Federal assault weapons ban
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The Federal Assault Weapons Ban, or AWB, was a provision of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law of the United States that included a prohibition on the sale of semiautomatic assault weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment. The ten-year ban was passed by Congress on September 13, 1994 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day. The ban expired on September 13, 2004, as part of the law's sunset provision.
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Provisions
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban is only a small part (title XI, subtitle A) of the very large and extensive Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. In total, there are 33 "titles" (sections) of the act.
All firearms addressed in the ban are semi-automatic firearms, that is, firearms that fire one shot each time the trigger is pulled. Neither the AWB nor its expiration affects the legal status of fully-automatic firearms, which can fire more than one round with a single trigger-pull; these have been regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934, and illegal to produce since the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.
During the period the law was in effect, it was illegal to manufacture any firearm that met the law's definiton of an assault weapon or any magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds, except for export or for sale to a government or law enforcement agency. Possession of illegally imported or manufactured equipment was outlawed as well, but note that the law did not ban the possession or sale of assault weapons or high-capacity magazines that were manufactured before the ban took effect. This provision for "pre-ban" weapons created an artificially inflated price point in the free market for such items, a disruption in the market that lasted until the ban sunset.
A variety of well-publicized multiple murders involving military-style semi-automatic rifles in the late 1980s and the early 1990s were exploited in lobbying for the ban's enactment. These incidents included:
- the January 17, 1989, schoolyard shooting in Stockton, California, in which the murderer killed five children before shooting himself (a.k.a. Stockton massacre); a semi-automatic version of the AK-47 was used in the murders
- the January 25, 1993, murder of two people in front of Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, by Mir Amir Kansi; here, again, another civilian version of the AK-47 was used in the murders.
Definition of Assault Weapon
The law created a definition of assault weapon: Certain models (all of which apply to only semi-automatic weapons), such as the Colt AR-15, TEC-9, all Kalashnikovs (including the AK-47), Uzi, and others were banned by name; other firearms were banned for having certain features:
Semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines and two or more of:
- folding or telescoping stock
- conspicuous pistol grip
- bayonet mount
- flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
- grenade launcher
Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of:
- magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
- threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or silencer
- barrel shroud that can be used as a hand-hold
- unloaded weight of 50 oz or more
- a semi-automatic version of an automatic firearm
(all but the last pistol feature are found in the pre-ban TEC-9, the probable inspiration for that section of the law)
Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of:
- folding or telescoping stock
- pistol grip
- capacity of more than 5 rounds
- detachable magazine
Expiration of the Ban
On March 2, 2004 (108th Congress, 2nd Session), Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) added a 10-year extension to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, Amendment 2637, to S.1805, the Senate's gun manufacturer immunity from liability bill. While the amendment was agreed to by a vote of 52-47, S.1805 picked up several other amendments, and the National Rifle Association withdrew its support of the bill. The sponsor Larry Craig (R-ID) asked for a vote, and S.1805, with the Feinstein Assault Weapon Ban renewal amendment, was voted down 8-90. S.1805 was widely hailed by Democrats as the only viable vehicle for a renewal of the AWB before its expiration.
President George W. Bush had promised to sign into law legislation to renew the ban provided that Congress passed such legislation (which it, ultimately, did not do). Bush was criticized for not doing enough to encourage the House and Senate to pass renewal legislation. The expiration came in spite of the increased national attention to gun violence stemming from the rash of school shootings in the late 1990s and early 2000s as well as the highly popular Michael Moore documentary film Bowling for Columbine, which was released in the fall of 2002.
