Federal Assault Weapons Ban

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) was a provision of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law of the United States that included a prohibition on the sale of semi-automatic "assault weapons" manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment. The ten-year ban was passed by Congress on September 13, 1994 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day. The ban expired on September 13, 2004, as part of the law's sunset provision.

Provisions

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was only a small part (title XI, subtitle A) of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

The act created a definition of "assault weapons" and subjected firearms that met that definition to regulation. Nineteen models of firearms were defined by name as being "assault weapons", and various semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns were classifed as "assault weapons" due to having various combinations of cosmetic features.

The act addressed only semi-automatic firearms, that is, firearms that fire one shot each time the trigger is pulled. Neither the AWB nor its expiration changed the legal status of fully automatic firearms, which can fire more than one round with a single trigger-pull; these had long been regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934.

The act separately defined and banned "large capacity ammunition feeding devices", which generally applied to magazines with capacities of greater than ten rounds.

During the period in which the AWB was in effect, it was illegal to manufacture any firearm that met the law's definition of an "assault weapon" or "large capacity ammunition feeding device", except for export or for sale to a government or law enforcement agency. Possession of illegally imported or manufactured firearms was outlawed as well, but the law did not ban the possession or sale of pre-existing "assault weapons" or "large capacity ammunition feeding devices". This provision for "pre-ban" weapons created a higher price point in the market for such items, which lasted until the ban's sunset.

Two events involving military-style semi-automatic rifles in the late 1980s and the early 1990s were used as examples by proponents for the ban's enactment. These incidents included:

The January 17, 1989, schoolyard shooting in Stockton, California, in which the murderer killed five children and wounded 30 others before shooting himself (also known as Stockton massacre); a semi-automatic version of the AK-47 was used in the murders.
The January 25, 1993, murder of two people in front of Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, by Mir Aimal Kansi; using another semi-automatic version of the AK-47.

Definition of assault weapon

Interdynamic KG-99 with 32-round magazine.

The term "assault weapon" in the context of civilian rifles has been attributed to gun-control activist Josh Sugarmann. The term assault rifle, referring to a category of rifles that are select-fire (capable of semi- or fully-automatic fire) and fire intermediate-power rounds (such as the 5.56x45mm NATO, or 7.62x39mm), which along with fully automatic pistols, provided the pre-cursor for the term "assault weapon". The military use of the term applies not to firearms but to shoulder-fired rocket launchers such as the FGM-172 SRAW or MK-153 SMAW.

The law defined and applied the term assault weapon to semi-automatic firearms that were predominantly derived from fully-automatic weapons. It included certain specific models by name (e.g., Colt AR-15, TEC-9, all Kalashnikovs [including the AK-47], and Uzi) and other firearms because they possessed disqualifying combinations of the features below;

Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:

Folding or telescoping stock
Conspicuous pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher

Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:

Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
Threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or silencer
Barrel shroud that can be used as a hand-hold
Unloaded weight of 50 oz or more
A semi-automatic version of an automatic firearm

Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:

Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Fixed capacity of more than 5 rounds
Detachable magazine

(Machine guns fire multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger and will continue to fire as long as the trigger is pulled and sufficient ammunition is available in the magazine; a semi-auto weapon fires one shot for each trigger pull, automatically loading another round of ammunition that can be fired with a subsequent trigger pull. This process can be repeated until all of the ammunition in the magazine is exhausted.)

Critics of the definition point out that most of the criteria are merely cosmetic, and referred to the law as the "Ugly-Gun Ban."

For instance, the "grenade launchers" identified in the specification are actually the barrel or muzzle; a rifle-launched grenade simply slips over the muzzle of nearly any rifle, to be fired by a special blank cartridge. They also note that rifle grenades are nearly unobtainable by civilians. Likewise, any firearm can be judged to have a "bayonet mount," as some bayonets attach to the barrel through the use of a clamp.

