Feinstein Assault Weapons Ban Wouldn’t Prevent Mass Shootings; Speaks Before Facts Are Known

Feinstein Assault Weapons Ban: Sen. Diane Feinstein renews calls for an Assault Weapon Ban would  not prevent mass shootings. What’s more, the Sr. Senator from California renewed her perennial call to ban before the facts of the Navy Yard Shooting were clear.

Following the tragedy at the Washington Naval Yard in Washington, D.C., Senator Feinsten is renewing her perennial call for more gun control laws. Feinstein said: “When will enough be enough? Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country. We must do more to stop this endless loss of life.”

Which begs the question, what could have been done that was not already done that might have prevented this tragedy?

Washington Naval Yard is a military installation located in the nation’s capital. As a military site, it is a gun-free zone. Located in D.C., it is illegal to carry a gun outside of your home. Access to the Naval Yard requires passing an armed checkpoint. It doesn’t get much more ‘controlled’ than that.

“This is one more event to add to the litany of massacres that occur when a deranged person or grievance killer is able to obtain multiple weapons — including a military-style assault rifle — and kill many people in a short amount of time,” Feinstein said.

NBC news reported that the attack began with a shotgun, but by the end of the incident, the attacker also had picked up a 9mm pistol and an AR-15 off a fallen police officer; a victim of the shooting. CNN also reported that, “sources, who have detailed knowledge of the investigation, cautioned that initial information that an AR-15 was used in the shootings may have been incorrect”, and that the weapons besides the shotgun “may have been taken from guards at the Navy complex.” So “obtain” in this case appears to mean taking off the body of a murdered police officer armed with the weapons. One wonders what law even could prevent such a thing from occurring in the future. UPDATE: FBI confirmed NO AR-15 was used, after the initial publication of this article.

Feinstein’s comment about the “endless loss of life” is also wrong. As I have written in this column recently, in the last 20 years homicides, violent crime and gun murder have been cut by 50% – in the case of gun murders in particular, they have dropped significantly by 65% since 1993.

This gets us to the heart of the matter: a so-called “assault weapons” ban does not reduce crime or prevent mass shootings. Calling for one, while grandstanding and exploiting a tragedy to push a personal agenda, may make for a nice soundbyte for unscrupulous politicians, but it ultimately futile. They admit as much. There are several problems that make any assault weapons ban unworkable.

First, rifles – which includes bolt-action, semi-automatic rifles that are not labeled “assault weapons”, like the rancher Mini-14, as well as so-called “assault weapons” – are rarely used in homicides. FBI data for 2011, the latest year available shows 323 murders with any type of rifle. Handguns are by far the most commonly used gun in homicide at 6,220 (out of 12,664 total homicides). So even if legislation were successful in preventing 100% of all rifle homicides, it still is minuscule reduction in the overall murder rate.

Also relevant is that Feinstein’s failed attempt at renewing a federal assault weapon ban from earlier this year specifically exempted over 2,258 makes and models of rifles she believed were ‘hunting rifles’ (apparently ignorant of the fact that AR-15 rifles can be chambered to fire a plethora of ammunition from .22LR, to .50BMG and is used to hunt everything from varmint to deer, hog, elk and large game). Included in this list are many varieties of shotgun rifles. There was nothing in it to prevent the Naval Yard shooter from legally possessing the shotgun he began his attack with.

Second, there is the problem of all the existing weapon stock that would be “grandfathered in.” This means already purchased so-called “assault weapons” would be exempted and their owners allowed to keep possession of them; only new purchases would be banned under the failed bill. This means that the millions of so-called “assault rifles” are still available for use.

Third, the highest year for mass shootings – 2003 – occurred during the last federal Assault Weapons Ban. Columbine and Virginia Tech occurred during the federal Assault Weapons Ban. The Virginia Tech shooter – the worst school shooting in U.S. History – used handguns & mostly 10-round magazines. There is no logical reason to conclude that a ban would prevent a future mass shooting, because past bans did not. Academic researchers and government agencies conclude the same thing: the CDC, National Research Council and others found the last federal Assault Weappons ban produced no clear, measurable reduction in crime or mass shootings.

UPDATE: Feinstein's proposed ban would not include the shotgun used by the shooter at the Navy Yard. This means even if she were able to see this legislation enacted, it would have had ABSOLUTELY NO effect on this shooting.

Feinstein’s comments amount to empty rhetoric and meaningless hyperbole. Her failed, proposed legislation would not be a solution to end “enough is enough”. When one considers her words to “resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence” one wonders if she means speaking before the facts of this case are fully known, or pushing a policy that is known from the start to be a non-solution.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication September 17, 2013).

