If banning assault weapons with high capacity magazines and selective fire could produce 1 to 7 percent fewer incidents and/or fewer deaths, then perhaps it's not a bad thing. The gun enthusiasts could still use their other rifles to hunt and everyone remains happy, no?
assault weapons and high capacity magazines WERE banned in this country from 1994-2004, so we dont have to guess if it works or not, it was determined to have no measureable effect on crime. The fact is, those weapons were used so far and few between in crime that a sweeping ban had no relative effect.
Here is an excerpt to an article from just a month before the ban expired:
The federal assault-weapons ban, scheduled to expire in September, is not responsible for the nation’s steady decline in gun-related 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.”
Read more:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/aug/16/20040816-114754-1427r/#ixzz2FRCusTRX
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Beefnot, also more importantly... When the ban was allowed to expire, violence and murder rates by guns continued to drop, proving even further thhose weapons did not increase crime rates