Deficiencies in the ban
Classification of assault weapons has proven extremely difficult since there is no basic functional difference between the types of firearms targeted for these bans and many very common hunting and target-shooting firearms. For the level of danger that most firearms are characterized by such as caliber, rate of fire, muzzle velocity, accurate range, magazine capacity, etc., assault weapons are identical in function to just about any semi-automatic firearm. The features banned by the law, however, were primarily superficial accessories such as bayonet mounts and flash supressors, so when a weapon is banned as an assault weapon, the gun manufacturers complied with the law by removing the banned items, making the required superficial changes which render it legal again. For example, the AB-10 is a post-ban version of the TEC-9, made legal by changing the name and removing the (cosmetic) barrel shroud and barrel threading; the XM-15 is an AR-15 made legal by changing the name and removing the flash suppressor; post-ban AK-47s are sold under different names with the bottom of the pistol-grip attached to the stock, creating a "thumbhole stock", or by removing both the threaded barrel and the bayonet lug. Furthermore, an imported "thumbhole" stock "assault rifle" could be legally modified into a "post-ban" legal rifle with a military style pistol grip so long as the weapon contained no more than 10 imported parts. These parts varied from weapon type to weapon type, making the identification of "illegal" weapons difficult. Muzzle brakes, (a device that diverts the gasses ejected from the barrel) were also ruled "legal" by the BATF a short time after the ban went into effect. These muzzle attachments were legal to attach to a threaded barrel, so long as it was welded in place. The sheer number of exceptions, and legal gray areas made the determination of "pre-ban" and "post-ban" weapons difficult for both the consumer and law enforcement. This in part contributed to the demise of the AWB.
Even though the manufacturing and sale of magazines that can hold more than ten rounds to civilians was prohibited, this prompted the importation of large quantities of pre-1994 manufactured magazines from other countries. Former Warsaw Pact countries had a huge surplus of AK-47 magazines of various capacities, that could fit a variety of both pre-ban and post-ban AK-47 variants.
The lack of distinguishing functional characteristics between assault weapons and other firearms was implied by Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center (VPC), years before the federal ban was passed. In his March 1989 paper titled "Assault Weapons: Analysis, New Research and Legislation," Sugarmann wrote that, "[Assault weapons] are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons – anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun – can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."
Kristen Rand, legistative director of the anti-gun VPC, said a few months before the expiration of the ban, "The 1994 law in theory banned AK-47s, MAC-10s, UZIs, AR-15s and other assault weapons. Yet the gun industry easily found ways around the law and most of these weapons are now sold in post-ban models virtually identical to the guns Congress sought to ban in 1994."[1] Others claim that the gun manufacturers were following both the letter and the spirit of the law by removing exactly what the law banned.
One effect of the ban was to raise the price on previously manufactured rifles, and previously existing normal capacity magazines. Its expiration has led to lower prices on the limited capacity rifles and magazines manufactured in accordance with the law.
Assault Weapons Ban in local politics
New York State and California have enacted their own versions of the ban. New York's version of the law is very similar to the Federal version, but New York's version does not have a sunset provision. The expiration of the federal ban has revealed deficiencies in the New York State ban. According to the laws of the State of New York, a magazine with a capacity of more than 10 rounds manufactured after September 14, 1994 cannot be legally possessed by anyone other then a law enforcement officer. However, since other states do not have similar prohibitions on the books and due to the fact that high capacity magazines for the most part do not have any characteristics that show when they were manufactured, this law is now virtually unenforceable.
Impact the ban has had on crime
The official US Department of Justice study done on the Assault Weapons Ban concluded that the ban’s "impact on gun violence has been uncertain, due perhaps to the continuing availability of grandfathered assault weapons, close substitute guns and large capacity magazines, and the relative rarity with which the banned weapons were used in gun violence even before the ban" [2]
John Lott performed another study, which appears in his book The Bias Against Guns. He writes, "(The study) examines the first four years of the federal law as well as the different state assault weapon bans. Even after accounting for law enforcement, demographics, poverty and other factors that affect crime, the laws did not reduce any type of violent crime. In fact, overall violent crime actually rose slightly, by 1.5 percent, but the impact was not statistically significant. The somewhat larger increase in murder rates—over 5 percent—was significant, but not all states experienced an increase." Others further argue that the ban did little to decrease crime because many criminals could still easily obtain weapons illegally. [3]