Assault Weapons Ban Wouldn’t Prevent Mass Shootings; Politicians Speak Before Facts Are Known

by Matt MacBradaigh | Sep 18, 2013 | Gun Control Facts | 4 comments

Following the tragedy at the Washington Naval Yard in Washington, D.C., Senator Feinsten is renewing her perennial call for more gun control laws. Feinstein said: “When will enough be enough? Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country. We must do more to stop this endless loss of life.”

Which begs the question, what could have been done that was not already done that might have prevented this tragedy?

Washington Naval Yard is a military installation located in the nation’s capital. As a military site, it is a gun-free zone. Located in D.C., it is illegal to carry a gun outside of your home. Access to the Naval Yard requires passing an armed checkpoint. It doesn’t get much more ‘controlled’ than that.

“This is one more event to add to the litany of massacres that occur when a deranged person or grievance killer is able to obtain multiple weapons — including a military-style assault rifle — and kill many people in a short amount of time,” Feinstein said.

NBC news reported that the attack began with a shotgun, but by the end of the incident, the attacker also had picked up a 9mm pistol and an AR-15 off a fallen police officer; a victim of the shooting. CNN also reported that, “sources, who have detailed knowledge of the investigation, cautioned that initial information that an AR-15 was used in the shootings may have been incorrect”, and that the weapons besides the shotgun “may have been taken from guards at the Navy complex.” So “obtain” in this case appears to mean taking off the body of a murdered police officer armed with the weapons. One wonders what law even couldprevent such a thing from occurring in the future. UPDATE: FBI confirmed NO AR-15 was used, after the initial publication of this article.

Feinstein’s comment about the “endless loss of life” is also wrong. As I have written in this column recently, in the last 20 years homicides, violent crime and gun murder have been cut by 50% – in the case of gun murders in particular, they have dropped significantly by 65% since 1993.

This gets us to the heart of the matter: a so-called “assault weapons” ban does not reduce crime or prevent mass shootings. Calling for one, while grandstanding and exploiting a tragedy to push a personal agenda, may make for a nice soundbyte for unscrupulous politicians, but it ultimately futile. They admit as much. There are several problems that make any assault weapons ban unworkable.

First, rifles – which includes bolt-action, semi-automatic rifles that are not labeled “assault weapons”, like the rancher Mini-14, as well as so-called “assault weapons” – are rarely used in homicides. FBI data for 2011, the latest year available shows 323 murders with any type of rifle. Handguns are by far the most commonly used gun in homicide at 6,220 (out of 12,664 total homicides). So even if legislation were successful in preventing 100% of all rifle homicides, it still is minuscule reduction in the overall murder rate.

Also relevant is that Feinstein’s failed attempt at renewing a federal assault weapon ban from earlier this year specifically exempted over 2,258 makes and models of rifles she believed were ‘hunting rifles’ (apparently ignorant of the fact that AR-15 rifles can be chambered to fire a plethora of ammunition from .22LR, to .50BMG and is used to hunt everything from varmint to deer, hog, elk and large game). Included in this list are many varieties of shotgun rifles. There was nothing in it to prevent the Naval Yard shooter from legally possessing the shotgun he began his attack with.

Second, there is the problem of all the existing weapon stock that would be “grandfathered in.” This means already purchased so-called “assault weapons” would be exempted and their owners allowed to keep possession of them; only new purchases would be banned under the failed bill. This means that the millions of so-called “assault rifles” are still available for use.

Third, the highest year for mass shootings – 2003 – occurred during the last federal Assault Weapons Ban. Columbine and Virginia Tech occurred during the federal Assault Weapons Ban. The Virginia Tech shooter – the worst school shooting in U.S. History – used handguns & mostly 10-round magazines. There is no logical reason to conclude that a ban would prevent a future mass shooting, because past bans did not. Academic researchers and government agencies conclude the same thing: the CDC, National Research Council and others found the last federal Assault Weappons ban produced no clear, measurable reduction in crime or mass shootings.

UPDATE: Feinstein’s proposed ban would not include the shotgun used by the shooter at the Navy Yard. This means even if she were able to see this legislation enacted, it would have had ABSOLUTELY NO effect on this shooting.

Feinstein’s comments amount to empty rhetoric and meaningless hyperbole. Her failed, proposed legislation would not be a solution to end “enough is enough”. When one considers her words to “resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence” one wonders if she means speaking before the facts of this case are fully known, or pushing a policy that is known from the start to be a non-solution.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Sept 18, 2013. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.

