EVERY 48 HOURS

An Analysis Of Assault Rifles An Analysis Of Assault Rifles

Traced To Crime In Maryland

September 2006

authored by CeaseFire Maryland Inc. Board Member Susan Peschin

 

8th comment on Ceasefire's "EVERY 48 HOURS"

Phil Lee1

Jan 17, 20 & 24, 2007 (rev. 3/8/08)

[ Testimony ]

 

This note continues comments on the “Every 48 Hours” report.

 

On page p9 Ms. Peschin claims:

In 1999, a Department of Justice (DOJ) commissioned study found that gun trace requests for assault weapons declined 20 percent in the year after the ban went into effect.23

23 Koper, Christopher and Roth, Jeffrey, “Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96,” National Institute of Justice Report, March 1999.

(the cited DOJ report is linked: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/173405.pdf ).  So, Ms. Peschin is claiming the federal ban passed in 1994 had an effect on use of assault weapons in violent crime.  Moreover, she cites this report to claim to the state of Maryland that a state ban on rifles will have a significant effect on violent crime there.

 

Ms. Peschin doesn't tell you, but a significant number of the traced firearms in the Koper and Roth report were pistols.  From Exhibit 1 on page 3, Koper and Roth show 291 Uzi, 878 Cobray type and 1202+175 TEC-9 type pistols totaling 2526 pistols being traced by the BATF in 1993 out of a total 3383 in the exhibit.  The BATF claimed that 3748 of Title XI banned-firearms were traced by them (page 6) in 1993.  The additional 265 firearms, not in Exhibit 1 but traced in 1993, are not identified, but at least 67.4% of this report’s statistics concerns handguns not rifles as indicated in Exhibit 1.  In 1994, the number of BATF traced firearms from the banned list increased to 4077 then decreased to 3268 in 1995 (see page 6 of the report).   That is, in the year the federal ban was enacted into law, the subject firearm tracing by the BATF increased by about 8.8% relative to 1993 (the year before) and then it decreased about 12.8% in 1995 relative to 1993 figures.  The decrease after an increase is made into a 20% decrease from the peak 1994 number.  No figures are cited to suggest that there was an increasing trend from prior years so suggesting the ban resulted in a 20% decrease isn’t statistically justified.

 

This cited Koper and Roth report states as a Key Issue on page 1:

"Although the weapons banned by this legislation were used only rarely in gun crimes before the ban, supporters felt that these weapons posed a threat to public safety because they are capable of firing many shots rapidly.  They argued that these characteristics enhance offenders’ ability to kill and wound more persons and to inflict multiple wounds on each victim, so that a decrease in their use would reduce the fatality rate of gun attacks."  (Emphasis added)

 

The supporters of banning semi-automatic rifles believe that certain features make them more “lethal.” By banning those features, firearms remaining in civilian hands would become less “lethal”, thereby making our world a much safer place.  But, the Koper and Roth report states: "The ban has failed to reduce the average number of victims per gun murder incident or multiple gunshot wound victims." (Key findings page 2)  That is, the fatality rate for gun attacks remained the same despite the ban – in other words, the high capability of firing many shots rapidly by semi-automatic rifles and pistols appears not to play much of a role in gun deaths.  Common sense would tell you the same thing about rifles since they are hard to conceal and are not very attractive to criminals for that reason.  Still, it is important to note Koper and Roth concluded high capacity firing does not play a role for concealable pistols either (remember pistols are 67.4% of the firearms considered in 1993).  Koper and Roth acknowledge this concealability issue for rifles on page 2 saying: "Various provisions of the ban limited its potential effects on criminal use.  As shown in exhibit 1, about half the banned makes and models were rifles [but not necessarily half the guns – note added by Phil Lee], which are hard to conceal for criminal use . . . . Further, the banned guns are used in only a small fraction of gun crimes; even before the ban, most of them rarely turned up in law enforcement agencies’ requests to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to trace the sales histories of guns recovered in criminal investigations."

 

Koper and Roth say (page 9 of their report) "Random, year-to-year fluctuations could not be ruled out as an explanation of the 6.7-percent drop [in murders].  With only 1 year of postban data available and only 15 States meeting the screening criteria for the final estimate, the model lacks the statistical power to detect a preventive effect of even 20 percent under conventional standards of statistical reliability."  In other words, the statistics do not show any ban effect on murder that can be distinguished from random fluctuation.

 

Koper and Roth say (page 10 of their report) admit, "The public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated."  That is, the report denies that the Federal 1994 has had any measurable positive effect on public safety. 

 

Yet Ms. Peschin cites this Koper and Roth report to justify to Maryland banning semi-automatic rifles.  She clearly doesn’t understand what this report says.

 

On page p10 of “Every 48 Hours” Ms. Peschin claims: “Part of the problem in determining an assault weapon ban’s effectiveness is the lack of reliable data on assault weapon-related deaths and injuries.  Exactly how many people are killed or injured each year by assault weapons is unknown.

