Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [an 59696] at [anon.penet.fi] (devildog)
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 1994 12:33:16 UTC
Subject: Kleck on evil guns.
The following copyright violation is brought to you by
the evil devil dog from hell of doom with fleas
from "point blank"
70 Searching for "Bad" Guns
Assault Rifles and Assault Weapons
According to official Department of Defense
definitions, as well as usage in standard firearms
reference works, an assault rifle (AR) is a "
selective fire" military rifle, i.e., one capable of
firing both fully automatically and semiautomatically
(and sometimes in short bursts of 3-5 rounds) (U.S.
Department of Defense 1980, p. 105; Ezell 1983, p.
515). However, the term "assault rifle" took on a
very different meaning in common journalistic usage in
the late 1980s, usually referring to weapons capable
of firing only in a semiautomatic mode, and having a
"military" appearance. There is no official
definition of the term in its journalistic usage, and
this usage is clearly inconsistent with official
military definitions. The term "assault rifle" in
quotes will be used to refer to the journalistically
defined weapon type and the term without quotes to
refer to true assault rifles.
An even vaguer term "assault weapons" (AW), also
began to appear in the news media in the late 1980s.
The term seemed to encompass semiautomatic pistols and
a few shotguns as well as "assault rifles," although
it too appears to be restricted to weapons
conceptualized as "militaty style" guns. Most
firearms, no matter what their current uses, derive
directly or indirectly from firearms originally
designed for the military; " military style" appears
to signify a modern or contemporary military
appearance. For example, plastic stocks are
supposedly more "military" in appearance than wood
stocks, a loop for a lanyard is militarystyle, having
a nonreflective surface is more military than a shiny
one, and so
Assault Rifles and Assault Weapons
71
on. Mechanically, there are no significant differences
between the semiautomatic rifles labeled "assault
rifles" and other semiautomatic centerfire rifles sold
to the civilian market for hunting and target
shooting, such as the Ruger Mini-14/5R Ranch Rifle and
the Valmet Hunter (Warner 1988, pp. 298, 302).
Legislators and other policy makers have also
had difficulties defining assault weapons." They have
had to tackle the difficult task of developing a
definition that simultaneously satisfied two
conflicting requirements: (1) it identified the
attributes that supposedly make AWs more dangerous
than other guns, and (2) was sufficiently limited so
as to not restrict gun models popular among large
numbers of voters. The chief attributes that are
supposed to make AWs more dangerous than other guns
are their semiautomatic capability, which provides a
higher rate of fire than other guns (and allegedly
make it easy to convert the guns to a fully automatic
capability), and their ability to accept large-
capacity magazines. However, if a law restricted all
guns with such attributes, millions of voters would be
affected. About 300,000-400,000 semiautomatic
centerfire rifles and about 400,000-800,000
semiautomatic pistols are sold each year in the United
States (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1989; Howe 1987),
and a December 1989 national survey indicated that 27%
of U.S. gun owners reported ownership of at least one
semiautomatic gun (Quinley 1990, p. 3), which would
imply that about 13% of all U.S. households own such
guns. Most of these semiautomatic firearms can accept
large magazines.
As a way out of this conflict, many policymakers
have thrown up their hands and declined to identify
the dangerous attributes of AWs. Instead, the
proposed bills include long lists of specific makes
and models of guns that have little in common beyond
(almost always) a semiautomatic loading mechanism and
(usually) an arguably "military" appearance. Typical
of such efforts is that of the Florida Commission on
Assault Weapons (Florida 1990), which listed no less
than 66 different guns in a survey designed to gather
data on AWs from police agencies. The list lumped
together handguns, rifles, and shotguns, both those
usually sold with large magazines and those sold with
small ones, large caliber and small caliber, foreign-
made and domestic. Although the guns on the list were
almost all semiautomatic, so were a large number of
guns left off the list, such as the very popular Colt
Model 19llAl .45caliber pistol and the Beretta Model
92 9-mm pistol. Legislation passed in California and
New Jersey, as well as a federal ban on importation,
defined the restricted weapon category using similarly
heterogeneous lists of specific gun models (Cox
Newspapers 1989).
