NY Times: Many Say End of Firearms Ban Changed Little

The federal ban on so-called "assault weapons," which was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, expired last September. As the ban was set to expire, the shrill warnings from the anti-gun forces were characterized by misinformation and outright lies.

MoveOn.org ran an ad insinuating that allowing the ban to expire would legalize machine guns. That allegation was a bold-faced lie, as factcheck.org pointed out.

John Kerry said, "For the first time in 10 years, when a killer walks in a gun shop, when a terrorist goes to a gun show somewhere in America, if they want to purchase an AK-47 or some other military assault weapon, they are going to hear one word -- sure," Kerry said. "Today George Bush chose to make the job of terrorists easier and make the job of police officers harder, and that's just plain wrong."

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said: "...the assault weapons ban will expire ("sunset") in September 2004 unless Congress and President George W. Bush renew it. That means that AK47s and other semi-automatic assault weapons could begin flooding our streets again, as the weapons of choice of gang members, drug dealers and other dangerous criminals...the weapons banned by the 1994 law are nothing more than 'cop-killer guns.'"

An ad run by StoptheNRA.com asked, "Why does President Bush want to put cop-killing guns back on the street?"

But, as this article from yesterday's New York Times indicates, none of the horrific consequences predicted by the ban's proponents have come true.

Despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns, the expiration of the decade-long assault weapons ban last September has not set off a sustained surge in the weapons' sales, gun makers and sellers say. It also has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime in the past seven months, according to several metropolitan police departments.

The ban's supporters say that's because it didn't go far enough to begin with. But, as the NRA and other gun-rights groups said all along, the ban was focused primarily on weapons whose aesthetics made them "look scary." The guns banned by the law were never used in a high percentage of crimes, and were never the "weapons of choice of gang members, drug dealers and other dangerous criminals," no matter what Sarah Brady and her followers might have said.

The long-term aim of the gun control crowd has always been an eventual ban on virtually all civilian ownership of firearms. The demise of the assault weapons ban is a victory for defenders of the Second Amendment, and they deserve a great deal of credit for their dedication and perseverance.