Anti-Gunners Claim Assault Weapon Ban Worked. They’re Wrong

By Tom Knighton

As we continue to debate various forms of gun control, there’s going to be a lot of discussion about what works and what doesn’t. One of the more contested pieces at the moment is the proposed assault weapon ban.

We had an assault weapon ban before and nothing seemed to change. Violent crime was decreasing before the ban and it continued to decrease after the ban sunset.

Yet a study tried to suggest that the ban actually worked, that it actually reduced mass shootings.

Needless to say, politicians have latched onto those findings. They’re declaring the 1994 ban a success and clamoring for a new such ban.

The problem is, the “science” that is used as proof was the result of some really shaky evidence.

“Public mass shootings—which we defined as incidents in which a gunman killed at least six people in public—dropped during the decade of the federal ban,” [Stanford law professor John] Donohue and Stanford student Theodora Boulouta write in a New York Times op-ed piece published yesterday. “Yet, in the 15 years since the ban ended, the trajectory of gun massacres has been sharply upward, largely tracking the growth in ownership of military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

Donohue and …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms