The price of these
pre-ban weapons skyrocketed in the months prior to the ban
and has been rising slowly but steadily over the last ten
years. Manufacturers, fearing the worst, stepped up production
of these banned items in order to insure that profitable
amounts were on hand once the Bill was inevitably passed.
For example, the cost of the AR-15 series of rifles has
more than doubled since the Ban first was introduced into
Congress in April of 1994. [3]
Post-ban look-alike
rifles, though lacking some or all of the banned features,
are often functionally identical to their pre-ban predecessors,
and fill a market vacuum created by the passage of an ineffective,
bean-counting law that a only a tax-collector could be proud
of. Indeed the term "assault weapons" is a misnomer.
Gun Digest defines true assault weapons as "...fully
automatic, selective-fire, or equipped with mission-specific
features designed only for military and law enforcement
application." [4] (Emphasis added.)
Regardless of one's
position on gun control, it is evident that the so-called
Assault Weapon's Ban did nothing to curb violent crime.
Indeed, in many ways it was a solution to a non-existent
problem. The ban did not help to eliminate crime, it did
not get weapons currently on the open market out of the
hands of any criminals, nor did it even target the types
of firearms most commonly favored by miscreants and lowlifes.
In a study done by the Florida Assault Weapons Commission,
it was found that between 1986 and 1989 assault weapons
were used in only 17 or .23% of the 7,500 gun crimes committed.
[5]
Public Support
Initially, the idea
of a law to ban assault weapons seemed to enjoy widespread
support among both the American people and members of Congress;
but later, after the ban was already passed, the American
people began to wakeup to the fact that the promises of
safer streets had been empty and impotent.
"In January
1995, ABC News/Washington Post interviewers found that 77
percent wanted Congress to keep in place "a law making
it illegal to sell assault weapons." In April and in
June, roughly identical numbers in the NBC News/Wall Street
Journal poll said Congress should keep the ban. Only two
in ten disagreed.
A Yankelovich Partners
poll in April 1995 approached the issue differently. Yankelovich
asked whether it should be illegal for people to own handguns
or, separately, to own semiautomatic assault guns. Forty
percent favored making it illegal to own handguns; 55 percent
did not. Forty-eight percent supported making it illegal
for citizens to own semi-automatic assault guns; 50 percent
dissented.
The public is dubious
about the effects of a ban on assault weapons. In the Yankelovich
poll, 46 percent said making the sale or possession of semiautomatic
weapons illegal would reduce the amount of violent crime;
51 percent said it would not." [6]
Since that time,
the trend of public apathy or outright hostility towards
the effectiveness of the Assault Weapons ban has been slowly
and quietly continuing to grow. The terrorist attacks of
9/11 had the unforeseen consequence of re-exposing millions
of Americans to the longstanding ideals of self-protection
in the face of danger. Gun permit applications in Oakland
County Michigan skyrocketed from an average of 2,200 per
year to over 8,000 following the September 11th terrorism
attacks on the world trade center. [7] The tides of gun
ownership appear to be shifting.
Effective Lobbying Efforts and the NRA
It is patently obvious
that, like most gun control legislation, the Assault Weapons
ban of 1994 was not popular among many members of the National
Rifle Association. With the first news of the impending
bill, groups like the NRA and the more grassroots GOA (Gun
Owners of America) launched a lobbying move to block it.
Members were encouraged to contact their representatives
and let them know that voting against this bill was important
to their reelection.
The result was the
bill passing by the narrowest of margins, with a vote count
of 216 for the bill, 214 against and with 3 abstaining;
it was numbered as one of the narrowest victories in legislative
history. [8] Gun owners, divided by political infighting
between weekend hunters (who see no need for assault weapons)
and strict constitutionalists (who obviously do) were unable
to effectively rally together for a common cause.
Those gun owners
who felt disenfranchised by the ban took up the torch once
more to stir up public support against the legislators who
favored the ban. By painstakingly comparing the lists provided
by the Office of the Clerk to the U.S. House of Representatives
concerning who voted for and against the 1994 ban and the
lists of winners in the 1994 and 1996 elections, we can
get a minimal idea of those who were defeated as a direct
result or at least partly because of the ban. Among those
who sought reelection, 33 were summarily defeated in 1994
and six more in 1996. [9]
In 1996, due to successful
lobbying by gun owners nationwide, the house voted 239 to
173 to repeal the Assault Weapons Ban as ineffective. [10]
The bill was then allowed to die in the Democrat controlled
Senate and the Assault Weapons Ban stood.
