Because you dummies keep up with the crap and refuse to acknowledge that the assault rifle ban expired in 2002..
That ban expired in 2004. Sunsetted. And there's this, from wikileaks:
In 2003, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, an independent, non-federal task force, examined an assortment of firearms laws, including the AWB, and found "insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence". A 2004 critical review of firearms research by a
National Research Council committee said that an academic study of the assault weapon ban "did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence outcomes". The committee noted that the study's authors said the guns were used criminally with relative rarity before the ban and that its maximum potential effect on gun violence outcomes would be very small.
Dickey Amendment (1996)
1996: Congress
bans the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from doing any research that could be used to “advocate or promote gun control,” effectively ending federally funded public health research on gun violence.
Attempts to remove the amendment
In 2013, President
Barack Obama directed the CDC to research gun violence. The CDC responded by funding a research project in 2013
[9] and conducting their own study in 2015.
[10] That month, a spokeswoman for the agency, Courtney Lenard, told the
Washington Post that "It is possible for us to conduct firearm-related research within the context of our efforts to address youth violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, and suicide. But our resources are very limited."
[3] In October 2015, 110 members of Congress, all of whom were Democrats, signed a letter calling on Congress to reject the amendment.
[11] In December 2015, despite
Nancy Pelosi's efforts to have the Dickey amendment removed from the spending bill for the following year, Congress passed this bill with the amendment still in it.
[12]
Reactions[edit]
In response to this amendment being adopted, the
American Psychological Association adopted a resolution condemning it.
[2] In December 2015, multiple medical organizations, including
Doctors for America, the
American College of Preventive Medicine, and the
American Academy of Pediatrics, called on Congress to repeal the amendment.
[3] That same month, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science also called for an end to this amendment.
[13]