down completely." Political scientists have documented the disastrous results when governments lose their monopoly on force. As Wulf has written, the erosion of states and the failure of domestic politics, leading to endemic state weakness and collapse, are conceived by a great number of social scientists as the central cause for war, armed violence and conflict. State collapses give rise to and sustain conflicts, prolong wars and complicate or prevent peace building. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia are used as the classic examples. The most appropriate measure, according to this analysis, is to rectify these deficits by establishing state authority, particularly the state monopoly of force. Wimmer adds that "the "failure of the state' is accompanied by the loss of control over and fragmentation of the instruments of physical coercion or a privatization of violence by so-called warlords which leads by necessity to indiscriminate killings of large numbers of the civilian population, the destruction of property and infrastructure... ."
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Insurrection Rights [contd]

2. Insurrection rights/claims are dangerousreadily abused, threatens majority rule
Josh Horwitz, Executive Director, Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Casey Anderson, attorney, Taking Gun Rights Seriously: The Insurrectionist Idea and Its Consequences, ALBANY GOVERNMENT LAW REVIEW v. 1, 2008, p. 502-504. Many commentators have observed that through the Constitution's militia clauses, the founders intended to establish the role of the militia as a force to be used to put down insurrection against the government. It would be a gross perversion of the intent of the Framers to invoke the Second Amendment as a basis for empowering those same militias to wage war against the very institutions they were intended to protect. By decoupling the militia purpose from the Second Amendment and ascribing an individual right to resist tyranny, the D.C. Circuit is wading into dangerous waters. The inescapable conclusion of District of Columbia v. Heller's right to prepare to take up arms against the government is that at some point, preparation can lawfully turn into action at the discretion of individuals accountable to no authority other than their own sense of just cause for the use of violence. The court makes no provision for how to regulate this right to insurrection, nor can it. If the state cannot control how arms are distributed, then the state loses control over how they are used. The D.C. Circuit's opinion in Heller does not explain who decides when the government is in fact tyrannical. This question is too important to simply glide past, because tyranny to some may look like effective government to others. For example, some anti-government activists sincerely believe that the federal income tax amounts to confiscation of private property in a manner not authorized by the Constitution, and others argue that a ban on the civilian ownership of semi-automatic assault weapons by itself amounts to government tyranny, while other citizens believe income taxes and assault weapon bans are entirely reasonable measures in an advanced industrial democracy. If an objectionable law is tyrannical to some, but not to the majority, doesn't the minority have the right to take up arms against the government? That is the kind of thinking that brought us the Civil War. If Lincoln had not forcefully responded by finding the insurrection illegal and spent five years putting down the rebellion by force, our democratic system would not have survived. In effect, the entire Civil War was an effort to prove that the Union was capable of exercising the most fundamental role of any government: maintaining democratic order by exercising a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. The eminent political scientist Ezra Suleiman has noted that when the government loses its monopoly on force it ceases to be a state and "its form of organization becomes indistinguishable from other types of organization." Similarly, where there is no state capable of enforcing the political and civil rights of its citizens, there can be no democracy. A state must be able to enforce its judicial and administrative decisions: if it is outgunned by individuals or factions, it is not functioning as a democratic state (in fact it is not functioning as a state at all). What is left is a return to a form of pre-governmental society where might makes right and political equality is at best an abstract ideal. The Heller decision is a direct challenge to the government's monopoly on legitimate force.
3. People can peacefully air their grievancesrender insurrectionist arguments profoundly antidemocratic
Josh Horwitz, Executive Director, Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Casey Anderson, attorney, Taking Gun Rights Seriously: The Insurrectionist Idea and Its Consequences, ALBANY GOVERNMENT LAW REVIEW v. 1, 2008, p. 507-509. Today in the United States, strong legal protections are in place to safeguard minority rights. Meaningful and non-violent mechanisms are available to resolve grievances and disputes between individuals and the state. Where these tools exist, the resort to private arms in opposition to government decisions is by definition anti-democratic and outside the Constitution. After all, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. It is open to amendment and change, but it does not authorize private citizens to take up arms to overthrow its institutions. This is a principle that all functioning democracies must maintain. The eminent jurist Roscoe Pound found that "a legal right of the citizen to wage war on the government is something that cannot be admitted ... [because it] would defeat the whole Bill of Rights." And longtime gun-debate observer Robert Spitzer, expressing astonishment that David Williams did not understand the need for a state's monopoly on force, wrote: "Not only does this notion sit at the epicenter of the modern nation state, it spans the writings of Hobbes and Locke ... and traces back to Aristotle and even before." Basic international law requires that the state be "the sole executive and legislative authority" in its territory. The origins of our own legal system makes this abundantly clear as well. While the Insurrectionists are fond of quoting Blackstone's fifth auxiliary right as the predecessor of the Second Amendment, researcher John Goldberg explains that under Blackstone's understanding of sovereignty under the English Constitution, it was impossible for a body of law actually to confer on citizens a legal right to revolt, for any such conferral would be a dissolution of government that would render the law no longer a law ... . Any such change would be "at once an entire dissolution of the bands of government; and the people would be reduced to a state of anarchy, with liberty to constitute to themselves a new legislative power. In other words, the decision of an individual or private group to take up arms to challenge the government is always extra-constitutional, and it cannot be justified by reference to the Constitution itself. Moreover, as James Madison made clear in Federalist 46, the founders believed that the residual natural law rights to withdraw support from a government belonged to the states, not to individuals. The American Constitution is an attempt to permanently bond the states and individuals together. Attempts to dissolve that compact, except through valid legal process, must be met with enough force to protect the compact.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Insurrection Rights [contd]

4. The state must have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force to be a viable entity
Josh Horwitz, Executive Director, Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Casey Anderson, attorney, Taking Gun Rights Seriously: The Insurrectionist Idea and Its Consequences, ALBANY GOVERNMENT LAW REVIEW v. 1, 2008, p. 504-505. The concept that a monopoly on legitimate force is necessary for government to function may sound heretical in a country steeped in stories of our own revolutionary founding, but it is the fundamental organizing principle of any political entity, including a democracy like the United States. Max Weber's famous definition states: "A compulsory political association with continuous organization ... will be called a "state' if and in so far as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order." Weber also wrote that the state must "possess an administrative and legal order subject to change by legislation" and that "the use of force is regarded as legitimate only so far as it is permitted by the state or prescribed by it." These additional characteristics identified by Weber are often skipped over by his Insurrectionist critics. Harry Redner explains that: Weber is careful, however, to qualify and nuance this crude realism, for although the expropriation of the means of violence is necessary for the formation of the state, he clearly does not regard it as sufficient. Unlike some contemporary authors ... Weber does not propound a militaristic theory of state formation; this is underlined by his linking the idea of a monopoly of the means of violence with the concept of legitimacy. Herbert Wulf adds: The specific characteristic of the state, according to Weber, is that it can successfully claim the legitimate physical violence in a given territory and that it is the only organization that is lawfully allowed to use force. The importance of legitimacy in exercising the monopoly of force needs to be recognized and can be based on three principles: on the authority of traditional rules, on charismatic authority and on the legality of agreed rules. In the modern state of today the political leadership is accountable for exercising legitimate physical violence and it is based on good governance. Of course, "the use of force is not the sole and not even the normal means for the modern state "to realize its orders'; it is only the ultimate ratio if all other means are not effective. The crucial point for Weber was the fact that the state cannot be defined by its "ends' because there are almost no ends that states did not try to realize in the course of history." Robert Dahl summarizes: "The state, remember, is a unique association whose government possesses an extraordinary capacity for obtaining compliance with its rules by (among other means) force, coercion, and violence." We still may not like the sound of the term monopoly of force but it is a crucial concept for defining a functional and healthy political state - and this is just as true of a functional and healthy democracy as a state organized under any other form of government. If the United States were ever to lose or give up its monopoly of force it would cease to be a viable political entity and the protections for individual liberty contained in our constitution would be worth no more than the paper they are printed on.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Legitimate UsesGeneral

1. Assault weapons serve no purpose other than to put the safety of the public at risk
William Bratton, Chief, LAPD, Assault-Weapons Ban Has Made America Safer, DAILY NEWS OF LOS ANGELES, 8 1504, p. V3. AS chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and a 28-year veteran of law enforcement, I have seen firsthand the death and destruction that can be brought by military-style assault weapons. These guns are not necessary for hunting or self-defense, but their light triggers and rapid-fire capability make them weapons of choice for criminals. Congress has only five working days to renew the federal ban on 19 different models of semiautomatic assault weapons. If they fail to do so, these killing machines will soon be rolling off the assembly lines at major gun manufacturers and flying off the shelves of your local gun shop. In 1994, the nation's law enforcement community, from small towns to large cities, rallied together in support of the assaultweapons ban for very practical reasons. Violent criminals and thugs had weapons of war far more powerful than our own, making it nearly impossible to protect neighborhoods that were being torn apart by vicious assault-weapon attacks in which hundreds of rounds of ammunition were spray-fired on innocent men, women and children.
2. Assault weapons serve no purpose other than to slaughter people

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 1. Assault weapons are semiautomatic versions of fully automatic guns designed for military use. These guns unleash extraordinary firepower. When San Jose, California, police test-fired an UZI, a 30-round magazine was emptied in slightly less than two seconds on full automatic, while the same magazine was emptied in just five seconds on semiautomatic. As the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has explained: Assault weapons were designed for rapid fire, close quarter shooting at human beings. That is why they were put together the way they were. You will not find these guns in a duck blind or at the Olympics. They are mass produced mayhem. ATF has also described semiautomatic assault weapons as large capacity, semiautomatic firearms designed and configured for rapid fire, combat use. Most are patterned after machine guns used by military forces. In short, as a Montgomery County, Alabama Sheriff has said: [T]heres only one reason for owning a gun like that killing people. Theres no other use other than to kill people. Thats all theyre made for.
3. Assault weapons serve no sporting purposeare completely distinct, multiple studies prove
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 1. Assault weapons have distinct features that separate them from sporting firearms. While semiautomatic hunting rifles are designed to be fired from the shoulder and depend upon the accuracy of a precisely aimed projectile, the military features of semiautomatic assault weapons are designed to enhance their capacity to shoot multiple human targets very rapidly. Assault weapons are equipped with large-capacity ammunition magazines that allow the shooter to fire 20, 50, or even more than 100 rounds without having to reload. Pistol grips on assault rifles and shotguns help stabilize the weapon during rapid fire and allow the shooter to spray-fire from the hip position. Barrel shrouds on assault pistols protect the shooters hands from the heat generated by firing many rounds in rapid succession. Far from being simply cosmetic, these features all contribute to the unique function of any assault weapon to deliver extraordinary firepower. They are uniquely military features, with no sporting purpose whatsoever. Accordingly, ATF has concluded that assault weapons are not generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes and instead are attractive to certain criminals. An ATF survey of 735 hunting guides, conducted during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, found that sportsmen do not use assault weapons. These findings were confirmed in a second study performed by ATF under the Clinton Administration.
4. Assault weapons are a distinct class of gunfar more destructive

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 2. A researcher hired by the Department of Justice to analyze the effect of the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons confirmed that the firepower of assault weapons gives them greater destructive potential. His analysis found that: attacks with semiautomatics including assault weapons and other semiautomatics equipped with large capacity magazines result in more shots fired, more persons hit, and more wounds inflicted per victim than do attacks with other firearms. This contradicts the National Rifle Associations (NRA) assertion that there are only cosmetic differences between the guns affected by the assault weapon ban and other firearms.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Legitimate UsesGeneral [contd]

5. There is no justification for assault weaponskill far too many people
Roland Martin, Average Americans Dont Need Assault Weapons, CNN, 72912, http://articles.cnn.com/2012-0729/opinion/opinion_martin-assault-weapons_1_gun-deaths-gun-culture-submachine-gun, accessed 8-23-12. For some, it's too soon to discuss gun reform, a little more than one week after the mass killings in Aurora, Colorado. I disagree. Too many Americans are being killed by guns every day; this most recent heinous tragedy should not keep us from having a rational debate. Let me be crystal clear: I do not own a gun, have no desire to get one and don't begrudge anyone for having one. Keeping a gun for safety? No problem. You're a hunter? Knock yourself out. I've fired a submachine gun once -- at the FBI Citizens Academy in Chicago -- and it did nothing for me, so please, carry on. I absolutely and positively support the Second Amendment. Americans have the right to bear arms, but nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say that you must be able to bear any arms your heart desires. There is no reason the ban on assault weapons is no longer the law of the land. If you need an AK-47 to hunt, maybe you need shooting lessons. President Barack Obama was right when he told the National Urban League last week that "AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers ... not on the streets of our cities." The inability of the National Rifle Association to understand that is shameful and destructive. The group assumes that any reasonable restriction on guns is un-American and unnecessary. Well, it's wrong. Dead wrong. And the NRA is just as wrong when it opposes efforts to restrict drum magazines that can hold 100 rounds, such as the one the gunman in Colorado used to mow down moviegoers. Seriously, please offer me a reasonable and rational explanation as to why someone who isn't a law enforcement officer needs to fire off that many bullets? This is where common sense makes a ton of sense. Yes, people are the ones pulling the trigger, but our gun culture borders on the truly obsessive. Gun deaths here have reached epidemic levels, and too many of us have an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude. Enough with timid politicians afraid to offend the gun lobby. Enough with voters making the stupid and nonsensical argument that the government wants all of our guns. As a nation that trumpets being the best in the world, let's stop outdistancing gun deaths in Japan, China and England. If we want to lead, let's lead in changing directions when it comes to our gun culture. America's gun obsession is unhealthy, unwise and deadly. Delaying the conversation does nothing for all of us.
6. Assault weapons have distinguishing characteristics than have no sporting value

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 14-16. Assault weapons, as opposed to hunting rifles, are commonly equipped with some or all of the following combat features that have no sporting value: A high-capacity ammunition magazine enabling the shooter to continuously fire dozens of rounds without reloading. Standard hunting rifles are usually equipped with no more than three or four-shot magazines. A folding or telescoping stock, which sacrifices accuracy for concealability and for mobility in close combat. A pistol grip or thumbhole stock, which facilitates firing from the hip, allowing the shooter to spray-fire the weapon. A pistol grip also helps the shooter stabilize the firearm during rapid fire. A barrel shroud, which allows the shooter to grasp the barrel area to stabilize the weapon, without incurring serious burns, during rapid fire. A flash suppressor, which allows the shooter to remain concealed when shooting at night, an advantage in combat but unnecessary for hunting or sporting purposes. In addition, the flash suppressor is useful for providing stability during rapid fire, helping the shooter maintain control of the firearm. A threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor or silencer. A silencer is useful to assassins but clearly has no purpose for sportsmen. Silencers are also illegal. A barrel mount designed to accommodate a bayonet, which obviously serves no sporting purpose. A grenade launcher or flare launcher, neither of which could have any sporting or self-defense purpose. A shortened barrel designed to reduce the length of an assault rifle to make it more concealable. This reduces accuracy and range.
7. Assault weapons have no legitimate useshould be banned

