2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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So....to get the results they need to make the news and to feed their supporters in the extremist, anti-gun movement......these researchers lied.....to try to show the 1994 failed Assault Weapon Ban worked......
The question they would not be able to answer, even before we get to the article?
If someone had wanted to commit a mass public shooting between 1994 and 2004.....and not use any of the millions of rifles that actually existed at the time.......why didn't they use other rifles, pistols or shotguns?
See....their research falls apart with the easiest of questions....
A Suspiciously Selective, Logically Shaky Analysis of Mass Shooting Data Claims the Federal 'Assault Weapon' Ban 'Really Did Work'
Limiting their analysis to shootings in which six or more victims were killed, Donohue and Boulouta report that the "federal assault weapon ban in effect from September 1994 through 2004 was associated with a 25 percent drop in gun massacres (from eight to six) and a 40 percent drop in fatalities (from 81 to 49)." Those are bigger drops than the Mother Jones database shows, but only because Donohue and Boulouta arbitrarily excluded mass shootings that killed four or five people.
Having magnified the decrease associated with the "assault weapon" ban through careful case selection, Donohue and Boulouta suggest the change must be due to the law. "This decline is plausible because assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms designed for rapid fire and combat use, and large-capacity magazines increase the number of rounds that can be fired without reloading," they say. "While the gun lobby prevented the ban from being as effective as it could have been and saddled the law with a 10-year sunset provision, the ban did impede the easy access to the type of lethal weaponry that those intent on mass killing have readily available in most of the country today."
Contrary to Donohue and Boulouta's implication, neither rate of fire nor the capacity to accept detachable magazines distinguished the guns covered by the 1994 law from the guns that remained legal. In any case, the numbers do not suggest that the ban had much of an impact on the weapons used by mass shooters. By my count, guns covered by the ban were used in six out of 16 mass shootings (38 percent) in the decade before it was enacted, compared to five out of 15 (33 percent) while it was in effect.
Even leaving aside the functional similarity between banned and legal guns, it seems clear that the slight change in the mix of weapons cannot explain the 23 percent drop in fatalities, especially since the two deadliest pre-ban mass shootings, accounting for nearly a third of the fatalities during that 10-year period, were carried out with ordinary handguns.
The question they would not be able to answer, even before we get to the article?
If someone had wanted to commit a mass public shooting between 1994 and 2004.....and not use any of the millions of rifles that actually existed at the time.......why didn't they use other rifles, pistols or shotguns?
See....their research falls apart with the easiest of questions....
A Suspiciously Selective, Logically Shaky Analysis of Mass Shooting Data Claims the Federal 'Assault Weapon' Ban 'Really Did Work'
Limiting their analysis to shootings in which six or more victims were killed, Donohue and Boulouta report that the "federal assault weapon ban in effect from September 1994 through 2004 was associated with a 25 percent drop in gun massacres (from eight to six) and a 40 percent drop in fatalities (from 81 to 49)." Those are bigger drops than the Mother Jones database shows, but only because Donohue and Boulouta arbitrarily excluded mass shootings that killed four or five people.
Having magnified the decrease associated with the "assault weapon" ban through careful case selection, Donohue and Boulouta suggest the change must be due to the law. "This decline is plausible because assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms designed for rapid fire and combat use, and large-capacity magazines increase the number of rounds that can be fired without reloading," they say. "While the gun lobby prevented the ban from being as effective as it could have been and saddled the law with a 10-year sunset provision, the ban did impede the easy access to the type of lethal weaponry that those intent on mass killing have readily available in most of the country today."
Contrary to Donohue and Boulouta's implication, neither rate of fire nor the capacity to accept detachable magazines distinguished the guns covered by the 1994 law from the guns that remained legal. In any case, the numbers do not suggest that the ban had much of an impact on the weapons used by mass shooters. By my count, guns covered by the ban were used in six out of 16 mass shootings (38 percent) in the decade before it was enacted, compared to five out of 15 (33 percent) while it was in effect.
Even leaving aside the functional similarity between banned and legal guns, it seems clear that the slight change in the mix of weapons cannot explain the 23 percent drop in fatalities, especially since the two deadliest pre-ban mass shootings, accounting for nearly a third of the fatalities during that 10-year period, were carried out with ordinary handguns.
