Disinformation on “Assault” Gun Ban

According to The Associated Press,

While manufacturers look for a boom in business as people buy up previously banned weapons like AK-47s, Uzis and TEC-9s, police chiefs warn of an upsurge in crime.

Actually, even under the “assault” weapons ban, you could legally buy a fully automatic AK-47 in the United States provided you wanted to jump through a bunch of red tape.

And if all you wanted was the semi-automatic version of the AK-47, you could essentially buy that too. There are a number of AK-47 semiautomatic knockoffs that, with minor cosmetic changes to comply with the “assault weapons” ban, went on sale immediately after the ban (the major changes that were made were removal of pistol grips and ability to mount a bayonet).

The Associated Press also falsely claims that,

Just over a year after the San Francisco shootings, President Bill Clinton signed Feinstein’s bill into law. It banned the sale of 19 specific semiautomatic weapons and ammunition clips of 10 rounds or more.

Wrong! The law banned the manufacture or sale of new ammunition clips of 10 rounds or more. It did not effect the sale of such clips that were manufactured before the law went into effect. The main effect was that the price of larger ammunition clips increased during the period the law was in effect, but they were still widely available for sale (in fact, manufacturers of such clips dramatically increased production of larger clips before the ban went into effect precisely for this reason).

Source:

Assault weapons ban to expire Monday. Associated Press, September 13, 2004.

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