Gary Stein, Should Assault Weapons Be Banned? SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL, 72412, http://articles.sunsentinel.com/2012-07-24/news/sfl-should-assault-weapons-be-banned-20120723_1_assault-weapons-argument-bottom-line, accessed 8-20-12. There is one key point being lost in the current debate about assault weapons who, exactly, needs one? he horrible Colorado theatre shooting has again stirred debate on whether to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. Dont give me the argument that the shooter was deranged and would have done his horrible deed no matter what laws were in place. The laws made it easier for him. Dont give me the argument that hunters need assault weapons. They dont. Dont give me the argument that the Second Amendment protest your right to assault weapons. It doesnt. No, the bottom line is who needs an assault-style weapon. They have one purpose to kill. Whether its cops or people in a movie theatre. No person needs an assault weapon. No person needs that kind of weaponry. Ban them. Now.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Legitimate UsesGeneral [contd]

8. Civilian assault weapons are just as deadly as their military counterparts
Violence Policy Center, TARGET: LAW ENFORCEMENTASSAULT WEAPONS IN THE NEWS, 210, p. 1. Assault weapons. Semiautomatic assault weapons are civilian versions of automatic military assault rifles like the AK-47 and the M-16. The civilian guns look the same as their military brethren because they are identical functionally, except for one feature: military assault rifles are machine guns. A machine gun fires continuously as long as its trigger is held backuntil it runs out of ammunition. Civilian assault rifles, in contrast, are semi-automatic weapons. The trigger of a semiautomatic weapon must be pulled back separately for each round fired. Because federal law has banned the sale of new machine guns to civilians since 1986 and heavily regulates sales to civilians of older model machine guns, there is virtually no civilian market for military assault weapons. Nonetheless, civilian semiautomatic assault weapons have proven every bit as deadly as their military counterparts.
9. There is no legitimate justification for owning assault weapons

Jake Matthews, For Lives and Liberty: Banning Assault Weapons in America, HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW, 813 12, http://hpronline.org/united-states/for-lives-and-liberty-banning-assault-weapons-in-america-3/, accessed 8-22-12. Weve reached a tipping point in the debate over gun control in America. Twelve died in the shooting in Aurora, Colo.; thirteen at Fort Hood in Texas; six in Tucson, Ariz.; and seven in Oak Creek, Wis. In news less publicized, there were 1.8 million emergency department visits for assault in 2011. Of those, 11,500 civilians would die from firearm homicides. Given recent tragedy upon tragedy, perhaps its finally appropriate to discuss gun policy in America, and in particular, the unnecessary and harmful role of assault weapons in society. Assault rifles make up only 1.7 percent of all guns in America. Their function in society is dispensable. A 2005 Gallup poll found that 67 percent of gun owners carried firearms for protection, 66 percent for target shooting, and 58 percent for hunting. None of these activitiesthe three most popular for gun usersrequires assault weapons. They are inaccurate, highly visible, and bulky. Given assault weapons limited practicality, why even involve the risk?
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Legitimate UsesSelf-Defense

1. Assault weapons are too dangerous to be useful in self-defense
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 16. In addition to utilizing military features useful in combat, but which have no legitimate civilian purpose, assault weapons are exceedingly dangerous if used in self defense, because the bullets many of the weapons fire are designed to penetrate humans and will penetrate structures, and therefore pose a heightened risk of hitting innocent bystanders. As Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police has explained: An AK-47 fires a military round. In a conventional home with drywall walls, I wouldnt be surprised if it went through six of them. A bullet fired in self-defense that penetrated a homes walls, could strike bystanders in neighboring rooms, apartments, or houses. High capacity magazines containing more than 10 rounds, which were also banned as part of the Federal Assault Weapons Act, are also not useful for self-defense, as former Baltimore County Police Department Colonel Leonard J. Supenski has testified: The typical self-defense scenario in a home does not require more ammunition than is available in a standard 6-shot revolver or 6-10 round semiautomatic pistol. In fact, because of potential harm to others in the household, passersby, and bystanders, too much firepower is a hazard. Indeed, in most selfdefense scenarios, the tendency is for defenders to keep firing until all bullets have been expended. Assault weapons were designed for military use. They have no legitimate use as self-defense weapons.
2. There is no self-defense or sporting justification for high-volume clips

Michael Nutter, Mayor, Philadelphia, Why Congress Should Ban High-Volume Ammo Clips, US NEWS, 21411, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/02/14/why-congress-should-ban-high-volume-ammo-clips, accessed 8-24-12. Some will argue that the magazines are used in sporting competitions or are necessary for defensive purposes at home. The plain truth is that a magazine with 10 bullets, which the McCarthy bill would allow, is more firepower than our Founding Fathers might have imagined and more than enough to guard one's castle. Beyond halting the ever-increasing arms buildup by bringing common sense back to our regulation of these large-capacity magazines, the U.S. Conference of Mayors has called on Congress to fund fully the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. Mentally ill people such as the gunman at Virginia Tech or the drug-abusing defendant in the Tucson massacre should not have been able to purchase weapons. [Read more about gun control and gun rights.] The Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, of which I'm a member, has called for a fully funded NICS to help states cover the costs of gathering records. And we need to clarify the definition of mentally ill people so that individuals like the alleged Tucson shooter, who was too sick to gain readmission to school but was able to buy a gun, can be stopped.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Other Gun Problems Worse

1. Assault weapons ban may not be entirely effective, but it is a good place to start
Terry Plumb, Ban Assault Weapons, Killers Favorite Tool, HERALD, 72812, www.heraldonline.com/2012/07/28/4143831/plumb-ban-assault-weapons-killers.html, accessed 8-22-12. So, absent an unlikely retooling of how we identify and treat people who pose a potential threat to society, are we to accept mass shootings as inevitable? That the best we can do is to express our collective pain on Facebook or place bouquets and teddy bears on impromptu shrines for victims? Hardly. The first thing we should do is to restrict access to the tools of choice by mass killers: Assault weapons. Yes, shotguns and pistols can kill people, too. James Holmes proved that last week in Colorado. The difference between those firearms and assault weapons is that the latter were designed for use by the military. According to Wikipedia, the term refers to firearms designed for rapidly firing at human targets from close range. For 10 years before it was allowed to expire in 2004, the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act banned such guns as well as magazines capable of carrying more than 10 rounds. Some states still prohibit them. What this country needs is more elected officials with the courage to tell the gun lobby its bottom line is less sacred than the lives of innocent people. A good place to start would be for the presidential candidates of two major parties to demand Congress enact a new assault weapon ban.
2. Assault weapons are disproportionately used by criminals

Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 10. The firepower of assault weapons makes them especially desired by violent criminals and especially lethal in their hands. Prior to the Act, although assault weapons constituted less than 1% of the guns in circulation, they were a far higher percentage of the guns used in crime. ATFs analysis of guns traced to crime showed that assault weapons are preferred by criminals over law abiding citizens eight to one. Access to them shifts the balance of power to the lawless. In arguing against assault weapon bans, the NRA and its supporters have cited Justice Department studies based on surveys of state and federal prisoners to claim that assault weapons are used in only 2% of crimes nationally. These studies, however, actually confirm the disproportionate use of assault weapons in crime. More than 80% of these prisoners used no firearm in the commission of their crime. Within the category of inmates who used guns to commit crimes, semiautomatic assault weapons were actually used in 6.8% of state prosecutions and 9.3% of federal prosecutions. Both percentages are much higher than the estimated 1% of guns in circulation that are assault weapons. In addition, research by Dr. Garen Wintemute of the University of California at Davis has found that gun buyers with criminal histories were more likely to buy assault weapons than buyers without such histories. Wintemute further found that the more serious the offenders crimes, the more likely he is to buy assault weapons. Assault weapon buyers also are more likely to be arrested after their purchases than other gun purchasers.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Ownership Levels Decreasing

1. This is a serious problemassault weapons are currently pouring into the U.S.
Violence Policy Center, TARGET: LAW ENFORCEMENTASSAULT WEAPONS IN THE NEWS, 210, p. 3. For all practical purposes, it thus appears that the federal government has abandoned all attempts to regulate commerce in assault weapons into and within the United States. As a result, an unknown but certainly substantial number of foreign assault weapons poured into the United States during the Bush Administration and continue to under the Obama Administration. This is in addition to the enormous number of firearms exempted from, or manufactured in easy evasion of, the 1994 law. The only meaningful attempts at regulating this flood of killing machines exist at the state level. One outstanding example is Californias assault weapons ban, which has been hammered into an effective ban after the now-predictable gun industry attempts to evade the intent of the original law. Even Californias law, however, is undermined by the lack of a strong and effective federal ban, allowing for out-of-state assault weapons to be illegally trafficked into the state.
2. Data gaps are a product of the influence of the gun lobby

Violence Policy Center, TARGET: LAW ENFORCEMENTASSAULT WEAPONS IN THE NEWS, 210, p. 4. The dearth of data. Firearms enjoy the dubious distinction of being the only consumer product not subject to federal public health and safety regulation. Moreover, there is no national database tracking deaths and injuries from specific types and models of firearms. And only the most rudimentary, summary information is collected at any level about criminal use of firearms. As a result, public policy analysts, legislators, and public health and safety administrators must make do with crude data and anecdotal analysis. This is neither an accident nor a product of inattention. It is the deliberate result of a coldly calculated long-term policy of strangling information about guns and their public health effects designed by the National Rifle Association and its major client, the gun industry, and implemented by an all-too-pliant Congress. The firearms industry and gun lobby know that if as much data were available to the public about death and injury resulting from firearms as is available about, for example tires, toys, or Tacoma pick-up trucks, the gun lobby would lose the public debate.
3. Assault weapons were much more likely to be used by criminals than the public at large
Kevin A. Fox and Nutan Christine Shah, Natural Born Killer: The Assault Weapons Ban of the Crime BillLegitimate Exercise of Congressional Authority to Control Violent Crime or Infringement of a Constitutional Guarantee, ST. JOHNS JOURNAL OF LEGAL COMMENTARY v. 10, Fall 1994, p. 145. Using the weapons identified in the Anti-Crime Act, in April of 1994, an "Assault Weapons profile" released by the United States Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ("BATF") announced that the nineteen assault weapons targeted in the Anti-Crime Act comprise only one percent of the guns in circulation in the United States. However, these weapons account for up to eight percent of the guns traced to criminal activity. These assault weapons are preferred by criminals over law-abiding citizens eight to one, ranking in the top ten of all guns traced to criminal activity. Consequently, Congress's wholesale ban of these weapons has been deemed as the most appropriate solution to criminal gun use. The ban has been recognized as such by prominent organizations, including the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, and many law enforcement groups.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to People Kill People

1. Guns in the hands of people kill peoplethe presence of a gun escalates violence
Childrens Defense Fund, PROTECT CHILDREN NOT GUNS 2012, p. 32. Myth 3: Guns dont kill people, people kill people. The Truth: Anti-gun-control advocates wrongly argue that it is the deadly intent of the people wielding the gun, not the weapons, that results in deadly violence. Yet research demonstrates that the presence of a gun intensifies a violent event and increases the likelihood that someone will die. For example, a groundbreaking and often replicated study of criminal attacks in Chicago by University of California at Berkeley law professor Frank Zimring found that the circumstances of gun and knife assaults were very similar: Incidents typically were unplanned and did not involve a clear intention to kill. Having a gun on hand, however, made it more likely that the incident would end with a fatality. No one would dispute that guns are potentially dangerous. The federal government regulates many products deemed to be potentially dangerous, such as cars. Automobiles are subject to a host of federal health and safety standards to protect drivers and the general public, but no federal safety standards are applied to guns. It is reasonable to require that safety measures be imposed on gun owners, such as passing a background check showing fitness to own a gun, obtaining a license, and registering the gun.
2. Federal assault weapons ban saves livespresence of guns increases risk of violence
Marian Wright Edelman, President, How Our Nation Can Protect Children, not Guns, CHILD WATCH, 33012, http://www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/child-watch-columns/child-watch-documents/how-our-nation-can-protectchildren-not-guns.html, accessed 8-25-12. Congress should reinstitute the ban on assault weapons. The federal Assault Weapons Ban, signed into law in 1994, prohibited the manufacture and sale of 19 types of semi-automatic military style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that contained more than 10 rounds of ammunition, but it expired in 2004. Legislation pending in Congress would reinstitute the ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines that were used in the mass shootings in Tucson, Arizona and at Virginia Tech. Congress must restore the ban on both high-capacity clips and assault weapons. These deadly assault weapons that cause multiple deaths at a time have nothing to do with hunting animals. As James Alan Fox, professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston, said right after the Tucson murders: Notwithstanding the worn-out slogan that guns don't kill, people do, guns do make it easier for people to commit murder. And semi-automatic guns, like the Tucson assailant's outof-the-box spanking-new Glock, make it easier to commit mass murder.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to State / Local Laws Solve

1. National ban is necessaryonly a universal policy will be effective
John Rosenthal, President, Meredith Management, Shame on Congress Renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, HUFFINGTON POST, 8112, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-rosenthal/gun-control-laws_b_1730567.html, accessed 8-25-12. We need uniformity, because gun laws are less effective on a on a state-by-state basis. We need firm national consumer protection standards that treat guns as the dangerous products that they are. We need to make it harder for guns to circulate freely and end up in the wrong hands by requiring background checks in all states. We need to renew the federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. We can no longer accept the irresponsible and dangerous gun policies dictated by the NRA that allow 83 Americans to be killed by guns every day and have made mass killings commonplace in our supposedly civilized society. We must hold Congress accountable. We shouldn't let money and backwards ideologies run our government and hide the facts from the public: gun violence prevention laws are a "no brainer"; they save and protect lives, while reducing crime. Yet we watch idly while Congress collects tens of millions in special-interest blood money in the form of campaign contributions and 150 more Americans are shot today and every day. Congress should be forced to accept responsibility for making this country safer, and they should recognize that they are accountable for the 30,000 Americans killed by guns every year. And if they don't, shame on them. Shame on Congress.
2. National ban is necessary to protect the public--leakage

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD, editorial, Assault Weapons Ban Worthwhile at Federal Level, 72204, p. A12. There is sufficient testimony from law enforcement officials, including Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood, to lend credibility to the effectiveness of a federal ban on guns considered to be assault weapons. What's not clear, however, is whether it makes sense for Maine to ban these weapons on its own. Fearing that the ban on these guns might lead to bans on other types of weapons, gun rights activists have fought renewal of the assault weapons ban in Congress. The law is set to expire this September. Gun rights groups say that the ban is not needed because there is little to distinguish what the law considers to be assault weapons from guns that are still legal. Cops tell a different story, however. Particularly in urban environments, the assault weapons ban has helped to get the more dangerous guns off the streets, say Chitwood and his fellow officers. That's credible testimony to the worth of the ban, and Congress should extend it as supporters of the ban urged at Portland rally on Tuesday. Here in Maine, some have said that if the federal government doesn't act, the Legislature should. That's probably not a good idea. It would be difficult for Maine to enforce such ban, as these weapons could be purchased legally in other states. Also, Maine has little of the urban violence that led to the ban in the first place, so it's not at all clear that the expense of attempting to enforce such a ban here would pay off. Mainers concerned about gun violence should focus their attention on Congress, and on President Bush, who supports the ban but has not actively campaigned for its renewal. Banning assault weapons helps fight urban crime. Doing so has not led to additional bans on guns used by legitimate sportsmen. The assault weapons ban is sensible gun regulation that Congress should support.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Unconstitutional / Slippery Slope