They also point out that there is little difference between one semi-automatic firearm and another. Most are based on the principles developed by John M. Browning, Jr., in the 19th century. These same principles are used in most of the full-automatic firearms in production today. Thus, any semi-auto can be considered the "semi-automatic version of an automatic weapon."

Expiration of the ban

On March 2, 2004, with 'sunset' of the ban on the horizon, assault weapon ban supporter Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) attached a ten-year extension to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban to the Senate's Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The National Rifle Association withdrew its support of the bill. With the Feinstein amendment, the bill was voted down 8-90. This rider was widely hailed by Democrats as the only viable chance for a renewal of the AWB before its expiration.

President George W. Bush had promised to sign a renewal of the ban provided that Congress passed such legislation and Bush was criticized by ban supporters for not doing enough to encourage the House and Senate to pass renewal legislation. The expiration came in 2004.

In late February 2007, the Assault Weapons Ban was reintroduced and to include other items, not limited to stricter laws, more banned guns, and laws regarding magazines over 10 rounds.

Issues surrounding the ban

AWB advocates and opponents alike state that the AWB allowed firearms manufacturers to make minor changes to make their affected firearms legal. Supporters and opponents alike described the features affected by the ban as "cosmetic", though for different reasons. ^[1] ^[2] Supporters point to the ability to fire a large capacity magazine without the need to reload, the ability to fire from the hip with a pistol grip, and greatly reduced chances for detection when using a silencer in the perpetration of a crime (though "silencers" were already heavily regulated by federal law prior to the AWB), felt that the final wording of the bill watered down the legislation making the ban much less effective. Opponents state that the features did not increase the likelihood of criminal use or function, and point that the features banned have had little to no record of impact in past criminal use.

Once certain combinations of features were banned, manufactures complied with the law by removing just enough of those features from their products to make them legal. For example, the AB-10 was a post-ban version of the TEC-9, with the barrel threading, and barrel shroud removed; the XM-15 was a legal AR-15 without barrel threading, or a bayonet mounting lug; post-ban semi-automatic AK-47s were also sold without folding stocks, bayonet lugs, and with standard or "thumbhole" stocks instead of pistol-grips. As the production of large-capacity magazines for civilians had also been prohibited, manufacturers sold their post-ban firearms either with newly manufactured magazines with capacities of ten rounds or less, or with pre-ban manufactured high-capacity magazines.

The BATF technology branch determined in 1994 that muzzle brakes were not impacted by the AWB, and that muzzle brakes on threaded barrels were not an assault weapon feature, so long as they were welded or soldered in place.

The law prohibited manufacturing and sale to civilians of detachable magazines with a capacity to hold more than ten rounds. This prompted the importation of large quantities of pre-1994 manufactured magazines from other countries. Former Warsaw Pact countries had a huge surplus of AK-47 magazines of various capacities, that could fit a variety of both pre-ban and post-ban AK-47 variants. There was also a large number of pre-1994 American-made magazines as well.

The similar appearance between "assault weapons" and machine guns was implied by Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center (VPC), years before the federal ban was passed. In his March 1989 paper titled "Assault Weapons: Analysis, New Research and Legislation," Sugarmann wrote that, "[Assault weapons] are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons – anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun – can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."

Kristen Rand, legislative director of the VPC, said a few months before the expiration of the ban, "The 1994 law in theory banned AK-47s, MAC-10s, UZIs, AR-15s and other assault weapons. Yet the gun industry easily found ways around the law and most of these weapons are now sold in post-ban models virtually identical to the guns Congress sought to ban in 1994."^[3]

Assault weapons ban in New York politics

New York's version of the law is very similar to the Federal version, but New York's version does not have a sunset provision. According to the laws of the State of New York, a magazine with a capacity of more than 10 rounds manufactured after September 14, 1994 cannot be legally possessed by anyone other than a law enforcement officer. A provision of the Federal law required the date of manufacture to be stamped on every newly manufactured "high capacity" magazine. Because that requirement is no longer in effect, the New York magazine ban becomes virtually unenforceable except with respect to those magazines manufactured during the ban and marked according to federal regulations then in effect.

