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

 

6th comment on Ceasefire's "EVERY 48 HOURS"

Phil Lee1

Jan 28, 2007 (rev. 3/8/08)

[ Testimony ]

 

In “EVERY 48 HOURS” CeaseFire Maryland Inc. Board Member Susan Peschin stated (p9) that the Federal assault weapon ban had reduced the number assault weapons traced .  She justified her statement by quoting from “Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96,” National Institute of Justice Report, March 1999, by Christopher Koper and Jeffrey Roth (“Every 48 Hours” page 9).  But Koper has prepared a follow-on study “An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003,” June 2004, Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania, by Christopher S. Koper, Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth.  So, why no quotes or citations from Koper's updated report?

 

Maybe the following snippets from Koper's update will explain why Ms. Pechin doesn’t quote from it:

1)    AWs were used in only a small fraction of gun crimes prior to the ban: about 2% according to most studies and no more than 8%.  Most of the AWs used in crime are assault pistols rather than assault rifles.   [p. 2]

2)    Because the ban has not yet reduced the use of LCMs [large capacity magazines] in crime, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.  [p. 2]

3)    Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.  AWs were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban.  LCMs are involved in a more substantial share of gun crimes, but it is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading.   [p. 3]

4)    Looking at the nation’s gun crime problem more broadly, however, AWs and LCMs were used in only a minority of gun crimes prior to the 1994 federal ban, and AWs were used in a particularly small percentage of gun crimes.  [p. 14]

5)    A compilation of 38 sources indicated that AWs accounted for 2% of crime guns on average (Kleck, 1997, pp.112, 141-143).10  The source in question contains a total of 48 estimates, but our focus is on those that examined all AWs (including pistols, rifles, and shotguns) as opposed to just assault rifles.  [p. 15]

6)    Similarly, the most common AWs prohibited by the 1994 federal ban accounted for between 1% and 6% of guns used in crime according to most of several national and local data sources examined for this and our prior study (see Chapter 6 and Roth and Koper, 1997, Chapters 5, 6):

• Baltimore (all guns recovered by police, 1992-1993): 2%

. . .

• National (guns used in murders of police, 1992-1994): 7-9%

Although each of the sources cited above has limitations, the estimates consistently show that AWs are used in a small fraction of gun crimes.  [p. 15]

7)    The relative rarity of AW use in crime can be attributed to a number of factors.   Many AWs are long guns, which are used in crime much less often than handguns.  Moreover, a number of the banned AWs are foreign weapons that were banned from importation into the U.S. in 1989.  Also, AWs are more expensive (see Table 2-1) and more difficult to conceal than the types of handguns that are used most frequently in crime.  [p. 16]

8)    In a 1991 national survey of adult state prisoners, for example, 8% of the inmates reported possessing a “military-type” firearm at some point in the past (Beck et al., 1993, p. 19).  Yet only 2% of offenders who used a firearm during their conviction offense reported using an AW for that offense (calculated from pp. 18, 33), a figure consistent with the police statistics cited above.  Similarly, while 10% of adult inmates and 20% of juvenile inmates in a Virginia survey reported having owned an AR, none of the adult inmates and only 1% of the juvenile inmates reported having carried them at crime scenes (reported in Zawitz, 1995, p. 6).  [p. 16]

9)    Hence, while some surveys suggest that ownership and, to a lesser extent, use of AWs may be fairly common among certain subsets of offenders, the overwhelming weight of evidence from gun recovery and survey studies indicates that AWs are used in a small percentage of gun crimes overall.  [p. 17]

10)    Our own more recent assessment indicates that AWs accounted for about 2.5% of guns produced from 1989 through 1993 (see Chapter 5).  Relative to previous estimates, this may signify that AWs accounted for a growing share of civilian firearms in the years just before the ban, though the previous estimates likely did not correspond to the exact list of weapons banned in 1994 and thus may not be entirely comparable to our estimate.  At any rate, the 2.5% figure is comparable to most of the AW crime gun estimates listed above; hence, it is not clear that AWs are used disproportionately in most crimes, though AWs still seem to account for a somewhat disproportionate share of guns used in murders and other serious crimes.  [p. 17]

11)    Using a number of national and local data sources, we also examined trends in measures of victims per gun murder incident and wounds per gunshot victim, based on the hypothesis that these measures might be more sensitive to variations in the use of AWs and LCMs.  These analyses revealed no ban effects, thus failing to show confirming evidence of the mechanism through which the ban was hypothesized to affect the gun murder rate.  [p.  24]

12)    Finally, it is worth noting the ban has not completely eliminated the use of AWs, and, despite large relative reductions, the share of gun crimes involving AWs is similar to that before the ban.  Based on year 2000 or more recent data, the most common AWs continue to be used in up to 1.7% of gun crimes.  [p. 52]

13)    Because offenders can substitute non-banned guns and small magazines for banned AWs and LCMs, there is not a clear rationale for expecting the ban to reduce assaults and robberies with guns.  [p. 81]

