NBC,Bay Area - From 1982 to 1994, prior to the advent of the [assault weapon] ban,
the U.S. averaged 1.5 such shootings a year, resulting in the death or
injury of roughly 25 people.
Once the assault weapons ban went
into effect in 1994, the frequency of the mass shootings remained stable
at 1.6, while the average number of casualties dropped to 21 a year.
When the ban expired, however, a substantial rise in violence and death ensued. From 2005 to the present day, there
has been an average of 3.4 mass shootings a year, resulting in 56 deaths
from those incidents.
2 comments:
The Clinton ban never actually banned semi-autos.
It mainly banned new production of high capacity magazines. Pre-ban magazines were grandfathered.
The pre-ban magazines were still widely available on the market right up until the day the ban expired, so the ban never had any practical effect of availability.
Furthermore, the national murder rate has been declining steadily for many years, and continued to decline when the Clinton ban expired.
Some people say the declining murder rate is due to passage of concealed carry laws.
Correlation, Sam. That's correlation, not causation. Our world has worsened in other ways in that time, so BOTH the elimination of the ban AND the rise in shootings can more plausibly attributed to that worsening than to one another.
Post a Comment