Pulling The Trigger on Weapons Ban
The Daily Iowan Editorial Board
The 1994
federal assault-weapons ban is set to expire today, a depressing
casualty of an election season in which facts and honest debate have
been abandoned for shameless political pandering. This ban should have
been renewed, and our government's failure to do so is a sad commentary
on the state of current public policy.
The ban
has serious drawbacks, most seriously its limited scope. Numerous
exceptions and a somewhat illogical set of criteria for defining an
“assault weapon” make it fairly easy to purchase a deadly semiautomatic
rifle. But this is no reason to make the 19 specific weapons – such as
the AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles – commercially available again.
While
the ban's overall effectiveness is subject to dispute, that it has
reduced the number of crimes committed with assault weapons is not. If
the problem is that not enough heavy-combat weapons are banned, the
sensible solution is to ban more of them, not to make more legal.
Tellingly, this is the position held by a huge number of
law-enforcement officials, who must deal with gun violence head-on;
police chiefs and sheriffs across the country have spoken out for
strengthening the ban.
There is
no shortage of public support, either. Studies consistently show that
at least two-thirds of Americans favor the ban (a study by the
Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that 68 percent of Americans
support renewing the ban). Unfortunately, their opinion carries less
weight with our government than the tremendous lobbying power of such
groups as the National Rifle Association, which has taken an almost
frenetic stance against the ban.
Curiously, this is an issue on which Bush and Kerry supposedly agree.
When he was campaigning for president in 2000, Bush said he would
support the ban's renewal, and he maintains that he still does. Yet
Bush has not lifted a finger to accomplish this goal, even though the
Republican Congress has not even held a vote on the issue. This
[pseudo-]pResident has shown no reluctance to lobby Congress in the
past; at best, his silence is a tragic failure of leadership, and at
worst, it is a cynical attempt to have it both ways, claiming to
support the bill while quietly killing it.
(Click here to read the complete article.)
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