72 Searching for "Bad" Guns
The difficulties with this political compromise
are obvious. If semiautomatic fire and the ability to
accept large magazines are not important in crime,
there is little reason to regulate AWs. On the other
hand, if these are important crime-aggravating
attributes, then it makes little crime control sense
(though ample political sense) to systematically ex-
clude from restriction the most widely owned models
that have these attributes, since this severely limits
the impact of regulation.
There is nothing new about either semiautomatic
firearms in general or "assault rifles" in particular.
Semiautomatic firearms were produced in large numbers
beginning in the late nineteenth century, and true
assault rifles were introduced into military use
during World War 11, (Ezell 1983, pp. 17, 514-5).
Semiautomatic "assault rifles" did become more popular
among civilians during the 1980s--gun catalogs
indicate a substantial increase in the number of
models of "paramilitary" rifles shown between 1973 and
1988 (compare Koumjian 1973 with Warner 1988).
However, this is less significant than it appears,
because it reflects little more than a demand for guns
with militarystyle cosmetic details, rather than a
criminologically significant shift in mechanically
different gun types. Mechanically, "assault rifles"
are semiautomatic centerfire rifles. Trends in sales
of semiautomatic centerfire rifles were basically flat
in the period from 1982 to 1987, and were
substantially lower in the 1980s than in the 1970s
(see Table 3.1). The major trend in recent years has
not been a shift to mechanically different types of
rifles, but rather a shift in consumer preferences
regarding guns' appearance, and a substantial shift
away from domestic sources to foreign sources of semi-
automatic rifles. In light of this latter trend,
President George Bush's move in 1989 to ban imports of
foreign "assault rifles" makes more sense as trade
protectionism than as gun control. Similarly,
proposed state controls were heavily aimed at foreign-
origin AWs (e.g., Florida 1990).
Among handguns, there was a trend towards semi-
automatic pistols and away from revolvers in the 1970s
and 1980s. In 1973, 28% of handguns produced by U.S.
manufacturers were semiautomatic pistols, compared to
58% in 1987 (Howe 1987; U.S. Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms 1989b). This trend was
characteristic of the general flow of guns into the
general population's stock of guns, implying increases
in the average magazine capacity and rate of fire of
U.S. handguns. It seems likely that a similar trend
occurred among criminals, though it is unknown whether
the trend was any stronger among criminals. It also
is unclear whether such a trend would have caused any
increases in violent crime or influenced the outcomes
of many criminal assaults.
Although there was no upward trend in sales of
semiautomatic center-
Assault Rifles and Assault Weapons
73
fire rifles in the general public from the early 1970s
to the late 1980s, it might be argued that the
prevalence of ownership and use of these and other
weapons in the broad AW category increased among
criminals during this period. There are no reliable
quantitative trend data for this period, partly
because the matter did not become an issue until late
in the period. The best available information appears
to be that pertaining to trends in Dade County
(Miami), Florida. An informal 1990 survey of all
seven firearms examiners in that county yielded the
unanimous opinion that AW use in shootings had been
slowly and steadily declining since 1981 (Florida
1990, pp. 156-7).
It was commonplace for news sources in the late
1980s to refer to assault rifles" as the "favored"
weapon of criminals, or, more specifically, of drug
dealers and youth gangs (e.g., New York Times 2-21-89;
Newsweek 10-14-85, p. 48). There is no hard evidence
to support such a claim, either for criminals in
general or for these specific types of criminals.
Analyses of samples of guns seized by police from
criminals indicate that only a small fraction can be
described as "assault weapons." This fraction was less
than 3% ("assault rifles" only) in Los Angeles in 1988
(Trahin 1989), 0.5% ("assault-type long guns") in New
York City in 1988 [White Plains Reporter Dispatch 3-
27-89, pp. A8, A9 (Associated Press wire service
story)], 8% ("assault weapons") in Oakland,
California, less than 3% (semiautomatic rifles,
including sporting ones) in Chicago, and 0% ("assault
weapons" covered under the 1989 federal import ban) in
Washington, D.C. (New York Times 4-3-89, p. A14). Of
217 homicides committed in 1989 in Dade County (Miami)
Florida, 3 or 1.4% involved an " assault weapon"
(Florida 1990, pp. 140-3). In Massachusetts
(excluding Boston) during 1984-1988, there were 559
criminal homicides, about 295 of them involving guns
(U.S. FBI 1985-1989). Of these, 5 involved "assault
rifles" (Boston Globe 3-16-89, p. 12), i.e., 0.9% of
the homicides and about 1.7% of the gun homicides.