14)    Attributing the decline in gun murders and shootings to the AW-LCM [large capacity magazine] ban is problematic, however, considering that crimes with LCMs appear to have been steady or rising since the ban.  For this reason, we do not undertake a rigorous investigation of the ban’s effects on gun violence.109

109 In our prior study (Koper and Roth 2001a; Roth and Koper, 1997, Chapter 6), we estimated that gun murders were about 7% lower than expected in 1995 (the first year after the ban), adjusting for pre-existing trends.  However, the very limited post-ban data available for that study precluded a definitive judgment as to whether this drop was statistically meaningful (see especially Koper and Roth, 2001a).  Furthermore, that analysis was based on the assumption that crimes with both AWs and LCMs had dropped in the short term aftermath of the ban, an assumption called into question by the findings of this study.  It is now more difficult to credit the ban with any of the drop in gun murders in 1995 or anytime since.

15)    But a more casual assessment shows that gun crimes since the ban have been no less likely to cause death or injury than those before the ban, contrary to what we might expect if crimes with AWs and LCMs had both declined.  For instance, the percentage of violent gun crimes resulting in death has been very stable since 1990 according to national statistics on crimes reported to police (see Figure 9-1 in section 9.1).110  In fact, the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death during 2001 and 2002 (2.94%) was slightly higher than that during 1992 and 1993 (2.9%).  [p. 92]

16)    If anything, therefore, gun attacks appear to have been more lethal and injurious since the ban.  [p. 96]

17)    Therefore, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.  And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury, as we might have expected had the ban reduced crimes with both AWs and LCMs.  [p. 96]

18)    Should it be renewed, the [the Federal AW] ban might reduce gunshot victimizations.  This effect is likely to be small at best and possibly too small for reliable measurement.  A 5% reduction in gunshot victimizations is perhaps a reasonable upper bound estimate of the ban’s potential impact . . ., but the actual impact is likely to be smaller . . . .  [p. 100]

19)    Mandating further design changes in the outward features of semiautomatic weapons (e.g., banning weapons having any military-style features) may not produce benefits beyond those of the current ban.  As noted throughout this report, the most important feature of military-style weapons may be their ability to accept LCMs, and this feature has been addressed by the LCM ban and the LCMM rifle ban.  Whether changing other features of military-style firearms will produce measurable benefits is unknown.  [p. 101]

 

Generally, there isn’t much in the follow-on Koper study to suggest any impact on violence from the Federal AW ban as these snippets and other material in the report indicate.  It is true that the report has the usual statements that grabbers like to see and cite such as claims that after the ban of assault pistols, assault pistols were traced less.  But, when it comes to impacts on public safety, the report doesn’t give any positive evidence that the ban had a beneficial effect and doesn’t claim any public safety benefit.  To the contrary, the admitted lack of positive impact contained in the June 2004 report by Koper as evidenced by the 19 quotes from that report given here show the complete lack of provable public safety benefit.  While it might have been possible for Ms. Pechin to have been unaware of the new report from Koper when she claimed (“Back in Busine$$”, Consumer Federation of America, September 7, 2004, Susan Pechin, page 3) a 20% decrease in traces of AWs, it is hard to imagine she was ignorant of the new Koper report when she repeated this claim in her 2006 CeaseFireMd recycled version of this Consumer Federation of America report.

 

But there are other reasons Ms. Pechin doesn’t want to draw attention to this follow-on Koper study.  Remember how the CeaseFireMd people claim great reductions in assault weapons used in Baltimore because of the ban?  In Koper’s follow-on study, we see some numbers for AWs used in violence in Baltimore.  Seventy-five AWs were seized over the entire period of 1992 through 2000 but skipping 1994 (an average of 9.4 per year) associated with violent crimes and 444 total AWs were seized and traced (Table 6-3, page 53 of the follow-on study).  During the 1992 to 2000 period, Baltimore typically seized 3000 guns per year (for typical Baltimore traces see the BATF YCGII reports for Baltimore at: 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000).  So, AWs represent less than 1.9% of all crime guns seized in Baltimore.  The follow-on Koper report data shows the number of long-gun AWs traced from Baltimore too.  Over the eight year period from 1992 through 2000 skipping 1994, 42 so-called assault rifles were traced or 5.3 per year representing less than 0.2% of Baltimore gun seizures.  To put these numbers into context, more than 10 times as many Marlin .22 rifles are traced annually from Baltimore as the average of these so-called assault rifles.

 

In  2002, Time magazine published an article and picture (Maryland Alert membership required for this link) of the top ten guns traces nationally by the ATF in 2000.  Take a look at this article and picture and see how many AWs you find.  The top crime gun on the ATF’s list is the S & W .38 revolver.  The only long gun of the pictured top ten doesn’t have a high capacity magazine, isn’t a semi-automatic and there are no flash hiders, bayonet lugs or pistol grips on it and it is a shotgun, not a rifle.  The disconnect between CeaseFireMd’s attention on AWs and the reality of guns used in crime presented Time’s top-ten picture couldn’t be more stark.

 

Who would have guessed?

 

1  Phil Lee has a PhD in Mathematics.