Gun Control Laws: Hype and reality
Date: Oct 29, 2005 2:24 PM
FYI (copy below):
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051027-094155-8948r.htm
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Editorials/Op-Ed

TODAY’S COLUMNIST
By John R. Lott Jr.
October 28, 2005

Hype and reality

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.

Curiously, the seven states that have their own
assault-weapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders last year
than the 43 states without such laws. States with bans
averaged a 2 percent decline in murders. States without
bans saw murder rates fall by more than 3.4 percent.
Indeed, that, too, suggests that doing away with the ban
actually reduced crime.

And the drop in U.S. crime was not just limited to murder.
Overall, violent crime also declined last year, according to
the FBI, and the complete statistics carry another surprise
for gun-control advocates: Murder and robbery rates fell by
3 percent and 4.1 percent, while rapes and aggravated
assaults rates fell by only 0.2 and 1.5 percent.

Yet, the sky-is-falling types of predictions were not just
limited to gun controllers. The media hyped the dangers of
“sunsetting” the ban. A search of a computer database of
news stories turned up more than 560 articles in the first
two weeks of September that expressed fear about ending the
ban. It was even part of the presidential campaign: “Kerry
blasts lapse of assault-weapons ban,” one headline said. It
will be surprising to see any news stories revisit those
past claims.

The media really should not have been so wrong about what
was going to happen. Not a single published academic study
has ever shown that these bans have reduced any type of
violent crime. Even research funded by the Clinton
administration didn’t find that it reduced violent crime.

And if reporters had actually ever fired guns they wouldn’t
have been taken in by the hysteria. There’s nothing unique
about the guns that these laws ban. The term assault weapon
conjures up images of the fully automatic weapons used by
the military, but the weapons in the ban actually function
the same as any semiautomatic hunting rifle. They often
fire the exact same bullets with the exact same rapidity and
produce the exact same damage.

The assault-weapons ban was one of the centerpieces of the
Clinton administration and is arguably one of the two most
important gun laws passed in the United States. What is so
rare is how infrequently these laws are repealed so that we
can so clearly test their effect.

The claims of gun-control advocates that the “sky is
falling” may get the media’s attention, but fame is fickle.
The new FBI crime numbers show that the only casualty from
sunsetting the ban has been gun-controllers’ credibility.
Letting the law expire has at best only showed its
uselessness. The real question is how much longer can the
media take such hysteria seriously when it is so at odds
with the facts.

John R. Lott Jr., a resident scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, is the author of “More Guns, Less
Crime” and “The Bias Against Guns.”