The 1994 moratorium on assault rifles did what it was intended to do - it drove down the numbers of dead Americans due to mass shooting incidents.
WaPo, Christopher Ingraham:
Critics of bans on assault weapons, however, say they do little to save lives. The NRA correctly points out that assault weapons are used only in a tiny fraction of gun crimes. The gun rights group also notes that a federally funded study of the previous assault weapons ban, which was in place from 1994 to 2004, concluded that “the ban’s impact on gun violence is likely to be small at best, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” Similar points have been made in arguments against a new ban in publications running the ideological gamut from Breitbart to the New York Times to HuffPost.
But the 1994 assault weapons ban was never intended to be a comprehensive fix for “gun violence” writ large. Its purpose, according to gun violence experts and the lawmakers who wrote the bill, was to reduce the frequency and lethality of mass shootings like the ones in Parkland, Sandy Hook and elsewhere. And on that front, the data shows it had a significant impact.
In the last few days, I've had people tell me (people I've known for a long time) - they've told me I'm lying to them when I present facts about things. It's almost like they've decided the numbers themselves don't even exist anymore, much less the facts those numbers illustrate.
I had one guy tell me I was lying when I pointed out that congress, in the mid 1990s, had cut the funding for CDC to study gun violence as a public health issue (they did it in a sneaky way, but they did it), and they added an amendment to a spending bill instructing CDC not to "advocate or promote gun control". So, of course, any study where the authors conclude that their findings suggest gun control measures might be appropriate is deemed in violation of that "non-advocacy" rule.
You may also have heard a while back all the noise about family docs and ER clinicians being told to shut up and stop asking patients about guns in the home.
I pointed to all of that when discussing the gun issue on several sites, and got nowhere. I went back and dug up some of the articles available in the archives, and showed them to my debate opponents, who dismissed them out of hand simply because they were Washington Post, and so they couldn't be trusted.
As usual, this gets worse before it gets better.
WaPo, Christopher Ingraham:
Critics of bans on assault weapons, however, say they do little to save lives. The NRA correctly points out that assault weapons are used only in a tiny fraction of gun crimes. The gun rights group also notes that a federally funded study of the previous assault weapons ban, which was in place from 1994 to 2004, concluded that “the ban’s impact on gun violence is likely to be small at best, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” Similar points have been made in arguments against a new ban in publications running the ideological gamut from Breitbart to the New York Times to HuffPost.
But the 1994 assault weapons ban was never intended to be a comprehensive fix for “gun violence” writ large. Its purpose, according to gun violence experts and the lawmakers who wrote the bill, was to reduce the frequency and lethality of mass shootings like the ones in Parkland, Sandy Hook and elsewhere. And on that front, the data shows it had a significant impact.
In the last few days, I've had people tell me (people I've known for a long time) - they've told me I'm lying to them when I present facts about things. It's almost like they've decided the numbers themselves don't even exist anymore, much less the facts those numbers illustrate.
I had one guy tell me I was lying when I pointed out that congress, in the mid 1990s, had cut the funding for CDC to study gun violence as a public health issue (they did it in a sneaky way, but they did it), and they added an amendment to a spending bill instructing CDC not to "advocate or promote gun control". So, of course, any study where the authors conclude that their findings suggest gun control measures might be appropriate is deemed in violation of that "non-advocacy" rule.
You may also have heard a while back all the noise about family docs and ER clinicians being told to shut up and stop asking patients about guns in the home.
I pointed to all of that when discussing the gun issue on several sites, and got nowhere. I went back and dug up some of the articles available in the archives, and showed them to my debate opponents, who dismissed them out of hand simply because they were Washington Post, and so they couldn't be trusted.
As usual, this gets worse before it gets better.
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