From: pes3@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Paul Eric Stoufflet)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Kleck editorial in NY Times
Date: 2 Sep 92 13:47:06 GMT
Reply-To: pes3@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Paul Eric Stoufflet)
Distribution: na
Organization: Columbia University

The following editorial appeared on the OP-ED page
of the New York Times, dated September 1, 1992.

The original text was set in the silhouette of an
upper torso, with a bullseye positioned over the 
center of the chest.

Reprinted without permission, all typos are mine.
--------

Assault Weapons Aren't the Problem

                                    by Gary Kleck
                                    Tallahassee, Fla.

After passing a ban on assault weapons in 1990, the New
Jersey Legislature recently voted to repeal the law.
Though Gov. Jim Florio promises to veto the repeal, there
will likely be an effort to override the veto.  Gun-control
advocates see this as a fight between good -- themselves --
and evil, in the form of the National Rifle Association.
But that is only oratory.  Let's look at the facts about
assault weapons and then think rationally about how to
control gun crimes.

"Assault weapon" is a vague label encompassing mostly
semiautomatic firearms with the cosmetic appearance of a
military gun.  These guns fire only one shot with each
trigger pull, unlike fully automatic weapons like machine
guns, which fire continuously as long as the trigger is
held down.

Military-style semiautomatics have become more popular in
the past 15 years among criminals and noncriminals (though
police records show that criminals' use of them has been
declining since around 1989).  Contrary to widespread
claims, however, assault weapons are not the "preferred"
firearm of criminals.  I know of 24 reports on the
prevalence of these weapons among guns seized by the
police; in 23 of these cases, police records indicate that
criminals almost never use them to commit crimes.
Virtually all the studies show that only 0 to 4 percent of
confiscated guns are assault weapons.  Since about 12
percent of violent crimes involve guns, this means that
assault weapons are used less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the
time.  The only source of the claim that assault weapons
are commonly used in crimes is a 1989 article from the Cox
newspaper chain reporting that 10 percent of a sample of
guns traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
were assault weapons.  Local police officials submit such
requests for Federal tracking when they want to know the
history of a gun used in a crime.  These requests are
optional and rare: As noted by the Congressional Research
Service, "Firearms selected for tracing . . . cannot be
considered representative of the . . . firearms used by
criminals."  Fully automatic military assault rifles are
weapons of war, but the semiautomatic handguns and rifles
covered by the New Jersey law are not.  The semiautomatic
assault weapons are not designed to be especially lethal.
They are no more lethal, in fact, than the standard
revolver.  Semiautomatic "assault rifles" are generally
less lethal than hunting rifles.

Legally available assault weapons cannot be readily
converted to fire like machine guns; guns that can be so
adapted are illegal.  Assault guns can fire somewhat more
rapidly than regular revolvers, but there is no evidence
that this increases the likelihood that someone will be
killed.

Most assault weapons can use magazines that can hold 30 or
more cartridges, allowing many rounds to be fired without
reloading.  This can increase the chances that a shooter
will hit someone, but studies of gun crimes show that it is
rare for criminals to make use of even the six-shot
capacity that most ordinary revolvers have.  If we somehow
deprived criminals of assault weapons and they substituted
standard guns, it would rarely affect whether a victim is
killed or not.

It might be argued that even though criminals almost never
use assault weapons, at least a few do, so why not ban them
if only one or two lives can be saved?  One answer is that
people may also use these guns for self-defense.
Supporters of controls might also ask, if a revolver is
just as good, then what law-abiding citizen would want an
assault gun anyway?  Millions of people apparently do want
them -- for target shooting and killing animals preying on
herds or crops, among other uses.

The problem is that many gun owners believe that
gun-control people are targeting assault weapons as part of
a step-by-step strategy to ban all firearms.  The leading
gun-control organization, Handgun Control, used to promise
that it did not want to ban rifles, yet as soon as assault
rifles became an issue, it pushed to ban them.  This feeds
the worst paranoia of gun owners and poisons the atmosphere
for politically achievable controls.

A better strategy would be to enact laws that keep firearms
-- whether assault weapons or regular guns -- out of the
hands of criminals through the use of mandatory
computerized background checks of all would-be gun buyers.

  Gary Kleck, professor of criminology and criminal
  justice, at Florida State University, is author of "Point
  Blank: Guns and Violence in America."

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  / \ / \     Paul Stoufflet                          / \ / \
 |  / \  |    Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center   |  / \  |
 |  \ /  |    internet: pes3@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu  |  \ /  |
  \_/_\_/     All opinions are my own                 \_/_\_/ 
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