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July 05, 2005

Sky Still Up There? Check.

Amid breathless, ill-informed predictions of carnage, news that the last year's sunset expiration for the federal "Assault Weapon" ban showed us the ban had less effect than even the state "shutdown":


This wasn't supposed to happen. When the federal assault weapons ban ended on Sept. 13, 2004, gun crimes and police killings were predicted to surge. Instead, they have declined.

For a decade, the ban was a cornerstone of the gun control movement. Sarah Brady, one of the nation's leading gun control advocates, warned that "our streets are going to be filled with AK-47s and Uzis." Life without the ban would mean rampant murder and bloodshed.

And we all know what happened, right?
Well, more than nine months have passed and the first crime numbers are in. Last week, the FBI announced that the number of murders nationwide fell by 3.6% last year, the first drop since 1999. The trend was consistent; murders kept on declining after the assault weapons ban ended.

Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assault weapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders than the 43 states without such laws, suggesting that doing away with the ban actually reduced crime. (States with bans averaged a 2.4% decline in murders; in three states with bans, the number of murders rose. States without bans saw murders fall by more than 4%.)

And the drop 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. Guns are used in murder and robbery more frequently then in rapes and aggravated assaults, but after the assault weapons ban ended, the number of murders and robberies fell more than the number of rapes and aggravated assaults.

So let's recap here:
  • Many gun bans are accompanied by rises in violent crime; see the UK, Australia, Washington DC, Chicago.
  • No gun ban has been shown to reduce crime.
  • Liberalization of gun laws usually reduces, and at worst has no negative effect, on crime
Has the left learned it's lesson?

Well, of course they have; most Democrats have backed away from gun control like it's a full diaper on a hot day. The only Dems you still hear carping about gun control are the ones in hyper-safe districts, sinecures like Massachussetts and south Minneapolis.

The media remains quiet, of course...

It's instructive to remember just how passionately the media hyped the dangers of "sunsetting" the ban. Associated Press headlines warned "Gun shops and police officers brace for end of assault weapons ban." It was even part of the presidential campaign: "Kerry blasts lapse of assault weapons ban." An Internet search turned up more than 560 news stories in the first two weeks of September that expressed fear about ending the ban. Yet the news that murder and other violent crime declined last year produced just one very brief paragraph in an insider political newsletter, the Hotline.

The fact that the end of the assault weapons ban didn't create a crime wave should not have surprised anyone. After all, there is not a single published academic study showing that these bans have reduced any type of violent crime.

As always.

Posted by Mitch at July 5, 2005 05:40 AM | TrackBack
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