With the exception of the Oakland data, available
evidence indicates that AWs constituted no more than
3% of crime guns in the nation's big cities. In the
face of such evidence, even a spokesman for Handgun
Control, Inc., which advocated tighter restrictions on
AWs, conceded that assault weapons "play a small role
in overall violent crime" (emphasizing, however, that
they could become a problem in the future) (New York
Times 4-7-89, p. A15).
This spokesman's use of the term "overall
violent crime" may have been intended to hint that
"ARs" or AWs might be commonly used by special
criminal subgroups such as drug dealers and youth gang
members. For example, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration asserted that "you can
count on coming across them on every
74 Searching for "Bad" Guns
single narcotics raid" (Los Angeles Herald Examiner 1-
23-89, p. A-1). The limited available hard evidence
contradicts the claim that "assault weapons" are
favored by these groups. Records of the previously
mentioned Chicago-area narcotics unit indicated that
only 6 of 375 guns seized in drug raids, or 1.6% could
be described as AWs (Mericle 1989).
In Los Angeles, beginning in 1983, police and
newspapers reported an epidemic of so-called "drive-
by" shootings allegedly involving gang members using
"assault weapons" to fight over control of drug
trafficking. However, when queried about the guns
seized from gang members, the head of the city's
largest police gang detail admitted that (as of 1985)
the unit had not confiscated any AWs: "We've seized
only shotguns and handguns, but I have heard about the
purchase of Uzis and military assault rifles" (Crime
Control Digest 5-13-85, p. 2; emphasis added). Pre-
sumably "AR" use was even less common among gang
members in cities lacking the vocal concern over gang
use of "ARs" that characterized Los Angeles.
Probably the most extensive data on the
involvement of AWs in crime were gathered by the
Florida Assault Weapons Commission (1990), which
distributed a survey on the topic to virtually every
police agency in the state. The Commission defined
AWs very broadly, providing agencies with a list of 66
models of handguns, rifles, and shotguns. The survey
covered the period 1986-1989 and inquired about guns
involved in crimes as well as all guns confiscated or
recovered after being abandoned. Of 136 agencies
eventually returning the survey, 18 were "unable to
provide information" and another three provided
unusable data. Of the remaining 115 agencies, 86
reported "no experience with assault weapons" or "no
assault weapons listed." Of the 29 agencies with some
experience with AWs, only two reported experience with
more than two such guns. Of 2522 guns "seized or
abandoned" and recovered by the police, only 90 (3.6%)
were AWs under the broad definition used. If
nonreporting agencies were predominantly those without
any contact with AWs, the true figures for AW
involvement in crime would all be lower. In sum, in
Florida, a state in which drug-linked AW use was
purportedly very common, most police agencies, even
over a 4-year period, had apparently never come across
even a single AW.
Lest it be thought that such negative evidence
dissuaded those who believed that "assault weapons"
were popular crime weapons, consider a widely
published newspaper series produced by the Cox
newspaperchain. Rather than study general samples of
guns seized by police from criminals committing gun
crimes, the reporters studied a more eccentric
Assault Rifles and Assault Weapons
75
subset of seized guns-those for which a "trace
request" had been processed by BATF.