Mass Murder Shooting Is Not Increasing – Piers Morgan and Mother Jones Proven Wrong

Washington Naval Yard

Mass murder shootings are not increasing. Disingenuous media outlets and personalities like Piers Morgan and Mother Jones falsely claim they are. Academic criminologists that study mass murder prove them wrong.

At least 13 people are dead and several others were wounded after a gunman opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.. Police have identified the suspect and cleared a possible second one. And while the dead have barely been identified, already the anti-gun talking heads are calling for more gun control. The who’s-who is predictable. Piers Morgan is, once again, claiming that mass shootings are on the rise in the United States. On his twitter feed he cites Mother Jones calling it “incontrovertible proof” that this is so. The Mother Jones page, A Guide to Mass Shootings in America states that the shooting at the Washington Naval Yard is the 5th one in 2013. If accurate (and it’s probably not), then that makes 2013 one of the lowest years for mass shootings since at least 1976 – or 37 years

Regrettably, this false narrative is not new. It’s old and often repeated whenever a sensationalized shooting like the Washington Naval Yard incident occurs. Besides Mother Jones, former President Bill Clinton and others have also falsely claimed mass shootings are increasing.

James Alan Fox, a widely respected criminologist from Northeastern University in Boston who researches mass shootings says that they are not increasing. Dr. Fox’s analysis of the Mother Jones‘ study indicates they left out mass murders which made it seem there was an increase after the Federal assault weapon ban expired (they’ve updated their story since). Some mass murders receive more media attention than others, however the number has been consistently about 20 annually since 1976. Dr Fox states: “What is abundantly clear from the full array of mass shootings, besides the lack of any trend upward or downward, is the largely random variability in the annual counts. There have been several points in time when journalists and others have speculated about a possible epidemic in response to a flurry of high-profile shootings. Yet these speculations have always proven to be incorrect when subsequent years reveal more moderate levels.”

Mass Shootings 1976-2011 – James Alan Fox

Dr. Fox specifically rebuts Mother Jones findings saying: “So how does the Mother Jones report of a rise in mass shootings stand up when considering the full range of cases? Simply put, not very well.” He uses instead, the academically accepted definition of mass murder set by the FBI, which is defined as: “as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. These events typically involved a single location, where the killer murdered a number of victims in an ongoing incident.

Time Magazine printed a chart of all mass shootings, citing Dr. Fox’s research following the Aurora Colorado, movie theater shooting (see below). The number of mass shootings varies from a low of 7 incidents in 1985, to a high of 30 incidents in 2003 (incidentally, when the federal Assault Weapons Ban was still in effect). The number of dead from these mass murder incidents varies from a low of 29 dead in 1985, coinciding with the lowest shootings – to a high of 135 in 2003, again coinciding with the highest number of shootings. In 2012, it was less than 100.

Mass shootings 1976-2010 – Time Magazine

Mass shootings grab our attention because they are tragic, though in reality more people die every year hitting deer with their cars. Most gun murders are one at a time, with mass shootings representing a fraction of 1% of homicides. Homicides by raw number peaked in 1991 at 24,700. Since then, homicide by raw number, the homicide rate, and gun murders have dropped in half. The homicide rate per 100,000 people today is less than it was even in the year 1900.

So while disingenuous media personalities focus on how horrible these incidents are (while they play dumb with regard to the ratings and advertising revenue these stories generate for themselves), the fact that they are horrible in itself provides nothing in terms of a solution to it. Would making the Washington Naval Yard a “gun free zone” work? Oops! It already is. Perhaps making Washington D.C. gun-free outside of people’s homes? That’s already the case as well. Maybe an assault rifle ban? Oh wait, the worst year for mass shootings happened during the federal Assault Weapons Ban. Perhaps the mantra “no guns” when there is gun violence is as inane as chanting “no cars” would be after a tragic car accident. Academic researchers explain why the “no guns” mantra fails to solve for gun violence – simply put it is because guns are not the cause of violence; socio-cultural & economic factors are. Professors Kates and Mauser explain in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy that adopting laws that restrict gun possession from law-abiding citizens is actually counter-productive, because average law-abiding citizens do not murder. The Congressional Research Study released in April reported that because of the rarity of the events, “potential perpetrators cannot be identified accurately, and no systematic means of intervening are known to be effective.” Preventing them from occurring may not be fully possible. Dr. Fox states there are no easy solutions when it comes to mass shootings; they are peak of violence, often meticulously planned by people that plan to die in the event.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication September 17, 2013).