1. Assault weapons ban would likely be upheld by the Supreme Court
Josh Gerstein, If Congress, W.H. Wanted to Ban Assault Weapons, Could They? POLITICO, 8812, http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/08/if-congress-wh-wanted-to-ban-assault-weapons-could-131451.html, accessed 8-25-12. Assault weapons bans have mostly been adjudicated in state courts thus far, where judges have generally been inclined to uphold them, according to Professor Adam Winkler of the UCLA School of Law. A federal ban, however, were it to end up before the Supreme Court, would most likely be evaluated in terms of the Second Amendment without much regard to state precedent, Winkler said. The federal courts have not given much previous guidance on whether a federal assault weapons ban would pass Second Amendment muster, but Winkler says he suspects one would be upheld by the Supreme Court. In the Heller case, the courts said a handgun ban is not constitutional because handguns are in common use, which is a common standard in jurisprudence, Winkler said. A shoulder-launched missile is not in common use for self-defense; a machine gun is not in common use. The assault rifle is a slightly more difficult question. I suspect [the court] would uphold such a ban, especially after such high-profile shootings. And I suspect that many judges, like many other people, would believe you dont need an assault weapon for self-defense. In June 2010, the Supreme Courts ruling in McDonald v. Chicago extended to states the decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that a D.C. ban on owning handguns violated the Second Amendment. The decision in McDonald struck down Chicago and Oak Parks handgun bans by incorporating the Second Amendment through the 14th. Since the invalidation of handgun bans, both pro- and anti-gun advocates have turned their attention to assault weapons bans. And in Heller, Scalia, writing for the majority, seems to indicate that restrictions on certain types of weapons remain constitutional. The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding, Scalia wrote. But he also said a 1939 Supreme Court case, United States v. Miller, allows for limitations on the right to bear arms, supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. We read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as shortbarreled shotguns, Scalia writes. A follow-up to Heller, Heller v. District of Columbia (known as Heller II) challenged laws prohibiting large-capacity ammunition magazines and assault weapons. In October 2011, the D.C. Circuit Court ruled 2-1 to uphold those bans as constitutional, remanding certain registration requirements back to the lower court for further review. Judge Douglas Ginsburg, delivering the opinion of the court, used the logic of the first Heller to conclude some restrictions on the Second Amendment are constitutional. He says these restrictions must pass an intermediate scrutiny test and the court found the assault weapons ban in question did. To pass muster under intermediate scrutiny the District must show [registration requirements] are substantially related to an important governmental objective, and the means must be a close fit with the ends, Ginsburg writes.
2. Second Amendment means militias, not an individual gun right

John P. Flannery, former Special Counsel, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Students Died at Virginia Tech Because Our Government Failed to Act! GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY CIVIL RIGHTS LAW JOURNAL v. 18, Spring 2008, p. 298299. Finally, in United States v. Miller, the leading case on the Second Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the National Firearms Act of 1934 as constitutional. The Court rejected the defense's argument that regulating the transfer of firearms and imposing a transfer tax usurped the police power reserved to the States. In upholding the Act, the Court concluded that the weapon at issue did not have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." In accord with the National Defense Act of 1916, the "militia" has since been supplanted by the National Guard. Thus, it is a fair characterization that the protections contemplated by the Second Amendment are mostly, if not entirely, obsolete. After all, the National Defense Act transformed the militia from an individual state service into a division of the United States Army that could be summoned by the President in a case of war or national emergency.
3. Second Amendment rights are not absoluteeven judicial conservatives agree

Diane Feinstein, U.S. Senator, Feinstein Presses for Assault Weapons Ban, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 72912, www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Feinstein-presses-for-assault-weapons-ban-3741632.php, accessed 8-22-12. Machine guns have been banned in this country for decades. Even as it found an individual right to gun ownership in the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court made the following observation: "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited," that it is "not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever" and noted "the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons.' " That opinion wasn't written by some wild-eyed liberal - it was written by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Unconstitutional / Slippery Slope [contd]

4. Assault weapons are not protectedHeller criteria prove
Brian J. Siebel, ASSAULT WEAPONS: MASS PRODUCED MAYHEM, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 1008, p. 18. The Second Amendment does not provide constitutional protection for military-style assault weapons. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense in the home. However, the Court also went out of its way to indicate that the right is limited in a number of ways. One limitation, the Court held, is that not all arms are protected. We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. [U.S. v.] Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those in common use at the time. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Assault weapons are certainly dangerous and unusual weapons according to any reasonable analysis of that phrase. They are military-style offensive weapons designed to slaughter human beings. This differentiates them from all hunting rifles and shotguns, as well as common handguns, which are often used in crime but have also been used in selfdefense. Moreover, assault weapons have never been in common use at any time. As semi-automatic versions of machine guns developed for use during the World Wars of the 20th Century, they are a relatively recent invention. In addition to being banned by the federal government for 10 years, they have been banned in several states. Plus, ATF has twice concluded, after thorough analyses in 1989 and 1998, that assault weapons have no sporting purpose. This conclusion has blocked them from being imported into the United States. Another factor suggesting that the Second Amendment does not protect assault weapons is that state supreme courts have consistently upheld the constitutionality of assault weapon bans as reasonable regulations designed to protect public safety under broadly-worded right-to-bear-arms provisions in state constitutions. The Heller Court relied on these state constitutional provisions, many of which were adopted in the 18th and 19th centuries, to support its interpretation that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. Courts construing the Second Amendment, post-Heller, can be expected to apply a similar standard of review, and uphold a federal assault weapons ban.
5. A ban is constitutionalthe government can constrain gun rights, a fact acknowledged by the majority in Heller
Michael Gerson, Gun Policys Slippery Slope, TAUNTON GAZETTE, 72812, http://www.tauntongazette.com/newsnow/x920141942/MICHAEL-GERSON-Gun-policy-s-slippery-slope, accessed 8-22-12 But there is another question: Given the existence of mental illness, criminal gangs and various ideologies of violence, what is a rational design for our gun laws? How do we preserve the right of self-defense and respect the rights of sportsmen while complicating the plans of the violent? The goal of gun control, in this case, is not to prevent specific crimes, but generally to limit the destructive options of criminals. This is a perfectly constitutional enterprise. In the Heller decision which recognized an individual right to gun ownership under the Second Amendment Justice Samuel Alito took pains to point out that the court was not overturning a variety of restrictions on that right, including prohibitions against gun possession by felons and the mentally ill, and gun bans in schools and public buildings. The guarantees of the Second Amendment are no more absolute than the guarantees of the First. The right to keep and bear arms does not mean the right to keep and bear tanks, shoulder-launched missiles, or fully automatic machine guns. All gun control policy unavoidably, by necessity is conducted on a slippery slope. The legal treatment of assault weapons, or of high-capacity magazines, is a prudential judgment, not a constitutional one.
6. Federal preemption prevailscan trump state gun laws, ban does not run afoul of the 10th Amendment
Kevin A. Fox and Nutan Christine Shah, Natural Born Killer: The Assault Weapons Ban of the Crime BillLegitimate Exercise of Congressional Authority to Control Violent Crime or Infringement of a Constitutional Guarantee, ST. JOHNS JOURNAL OF LEGAL COMMENTARY v. 10, Fall 1994, p. 147-148. Yet another constitutionally based argument, raised by the opponents of gun control legislation, is grounded within the tenets of the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment has been invoked to strike down federal legislation that infringed upon areas normally under state control. Through the use of the Commerce Clause, Congress has been able to enact sweeping legislation in areas normally left to the states. Congress has deemed that the interstate flow of weapons brings federal gun legislation within the purview of the Commerce Clause. Courts have agreed with Congress's approach, upholding federal gun control legislation in the face of Tenth Amendment challenges. Such court approval indicates that the federal power can be invoked to overcome state control of guns. Thus, it seems that the Anti-Crime Act would withstand constitutional scrutiny under the Tenth Amendment.
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Ban Desirable: Answers to Unconstitutional / Slippery Slope [contd]

7. Second Amendment rights are subject to regulationthe ban is a constitutional regulation of commerce
Kevin A. Fox and Nutan Christine Shah, Natural Born Killer: The Assault Weapons Ban of the Crime BillLegitimate Exercise of Congressional Authority to Control Violent Crime or Infringement of a Constitutional Guarantee, ST. JOHNS JOURNAL OF LEGAL COMMENTARY v. 10, Fall 1994, p. 150. An analysis based on the origins of the Second Amendment and the intent of the Framers reveals that the right to bear arms is a collective right intended to ensure an independent state militia. This is supported by the fact that the judiciary has consistently interpreted the Second Amendment as such, rather than as a right of individuals to bear arms. Additionally, the right has never been accorded absolute or fundamental status in the hierarchy of liberties. Consequently, the right is subject to regulation. In an attempt to address the problem of growing gun-related violence and the proliferation of assault weapons, state legislatures initiated restrictions concerning the manufacture, sale, and possession of assault weapons. State legislative attempts at regulating have been noteworthy for their acceptance by both federal and state courts. Unfortunately, the lack of uniformity in decisions rendered these state regulatory schemes largely ineffective when examined within a national perspective. The federal government has exercised its power and regulated firearms. Such regulation, however, did not include assault weapons. Coupling the inability of the states to properly address the growing abuse of assault weapons with the federal government's compelling and legitimate interest to protect the citizenry, congressional intervention was mandated. Congress has responded with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Due to the frequency with which firearms travel in interstate commerce, an exercise of congressional commerce power is justified. This should eviscerate any Tenth Amendment concerns of inappropriate usurpation of state sovereignty. Therefore, it is submitted that the federal ban of assault weapons as incorporated in the Anti-Crime Act of 1994 will not infringe upon Constitutional guarantees and will be upheld by the courts.
8. Ban is constitutionalonly touches on a narrow range of weapons

Kevin A. Fox and Nutan Christine Shah, Natural Born Killer: The Assault Weapons Ban of the Crime BillLegitimate Exercise of Congressional Authority to Control Violent Crime or Infringement of a Constitutional Guarantee, ST. JOHNS JOURNAL OF LEGAL COMMENTARY v. 10, Fall 1994, p. 146. Gun advocates are concerned that the recent passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act is the beginning of a national movement to quash the individual rights purportedly conferred by the Second Amendment. Proponents of the federal assault weapons ban, however, emphasize that the Anti-Crime Act is restrictive only to weapons with substantial destructive capacity and protective of handgun and sporting weapons ownership. Accordingly, the legislation does not criminalize lawabiding gun owners, by exempting 650 weapons, while eliminating access to military-style weapons which threaten the general population.
9. Second Amendment rights are not absoluteare subject to limits

Kevin A. Fox and Nutan Christine Shah, Natural Born Killer: The Assault Weapons Ban of the Crime BillLegitimate Exercise of Congressional Authority to Control Violent Crime or Infringement of a Constitutional Guarantee, ST. JOHNS JOURNAL OF LEGAL COMMENTARY v. 10, Fall 1994, p. 128-130. Although the right to bear arms was enumerated in the Bill of Rights, courts have specifically stated that the Constitution is not the source of rights themselves, but merely acts as a safeguard to protect these rights. The right to bear arms actually extends from English common law, which itself did not recognize an absolute right to bear arms. Therefore, it seems reasonable to infer that the Framers intended such a condition to apply to the same right as enumerated in the United States Constitution. In general, if a right is deemed absolute, Congress can make no law limiting that right. However, no liberty within the Bill of Rights has been accorded this protection by the courts. For example, the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and free exercise of religion have been regulated even though they have been deemed our most fundamental rights. Fundamental rights are given the highest position in the hierarchy of values, yet even they must sometimes yield to other considerations. With regard to gun control, courts have refused to accord such a classification to the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Therefore, the Second Amendment does not protect an absolute right to bear arms. Considering the spirit in which the Second Amendment was drafted, coupled with consistent judicial interpretation of the right as neither absolute nor fundamental, the right to bear arms historically has been subject to some degree of regulation.
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Ban Undesirable: Topshelf

1. Bans impose direct costs on every gun owner, will do little to decrease violence
Jeffrey Miron, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Strict Gun Control Will Seem Like War on Drugs, BLOOMBERG NEWS, 1 1311, www.cato.org/publications/commentary/strict-gun-control-will-seem-war-drugs, accessed 8-23-12. Gun controls like those being proposed may, on occasion, prevent horrific events like the Tucson shooting or at least reduce their harm, but in all likelihood only rarely. Avoiding a few such incidents is surely better than avoiding none, so these controls would make sense if they had no negatives of their own. But gun controls, even mild ones, do have adverse consequences. At a minimum, these laws impose costs on people who own and use guns without harming others, whether for hunting, collecting, target practice, self-defense, or just peace of mind. The inconvenience imposed by bans on extended-ammunition clips or waiting periods to buy a gun might seem trivial compared with the deaths and injuries that occur when someone like Loughner goes on a rampage. And if the only negative from these controls were such inconveniences, society might reasonably accept that cost, assuming these controls prevent some acts of violence.
2. Any new laws that are passed are unlikely to be enforced

Matthew Dolan and Steve Eder, Rifle in Shooting Once Was Federally Restricted, WALL STREET JOURNAL, 72212, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443295404577543262884887188.html, accessed 8-25-12. There were renewed calls for a federal assault weapons ban in 2009, after Michael McLendon killed 10 people in southeastern Alabama. He used two assault rifles in the attackan SKS and a Bushmaster. Now, Gary Kleck, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, is predicting yet another "effort to resuscitate the assault weapon ban." Still, he said, "The political odds are stacked against it" actually happening as the federal government has been reluctant to act on gun control issues. "For the most part, merely passing new laws, which for the most part go unenforced, won't do any good," Mr. Kleck said.
3. Gun control fails at limiting gun violencesupply side restrictions fail

Nicholas J. Johnson, Professor, Law, Fordham University, Supply Restrictions at the Margins of Heller and the Abortion Analogue: Stenberg Principles, Assault Weapons, and the Attitudinalist Critique, HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL v. 60, 609, p. 1290-1291. From a crime-control perspective, the regulation of assault weapons is mainly symbolic. I have demonstrated previously that supply restrictions ranging from one-gun-a-month schemes to flat gun bans cannot work without a willingness and ability to reduce supply to levels approaching zero - an impossible feat in a country with 300 million guns tightly held by people who think they are uniquely important tools. Internationally, the defiance ratio in places that have attempted confiscation and registration is 2.6 illegal guns for every legal one. That is just the average. In many countries defiance is far higher. And none of those countries has as deep and entrenched a gun culture as the United States. This remainder problem and defiance impulse mean that we are far past the point where supply restrictions can work. Moreover, post-Heller, taking the supply to zero is explicitly constitutionally prohibited. This means that prospective supply restrictions on the roughly 1.5% increase in the civilian inventory that occurs each year - some fraction of which are assault weapons - are worse than ineffective because they fuel delusions that something important has happened on the violence policy front. They are worse still where they amount to pandering by people who understand the problem well enough to know that restrictions just on certain guns will consume our energy, but will not reduce gun crime. That said, campaigning for assault weapons bans persists.
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Ban Undesirable: Topshelf [contd]