Atrace request is submitted when police have
seized a gun and decide they want to track down its
previous history, from manufacture or importation to
wholesale purchase to first retail purchase. About
35,100 trace requests were sent to BATF in 1987 (Cox
Newspapers 1989, p. 3). Cox claimed that about 1 in
10 "gun crimes" results in a trace request. In fact,
only about 1 of 6 of these trace requests involved a
gun used to further a violent crime such as homicide,
assault, or robbery. The rest were linked only with
technical gun violations (illegal possession, sales,
etc.), "narcotics" violations, or other
"miscellaneous" offenses (BATF 1990). Thus, there are
only about 5600 traces per year of guns used to
further violent crimes. Compared to about 360,000
such crimes known to the police in 1987 (U.S. FBI
1988), this means that fewer than 2% of violent gun
crimes result in a trace. Thus, requesting a trace is
strictly optional and clearly not very common.
It also is apparently not random. For example,
there seems to be a disproportionate tendency to
request a trace when a gun is linked with drug
trafficking or other "organized" crime (Cox Newspapers
1989, p. 4). For whatever reason, "assault weapons"
are substantially overrepresented among guns traced,
relative to their share of all guns used in violent
crimes. Cox claimed that 10% of U.S. "crime guns"
(i.e., among those few that were traced) were "assault
weapons." However, they also provided a "city-bycity"
breakdown that allows comparisons with the previously
cited police data taken from the entire stock of guns
seized from criminals. The latter data indicated that
3% of seized guns in Chicago were semi-automatic
rifles, whereas Cox found that 10% of traces concerned
"assault weapons." The corresponding figures were 3%
("assault rifles") of all confiscated gun vs. 19% for
Los Angeles trace requests, under 1% ("assault
rifles") of all guns vs. 11% of New York City's trace
requests, and 0% ("assault weapons" covered under
federal import ban) vs. 13% of trace requests from
Washington, D.C. Part of these huge discrepancies is
due to the fact that the Cox reporters defined
"assault weapons" more broadly than did police
departments in these cities-the Cox definition
encompassed 64 different weapons (p. 1). However, Cox
reported that 90% of the traced "assault weapons" were
of just 10 different models, 6 of which were "assault
rifles" clearly counted in the police estimates based
on confiscation stocks. Most of the difference,
therefore, was probably due to the simple fact that
guns on which trace requests are filed are not
representative, by gun type, of the firearms used in
crime. Consequently, the Cox trace request data could
not provide a reliable basis for judging the share of
crime guns that are "assault weapons." It is worth
noting that the Cox Chain began publishing their "as-
sault weapons" series on May 21, 1989, over a month
and a half after publication of the New York Times and
Associated Press articles in which the more
representative police confiscation figures were
reported.
About the time that news stories started to
report on how rarely assault rifles" were used in
crime (ca. April 1989), the Cox chain and other
newspapers shifted their emphasis to the broader, more
vaguely defined category dubbed "assault weapons"
(AWs), an amorphous category that included many
semiautomatic pistols and a few shotgun models,
apparently with militarystyle cosmetic details, as
well as "assault rifles." Thus, the emphasis was
shifted to semiautomatic handguns. The Cox chain
claimed that criminals "preferred" AWs in some sense,
documenting their claim by showing that the fraction
of traced guns that were AWs exceeded a rough guess
from BATF on the fraction of all U.S. guns that were
AWs (Cox 1989, p. 4).
Could it be that criminals "prefer"
semiautomatic pistols in this same sense? Trace
requests are misleading for judging the types of guns
generally used by criminals, but no other national
source covers all guns seized by police or a
representative sample of seized guns. However, one
can examine a local police sample of seized guns and
compare it with guns recently added to the general
U.S. gun stock. Zimring (1976) showed that the
majority of guns used by criminals are relatively re-
cently manufactured guns, so these would be the
appropriate set of guns to use in the comparison. In
a sample of guns seized in the first 3 months of 1989
by the Los Angeles Police Department, 49.8% of the
handguns were semiautomatic pistols (Los Angeles
Police Department 1989). Among the 7.08 million
handguns added to the U.S. stock (the number
domestically manufactured, plus imports, minus
exports) from 1984 to 1987 (1988 data were not yet
available), about 3.89 million were semiautomatic
pistols.' Thus, about 55 % of the handguns bought by
the general, largely noncriminal public were
semiautomatic pistols, while only about 50% of those
seized from criminals fell into this category. Los
Angeles criminals in 1989 did not "prefer"
semiautomatic weapons in the sense of going out of
their way to obtain them in numbers disproportionate
to their share of the recently sold handgun stock.