Possession of unmarked "high-capacity" magazines made after the sunset of the federal ban would subject New Yorkers to felony charges. Police and prosecutors may be able to determine actual manufacture dates of seized magazines from information not generally available to consumers, such as the dates of magazine design changes and parts assembly numbers. The New York ban thus leaves possessors of unmarked magazines at risk of felony charges since they may not know the magazines were manufactured post-sunset and not pre-ban.

During the period of the federal ban, ATF would issue rulings as to whether attachment of a given muzzle device on a post-ban rifle was permissible because it acted only as a brake, or impermissible because it acted as a flash suppressor. As with magazines, the New York regulatory scheme implicitly relied upon such federal regulatory determinations for enforcement of the state's ban. With the sunset of the federal ban, ATF is no longer concerned with classifying muzzle devices. New York residents now may acquire or modify rifles attaching what they believe to be muzzle brakes, but which at some point New York police or prosecutors may classify as flash suppressors, resulting in unwitting possession of a banned rifle.

Assault weapons ban in other State's politics

The states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California also enacted similar bans.

Impact on crime

An informal survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police of about 20 departments revealed that since 2004 all of the agencies have either added weapons to officers' patrol units or have replaced existing weaponry with military-style arms. ^[4] Ron Stucker, criminal investigations chief of the Orange County Sheriff's Department in Florida, says deputies are now "frequently" encountering assault weapons in local robberies and during simple traffic stops. Weapons seizures in Orlando have increased overall by 26% since 2004. However, Paul Erhardt, a spokesman for major gun manufacturer Sigarms (which outfits about 40% of the statewide law enforcement agencies in the USA), says the 2001 terrorist attacks, the violence following Hurricane Katrina and other high-profile incidents involving weapons contributed more to law enforcement's interest in rearming officers than any concerns raised by the expiring assault weapons ban.

A 1999 preliminary study commissioned by the US Department of Justice done on the Assault Weapons Ban found that the ban’s "short-term impact on gun violence has been uncertain, due perhaps to the continuing availability of grandfathered assault weapons, close substitute guns and large capacity magazines, and the relative rarity with which the banned weapons were used in gun violence even before the ban" ^[5]

The 2004 final study commissioned by the DOJ found that "the ban’s impact on gun violence is likely to be small at best, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement". ^[6]

Others further argue that the ban did little to decrease crime because many criminals could still easily obtain weapons illegally. ^[7]

The Violence Policy Center blames technicalities. "Soon after its passage in 1994, the gun industry made a mockery of the federal assault weapons ban, manufacturing 'post-ban' assault weapons with only slight, cosmetic differences from their banned counterparts. The VPC estimates that more than one million assault weapons have been manufactured since the ban's passage in 1994."^[8]

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence examined the impact of the Assault Weapons Ban in a 2004 report entitled On Target: The Impact of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapon Act. ^[9] The report looked at 1.4 million crime guns and determined that "since the law’s enactment ... assault weapons have made up only 1.61% of the guns ATF has traced to crime — a drop of 66% from the pre-ban rate" and that the Act prevented 60,000 assault weapon crimes. The report determined that the Act prevented crimes with assault weapons despite gun manufacturers' attempts to evade the ban by making minor changes in banned guns.

Resurrection of the AWB (Assault Weapons Ban 2007)

Currently there is a new bill ^[10] sponsored by Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York to reinstitute the ban on assault weapons, expanded to include other firearms previously not considered to be assault weapons. The bill, as is drafted, has a "other uses" clause which addresses large capacity magazines and sales to juveniles. However this bill directly contradicts rulings made on the 1986 Gun Owners Protection Act^{[citation needed]}.