Gun Massacre Deaths Dropped During Assault Weapons Ban, Increased Afte

Meridian ID

Description

Gun Massacre Deaths Dropped During Assault Weapons Ban, Increased After Expiration. The NRA likes to say the 1994 federal Assault Weapons Ban didn’t work, but it did work. The data is clear: there were fewer mass shootings while the Assault Weapons Ban was in effect and significantly more after it expired. Gun massacres of six or more killed decreased by 37 percent for the decade the ban was active, then shot up 183 percent during the decade following its expiration. There’s no disputing those numbers. The goal of the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 was the same as it is today: to prevent mass shootings by beginning to dry up the supply of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. There are roughly 15 million assault weapons in the United States today, so no law will be immediately effective. But by banning the manufacture and importation of new guns and implementing voluntary buy-back programs, we can again start to get these weapons of war off our streets. That’s how we’ll save lives, and we need to act now. Fact: The ban did work, and a number of studies lay that out. University of Massachusetts researcher Louis Klarevas, author of the book “Rampage Nation,” found that the number of gun massacres dropped by 37 percent and the number of gun massacre deaths feel by 43 percent while the ban was in effect compared to the previous decade. After the ban lapsed in 2004, those numbers dramatically rose – a 183 percent increase in massacres and a 239 percent increase in massacre deaths. A 2019 study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Surgery found that, based on data from 1981 to 2017, there were fewer mass-shooting deaths while the ban was in place. A 2017 study in the Journal of Urban Health observed that law enforcement recovery of assault weapons fell nationwide while the ban was in base, indicating that they were used in fewer crimes, but increased after the ban expired. A 2004 University of Pennsylvania study conducted for the Justice Department explained that the use of assault weapons in crime declined by 70 percent nine years after the Assault Weapons Ban took effect. It is a FACT that the assault style weapons ban worked.