A ban would save lives  Put simply assault weapons are designed for assault, therefore their proliferation should be prohibited in law. To put things into the general context of gun crime within the United States every year 17,000 people are killed, 70 percent of them with guns and nearly 20,000 people commit suicide by shooting themselves [1] . Murder by gunfire particularly affects children, in total well over a million Americans have died in this manner and 80 people continue to be shot in the states every day. So some form of gun control is necessary and a ban on assault weapons is a good starting point.  Out of 62 mass murders since 1982 almost half the weapons used, 67 out of 142, were semi-automatic handguns and more than 30 were assault weapons. [2] The period of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban from 1994-2004 with the exception of 1999, the year of the Columbine massacre (which notably involved a semi-automatic produced before the ban), was also a peaceful period in terms of numbers of mass shootings. [3] While assault weapons are responsible for a relatively small amount of total gun deaths in the USA that is not a good reason for not banning them; any life saved is worthwhile. Taking the low estimate of 1% of deaths from assault weapons that still means 90-100 people a year while the high 7% [4] means 630-700 lives that could be saved.  Australia shows the advantages on implementing restrictions on guns (in Australia’s case much stricter than anything being contemplated in this debate so the effect would not be as pronounced). In the wake of a mass shooting in Port Arthur in 1996 strict gun laws were implemented. An evaluation by the Australian National University found laws saved $500 million and halved the number of people killed by guns saving 200 lives every year. [5]  [1] Masters, Brian, ‘America’s deadly obsession with guns’ The Telegraph 16 December 2012,   [2] Follman, Mark, et al., ‘A Guide to Mass Shootings in America’, Mother Jones, 15 December 2012,   [3] Wang, Sam, ‘Did the federal ban on assault weapons matter?’, Princeton Election Consortium, 14 December 2012,   [4] Matthews, Jake, ‘For Lives and Liberty: Banning Assault Weapons in America’, Harvard University Institute of Politics, 2012,   [5] Peters, Rebecca, ‘Will Sandy Hook massacre be America’s tipping point’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 December 2012,