4. The nominal criteria used to determine which weapons were covered by the ban were sillyhad little to do with their lethality
Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 477-478. The second prong of the AWB prohibited firearms with at least two of the listed characteristics, such as a folding stock, a pistol grip, a threaded muzzle, a bayonet mount, or a grenade launcher. However, these criteria have little connection to the dangerousness of the weapon or a particular crime problem. Although folding and telescoping stocks make long guns marginally easier to conceal, they are still more difficult to conceal than legal handguns, and are primarily used for easier carrying and storage. Protruding pistol grips permit the firer to shoot from a position off the shoulder, but they do not give assault weapons a shooting position different from all handguns. Further, while threaded muzzles allow easy attachment of flash suppressors (which reduce the flash emitted from the barrel) or muzzle breaks (which reduce the "kick" when the weapon is fired), a gunsmith can attach these features regardless of whether the weapon has a threaded barrel "like true military assault rifles." These features do allow for more comfortable and accurate shooting, but this is "a dubious basis for classifying a firearm as uniquely suitable for prohibition." Finally, and most absurdly, the AWB prohibits bayonet mounts and grenade launchers. Bayonets can be fixed to guns regardless of whether the firearm has a mount, and it is doubtful that "criminals charging their victims with a bayonet" pose a great crime concern. Similarly, the criminal use of grenade launchers is more fantasy than reality. Further, grenades and grenade launchers, like machine guns, are already heavily regulated.
5. Expiration was goodremoved gridlock, opens door to more effective regulation

Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 481-482. The common storyline is that election-year politics prevented the AWB's renewal. One September 2004 poll showed that sixtyeight percent of the public supported its renewal. In March, the Senate voted fifty-three to forty-six for renewal of the AWB before the bill to which it was attached was abandoned. Despite this popular support, this article argues that the expiration of the AWB was responsible legislative inaction. Gun rights supporters obviously benefit from the expiration of the ban, but those favoring greater gun controls can also benefit from the opportunity to move forward on less-polarizing gun control legislation. This complex outcome means that the expiration of the AWB was not a matter of Congress simply ignoring public will in favor of rewarding special interests. Rather, Congress's inaction removed a failing law and may end gridlock on other pressing and more effective gun control measures.
6. Any action should be left up to the states

Laurence M. Vance, policy advisor, Future of Freedom Foundation, The Cans and Shoulds of Gun Control, FREEDOM DAILY, 8712, http://www.fff.org/comment/com1208f.asp, accessed 8-17-12. The Second Amendment hasnt prevented the myriad of federal gun laws that were put in place during the 20th century. So then, what should the federal government do about gun violence? The federal government should do the same thing it should do when it comes to just about everything else absolutely nothing. Not only should there be no ATF, there should be no federally licensed firearms dealers, no federal bans on any size or type of gun or ammunition, no federal restrictions on gun purchases, and no mandates issued to the states that have anything to do with guns. It is in the states where any gun regulation or control measures should be passed if they should be passed at all. To do so on the federal level does violence to the Second Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, federalism, and the Constitution itself.
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Ban Undesirable: Access Failure

1. Ban faileddid nothing to limit the publics access to the weapons
Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 480. Not only was the AWB flawed in terms of the weapons it banned, but it also failed to limit the public's access to such firearms. One concession made during the congressional debate was the inclusion of grandfather clauses, which limited the application of the AWB to newly manufactured weapons and clips while permitting legal possession, sale, or transfer of existing assault weapons and large capacity ammunition clips. Because of these provisions, the production and sale of assault weapons substantially increased as individual citizens and dealers stocked up on weapons in order to circumvent the impending ban. Gun manufacturers made minor cosmetic changes to make their weapons compliant and even increased demand by specifically marketing these "new" weapons as "post-ban." Some have argued that this surge in demand actually increased the number of assault weapons on the market. The incoherent grandfather clause and criteria system may have undermined the intent of the AWB: they allowed people to retain and transfer existing weapons, make minor adjustments to firearms to make them compliant, and may have increased assault weapons possession. Although the law could be easily avoided by purchasing grandfathered or adjusted weapons, many people still did not comply with the ban. David B. Kopel suggests that "perhaps no laws in American history have been more universally ignored than 'assault weapon' prohibitions." Various municipal assault weapons bans have resulted in estimated compliance rates as low as one percent. Such noncompliance may not be entirely subversive, since gun owners may find the details of the prohibition confusing and inadvertently purchase banned weapons. Additionally, individuals may purposely ignore the ban for other reasons. The AWB "enriches organized crime" by creating a black market, and subsequent profit, for banned weapons. Individuals may have concerns for protecting themselves that trump their desire to comply with the federal law. Also, many gun owners feel it is a constitutional right to own assault weapons, and such bans alienate them from police attempting to enforce the ban. For these reasons, both unintentional and intentional, compliance with the AWB was poor.
2. The ban did not reduce crimecriminals could have gotten the weapons, are rarely used anyway
Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 480-481. Despite flaws in the legislation, the question still remains whether or not prohibiting assault weapons prevents crime. Given their widespread availability, criminals would likely be able to acquire assault weapons if they desired. Moreover, faced with an under-inclusive AWB, a criminal would simply turn to other legal weapons; the ban would only limit a criminal's options, but would not prevent the crime itself. Proponents of renewing the ban claim that assault weapons are currently used in twothirds fewer crimes than before the AWB, but other empirical evidence suggests that "assault weapons ... are rarely used in crimes." Fewer than ten percent of all murders and manslaughters involved long guns (of which semiautomatic rifles are a small subset). Contrary to the common perception, assault weapons are used in only about one percent of all police gun murders. The Justice Department study mandated by the AWB was also equivocal: noting that assault weapons are not commonly used in crimes and that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) tracing statistics were down since the AWB, but that there were generally more weapons available to the public which could possibly reach criminal hands. The broad access to existing weapons, the ease of displacement, and the lack of solid empirical evidence that assault weapons are used in crimes casts serious doubt as to whether the AWB acted to reduce crime.
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Ban Undesirable: CircumventionGeneral

1. Gun manufacturers readily circumvent the ban
Violence Policy Center, WHY MERELY RENEWING THE CURRENT ASSAULT WEAPON BAN WILL NOT STOP THE SALE OF ASSAULT WEAPONS, 2004, p. 1-2. Immediately after the 1994 law was enacted, the gun industry moved quickly to make slight, cosmetic design changes in their post-ban guns to evade the law, a tactic the industry dubbed sporterization. Of the nine assault weapon brands/types listed by manufacturer in the law, six of the brands/types have been re-marketed in new, sporterized configurations. Post-ban AR-15s, AK-47s, MAC-10s, UZIs, and other assault weapons are readily available today. At the same time, the gun industry has aggressively marketed new assault-weapon typessuch as the Hi-Point Carbine used in the 1999 Columbine massacre that are commonly used in crime. In fact, gunmakers openly boast of their ability to circumvent the assault weapons ban. Their success is described in an August 2001 Gun World magazine article about the Vepr II assault rifle, a sporterized version of the AK-47: In spite of assault rifle bans, bans on high capacity magazines, the rantings of the antigun media and the rifles innate political incorrectness, the Kalashnikov [AK-47], in various forms and guises, has flourished. Today there are probably more models, accessories and parts to choose from than ever before. Equally blunt was an article in the May 2003 issue of Gun World reviewing the LE Tactical Carbine, a post-ban, sporterized AR-15 clone: Strange as it seems, despite the hit U.S. citizens took with the passage of the onerous crime bill of 1994 [which contained the federal assault weapons ban], ARs are far from dead. Stunned momentarily, they sprang back with a vengeance and seem better than ever. Purveyors abound producing post-ban ARs for civilians and pre-ban models for government and law enforcement agencies, and new companies are joining the fray. Just such a post-ban AR, the Bushmaster XM15 M4 A3 assault rifle, was used by the Washington, DC-area snipers to kill 10 and injure three in October 2002. The Bushmaster is the poster child for the industrys success at evading the ban. The snipers Bushmaster is even marketed as a Post-Ban Carbine. The industrys ability to evade the ban is easily documented, not only by articles contained in gun magazines, but also by a review of advertisements in such gun dealer publications as Shotgun News and Gun List. Numerous manufacturer web sites also display currently available post-ban assault weapons.
2. Gun ban was circumventedeven supporters concede

Jennifer Dlouhy, Odds Stacked Against Renewal of Ban on Assault Weapons, CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY WEEKLY, 9404, npg. But Democrats have not made good on their threats, and with just one legislative week left before the ban expires, the law is set to become a casualty in the standoff between gun rights and gun control advocates. Reauthorizing the law would be a mostly symbolic victory, because even supporters privately acknowledge that gunmakers have found a way around much of the current ban. But the fact that gun control advocates are poised to lose on an issue that is more symbolic than substantive -- and on a policy supported by the vast majority of Americans -- speaks volumes about the erosion of gun control as a viable political and policy issue.
3. Ban was too weakcircumvented with sporterized versions of the weapons

Violence Policy Center, ILLINOIS: LAND OF POST-BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS, 304, p. 1. Immediately after the 1994 law was enacted, the gun industry moved quickly to make slight, cosmetic design changes in their post-ban guns to evade the law, a tactic the industry dubbed sporterization. Of the nine assault weapon brand/types listed by manufacturer in the law, six of the brand/types have been re-marketed in new, sporterized configurations. Because of the transient nature of the gun industry and the lack of reliable, comprehensive information on gun manufacture in the United States,3 it is impossible to offer an exact number as to the number of manufacturers who are currently manufacturing sporterized assault weapons as well as the actual number of such guns manufactured. An examination by the Violence Policy Center of manufacturers attending the annual S.H.O.T. (Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade) Show, the annual trade show for the firearms industry, advertisements by gunmakers in industry trade publications and consumer gun publication, and, manufacturer web sites, reveals however, that Illinois appears to have the largest number of sporterized assault weapon manufacturers of any state.
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Ban Undesirable: CircumventionGeneral [contd]

4. Law was easy to circumvent via weapons modificationNIJ report proves
Jerry Seper, Ban on Assault Weapons Didnt Reduce Violence, WASHINGTON TIMES, 81704, p. A7. According to recent surveys by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), firearms-related crime has declined to record levels. The violent crime rate has fallen 54 percent since 1993, and there were more than 980,000 fewer violent crimes in 2002 than in 2000. But in the past three years, according to the BJS, federal gun prosecutions have increased by 68 percent, with the number of persons charged with federal firearms offenses rising by more than 22 percent in fiscal 2003, the largest single-year increase ever recorded. The 102-page NIJ report said the assault-weapons ban was intended to "reduce gunshot victimizations by limiting the national stock of semiautomatic firearms with large ammunition capacities," although it said the automaticweapons provision of the bill targeted a "relatively small number of weapons" based on features that had little to do with the weapons' operation. The report said the removal of those features, such as detachable high-capacity magazines, was "sufficient to make the weapons legal."
5. Ban was easily circumventedremoval of accessories

Sheldon Alberts, U.S. Ban on Assault Rifles Runs Out on Monday, OTTAWA CITIZEN, 91104, p. A9. "There has been so much rhetoric about how AK-47s and Uzis are going to flood our streets. But the reality is that AKs and Uzis are being made in the U.S. today and they will continue to be made," said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Centre, which is lobbying for much tougher gun control laws. "Overall, the marketplace for assault weapons is robust today, and really won't change that much after the ban expires.... The ban is not worth renewing as it is. We think the law needs to be fixed." Ms. Rand says some of the toughest-sounding provisions of the law were easily skirted by gun manufacturers. The bill, for instance, banned the manufacture of ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 live rounds. But gunmakers managed to produce thousands of the clips before the federal legislation came into effect. To this day, dealers are peddling high-capacity clips that were stockpiled before the ban was imposed. Gun control advocates such as Ms. Rand still don't understand Congress's decision to ban such items as bayonet lugs and grenade launchers without outlawing actual shooting parts on the assault rifles themselves. "We would argue that those characteristics aren't essential to the gun's functioning as assault weapons," Ms. Rand said. "I mean, we don't have a lot of bayoneting on the streets of America. You can't get grenades for grenade launchers. So those are sort of extraneous features."
6. Previous ban failed because it was too easily circumventedsmall manufacturing modifications
Violence Policy Center, UNITED STATES OF ASSAULT WEAPONS: GUNMAKERS EVADING THE FEDERAL ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN, 704, p. 1-3. The 1994 law banned specific assault weapons by namee.g. UZI, Avtomat Kalashnikov (AK-47), AR-15 as well as their copies or duplicates. The law also classifies as assault weapons semiautomatic firearms that can accept a detachable ammunition magazine and have two additional assault weapon design characteristics. But immediately after the 1994 law was enacted, the gun industry evaded it by making slight, cosmetic design changes to banned weaponsincluding those banned by name in the lawand continued to manufacture and sell these post-ban or copycat guns. Changes that allow an assault weapon to stay on the market can be as minor as removing a flash suppressor at the end of a guns barrel. The gun industry dubbed this process sporterization. Gunmakers quick and successful evasion of the law was no secret. In February 1995, just five months after the bans enactment, lead sponsor Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), in a 60 Minutes interview, charged that the industry was violating both the spirit and intent of the law and promised, I can assure you if I can figure a way to stop it, Ill try to do that. In the nearly 10 years following that interview, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Today, of the nine assault weapon brand/types banned by name and manufacturer in the law, six of the brand/types are still marketed in post-ban, copycat configurations. In fact, gunmakers openly boast of their ability to circumvent the ban. Their success is described in an August 2001 Gun World magazine article about the Vepr II assault rifle, a sporterized version of the AK-47: In spite of assault rifle bans, bans on high capacity magazines, the rantings of the anti-gun media and the rifles innate political incorrectness, the Kalashnikov [AK-47], in various forms and guises, has flourished. Today there are probably more models, accessories and parts to choose from than ever before.
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Ban Undesirable: CircumventionGeneral [contd]

7. The 1994 ban was ineffectiveonly addressed cosmetic issues, was easily circumvented
Violence Policy Center, THE MILITARIZATION OF THE U.S. CIVILIAN FIREARMS MARKET, 611, p. 27. In 1994, Congress passed a ban on the production of certain semiautomatic assault weapons as well as new high-capacity ammunition magazines that held more than 10 rounds. The law banned specific assault weapons by name and also classified as assault weapons semiautomatic firearms that could accept a detachable ammunition magazine and had two additional assault weapon design characteristics. Because the law listed merely cosmetic features (like bayonet mounts) and did not address the fundamental design of assault weapons, it was ineffective. The gun industry quickly made slight design changes in post-ban guns to evade the law, a tactic gunmakers dubbed sporterization. One of the most aggressive of the manufacturers of postban ARs was Bushmaster Firearms. A Bushmaster XM15 M4 A3 assault rifle was used by the Washington, D.C.-area snipers to kill 10 and injure three in October 2002. A poster child for the industrys success at evading the ban, the snipers Bushmaster was marketed as a Post-Ban Carbine.
8. The ban failedloopholes allowed continued manufacturing and sales

Deborah Sontag, Assault Weapons Ban Comes to End: a Dud? NEW YORK TIMES, 42505, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/world/americas/24iht-gun.html?_r=1, accessed 8-23-12. "Back in the early '90s, criminals wanted those Rambo-type weapons they could brandish," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police. "Today they are much happier with a 9-millimeter handgun they can stick in their belt." When the ban took effect in 1994, it exempted more than 1.5 million assault weapons in private hands. Over the next 10 years, at least 1.17 million more assault weapons were produced - legitimately - by manufacturers that availed themselves of loopholes in the law, according to an analysis of firearms production data by the Violence Policy Center. Throughout the decade-long ban, for instance, the gun manufacturer DPMS/Panther Arms of Minnesota continued selling assault rifles to civilians by the tens of thousands. In compliance with the ban, the firearms manufacturer "sporterized" the military-style weapons, sawing off bayonet lugs, securing stocks so they were not collapsible and adding muzzle brakes. But the changes did not alter the guns' essence; they were still semiautomatic rifles with pistol grips.
9. Ban allowed sale of near-duplicate weapons that had only small modifications
Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. 10. Although the law bans copies or duplicates of the named gun makes and models, federal authorities have emphasized exact copies. Relatively cosmetic changes, such as removing a flash hider or bayonet mount, are sufficient to transform a banned weapon into a legal substitute, and a number of manufacturers now produce modified, legal versions of some of the banned guns (examples are listed in Table 2-1). In general, the AW ban does not apply to semiautomatics possessing no more than one military-style feature listed under the bans features test provision. For instance, prior to going out of business, Intratec, makers of the banned TEC-9 featured in Figure 2-1, manufactured an AB-10 (after ban) model that does not have a threaded barrel or a barrel shroud but is identical to the TEC-9 in other respects, including the ability to accept an ammunition magazine outside the pistol grip (Figure 2-4). As shown in the illustration, the AB-10 accepts grandfathered, 32-round magazines made for the TEC-9, but post-ban magazines produced for the AB-10 must be limited to 10 rounds.
10. Gun control efforts faileasily circumvented

Jeffrey Miron, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Strict Gun Control Will Seem Like War on Drugs, BLOOMBERG NEWS, 1 1311, www.cato.org/publications/commentary/strict-gun-control-will-seem-war-drugs, accessed 8-23-12. The atrocity committed last weekend in Tucson, Arizona, by alleged perpetrator Jared Loughner has predictably generated calls for new gun-control laws in the U.S. Some want bans on the extended-capacity ammunition clips that allowed Loughner to fire more than 30 shots from his Glock semi-automatic pistol without reloading. Others want improved background screening to prevent mentally unstable individuals from purchasing guns. Would these or other laws prevent incidents like the Arizona shooting? Probably not. And such laws, along with existing gun controls, not only harm responsible gun owners but may even increase violence.
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Ban Undesirable: CircumventionLethality Myth / Arbitrary

1. The ban only covers cosmetic featureswholly ineffective
Janine Peterson, The Assault Weapons Ban, ETHICAL SPECTACLE, 304, http://www.spectacle.org/0304/assault.html, accessed 8-24-12. The Assault Weapons Ban, Feinstein (and others) Amendment Number 1152 (Senate November 9, 1993), is due to sunset this year. This law is ineffective and unnecessary, and it should be allowed to sunset as originally scheduled. There is an unfortunate amount of misinformation around this law. Gun advocates call it the scary weapons ban, because the law primarily regulates certain cosmetic features. The law applies only to semi-automatic weapons, not automatics. This law explicitly regulates the manufacture, transfer, and possession of certain semiautomatic assault weapons. These weapons are not automatic. Every time you pull the trigger on a semi-automatic weapon, the gun fires one bullet. Automatic weapons are capable of firing more than one bullet per trigger pull, and automatic weapons are capable of what is called spray fire, or unaimed, sustained fire. Automatic weapons, incidentally, are tightly regulated under other, unrelated laws. The assault weapons ban doesnt affect automatic weapons at all, despite attempts to link the two in peoples minds. The law begins by stating that it applies only to semi-automatic weapons. The law then describes the other, cosmetic features that rifles, shotguns, and handguns must have to be considered assault weapons.
2. Assault weapons are a myththe ban applied to legitimate semi-automatic weapons

Joseph P. Tartaro, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994: The Great Assault Weapon Hoax, UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON LAW REVIEW v. 20, Winter 1995, p. 621-622. If this evidence exists, one must wonder why the debate over these particular firearms continues. The answer, of course, lies in the total confusion that surrounds the issue. Let us examine some elements of the mystification. First, the term "assault weapon" is erroneously applied. Assault weapons are by military procurement definition "selective fire (full auto continuous or burst fire plus autoloading) arms of sub caliber." Since fully automatic and selective firearms have been severely restricted, taxed and licensed--and owners screened by local and federal law enforcement--since 1934, real assault weapons have been strictly regulated by federal as well as state laws for sixty years. The firearms which are targeted by recent laws and current legislative proposals are mostly semi-automatic (requiring a single trigger pull for each shot) or, in the case of the StreetSweeper type shotgun, functional revolvers. They are [*622] indistinguishable in operation from other semi-automatic firearms used for self-defense, pest and vermin control, sport hunting and recreational shooting since the turn of the century.
3. Assault weapons are no more dangerous than other semi-automatic weapons

Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 477. Furthermore, the ammunition used in assault weapons is not uniquely lethal compared to the ammunition used in other weapons permitted by the federal government. The two major factors that determine the destructive force of a round are its weight and velocity, and rounds fired by assault weapons have less weight and a lower velocity than rounds used in many hunting rifles. Because assault weapons are not automatic weapons, they do not spray ammunition at nearly the destructive force of an ordinary shotgun firing buckshot. Therefore, looking purely at the firing rate and power of the firearms included under the AWB, the nineteen banned weapons are less dangerous than many weapons left untouched by the ban.
4. The ban failed-did nothing to limit the lethality of available weapons

Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 478-479. The nineteen expressly-prohibited weapons and the criteria system raise serious doubt as to whether the weapons banned by the AWB were actually more lethal than those permitted. Assault weapons as defined in the AWB are not automatic weapons and do not fire rounds that are any more dangerous than common handguns, shotguns, and hunting rifles. Furthermore, the criteria system and the ban on large capacity clips are only marginally related to limiting the lethality of weapons available to potential criminals. In the end, the law failed to address the dangers of particularly lethal weapons, and instead focused on technical details that inspire fear but do not pose any particular threat.
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Ban Undesirable: CircumventionLethality Myth / Arbitrary [contd]

5. Assault weapon is a misnomer, are too hard to define
Joseph P. Tartaro, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994: The Great Assault Weapon Hoax, UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON LAW REVIEW v. 20, Winter 1995, p. 622. To illustrate how difficult it is to define assault weapons outside the lexicon of the Pentagon, one need only examine some of the legislation which has been proposed or passed. When Senator Howard Metzenbaum filed his first "assault weapon" ban legislation in 1989, Peter Kokalis, technical editor for Soldier of Fortune magazine, applied the Ohio Democrat's definition to existing catalogs of available arms and discovered that the bill would have banned more than 250 different models. Among these were .22 caliber semi-automatic repeaters that have been around for more than fifty years, and semi-automatic military style guns of World War II and Korea, such as the M1 Garand and the M1 carbine, beloved by millions of war veterans, collectors and recreational shooters. Further indication of the difficulty in crafting a definition of a semi-automatic assault weapon can be found in the experience of the two states which have enacted such laws. In California, Department of Justice reports show that thousands of firearms which were not included in that state's ban have been registered by individuals and law enforcement officials who did not know the difference, and that hundreds of thousands of estimated "assault weapons" have not been registered. In New Jersey, a similar situation exists, with a confused public failing to comply as predicted and with the legislature and attorney general trying to decide which of the guns already outlawed may be lawfully owned by private citizens for marksmanship programs sanctioned by the Department of the Army. The term "assault weapon" was originally coined by the Nazi military machine in Germany to describe a sub- or mid-caliber selective fire (fully automatic) light rifle or carbine. It first appeared in the designation of the Sturmgewehr 44, a lighter, rapid fire military small arm which fired a projectile smaller (and logistically lighter and cheaper) than that of the standard battle rifle. The Germans had been making similar arms before 1944, but they had generally been classified as machine pistols or submachine guns. While the Korean War era Grease Gun and M2 carbine might be classified as "assault rifles," the M-16 developed by Colt was the first American "assault weapon."
6. The ban only applied to semi-automatic weapons, not military weapons

Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 475-476. The term "assault weapon" is itself intimidating, conjuring images of the powerful, rapid-fire weapons used by the military or in action films. These images increase fear in the public consciousness, but do not reflect the reality of assault weapons as defined by the federal government. In fact, the weapons banned under the AWB are not actually automatic weapons - they cannot fire more than one round per pull of the trigger. Guns that fire more than one round per trigger-pull have been heavily regulated since the 1930s, and nothing in the AWB affected these firearms. Although they are dubbed "military-like," they are not military weapons used by conventional militaries.
7. Ban failedwas entirely arbitrary about what weapons were covered

John R. Lott Jr., resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute, A Weapons Surrendered, NATIONAL REVIEW, 325 04, npg. And it is also true that the ban arbitrarily outlaws some guns based on brand name or cosmetic features--such as whether a rifle has two or more of the following: a bayonet mount, a pistol grip, a folding stock, or a threaded muzzle. These were not machine guns: The federal assault-weapons ban applied to semi-automatics that fire one bullet per pull of the trigger. Not only could someone buy some other semi-automatic gun that wasn't banned that fired the same bullets, with the same rapidity and with the same damage, but even the banned guns could be sold under a different name or after, say, the bayonet mount was removed.
8. The ban was so narrow that it was irrelevant

Rich Lowry, Half-Cocked Assault-Weapons Ban May Be Extended, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 52103, p. B6. Congress cut through the amorphousness by arbitrarily picking 19 nasty-looking models to ban. As Kleck writes, "It is hard to imagine how the federal assault-weapons ban could even hypothetically prevent a death or injury by banning further sales and manufacture of just 19 models of semiautomatic guns that accounted for less than 1.4 percent of guns used by criminals and that possessed no violence-relevant attributes to distinguish them from over 380 semiautomatic models not banned." Congress also enumerated characteristics, including bayonet mounts and pistol grips, that would be verboten on certain semiautomatics. None of these characteristics have anything to do with the lethality of the guns. And if you think there is danger of assaultweapons-armed criminals charging with their bayonets fixed, you have probably seen "Lethal Weapon 4" one too many times.
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Ban Undesirable: CircumventionLethality Myth / Arbitrary [contd]

9. The ban faileddid not eliminate the most dangerous weapons, had too many loopholes
Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 475. Although the AWB was intended to remove dangerous weapons from the streets, the law did little to achieve this goal. It failed to prohibit particularly dangerous weapons, because the firearms encompassed in the statute's definition of assault weapons were not uniquely lethal compared to weapons that remained legal under the ban. Furthermore, concessions during the legislative process made the AWB unsuccessful in achieving its second purpose - removing these weapons from the public. Ultimately, the questionable evidence associating assault weapons with crime, coupled with the continuing availability of assault weapons after the ban, raise doubts as to whether the AWB addressed the underlying crime problem.
10. The ban applied to semi-automatic weapons that in actuality are not different than similar weapons not covered by the ban
Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 476-477. Assault weapons, as defined by the AWB, are functionally the same as other semiautomatic guns. They fire no faster than other semiautomatic firearms not prohibited by the AWB. Moreover, gun control advocates' contention that semiautomatic weapons fire at an extraordinary rate is untenable; a U.S. Navy Seal study shows they fire roughly one-tenth of a second faster than boltaction weapons. Furthermore, when a weapon is actually aimed, the rate of fire is only about one shot per second on target. Thus, the fear of hundreds of rounds being fired in a matter of seconds is unfounded. The AWB did prohibit large capacity clips, and in that sense did reduce the firing rate of guns. However, the delay in firing caused by smaller ammunition clips is marginal due to the split second it takes for the shooter to press the release button and lock in a "new fully-loaded clip."
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Ban Undesirable: CircumventionRenewal Backfires

1. Renewal just means we are stuck with a weak law
Violence Policy Center, WHY MERELY RENEWING THE CURRENT ASSAULT WEAPON BAN WILL NOT STOP THE SALE OF ASSAULT WEAPONS, 2004, p. 2-3. By simply renewing existing law, Congress also adopts and endorses the weak interpretation of the law promulgated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). As a result, efforts to fix the ban in the courtsby arguing that post-ban models of restricted weapons violate the laws prohibition on copies or duplicates of banned gunsare unlikely to succeed. Furthermore, not all assault weapons were affected by the 1994 ban. For example, assault weapons with more conventional designs, such as the Ruger Mini-14, were not covered by the 1994 lawalthough gun experts define them as assault weapons. Furthermore, any gun that was legally possessed as of the date the 1994 law took effect may still be legally possessed and transferred without restriction. With respect to high-capacity ammunition magazines, manufacturers stockpiled thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands, of magazines before the ban took effect. Those magazinessome of which can hold up to 75 rounds of ammunitionare still widely available.
2. Renewing the 1994 ban will faileven advocates of eliminating assault weapons agree
Violence Policy Center, Senate-Passed Assault Weapons 'Ban' Will Do Little to Keep Assault Weapons Off Our Streets, Violence Policy Center (VPC) Warns, PR NEWSWIRE, 3204, lexis. Senate action renewing the current federal assault weapons ban will do little to protect America's police and public from assault weapons, the Violence Policy Center (VPC) warned today. The measure was passed as an amendment to a Senate bill granting America's firearms industry limited immunity from lawsuits. "This bill merely continues the badly flawed 1994 ban, which is a ban in name only," states Kristen Rand, VPC legislative director. "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. At the same time, the gun industry has aggressively marketed new assault-weapon types -- such as the Hi-Point Carbine used in the 1999 Columbine massacre -- that are frequently used in crime. Reenacting this eviscerated ban without improving it will do little to protect the lives of law enforcement officers and other innocent Americans. Now is the time for Americans to demand that Congress and the Bush Administration roll up their sleeves and enact a truly effective assault weapons ban."
3. Ban failstoo many loopholes, advocates on both sides of the issue agree
Sheldon Alberts, U.S. Ban on Assault Rifles Runs Out on Monday, OTTAWA CITIZEN, 91104, p. A9. But while the media war rages between supporters and opponents, long-standing criticisms of the legislation have been overshadowed. The reality, agree activists on both sides of the issue, is that the assault rifle ban never did much good. Because of numerous loopholes in the original law, Americans who owned assault rifles prior to imposition of the ban got to keep their guns under a "grandfather" clause included by U.S. Congress. Gunmakers were allowed to continue building assault weapons as long as they excluded a few largely cosmetic accessories -- such items as bayonet lugs, grenade launchers, flash suppressors, and collapsing stocks -- which qualified them as military rifles under the law. And despite the ban, two of the worst crimes in recent U.S. history -- the Columbine massacre and the Washington, D.C., sniper rampage -- were carried out by assailants using assault rifles. The D.C. snipers used a Bushmaster XM-15, an assault rifle clone manufactured after the 1994 ban. The killers at Columbine opened fire with a TEC-9, a banned weapon they had obtained illegally, and a Hi Point Carbine, a cheap post-ban assault rifle marketed to buyers as a "working man's" gun.
63
Ban Undesirable: Constitutionality Concerns

1. Assault weapons are protectedright to self-defense
Nicholas J. Johnson, Professor, Law, Fordham University, Supply Restrictions at the Margins of Heller and the Abortion Analogue: Stenberg Principles, Assault Weapons, and the Attitudinalist Critique, HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL v. 60, 609, p. 1325-1326. The answer to this is straightforward. Post-Heller, firearms for self-defense against criminal attackers are at the core of the Second Amendment right. The sporting-use designation, a key feature of federal importation rules that seeped into general questions of firearms legitimacy, is now just a vestige of the pre-Heller world. So while the impulse to ban assault weapons is understandably rooted in the symbolism of the sporting-use designation, Heller's protection of ordinary self-defense guns nullifies the sporting use filter and places self-defense utility at the center of the constitutional inquiry. Justice Kennedy argues that the state has an interest in declaring critical moral differences between the permitted D&E and the restricted D&X procedures. The state, he says, need not be indifferent to a procedure that uses the natural delivery process to kill the fetus. This is a fair analogue to the argument that the state has an interest in preventing citizens from defending themselves with guns that look like weapons of war, and that "silly" distinctions based on appearance actually reflect important moral judgments. One answer is that the distinctions used to classify some semiautomatic guns as assault weapons are hardly perceptible and others are nebulous. For example, one of the things necessary to make a prohibited gun legal under the 1994 ban was swapping internal parts like the foreign-trigger group for domestic ones. And for some people just the color and constituent materials of the gun (black and synthetic versus wood and blued steel) may be the difference between sporting and menacing. More broadly, in the context of the full inventory of common firearms, the moral distinction is unsustainable. Is it plausible that guns easily secreted on the person (i.e., handguns, all of which have pistol grips) are morally superior to rifles with pistol grips? Are high-powered rifles that can produce sure kills on human targets at hundreds of yards (essentially every deer rifle ever made) morally superior to lower-powered carbines with adjustable stocks (e.g., the AR-15)? Why are semiautomatic repeaters in intermediate calibers reprehensible but high-caliber semiautomatic, pump-, or lever-action hunting guns, and multi-projectile shotguns morally benign?
2. Assault weapons ban is unconstitutionalHeller precedent