Rather, criminals were just using the same kinds of
handguns as recent noncriminal gun buyers were
obtaining. If the higher rate of fire and larger
magazines of these weapons were important to
criminals, they were no more important to them than to
noncriminal gun buyers.
Assault Rifles and Assault Weapons
77
"Assault rifles" are clearly much larger than
the handguns criminals really do favor, and even
"assault weapon" handguns such as Uzis are generally
larger than other handguns. Since criminals say they
favor more concealable handguns, this may largely
explain why so few criminals use assault weapons.
AW pistols are no more lethal than either non-AW
semiautomatic pistols (since they differ only
cosmetically) or revolvers. Moreover, "ARs" are less
lethal than ordinary civilian hunting rifles and the
standard military rifles of the World War 11 era.
Based on scattered experience in treating wounds
purportedly inflicted with "assault rifles," some
emergency room physicians have asserted that these
guns create especially devastating and lethal wounds
that are unusually hard to treat (New York Times 2-21-
89). However, specialists in the wounding effects of
military rifle ammunition, experienced in treating
battlefield wounds, contradict this claim (Fackler
1989; Mohler 1989). Dr. Martin L. Fackler (1989),
Director of the Wound Ballistics Laboratory at the
Letterman Army Institute of Research, has noted that
typical "assault rifles" fire smaller-than-average
ammunition, and has shown through ballistics ex-
periments that this ammunition has milder wounding
effects than civilian hunting ammunition or regular
infantry rifle cartridges. This is partly because the
military cartridges commonly used in "assault rifles"
have smaller, pointed bullets, which tend to produce
smaller wounds, which are correspondingly less lethal.
The more lethal hollow point or "dumdum" bullet often
used in hunting ammunition was forbidden for military
use by the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. In addition
to serving lifesaving humanitarian purposes, the
smaller, pointed full-metal-jacketed bullet has
military advantages. By wounding rather than killing
enemy soldiers, it not only removes the soldier from
combat, but also requires the enemy to devote
resources to evacuating and treating him. Further,
the light weight of the bullets allows soldiers to
carry more rounds. In short, rather than being
designed to kill human beings, the military ammunition
commonly used in assault rifles was designed in such a
way as to reduce the likelihood it would kill.
Nevertheless, compared to the ammunition used in
the middle-caliber handguns that criminals commonly
use, "AR" ammunition is indeed more lethal, as is
rifle ammunition in general. Fackler described the
"AR" ammunition as being intermediate in power between
handgun ammunition and regular infantry rifle
cartridges (and, by implication, civilian hunting
ammunition). Thus, if many criminals in the future
did start using "ARs" in place of handguns it would
result in higher fatality rates in assaults and other
crimes. Because of the limited concealability
78
Searching for "Bad" Guns
of "ARs," it is unlikely that criminals would adopt
them. But even if at least some types of criminals
did seek out rifles as an alternative to handguns,
they would have an ample supply of more lethal
substitute rifles available to them even in the
absence of "ARs."
While "ARs" are not unusually lethal relative to
other rifles, they do have other technical attributes
potentially relevant to criminal violence: (1) they
are capable of firing single shots as fast as the
shooter can pull the trigger, and (2) they can accept
magazines that hold a large number of cartridges. It
is unclear whether either of these attributes is of
substantial criminological significance. "ARs" are
capable of firing at a rate somewhat faster than other
gun types, but it is unknown how often violent
incidents occur in which this higher rate of fire
would have any impact on the outcome of the incident.
For example, even in a rare mass shooting such as the
1989 Stockton schoolyard killing of five children, the
killer fired 110 rounds in 3 to 4 (or more) minutes,
or about 28-37 rounds per minute (Los Angeles Times 1-
18-89, p. 3; 1-19-89, p. 9). The same rate of fire
can be achieved with an ordinary double-action re-
volver using speed-loaders to reload. Further, there
was nothing to stop Purdy from continuing his attack
for another 3 or 4 minutes. The higher rate of fire
was unnecessary for Purdy to carry out his murderous
intentions-he did all the shooting he wanted to do in
4 minutes and then killed himself.
