From: stanley@yngstr.enet.dec.com
Subject: New York Times article
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 20:24:34 GMT

The New York Times Tuesday, September 1, 1992

Assault Weapons Aren't the Problem  by Gary Kleck

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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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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 cosmetic appearance of a military gun.  These 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 non-criminals (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
request for Federal tracking when the want to know the history of a gun used is
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 the 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 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 hand of criminals through the use of
mandatory computerized background checks of all would-be gun buyers.

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Dave Stanley		
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"Legalize the Bill of Rights!"
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