 

. . .

 

It is also widely acknowledged that the gun industry easily circumvented the 1994 Federal assault weapons ban by making minor cosmetic changes, renaming them, and putting nearly identical “post-ban” weapons back on the market.”

 

So Ms. Peschin claims on p9 (see above) that the Federal ban was effective and quoted a DOJ study that traces of assault weapons declined 20% then on p10 she says the gun industry “easily circumvented” the 1994 Federal ban.  How could this ban be effective if it is “easily circumvented”?  Truth doesn’t seem to matter to her at all and logical consistency isn’t one of her strong points either.

 

Also on page p10 Ms. Peschin claims: "A study of Maryland's 1994 ban on assault pistols showed similar positive effects.  According to an analysis of 1995 data from the Baltimore City Police Department by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, 55 percent fewer assault pistols were used to commit crimes than would have been used had Maryland not passed a ban.24"  So, on the same page, Ms. Peschin claims measures of ban effectiveness lack reliable data, but a Maryland partial ban was effective in Baltimore.  She is wrong on both counts.

 

In 1994, Baltimore's murder rate was 43.4 per 100,000 (ref: Maryland Uniform Crime Reports 1975-2005, Maryland State Police) a little less than 5 times (see Figure 7 in Maryland Violent Crime  ) the US national rate of 9.0 per 100,000.  By 1999, the US murder rate had decrease to 5.7 per 100,000 and Baltimore's rate stood at 46.9 or more than 8 times the US rate.  Baltimore had no reduction in murder from 1994 (the year of Maryland's ban on selected semi-automatic pistols) to five years later in 1999.  In fact, murder rates increased slightly.  It didn't matter to a 1995 Baltimore murder victim whether 55% fewer "evil" pistols were used in that city.  Criminals found ways to keep murdering at the same rate as before.  In fact, Baltimoreans managed to murder at the rate of 45.6 per 100,000 in 1995 which was 5.1% greater than 1994.  So, what is the public safety benefit to this ban of pistols – is it that Baltimoreans had to use .38 revolvers or sawed-off shotguns to kill their victims instead?

 

Maryland faired better than Baltimore over the period 1994 to 1999 with murder rates going from 11.6 in 1994 to 9.5 in 1999.  But Maryland's murder rate was 29% higher than the US national rate in 1994.  In 1999, five years after the assault pistol ban, Maryland's murder rate was 58% higher than the US national rate.  Even though Maryland had a drop in its murder rate, the remaining states managed to reduce their murder rates much more than Maryland and did so without a ban of semi-automatic pistols.

 

Ms. Peschin’s self contradiction (“Part of the problem . . . is unknown” but the Federal 1994 and Maryland 1994 bans were effective) show disregard for the facts and for logic.  We know gun bans don’t work – their effectiveness has been studied by both the CDC (References [Transcript] [Washington Times OpEd]) and the National Academy of Sciences ([News Conference] [“Gun-control study inconclusive,” Wash. Times, Dec. 17, 2004; or here] [“Anti-Gun Academics,” John R. Lott, Jr.]).  Neither the CDC nor the National Academy of Sciences have found scientific justification that gun control reduces violence.  Others have concluded gun bans are not effective including the Jan. 19, 2003 Washington Post editorial “Maryland Firing Blanks”.

 

Ms. Peschin has claimed that there is no reliable data showing “assault weapon-related deaths and injuries” but, nevertheless, a ban is justified even though we can’t measure how serious the problem is with these firearms.  She has claimed that the 1994 Federal ban and 1994 Maryland ban on assault weapons showed measured benefits to public safety, but there isn’t any reliable data on “assault weapon-related deaths and injuries”.

 

Unfortunately for her contradictory positions, reliable public safety data has been shown above on these 1994 bans, but the data contradict Ms. Peschin assertions on both sides of her contradictory positions.

 

A ban of the “semi-automatic rifle” class of firearms targeted by the “Every 48 Hours” document isn’t justified by the data either.  Reliable data from the Maryland State Police shows how many Marylanders are killed with rifles each year.  While they do not publish whether the rifles are the targeted class of rifles, we know the numbers of deaths resulting from violence using all rifles is a small fraction of all murders in Maryland (2 killings or less than 0.4% of Maryland murders in 2004 and 4 killings or less than 0.8% in 2005).  Nationally, Rifles are involved in fewer murders than knives (each year there are 3.2 to 4.7 times as many knife murders).  Rifles are involved in fewer murders even than personal weapons such as hands and feet (1.6 to 2.5 times the rifle use rate).  Rifles, including the class of rifles vilified by Ms. Peschin, simply aren’t involved in a large fraction of National violence or in Maryland violence.

 

1  Phil Lee has a PhD in Mathematics.