The effective rate of fire of any gun is limited
by its recoil. When a shot is fired, the force of the
bullet leaving the barrel causes the gun to move back
toward the shooter and off of its original aiming
alignment. it cannot be fired at the same target again
until the shooter puts it back in line with the
target. Thus the somewhat higher rate of fire of
semiautomatic weapons cannot be fully exploited,
reducing the effective difference between these
weapons and revolvers.
Ordinary revolvers can easily fire six rounds in
3 seconds without any special skill on the part of the
shooter or modification to the weapon. Even assuming
a semiautomatic gun could fire at twice this rate, it
would only mean that a shooter could fire six rounds
in 1.5 instead of 3 seconds. The issue comes down to
this: How many violent incidents occur each year in
which a shooter has 1.5 seconds to shoot the
victim(s), but not 3 seconds? Such incidents are
probably fairly rare, although there are no hard data
on the matter.
Critics of "ARs" have also pointed to the high
total volume of fire of which the weapons are capable,
due to their large magazines. It should be noted that
magazines for these weapons are almost always detach-
able, and the weapons are usually capable of accepting
many different
Assault Rifles and Assault Weapons
79
common magazine sizes, whether one containing only 3
rounds, or one containing 30 or more (Warner 1989).
Thus, the high volume of rounds is not, strictly
speaking, an attribute of the gun itself, but rather
of the magazine. Likewise, most of the millions of
ordinary semiautomatic pistols sold in the United
States for decades are also capable of accepting box-
type magazines that can have very large capacities.
Consequently, one legal difficulty in distinguishing
"ARs" from other semiautomatic rifles, or AWs from
other semiautomatic handguns, is that most varieties
of all of these weapon categories accept box-type
magazines. Since such magazines can be either big or
small, it means that the unrestricted civilian-style
guns are just as capable of using a large-capacity
magazine as are the restricted modern militarystyle
AWs. Consequently, rational controls based on concern
over large ammunition capacity would have to either
ban large magazines or ban all guns capable of
receiving types of magazines that sometimes have large
capacities. The former alternative would be very
difficult to enforce, whereas the latter alternative
would mean banning large numbers of hunting rifles and
most semiautomatic pistols, and thus would negate the
chief political benefit of restricting only rare
weapons.
It is doubtful whether a high volume magazine is
currently relevant to the outcome of a large number of
violent incidents. The rare mass killing
notwithstanding, gun assaults usually involve only a
few shots being fired. Even in a sample of gun
attacks on armed police officers, where the incidents
are more likely to be mutual combat gunfights with
many shots fired, the suspects fired an average of
only 2.55 times (New York City Police Department 1989,
p. 6). On the other hand, if high-volume guns did
become popular among criminals in the future, this
could change for the worse. Further, although "ARs"
are not unique in any one of their attributes, they
are unusual, although not unique, in combining the
lethality of rifles, a potentially large ammunition
capacity, and a high rate of fire. It is possible
that the combination of all three attributes could
have a crime-enhancing effect greater than that
generated by any one of the attributes.
Whereas semiautomatic firearms offer a rate of
fire only somewhat higher than other common gun types,
fully automatic weapons have much higher rates of
fire. "ARs" sold on the civilian market are not
capable of fully automatic fire, but it has been
argued that this distinction is a minor one because
"ARs" are so easily converted to fully automatic fire
(Newsweek 10-14-85, pp. 48-9). The New York Times, in
an editorial, even told its readers that "many
semiautomatics can be made fully automatic with a
screwdriver, even a paperclip" (8-2-88). Eight
80
Searching for "Bad" Guns
months later, a New York Times feature article about a
federal ban on importation of "ARs" gave its readers a
rather different view of the "issue of whether or not
such guns are easy to convert from semiautomatics to
illegal fully automatics":
The staff of technical experts at the [Bureau of
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms] disassemble, test
and examine samples of all semiautomatic weapons
marketed in the United States to make formal
determinations on this question. Any model
found to be readily convertible to automatic
fire would be declared illegal. None of the
five types included in the import ban had been
declared readily convertible, nor have any
domestic semiautomatics now on sale. (4-3-89;
emphasis added)
Thus, none of the semiautomatic guns available
for sale in the U.S., whether "ARs" or not, was
readily convertible to fully automatic fire as of
1989. Two semiautomatics, the MAC-10 and MAC-11, were
sold in the United States, but in 1982 were declared
by the BATF to be "readily convertible" to automatic
fire and their further sale was banned (Hancock 1985).