Nicholas J. Johnson, Professor, Law, Fordham University, Supply Restrictions at the Margins of Heller and the Abortion Analogue: Stenberg Principles, Assault Weapons, and the Attitudinalist Critique, HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL v. 60, 609, p. 1292-1293. As a threshold matter, in contrast to the ambiguous implications of Miller, Heller's common-use formula provides a relatively narrow range of protection that easily excludes the vast majority of military arms. Excluded by definition are possibilities that, pre-Heller, were snidely advanced to undercut the individual-rights view - for example, does the Second Amendment mean you can have tactical nuclear weapons and stinger missiles? By definition, any device that would destroy both the self-defender and the attacker in situations that satisfy the imminent threat requirement are outside the envelope. So no, you do not have a Second Amendment right to a nuke, a howitzer, or a stinger, because within the boundaries of private self-defense, they would blow you up too. This does leave room for dispute about fully-automatic infantry rifles. But as a practical matter that question is essentially settled. The Court already has said that machine guns might be excluded. They are numerically uncommon, have been regulated as an exceptional category for decades, and introduction of new ones is barred by law. So if machine guns can be restricted, what about assault weapons? Heller suggests criteria for answering at least part of that question. First, Heller's explicit validation of firearms for self-defense shows that the visceral reaction some people have to guns that seem built for fighting rather than sport is no longer a sufficient gauge of legitimacy. Second, Heller's common self-defense criteria suggests at least two obvious ways to qualify: A gun might be common because it is widely owned - for example, a Remington shotgun with sales in the millions. A gun might also be common because it is functionally the same as other common guns - for example, a custom-made shotgun that operates just like the widely-owned Remington.
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Ban Undesirable: Constitutionality Concerns [contd]

3. Assault weapons are very commonmajority of gun owners have semi-automatic weapons
Nicholas J. Johnson, Professor, Law, Fordham University, Supply Restrictions at the Margins of Heller and the Abortion Analogue: Stenberg Principles, Assault Weapons, and the Attitudinalist Critique, HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL v. 60, 609, p. 1293-1295. Fundamentally, assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms, distinctions among which border on incoherent. As a type, semiautomatics are quite common. The technology is at least a century old in both handguns and long guns (including rifles and shotguns). For example, the Browning Auto-5 semiautomatic shotgun was introduced in 1902. The Colt 1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol was adopted as the U.S. military sidearm in 1911. The Remington Model 8 semiautomatic rifle was patented in 1900. Even today, with its magazine protruding below the breech, the Model 8 is roughly an assault weapon type. These guns and millions of other semiautomatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns, have circulated in the civilian inventory for generations. Estimating the total number of semiautomatics in the private inventory is difficult. Many were sold before even nominal record-keeping was required under federal law. Many others were sold by the U.S. government under the nowcentury-old Civilian Marksmanship Program. Still, it is evident that semiautomatics are widely owned. In the early debate over the 1994 ban, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health surveyed whether people who owned semiautomatic firearms exhibited personal characteristics different from other gun owners. This study reflected the subtext of the 1994 ban that something about the appearance of assault weapons attracted worrisome people, and the researchers pressed this point with the argument that owners of semiautomatic guns reported binge drinking more often than other gun owners. For our purposes, the most significant finding was that sixty percent of gun owners reported owning some type of semiautomatic firearm. This does not mean they all owned the archetypal AR-15. However, it does suggest that a clear majority of gun owners have at least one gun that will fire as fast as they can pull the trigger. So it is just not credible to say that semiautomatic technology is unusual or uncommon.
65
Ban Undesirable: Gun Rights

1. Gun rights are importantallow people to protect themselves
Gene Hoffman, Chair, Calguns Foundation, Guns Defend Good People from Bad People, US NEWS, Debate Club, 726 12, http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/does-the-colorado-shooting-prove-the-need-for-more-gun-control-laws/guns-defendgood-people-from-bad-people, accessed 8-25-12. Evil is a part of life, and this has been true since the dawn of our civilization. Evil recently appeared in a dark theater in Aurora, Colo. As we know, a disturbed man hurt and massacred dozens. And it is a natural human emotion to think of ways to stop it from happening again. This is now causing some people to push for the disarmament of all, regardless of who they are, and regardless of whether they are dangerous to other people. But there are other evils in this world. Our civil right to armed self defense has a storied history of protecting us from many of those evils: This right protected the abolitionists who took the message that slavery was evil directly into the slave states. After the civil war, the right to bear arms was used to protect freedmen from the brutal violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Arms continued to protect civil rights workers even through the 1960s as the twin specters of racism and the Klan itself, had permeated local law enforcement. Today, the right to armed self defense protects the LGBT community from the twin evils of ignorance and hate. The right to self defense also protects mothers and daughters from rapists, merchants from robbers, and families from home invaders. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that guns are used 1,500,000 times a year to successfully defend good people from bad peoplealmost always without the firing of a single shot. The Colorado massacre is disturbing, but it must be seen in this context. Like all civil rights, our right to self defense is dangerous and can be abusedask a mourning soldier's parents about the abuse of the freedom of speech they experience at the hands of the Westboro Baptist Church.
2. Gun control is dangerousare an important check against tyranny

Jacob Hornberger, President, Future of Freedom Foundation, Once Again, Gun Control Doesnt Work, FREEDOM DAILY, 41807, http://www.fff.org/comment/com0704i.asp, accessed 8-17-12. The gun controllers have a second rationale for gun control that with harshly enforced gun-control laws, guns would disappear from the marketplace and, therefore, murderers would be unable to acquire guns. You know, sort of like drug laws, which, as everyone knows, have caused illicit drugs to disappear from the marketplace, thereby preventing drug users from acquiring them. The problem is that the gun-control crowd has never heard of or at least never understood a free-market phenomenon known as the black market. It is an illegal market that immediately arises whenever the government criminalizes a peaceful activity, such as the consumption of drugs or ownership of guns. Moreover, as we have learned in the drug war (and during Prohibition), the black market inevitably generates collateral violence, which the government then uses as the excuse for more intervention and control. We should note also that gun controllers hardly ever confront the original and central purpose of the Second Amendment: To serve as a check against tyranny. Their position here, which is as faulty and fallacious as their other two gun-control positions, is that, unlike the olden days, the federal government can now be trusted never to become tyrannical. How many gun massacres must we witness before Americans finally abandon their devotion to gun control? The best thing Americans could ever do is to abolish all restrictions on ownership of weapons, including registration requirements, waiting periods, concealed-carry laws, et cetera, which would once again permit ordinary, peaceful, law-abiding Americans the unrestricted ability to defend themselves against murderers, who have as much respect for laws against guns as they do for laws against murder.
3. People at places like Virginia Tech could protect themselves if they had access to firearms
Jacob Hornberger, President, Future of Freedom Foundation, Once Again, Gun Control Doesnt Work, FREEDOM DAILY, 41807, http://www.fff.org/comment/com0704i.asp, accessed 8-17-12. To belabor the obvious, murderers do not obey restrictions on gun possession, contrary to the long-repeated suggestion of the gun-control crowd that if we simply enact such restrictions into law, murderers will comply with them. As we once again see in the context of the Virginia Tech massacre, a person who intends to break a law against murder isnt going to stop and say to himself, Oh my, I cant use a gun to commit these murders because the schools regulations prevent me from carrying a gun onto campus. Virginia Tech, a state school, prohibits its students from carrying guns onto campus. When someone recently introduced a bill in the Virginia legislature to permit students with state-issued concealed-carry permits to carry guns onto campus, the bill was allowed to die in committee. So there you have it, once again: Virginia Techs gun-control regulation disarmed Virginia Techs students from defending themselves against a mass murderer who, having ignored the regulation, could be virtually certain that all Virginia Tech students would be disarmed. Why, just one or two armed students could have taken the murderer out. Virginia Tech officials steadfastly maintain that their gun-free zone makes their campus safer. Yeah, safer for mass murderers who know that they wont have to worry about students with the capacity to fire back.
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Ban Undesirable: Illicit Markets

1. Bans failonly spur an illicit market, may increase violence
Jeffrey Miron, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Strict Gun Control Will Seem Like War on Drugs, BLOOMBERG NEWS, 1 1311, www.cato.org/publications/commentary/strict-gun-control-will-seem-war-drugs, accessed 8-23-12. Thus the classic slogan when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns isn't only a word play; it is a fundamental insight into the folly of gun prohibition. Such an approach means the bad guys are well-armed while law-abiding citizens are not. Even if strict controls or prohibition had prevented Loughner from obtaining a gun, he might have still carried out a violent attack. Timothy McVeigh's 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, illustrates perfectly that a determined lunatic has multiple ways to inflict harm. Beyond being ineffective, gun prohibition might even increase violence by creating a large black market in guns. So if gun laws follow the path of drug laws, we can expect more violence under gun prohibition than in a society with limited or no controls. The sad reality is that every society has a few people whose mental instabilities cause serious harm to others. This is tragic, but it doesn't justify ineffective and possibly counterproductive attempts to prevent such harm.
2. Criminals will just get their weapons from an illegal market

Kevin ONeill, Gun Control, Unregistered Firearms and the Black Market, THE EXAMINER, 11910, http://www.examiner.com/article/gun-control-unregistered-firearms-and-the-black-market, accessed 8-17-12. The growing number of guns that leave the hands of registered owners and fall into the hands of illegal arms dealers is the biggest concern relating to firearms. You might be wondering how this happens, usually one of two ways: first off, thousands of firearms are reported stolen every year only to be turned around and sold and secondly, thousands of gun owners die each year, leaving their firearms inaccurately registered. Both of which cause major influxes of guns to the black market. Many surveys suggest criminals obtain their weapons through this illegal firearms market. One study indicated that in 37 percent of their arrests the criminal said they could obtain a gun in less than a week, while another 20 percent said they could get a firearm in a day or less. Therefore the biggest problem is not that cities either have too many or too few laws pertaining to gun control, but more the amount of firearms (mostly handguns) that are sold each year on the black market.
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Ban Undesirable: Not Used in Crime

1. Automatic weapons only accounted for a small percentage of pre-ban crimes
Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. 15. Numerous studies have examined the use of AWs in crime prior to the federal ban. The definition of AWs varied across the studies and did not always correspond exactly to that of the 1994 law (in part because a number of the studies were done prior to 1994). In general, however, the studies appeared to focus on various semiautomatics with detachable magazines and military-style features. According to these accounts, AWs typically accounted for up to 8% of guns used in crime, depending on the specific AW definition and data source used (e.g., see Beck et al., 1993; Hargarten et al., 1996; Hutson et al., 1994; 1995; McGonigal et al., 1993; New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, 1994; Roth and Koper, 1997, Chapters 2, 5, 6; Zawitz, 1995). A compilation of 38 sources indicated that AWs accounted for 2% of crime guns on average (Kleck, 1997, pp.112, 141-143). Similarly, the most common AWs prohibited by the 1994 federal ban accounted for between 1% and 6% of guns used in crime according to most of several national and local data sources examined for this and our prior study (see Chapter 6 and Roth and Koper, 1997, Chapters 5, 6): Baltimore (all guns recovered by police, 1992-1993): 2% Miami (all guns recovered by police, 1990-1993): 3% Milwaukee (guns recovered in murder investigations, 1991-1993): 6% Boston (all guns recovered by police, 1991-1993): 2% St. Louis (all guns recovered by police, 1991-1993): 1% Anchorage, Alaska (guns used in serious crimes, 1987-1993): 4% National (guns recovered by police and reported to ATF, 1992-1993): 5% National (gun thefts reported to police, 1992-Aug. 1994): 2% National (guns used in murders of police, 1992-1994): 7-9% National (guns used in mass murders of 4 or more persons, 1992-1994): 4-13%
2. Assault weapons are only rarely used in crimesurvey data proves

Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. 16-17. Even so, most survey evidence on the actual use of AWs suggests that offenders rarely use AWs in crime. In a 1991 national survey of adult state prisoners, for example, 8% of the inmates reported possessing a military-type firearm at some point in the past (Beck et al., 1993, p. 19). Yet only 2% of offenders who used a firearm during their conviction offense reported using an AW for that offense (calculated from pp. 18, 33), a figure consistent with the police statistics cited above. Similarly, while 10% of adult inmates and 20% of juvenile inmates in a Virginia survey reported having owned an AR, none of the adult inmates and only 1% of the juvenile inmates reported having carried them at crime scenes (reported in Zawitz, 1995, p. 6). In contrast, 4% to 20% of inmates surveyed in eight jails across rural and urban areas of Illinois and Iowa reported having used an AR in committing crimes (Knox et al., 1994, p. 17). Nevertheless, even assuming the accuracy and honesty of the respondents reports, it is not clear what weapons they were counting as ARs, what percentage of their crimes were committed with ARs, or what share of all gun crimes in their respective jurisdictions were linked to their AR uses. Hence, while some surveys suggest that ownership and, to a lesser extent, use of AWs may be fairly common among certain subsets of offenders, the overwhelming weight of evidence from gun recovery and survey studies indicates that AWs are used in a small percentage of gun crimes overall.
3. Government data proves that assault weapons do not contribute to crime

Joseph P. Tartaro, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994: The Great Assault Weapon Hoax, UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON LAW REVIEW v. 20, Winter 1995, p. 637-638. As previously stated, the anti-gun crowd has taken advantage of the public confusion over what are essentially cosmetic differences. If you show someone a Mini 14 with a wooden stock, you get a sort of "ho-hum" reaction from the uninformed. If you show them a Mini 14 with a folding stock, pistol grip or bipod, they immediately get excited and ask "Is that a machine gun?" Government study after government study has shown that the semi-automatics called "assault weapons" are not a special problem in crime [*638] statistics. Lawmakers such as those in Connecticut still vote for a ban even after having seen the mountains of reports and studies which refute the arguments usually offered in defense of these bans. We have cited many of the reports showing that the targeted semi-automatics are involved in less than one percent of violent crimes. There are other such reports. The evidence is clear. The arguments against these guns are false. The attendant media editorial demands for banning them are part of a great hoax being perpetrated on Americans. Rational people ask why, when the facts mitigate against bans, new bans on the fake assault weapons continue to be enacted.
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Ban Undesirable: Not Used in Crime [contd]