While there is no
accurate way to measure the effects of gun control legislation
in each individual race, and this evidence can be considered
consequential at best, it should be noted that many members
of the Democratic Party consider gun control to be an issue
to be avoided as harmful to their campaigns.
Clinton-Gore strategist
James Carville said, "I don't think there is a
Second Amendment right to own a gun. But I think it's a
loser political issue." [11]
By the 2000 elections,
the NRA had rallied a greater measure of support and unity
throughout the gun owning community. The monthly magazines
distributed to all dues-paying NRA members contained report
cards for individual candidates in races nationwide, ranking
them solely on their stances on gun control. This had a
unifying effect on gun owners and allowed them to see the
candidates voting records in black and white and as they
compared to others.
Indeed it was claimed
by former President Bill Clinton that the lobbying efforts
of the NRA and other pro-gun groups that were directly responsible
for the Democratic loss of the House of Representatives
in the 2000 election and partially responsible for Al Gore's
loss of the Presidency to George W. Bush. In an interview
with CBS News on December 18th 2001, "You've got
to give it to them, they've done a good job. They've probably
had more to do than anyone else in the fact that we didn't
win the house this time. And they hurt Al Gore."
[12]
USA Today quipped,
"Guns played a key role in Gore's loss of Arkansas,
Tennessee, and West Virginia, any one of which could have
delivered him the presidency." [13]
In the recent 2002
elections, of the 246 candidates endorsed by the NRA for
the House of Representatives, 232 seats were won. This clearly
demonstrates the effectiveness of the NRA's Get out the
Vote programs and gun lobby report cards.
The Future of the Assault Weapons Ban
Guns are and will
continue to be a major issue in American politics. The passage
of the nefarious Assault Weapons Ban and its inability to
effectively fight real crime gave rise to an increasingly
unified movement of gun owners who simply won't stand for
any more useless legislation that only serves to limit the
rights of honest law abiding citizens.
The 1994 ban, as
written, includes a sunset period of ten years from its
passage into law. Unless renewed by an act
of Congress and again signed into law by President George
W. Bush, firearms that have been demonized as illegal "weapons
of mass destruction" will once again suddenly be legal
to manufacture and import. Artificially inflated values
of so-called pre-ban weapons will drop dramatically, as
brand-new weapons roll off the factory milling machines
and the cosmetically castrated weapons of the ten-year prohibitionary
period will be legally modified by their owners to include
all of those features once declared "too evil"
to be on a modern civilian's rifle.
Make no mistake,
anti-gun activists and legislators will make every attempt
to reinstate an even more restrictive and permanent ban,
but given the current political climate and Congressional
representation, coupled with the growing tendency of gun
owners to vote as a group, you will most likely see a massive
successful campaign by grassroots activists to soundly defeat
the ban once and for all.
In a survey of gun
owners conducted by the Author on the internet-based web
forum www.thefiringline.com, 78.95% of 114 responding gun
owners claimed that the 1994 ban had influenced their voting
practices and would continue to influence them in the 2004
election.
Did the '94 Assault Weapons ban affect your vote? Will it
affect your vote in 2004? Yes it did affect my vote and
WILL affect my vote in '04 90 78.75%
Yes it did affect my vote but WILL NOT in '04 1 0.88%
No it did not affect my vote but it WILL in '04 3 2.63%
No it did not affect my vote and it WILL NOT in '04 3 2.63%
I was ineligible to vote in '94 but it WILL affect my vote
in '04 17 14.91%
I was ineligible to vote in '94 and it WILL NOT affect my
vote in '04 0 0%
Approx 6.5% Margin for error Total: 114
votes 100%
Additionally, 14.91% of those responding were ineligible
to vote in the 1994 election, but stated that an act of
Congress in regards to the Assault Weapons Ban would affect
their votes in the 2004 election. These are individuals
who were presumably too young to vote, and interestingly
enough also too young to own a gun when the Assault Weapons
Ban was passed, and have had to live under its restrictions
the entire time they have owned a firearm.
Conclusion
Gun ownership is
becoming increasingly salient in the minds of American voters.
The failure of the Assault Weapons Ban to deter violent
crime and the resulting lack of public support will be its
death knell in 2004. In order for the gun owners to insure
its quiet sunset into oblivion they will need to band together
once more and ensure that each representative knows that
a renewal of the ban will result in their electoral defeat
in November of that year.