Of course, it is trivially true that almost any gun
can be converted to fully automatic fire, given
sufficient expertise, time, tools, and added parts.
Given unlimited resources, one could also fabricate an
entire machine gun from scratch. However, data on
weapons seized by police indicate that criminals
almost never have both the resources and the
inclination to perform a conversion. Of over 4000
guns confiscated by the Los Angeles Police Department
in a 1-year period, only about a half dozen (1/6 of
1%) were formerly semiautomatic guns successfully
converted to fully automatic fire; only about a dozen
showed evidence of even an attempt to perform a
conversion (Trahin 1989).
All rifles fire bullets at high velocity, which
increases the likelihood they can penetrate body armor
of the sort police officers wear. This has given rise
to concern about "ARs" by some police. One big city
police official was quoted in the Los Angeles Times
(5-25-90) as saying "We're tired of passing out flags
to the widows of officers killed by drug dealers with
Uzis." Are large numbers of police officers killed by
drug dealers using Uzis? It is easy enough to test
this narrow claim about Uzis. According to the Chief
of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, from
1980 when the Uzi was first imported into the U.S.,
through 1989, not one police officer in the U.S. was
killed by a drug dealer with an Uzi. Only one case in
their files involved an officer killed with an Uzi
under any circumstances, but this was in Puerto Rico
and did not involve a drug dealer (Wilson 1990a).
Assault Rifles and Assault Weapons
81
The police official's claim might generously be
interpreted to broadly refer to all AWs rather than
just Uzis, and all criminals, not just drug dealers.
For the 10-year period 1980-1989, of 810 officers
feloniously killed in the United States and its
territories, 33 (4%) were killed by " assault weapon"
models covered by federal restrictions either passed
or pending as of January, 1991. For 1986-1989, of 284
killings, 14 involved rifles and three involved
handguns covered under such restrictions (U.S.
Congressional Research Service 1991, p. 6). Thus, 4%
involved "ARs" and 5% involved AWs, averaging about
four AW killings of police officers in the United
States per year.
For the entire nation in 1988, there were 78
police officer killings, of which 5-8 involved AWs
(U.S. Congressional Research Service 1991, p. 6).
Based on case descriptions published by the FBI, there
were at most four, and possibly no police officers,
killed by drug dealers using any kind of "assault
weapon" anywhere in the U.S. in 1988 (U.S. FBI 1989,
pp. 31, 33, 37).
"Assault rifles" are of particular concern to
police because some of these weapons, like civilian
hunting rifles, are capable of penetrating police body
armor. ("Assault weapon" handguns are no more capable
of penetrating body armor than ordinary revolvers.) In
the United States in 1988, five officers wearing body
armor were killed by gunshot wounds inflicted anywhere
other than in the head, regardless of the gun type
used (U.S. FBI 1989, p. 13). At least four of these,
however, involved bullets that passed between body
armor panels or in lower torso areas below the area
covered by protective vests (U.S. FBI 1989, pp. 28,
31, 356, 38). In sum, killings of police officers
with bullets penetrating body armor, fired from AWs or
any other kinds of guns, were almost nonexistent.
Have the very rare killings of police officers
by assailants using "assault rifles" increased in
recent years? Table 3.2 presents relevant data
covering 1970-1989. The figures indicate that
killings of police officers generally declined over
this period, the number and fraction involving guns
declined slightly, and the number and fraction
involving rifles declined slightly. The maximum
number that could have involved "ARs" (i.e., involved
rifles with calibers common among "ARs") has always
been very small (nine or fewer in any single year) and
has shown no consistent trend over this period.