4. There is no evidence that assault weapons are linked to violent crime
Joseph P. Tartaro, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994: The Great Assault Weapon Hoax, UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON LAW REVIEW v. 20, Winter 1995, p. 621. Indeed, despite a barrage of widely disseminated and often repeated misinformation and outright lies, the factual evidence continues to deny the claims made against the firearms erroneously referred to as "assault weapons." There are reports from federal, state and local police files--most of them drafted since 1989--that clearly show that the targeted guns are far from the scourge their detractors claim. In this Article, it will become evident that there are no valid statistics to support the claims that "assault weapons are the 'weapons of choice' for drug dealers and other violent criminals" or that police are being mowed down by such guns and are vastly "outgunned." What data exist clearly show that even with the most generous interpretation of statistics, these guns are used in well under two percent of homicides in America. If only the data regarding rifles and shotguns defined as "assault weapons" is tabulated, these guns represent less than one percent of "crime guns."
5. Assault weapons are rarely used in crimes

Jerry Seper, Ban on Assault Weapons Didnt Reduce Violence, WASHINGTON TIMES, 81704, p. A7. In 1994, when the ban was approved by Congress, 1.5 million privately owned assault weapons were thought to be in the United States. The report said assault weapons were used in 2 percent of gun crimes reported nationwide before enactment of the 1994 ban. It also said assault weapons and other guns equipped with large-capacity magazines accounted for a higher share of the guns used to kill police officers and in mass public shootings, although such incidents were "very rare." The report said the relatively rare use of assault weapons in crimes was attributable to a number of factors: Most assault weapons are rifles, which are used much less often than handguns, a number of the weapons were barred from importation before the ban was enacted, and the weapons are expensive and difficult to conceal. "The ban's success in reducing criminal use of the banned guns and magazines has been mixed," the report said, noting that because the ban had not yet reduced the use of large-capacity magazines in crime, researchers could not "clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence."
6. Assault weapons are used in very few crimesdont meet criminals needs
Rich Lowry, Half-Cocked Assault-Weapons Ban May Be Extended, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 52103, p. B6. Criminologist Gary Kleck recounts that the head of the biggest gang detail in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s had never confiscated any assault weapons. A study of drive-by shootings in Los Angeles found that an assault weapon had figured in only one of 583 incidents. Kleck's estimate is that less than 2 percent of guns used in crimes were assault weapons, and that assault weapons were used in one of 400 violent crimes overall. This made sense, since few street criminals would want to try to carry on their persons a heavy, conspicuous rifle. When it came time for Congress to ban assault weapons, the difficulty was that no one knew exactly what they were. They were commonly taken to be semiautomatics that accept a large magazine and the crucial part - have a military-style appearance.
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Ban Undesirable: Polarization

1. Expiration bolstered gun rights
Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 482-483. The expiration of the AWB is a victory for gun rights supporters, both for the obvious reason - removal of gun regulation - and for subtle reasons that made the AWB particularly volatile. Because the AWB seemed ineffective and unnecessary, opponents viewed it as more than mere gun control: it was seen as the first step toward prohibiting all semiautomatic weapons. Senator Feinstein hardly dispelled this fear; when confronted with the question as to why the AWB did not include all semiautomatics she replied, "We couldn't have gotten it through Congress." This concern resonated broadly in Washington. As Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) explained his turnabout on the floor of the Senate: Although I voted for the ban on certain kinds of semiautomatic weapons in 1994, I have come to believe that it is a largely arbitrary and symbolic measure. Citizens see it as a first step towards confiscating their firearms. I will, therefore, vote against its reauthorization. Thus, the NRA remained strongly opposed to the ban, arguing that the AWB represented a move toward greater confiscation. Because of this stance, the NRA appeared extreme, losing some of its grassroots base, its traditional support from police associations, and some of its political capital. With the AWB out of the spotlight and the NRA's stubborn position unnecessary, the NRA has the opportunity to regain its base and recast its image.
2. Expiration bolsters more effective gun controlimproves the political climate

Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 483-484. In addition, the AWB's expiration is not a complete loss for those seeking greater gun controls. If the purposes of gun control are reducing crime and removing dangerous guns from the public, it is not clear that the AWB was effective. With the AWB off the table, it may be possible to make progress toward other legislative goals that will not be viewed by gun rights supporters as a step toward confiscation. The unfortunate result of the assault weapons debate was the provocation and galvanization of the NRA, a powerful lobbying organization, into an entrenched position. Since the passage of the AWB, no other significant federal gun control legislation has passed. "More than any other gun control topic, the 'assault weapon' controversy has made more difficult the formation of any kind of unifying consensus on national gun policy." This gridlock prevents more important issues, which may offer the possibility of cooperation, from being addressed by Congress. As Gary Kleck points out: The legislative process is warped by inducing lawmakers to focus on highly publicized but substantively trivial side-show issues, such as bans on "assault weapons," plastic guns, "cop killer" bullets, and "Saturday Night Specials," rather than addressing more serious, but perhaps less exciting, control measures like gun buyer background checks or improved enforcement of existing bans on criminal possession and unlawful carrying of guns. By alienating gun owners and hardening their powerful interest groups through the AWB, little compromise was possible. The dearth of enacted legislation over the last decade, despite gun control's public popularity, indicates this stalemate.
3. Expiration did not impact crime levels, allows for more meaningful and effective gun control
Clark A. Wohlferd, Mud Ado About Not Very Much: The Expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban as an Act of Legislative Responsibility, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY v. 8, 2004/2005, p. 484. The expiration of the AWB has not led to the doomsday scenario some had predicted. Ultimately, the AWB's expiration probably has had as little impact on crime as its passage. Gun rights groups welcomed the end of a law seen as a step closer to complete prohibition of firearms. Yet the expiration of the ban also has benefits for those seeking broader gun controls. With this divisive issue off the table, the future is less bleak for gun control issues with the potential to create consensus. For example, the gun control loophole, gun safety locks, or stricter enforcement of existing regulations can be meaningfully discussed now that the AWB is gone. Though many see the AWB as a casualty of politics, its expiration is an example of legislative responsibility. The expiration serves the public by promoting discussion and allowing opportunities for more meaningful gun safety measures, rather than polarizing interest groups over a largely symbolic ban.
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Ban Undesirable: Self-Defense

1. Gun control backfiresmassacres happen in areas with gun bans
Erich Pratt, Colorado Shooting Shows the Failure of Gun Control Laws, US NEWS, Debate Club, 72612, http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/does-the-colorado-shooting-prove-the-need-for-more-gun-control-laws/coloradoshooting-shows-the-failure-of-gun-control-laws, accessed 8-25-12. Last week's shooting in Colorado shows us, once again, the failure of gun control. The Century 16 theaters in Aurora were "gun free" zones, where citizens are prohibited from carrying weapons for self defense. If this sad scenario sounds familiar, it shouldas almost every large-scale massacre in this country has occurred in an area where guns are outlawed: Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, etc. In all of these shootings, the victims were disarmed by law or regulationyes, even the one at Fort Hood. They were made mandatory victims by restrictions which never stop the bad guys from getting or using guns. Contrast these disastrous eventswhich occurred in "gun free" kill zoneswith the Aurora shooting you didn't hear about. That shooting occurred three months ago at a church, which is not a gun free zone. A gunman drove into the New Destiny Church parking lot in Aurora, got out of his car, and started spraying bullets. Thankfully, a congregant with a concealed firearm shot and killed him, saving countless lives.
2. Guns are important to self-defense, criminals dont obey the laws

Laurence M. Vance, policy advisor, Future of Freedom Foundation, The Cans and Shoulds of Gun Control, FREEDOM DAILY, 8712, http://www.fff.org/comment/com1208f.asp, accessed 8-17-12. There are, of course, other reasons that the federal government should do nothing when it comes to gun control. First of all, it is still true that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Criminals dont obey gun-control laws. The accused shooter in the Aurora theater massacre has been charged with 24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 counts of attempted murder. Anyone who plans and carries out such a horrendous public act knows that either he will be killed in the act or he will be caught and possibly face the death penalty. If someone is going to perpetrate such a crime, then concern about violating weapons laws is the last thing on his mind. Second, it is also still true that more guns means less crime, as the heroic John Lott has shown in More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias against Guns: Why Almost Everything Youve Heard about Gun Control Is Wrong. And as Lott points out in a recent article, Since the federal [assault-weapons] ban expired in September 2004, murder and overall violent-crime rates have actually fallen. In 2003, the last full year before the law expired, the U.S. murder rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people. Initial data for 2011 shows that the murder rate has fallen to 4.7 per 100,000 people. Third, according to the FBIs Uniform Crime Report, rifles and shotguns that liberals are so concerned about are used less often in murders than knives, hands, and feet.
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Ban Undesirable: Answers to Automatic Weapons

1. The assault weapons ban only covers semi-automatic weaponsautomatic firearms have been banned since 1934
Robert A. Levy, chair, Cato Institute, Gun Control Measures Dont Stop Violence, CNN, 11911, www.cato.org/publications/commentary/gun-control-measures-dont-stop-violence, accessed 8-23-12. Expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004 did not contrary to popular belief legalize automatic firearms. Those weapons have been banned since 1934 for all practical purposes. The ban covered semi-automatic weapons, which are used by tens of millions of Americans for hunting, self-defense, target shooting, and even Olympic competition. Take it from The New York Times, written a few months after the ban expired: "Despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in militarystyle guns, expiration of the assault weapons ban has not set off a sustained surge in sales (or) caused any noticeable increase in gun crime."
2. Automatic weapons have been banned for almost 50 yearsnot part of the assault weapons ban
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, Laws Dont Stop Shooting Sprees, 72312, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/gun365044-victims-ban.html, accessed 8-17-12. Part of the problem with such a ban is one of definition. "Assault weapon" is not an exact term, but in common usage it means something like, "a military-looking rifle." The 1994 federal law included definitions of details, such as having a "detachable magazine," "bayonet mount" and "flash suppressor." Gun-control advocates soon complained that gun companies were modifying designs to get around the definitions. It's also worth noting that these weapons are not machine guns, or "fully automatic weapons," which have been banned since the National Firearms Act of 1934, enacted during the heyday of Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson and Machine Gun Kelly. It's difficult for anyone to get a permit for a machine gun. The theater shooter used a semiautomatic rifle with a large-capacity magazine, a shotgun and a pistol, police said.
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Ban Undesirable: Answers to Criminality Justifications

1. Crime actually went down after the ban expired
John R. Lott, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Hype and Reality, WASHINGTON TIMES, 102805, p. A23. Gun-control advocates seemed so certain. When the federal assault-weapons ban expired on Sept. 13, 2004, gun crimes would surge dramatically. Sarah Brady, a leading gun-control advocate, warned it would "arm our kids with Uzis and AK-47s" and "fill" our streets with the weapons. Sen. Charles Schumer ratcheted up the rhetoric, labeling the banned guns "the weapons of choice for terrorists." Not only would murder rise, but especially firearm murders. Murder and robbery rates should have gone up faster than other violent-crime rates since they are the crimes in which guns are most frequently used. Only states with their own assault-weapon bans would escape some of the coming bloodshed. Well, what happened? On Oct. 18, the FBI released the final data for 2004. It shows clearly that in the months after the law sunset, crime went down. During 2004 the murder rate nationwide fell by 3 percent, the first drop since 2000, with firearm deaths dropping by 4.4 percent. The new data show the monthly crime rate for the United States as a whole during 2004, and the monthly murder rate plummeted 14 percent from August through December. By contrast, during the same months in 2003 the murder rate fell only 1 percent.
2. Ban does not prevent crime or police killings

John R. Lott Jr., resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute, A Weapons Surrendered, NATIONAL REVIEW, 325 04, npg. Eliminating the ban will not produce an upward surge in crime. There will be no upward surge in police killings. Gun controllers have a problem: It will be much harder for legislators and the press to take gun-control groups' apocalyptic claims seriously after they fail to materialize on such a high-profile issue. It is not just the gun-control groups who have mischaracterized the issue. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry supports extending the ban because, "When I go out there and hunt, I'm going out there with a 12-gauge shotgun, not an assault weapon." Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) has said that allowing the ban to expire will "inevitably lead to a rise in gun crimes." Ratcheting up the fear factor to an entirely new level, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) says the ban is one of "the most effective measures against terrorism that we have." Despite gun-control organizations' finally agreeing that the semi-automatic gun ban now doesn't matter, too much has been made of the importance of this legislation for too many years. Somehow, the obvious failure of the semi-automatic-gun ban will be a fitting epitaph for one of the gun-control movement's hallmark pieces of legislation. It would have been nice if guncontrol organizations had been honest and told us all of this a decade ago.
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Ban Undesirable: Answers to Gun Violence

1. Gun control does not decrease violencehuge study proves
Robert A. Levy, chair, Cato Institute, Gun Control Measures Dont Stop Violence, CNN, 11911, www.cato.org/publications/commentary/gun-control-measures-dont-stop-violence, accessed 8-23-12. In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 253 journal articles, 99 books and 43 government publications evaluating 80 gun-control measures. Researchers could not identify a single regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents. A year earlier, the Centers for Disease Control reported on ammunition bans, restrictions on acquisition, waiting periods, registration, licensing, child access prevention and zero tolerance laws. CDC's conclusion: There was no conclusive evidence that the laws reduced gun violence. So much for the quasi-religious faith that more controls mean fewer murders. There are about 500,000 gun-related crimes annually in the United States. Further, Americans own roughly 250 million guns. Assuming a different gun is used in each of the 500,000 crimes, only 0.2% of guns are involved in crime each year. A ban on firearms would be 99.8% over-inclusive.
2. Gun control does not lower levels of violenceexamples like Japan or the UK are red herrings
Jeffrey Miron, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Strict Gun Control Will Seem Like War on Drugs, BLOOMBERG NEWS, 1 1311, www.cato.org/publications/commentary/strict-gun-control-will-seem-war-drugs, accessed 8-23-12. But mild controls don't always stay mild; more often, they evolve into strict limits on guns, bordering on outright prohibition. And this isn't just slippery-slope speculation; a century ago most countries had few gun controls, yet today many have virtual bans on private ownership. Some of these countries (the U.K. and Japan) have low violence rates that might seem to justify strict controls, yet others experience substantial or extreme violence (Brazil and Mexico). More broadly, comparisons between states and countries --as well as social-science research provide no consistent support for the claim that gun controls lower violence. Strict controls and prohibition, moreover, don't eliminate guns any more than drug prohibition stops drug trafficking and use. Prohibition might deter some potential gun owners, but mainly those who would own and use guns responsibly.
3. Number of gun-related homicides is declining

CBS NEWS, Poll: Most Oppose Assault Weapon Ban, 102811, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500202_16220126950/poll-most-oppose-assault-weapon-ban/, accessed 8-22-12. But the number of firearm-related homicides in the U.S. has dropped dramatically, from more than 18,000 in 1993, to fewer than 9,000 in 2010 - numbers the NRA is quick to point out. "Those rates are the lowest record in 43 years while gun ownership is at an all time high," Chris Cox, chief lobbyist and principal political strategist for the National Rifle Association, told CBS News. "It really destroys the arguments from the gun control community that more guns means more crime."
4. Expiration of the ban did nothing to increase gun violence