Mass Murder Shooting Is Not Increasing – Mother Jones Proven Wrong

by Matt MacBradaigh | Sep 17, 2013 | Gun Control Facts | 2 comments

Mass murder shootings are not increasing. Disingenuous media outlets – like Mother Jones – and politicians and pundits that don’t bother to fact-check falsely claim mass shootings are increasing. Academic criminologists that study mass murder prove them wrong.

At least 13 people are dead and several others were wounded after a gunman opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Police have identified the suspect and cleared a possible second one. And while the dead have barely been identified, already the anti-gun talking heads are – predictably – calling for more gun control. For instance, Piers Morgan is, once again, claiming that mass shootings are on the rise in the United States. On his twitter feed he cites Mother Jones calling it “incontrovertible proof” that this is so. The Mother Jones page, A Guide to Mass Shootings in America states that the shooting at the Washington Naval Yard is the 5th one in 2013. If accurate (and it’s probably not), then that makes 2013 one of the lowest years for mass shootings since at least 1976 – or 37 years.

Regrettably, this false narrative is not new. It’s old and often repeated whenever a sensationalized shooting like the Washington Naval Yard incident occurs. Besides Mother Jones, former President Bill Clinton, and others, have also falsely claimed mass shootings are increasing.

James Alan Fox, a widely respected criminologist from Northeastern University in Boston who researches mass shootings says that they are not increasing. Dr. Fox’s analysis of the Mother Jones‘ study indicates they left out mass murders which made it seem there was an increase after the Federal assault weapon ban expired (Mother Jones has since updated their story since thanking Dr. Fox for his input while simultaneously not changing their actual content and false claims). Some mass murders receive more media attention than others, however the number has been consistently about 20 annually since 1976. Dr Fox states: “What is abundantly clear from the full array of mass shootings, besides the lack of any trend upward or downward, is the largely random variability in the annual counts. There have been several points in time when journalists and others have speculated about a possible epidemic in response to a flurry of high-profile shootings. Yet these speculations have always proven to be incorrect when subsequent years reveal more moderate levels.”

Dr. Fox specifically rebuts Mother Jones findings saying: “So how does the Mother Jones report of a rise in mass shootings stand up when considering the full range of cases? Simply put, not very well.” He uses instead, the academically accepted definition of mass murder set by the FBI, which is defined as: “as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. These events typically involved a single location, where the killer murdered a number of victims in an ongoing incident.

Time Magazine printed a chart of all mass shootings, citing Dr. Fox’s research following the Aurora Colorado, movie theater shooting (see below). The number of mass shootings varies from a low of 7 incidents in 1985, to a high of 30 incidents in 2003 (incidentally, when the federal Assault Weapons Ban was still in effect). The number of dead from these mass murder incidents varies from a low of 29 dead in 1985, coinciding with the lowest shootings – to a high of 135 in 2003, again coinciding with the highest number of shootings. In 2012, it was less than 100.

Mass shootings grab our attention because they are tragic, though in reality more people die every year hitting deer with their cars. Most gun murders are one at a time, with mass shootings representing a fraction of 1% of homicides. Homicides by raw number peaked in 1991 at 24,700. Since then, homicide by raw number, the homicide rate, and gun murders have dropped in half. The homicide rate per 100,000 people today is less than it was even in the year 1900.

So while disingenuous media personalities and politicians focus on how horrible these incidents are (while they play dumb with regard to the ratings and advertising revenue these stories generate for themselves), the fact that they are horrible in itself provides nothing in terms of a solution to it. Would making the Washington Naval Yard a “gun free zone” work? Oops! It already is. Perhaps making Washington D.C. gun-free outside of people’s homes? That’s already the case as well. Maybe an assault rifle ban? Oh wait, the worst year for mass shootings happened during the federal Assault Weapons Ban. Perhaps the mantra “no guns” when there is gun violence is as inane as chanting “no cars” would be after a tragic car collision. Academic researchers explain why the “no guns” mantra fails to solve for gun violence – simply put it is because guns are not the cause of violence; socio-cultural & economic factors are. Professors Kates and Mauser explain in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy that adopting laws that restrict gun possession from law-abiding citizens is actually counter-productive, because average law-abiding citizens do not murder. The Congressional Research Study released in April reported that because of the rarity of the events, “potential perpetrators cannot be identified accurately, and no systematic means of intervening are known to be effective.” Preventing them from occurring may not be fully possible. Dr. Fox states there are no easy solutions when it comes to mass shootings; they are peak of violence, often meticulously planned by people that plan to die in the event.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Sep 17, 2013. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.