To summarize, "assault rifles" and "assault
weapons" are rarely used by criminals in general or by
drug dealers or juvenile gang members in particular,
are almost never used to kill police officers, are
generally less lethal than ordinary hunting rifles,
and are not easily converted to fully
82
Searching for "Bad" Guns
automatic fire. They offer a rate of fire somewhat
higher than other gun types and can be used with
magazines holding large numbers of cartridges, but
there is at present little reason to believe either
attribute is relevant to the outcome of any
significant number of gun crimes.
Plastic Guns
An even rarer weapon type has been the focus of
regulatory efforts. A federal law passed in 1988
required that all guns contain a certain minimum
amount of metal, thereby banning guns made entirely of
nonmetallic materials such as plastic. These weapons
were of concern to legislators because they would not
be detectable by metal detectors such as those used at
airports, outside courtrooms, and in prisons and other
secure facilities. They would thus be ideal, for
example, for use by persons intent on hijacking
airplanes. Such weapons are detectable by the X-ray
machines used to examine luggage-even a plastic squirt
gun is perfectly visible if the machinery is working
properly (Astrophysics Research Corporation 1986).
What was unusual about this law was that it
banned a nonexistent weapon type. At the time it was
proposed, no all-plastic gun had yet been
manufactured. A few weapons such as the Glock 17
pistol were made partly of plastic, but had enough
metal to set off properly functioning metal detectors
(New York Times 5-5-86, p. A15). Consequently, it is
safe to say that no crime had ever been committed with
an all-plastic gun. Since production of such a gun
may have been technically feasible, sponsors promoted
the law as a preventive measure, rather than as a cure
of an existing problem.
"Cop-Killer" Bullets
Some gun control efforts focus on ammunition
rather than guns. An example is a 1986 federal law
that banned the manufacture, importation, or sale of
armor-piercing bullets made with any of seven hard
metals such as bronze. Ordinary bullets are made of
lead, a soft metal. Bullets made of hard metals can
more easily penetrate the soft body armor worn by
police officers, so advocates of such legislation
referred to the bullets as "cop-killer bullets." This
was something of a misnomer since, at the time the law
was voted on, there were no documented cases of a po-
liceman being killed by such a bullet. Congressional
committees could
find only 18 cases, over an 18-year period, in which
criminals were even found in possession of armor-
piercing ammunition (Los Angeles Times 12-18-85, p.
16). [None of this prevented the New York Times from
asserting that hard-alloy ammunition was "favored by
narcotics traffickers and other criminals" (7-20-85,
p. 22).]
The softness of ordinary lead bullets causes
them to expand on hitting a target, increasing the
bullet's cross-sectional area and thereby widening the
wound cavity created by the bullet. Thus, although a
bullet made of hard materials will tend to penetrate
into a body further, thereby lengthening the wound
cavity, it will also tend to create a narrower wound
cavity than an ordinary lead bullet. Consequently,
for civilians and police officers without body armor,
the physical attributes that make bullets capable of
penetrating body armor do not necessarily increase the
average size of wound cavities and thereby make the
bullets more lethal. Armor-piercing bullets may thus
be significant in influencing the outcome of a gun
attack only with shots fired at body armor, by
increasing the probability of the round reaching the
wearer's body.
In this connection, bullets capable of
penetrating body armor continue to be legally
available. The federal law provided an exemption for
"bullets primarily intended to be used for sporting
purposes" (Los Angeles Times 12-18-89, p. 16), and
much ordinary hunting rifle ammunition still on the
market is capable of piercing body armor. This law
might, in the future, be responsible for preventing
killings of armor-wearing police officers who
otherwise would have been killed had this ammunition
been more widely available, but there is no evidence
from past experience to support this speculation,
since criminals have not used hardalloy ammunition.
However, as with plastic gun legislation, one can
always speculate that this ban discouraged development
of a possible future problem.
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