Deborah Sontag, Assault Weapons Ban Comes to End: a Dud? NEW YORK TIMES, 42505, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/world/americas/24iht-gun.html?_r=1, accessed 8-23-12. Despite dire predictions that America's streets would be awash in military-style guns, the expiration of the decade-long assault weapons ban in September has not set off a sustained surge in the weapons' sales, gun makers and sellers say. It also has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime in the past seven months, according to several city police departments. The uneventful expiration of the assault weapons ban did not surprise gun owners, nor did it surprise some advocates of gun control. It underscored what many of them had said all along: The ban was porous - so porous that assault weapons remained widely available throughout their prohibition. "The whole time that the American public thought there was an assault weapons ban, there never really was one," said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, a gun-control group. What's more, law-enforcement officials say that military-style weapons, which were never used in many gun crimes but did enjoy some vogue in the years before the ban took effect, seem to have gone out of style in criminal circles.
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Ban Undesirable: Answers to Gun Violence [contd]

5. There is not a single study showing that the ban decreased gun violence
John R. Lott Jr., resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute, A Weapons Surrendered, NATIONAL REVIEW, 325 04, npg. An example? Take the statements made recently on National Public Radio by a representative of the Violence Policy Center. NPR described the VPC as "one of the more aggressive gun groups in Washington." Yet the VPC's representative claimed: "If the existing assault-weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe it will make one whit of difference one way or another in terms of our objective, which is reducing death and injury and getting a particularly lethal class of firearms off the streets. So if it doesn't pass, it doesn't pass." The NPR reporter noted: "[the Violence Policy Center's representative] says that's all the [assault-weapons ban] brought about, minor changes in appearance that didn't alter the function of these weapons." These are "aggressive" gun controllers? These are points one expects to hear them from the NRA. True, there is not a single academic study showing that either the state or federal bans have reduced violent crime. Even research funded by the Justice Department under the Clinton administration concluded merely that the ban's "impact on gun violence has been uncertain."
6. Gun control measures wont stop mass killings

Michael Gerson, Gun Policys Slippery Slope, TAUNTON GAZETTE, 72812, http://www.tauntongazette.com/newsnow/x920141942/MICHAEL-GERSON-Gun-policy-s-slippery-slope, accessed 8-22-12 Following the Aurora shooting, some gun control supporters began immediately hunting through the wreckage for scraps of political advantage. It showed all the sensitivity and consideration of starting a food fight at a funeral. It is one thing to draw lessons from tragedy. It is another to hang a political banner on an occupied cross. At the proper time, however, the drawing of lessons is appropriate. What happened in a theater outside Denver was not an act of God not the moral equivalent of an earthquake or meteor strike but the act of a mentally unbalanced man with access to destructive weaponry. The quest to separate the mentally ill from modern armaments may well be hopeless. But it is at least worth a discussion. There are two questions to consider. First, would tighter gun control laws say, one banning the AR-15 James Holmes allegedly used have prevented the Aurora shooting? It is a difficult case to make. A committed, intelligent mass murderer will find a way. Gun control laws do not reduce massacres in the same manner that OSHA regulations reduce industrial accidents. Massacres are purposely monstrous violations of the law, which marginal changes in the law are unlikely to prevent.
7. Assault weapons ban was a failure, did not save any lives
Janine Peterson, The Assault Weapons Ban, ETHICAL SPECTACLE, 304, http://www.spectacle.org/0304/assault.html, accessed 8-24-12. There are legitimate uses of all the cosmetic features and non-cosmetic capabilities that are banned by this law. In addition, assault weapons were responsible for less than 1% of all deaths of law enforcement officers, even before the ban. In short, this is a bad law. No lives are saved. Criminals still have access to guns. Law-abiding citizens are at best inconvenienced and stripped of their second amendment rights and at worst deprived of adequate defense. This law bans scary looking guns and allows politicians to feel good that they have done something to stop crime. In reality, this law is worse than useless. Let it die.
8. The ban was ineffectivecongressional study showed that they it did not increase violence
Chris Cox, Executive Director, Institute for Legislative Action, National Rifle Association, High-Capacity Ammo Clips for Guns Save Lives, US NEWS, 21411, www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/02/14/high-capacity-ammo-clips-for-gunssave-lives, accessed 8-24-12. The earlier ban was proven a failure. A congressionally mandated study released in March 1997 found that the banned weapons and magazines "were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders." The study also "failed to produce any evidence that the ban reduced the number of victims per gun homicide incident" and found that "the average number of gunshot wounds per victim [about two] did not decrease" after the ban. Since the ban expired in 2004, the nation's murder rate has dropped 10 percent, continuing a long-term decline that began in 1991. Through 2009, the murder rate is at a 45-year low, and the FBI recently reported that it fell an additional 7 percent in the first half of 2010. Mayor Nutter's city, unfortunately, has lagged far behind the rest of America, with a murder rate that returned to early '90s levels in recent years. While Philadelphia politicians call for gun control, nearly two thirds of violent-crime defendants in Philadelphia over a recent three-year period avoided conviction.
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Ban Undesirable: Answers to Gun Violence [contd]

9. Ban has not been linked to a decline in gun violence
Deborah Sontag, Assault Weapons Ban Comes to End: a Dud? NEW YORK TIMES, 42505, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/world/americas/24iht-gun.html?_r=1, accessed 8-23-12. Assault weapons account for a small fraction of gun crimes: about 2 percent, according to most studies, and no more than 8 percent. But they have been used in many high-profile shooting sprees. Gun crime in the United States has plummeted since the early 1990s. But a study for the National Institute of Justice said that it could not "clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence."
10. Ban did not decrease gun violenceNIJ study proves

Jerry Seper, Ban on Assault Weapons Didnt Reduce Violence, WASHINGTON TIMES, 81704, p. A7. The federal assault-weapons ban, scheduled to expire in September, is not responsible for the nation's steady decline in gunrelated violence and its renewal likely will achieve little, according to an independent study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence," said the unreleased NIJ report, written by Christopher Koper, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "It is thus premature to make definitive assessments of the ban's impact on gun violence. Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement," said the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times. The report also noted that assault weapons were "rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban." NIJ is the Justice Department's research, development and evaluation agency - assigned the job of providing objective, independent, evidencebased information to the department through independent studies and other data collection activities.
76
Ban Undesirable: Answers to Large Capacity Magazine Bans

1. Even clip bans wont decrease levels of violence
Jeffrey Miron, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Strict Gun Control Will Seem Like War on Drugs, BLOOMBERG NEWS, 1 1311, www.cato.org/publications/commentary/strict-gun-control-will-seem-war-drugs, accessed 8-23-12. Consider, for example, a ban on extended-capacity ammunition clips. If these had been unavailable, Loughner could still have carried out his attack with a 10-bullet clip, and he might have aimed more carefully knowing he had less ammunition. Loughner could have brought several guns, allowing him to continue firing without interruption. Loughner could have purchased extended-ammo clips that were sold before a ban took effect (especially since the prospect of bans stimulates sales in advance of implementation). Or he could have bought a black- market clip, perhaps just by placing a classified advertisement. Similar difficulties confront the use of background checks designed to prevent the mentally unstable from buying guns. The U.S. already has such a system, but it wouldn't have stopped Loughner from buying a gun because it only applies when a court has decreed a person to be mentally unfit, which hadn't occurred in Loughner's case. Even a broader definition of mentally unfit probably wouldn't deter someone determined to commit violence. No matter how broad the definition, this approach does nothing to close the multiple avenues whereby anyone with sufficient cash can purchase a gun and ammunition.
2. People need high-volume clips to protect themselves

Erich Pratt, Colorado Shooting Shows the Failure of Gun Control Laws, US NEWS, Debate Club, 72612, http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/does-the-colorado-shooting-prove-the-need-for-more-gun-control-laws/coloradoshooting-shows-the-failure-of-gun-control-laws, accessed 8-25-12. This is a dangerous argument. If we turn the Bill of Rights into a "Bill of Needs," our liberties will be short-lived for sure. After all, who needs the dozens of newspapers and magazines that line the shelves of supermarkets? Or who needs a car that drives more than 100 mph? But still, some ask, who really needs a magazine that holds lots of ammunition? Well, how about the displaced citizens who, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, had to fend for themselves against roving gangs? Or how about the Korean merchants who armed themselves with so-called "assault" weapons and large-capacity magazines during the Los Angeles riots? Their stores remained standing, while others around them burned to the ground. This shows that when one is facing gang or mob violenceand the police are nowhere to be found (as occurred in both examples above)you need more than just a six-shooter. Don't restrict the rights of decent Americans. Guns in good people's hands save lives.
3. Large quantity of pre-ban magazines confounds any ban effortsempirically true

Christopher S. Koper, principal investigator, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updates Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 604, p. 2. The Bans Success in Reducing Criminal Use of the Banned Guns and Magazines Has Been Mixed Following implementation of the ban, the share of gun crimes involving AWs declined by 17% to 72% across the localities examined for this study (Baltimore, Miami, Milwaukee, Boston, St. Louis, and Anchorage), based on data covering all or portions of the 1995-2003 post-ban period. This is consistent with patterns found in national data on guns recovered by police and reported to ATF. The decline in the use of AWs has been due primarily to a reduction in the use of assault pistols (APs), which are used in crime more commonly than assault rifles (ARs). There has not been a clear decline in the use of ARs, though assessments are complicated by the rarity of crimes with these weapons and by substitution of post-ban rifles that are very similar to the banned AR models. However, the decline in AW use was offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with LCMs in jurisdictions studied (Baltimore, Milwaukee, Louisville, and Anchorage). The failure to reduce LCM use has likely been due to the immense stock of exempted pre-ban magazines, which has been enhanced by recent imports.
4. High-volume clips are used for many lawful purposes

Chris Cox, Executive Director, Institute for Legislative Action, National Rifle Association, High-Capacity Ammo Clips for Guns Save Lives, US NEWS, 21411, www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/02/14/high-capacity-ammo-clips-for-gunssave-lives, accessed 8-24-12. High on their wish list is banning ammunition magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. This failed ban was in effect from 1994 to 2004; bills in Congress would bring it back and make it even more restrictive on honest citizens. These magazines are standard equipment for handguns and other firearms owned by tens of millions of Americans, just as they were before and during the earlier ban. Besides using them for self-defense, gun owners own them for competitive or recreational shooting, as key parts of collectible firearms, and for other lawful purposes.
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Ban Undesirable: Answers to Large Capacity Magazine Bans [contd]

5. High-volume clips improve the self-defense capabilities of firearms
Chris Cox, Executive Director, Institute for Legislative Action, National Rifle Association, High-Capacity Ammo Clips for Guns Save Lives, US NEWS, 21411, www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/02/14/high-capacity-ammo-clips-for-gunssave-lives, accessed 8-24-12. Why do honest Americansprivate citizens and police alikechoose magazines that hold more than 10 rounds? Quite simply, they improve good people's odds in defensive situations. Contrary to what the public sees in the movies, criminals are not always stopped when struck by a single bullet, or even multiple shots. And one third of aggravated assaults and robberies involve more than one assailant, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Ask yourself: How many rounds would you want to have on hand if you knew you were going to be attacked tomorrow, but didn't know how many attackers you'd face, whether they might be on drugs, or whether you'd have time to reload?
6. People need high-capacity magazines to defend themselves

NBC Southern California, LAPD Chief Backs Ban on Some Ammo Magazines, 3211, www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/beck-lapd-ammunition-ban-nra-117261943.html, accessed 8-20-12. The National Rifle Association would do everything in its power to stop the law, the group's spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said. Members of the public should be allowed access to the ammunition clips to protect themselves from attacks by armed mobs, he said. "When someone is being attacked by multiple people, it is only reasonable that they are given as much opportunity to defend themselves as they need," Arulanandam said. High-capacity magazines were banned in 1994, but Congress refused to renew the law and it expired in 2004.
7. Dangerous situations require high-volume magazines for self-defense purposes

Janine Peterson, The Assault Weapons Ban, ETHICAL SPECTACLE, 304, http://www.spectacle.org/0304/assault.html, accessed 8-24-12. The second half of the law bans the manufacture of high capacity ammunition feeding devices, or normal capacity magazines. Any law-abiding citizen who wants to keep more than 10 rounds in her weapon must buy a pre-ban magazine. These pre-ban magazines, economics being what they are, are extremely expensive. But many people think the expense is worth it if you wake up to find a local gang in your living room, all probably armed, and all intent on doing harm to you and your family, how many rounds do you want in your gun? Do you trust yourself to disable each attacker with one shot? Most people, including the police, cannot reliably hit five or six targets straight on with a single shot each, and one hit with a handgun is rarely sufficient to immediately stop an attacker. Police officers are allowed to carry high capacity magazines. This, presumably, is because they may need to defend themselves in a gun fight, not because they intend to commit crimes. Lawabiding civilians often have to defend themselves as well, and they not have an artificially low magazine.
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Ban Undesirable: Answers to Public Supports / Should Strengthen

1. Public majority opposes an assault weapons ban
CBS NEWS, Poll: Most Oppose Assault Weapon Ban, 102811, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500202_16220126950/poll-most-oppose-assault-weapon-ban/, accessed 8-22-12. A new poll indicates that more and more people now have guns in their homes, and that America's attitude towards gun-control may be shifting. According to a new Gallup poll, 47 percent of Americans report having a gun on their property, up from 41 percent a year ago. It's the highest number Gallup has recorded since 1993. The poll also found that 53 percent of Americans oppose a ban on assault rifles and semiautomatic guns - the first time more have opposed than supported a ban. It's difficult to monitor gun ownership in this country, and the latest increase in self-reported gun ownership could reflect more of a change in Americans' comfort with stating publicly that they have a gun, than in a real increase in gun ownership.
2. Expanding the scope of the ban will not make it more effective
Rich Lowry, Half-Cocked Assault-Weapons Ban May Be Extended, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 52103, p. B6. Only in Washington would it be considered imperative to extend legislation precisely because it's been so ineffectual. Such is the logic behind a Democratic push to prevent the assault-weapons ban from expiring next year, and even to broaden it. It was obvious at the time of the ban's passage in 1994 that it couldn't possibly have any effect on crime as advertised, which it hasn't. The ban nonetheless is such a nice-sounding idea - who wouldn't want to ban assault weapons? - that even President Bush has endorsed its reauthorization. If the ban is indeed preserved and broadened, it will be just as worthless as the original version. By the reasoning of its supporters, that failure will, in turn, make necessary an even more sweeping ban. Thus gun controllers demonstrate the fine political art of how to win by repeatedly doing things that don't work. In the rest of the world, that fits the loose definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - but in Washington, it defines success.
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Sept 2012 Assault Weapons Ban Briefs

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September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Assault Weapons Ban: Table of Contents

Pro: Assault Weapons Ban Desirable

Con: Assault Weapons Ban Undesirable

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Assault Weapons Ban: Introduction

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Assault Weapons Ban: Introduction [contd]

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Status Quo: No Ban Renewal Coming Now

2. NRA effectively blocks political action to control guns

3. NRA is an enormously powerful lobby

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: Topshelf

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: Topshelf [contd]

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: Topshelf [contd]

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: General

3. We need to renew the ban

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September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: General [contd]

5. Congress should act

6. Assault weapons remain a threatCongress should renew the ban

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: General [contd]

9. Congress should renew the banthe weapons serve no purpose

11. We should re-institute the federal assault weapons ban

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: General [contd]

13. We need a bananecdotal evidence proves

14. We need the ban to curb gun violence

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsGeneral

3. Gun violence is a particular problem in urban areas

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September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsGeneral [contd]

Paradigm Research 2012-13

September Public ForumAssault Weapons

Ban Desirable: Gun Violence ImpactsChildren

2. African American children are particularly targeted by gun violence

3. Gun violence is a serious problem among children

4. The U.S. is a world leader in gun deaths

Paradigm Research 2012-13