Date: Fri, Mar 22, 1996 14:19 EDT From: EdgarSuter Subj: research on "assault weapons" (part 1 of 3) To: [r--ty--k] at [cbsnews.com] Gentlemen, Herewith for your consideration is my review article on "assault weapon" research published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. It would be a great help to the development of sound public policy if you were to balance the emotional and insupportable propaganda of the gun-ban-lobby with the factual data available. I am at your disposal in these regards. Yours, Edgar A. Suter MD National Chair Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc. a national 501c(4) non-profit physicians think tank 5201 Norris Canyon Road, Suite 220 San Ramon CA 94583 voice 510-277-0333 FAX 510-277-1568 "Assault Weapons" Revisited - An Analysis of the AMA Report (Copyright 1994 Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia - Permission to distribute with full attribution granted) by Edgar A. Suter, MD Chairman, Doctors for Integrity in Research & Public Policy 5201 Norris Canyon Road, Suite 220, San Ramon, CA 94583 USA Abstract The AMA Council on Scientific Affairs did not conduct a rigorous scientific evaluation before supporting a ban on assault weapons. The Council appears to have unquestioningly accepted common misperceptions and even partisan misrepresentations regarding the nature and uses of assault weapons. This article examines the pivotal issues and proposes a rational approach to gun control and more effectual measures to reduce violence in our society. Introduction On the basis of a single study of gun trace data, the AMA Council on Scientific Affairs has endorsed a ban on assault weapons.1 A review of available literature suggests the Council has not considered the majority of scholarship available. The sole study offered by the Council in support of their position was based on gun trace data, even though the Council fleetingly acknowledged that gun "trace" data is not representative of criminal gun use. A remarkable preponderance of data actually suggests that the misuse of assault weapons has been exaggerated, since such guns are used in generally 0% to 3% of gun crime even in the worst hotbeds of drug and violent crime. The Council understated the legitimate uses of assault weapons, including hunting, self-protection, and target competition. The Council also failed to explain the significance of pivotal technical matters; such as, assault weapons cannot be distinguished by meaningful criteria from their "sporting" counterparts and assault weapons do not have greater magazine capacity, rapid fire capability, or lethality than their "sporting" counterparts. Finally, the Council dismissed the constitutional impediments to assault weapon bans without good authority. Public policy on guns and violence should couple effectual controls with realistic goals. Definition problems A consistent definition of "assault weapon," if possible, would be key to amassing and collating data and to regulating such weapons. By 1988, however, the California Attorney General's expert had already concluded such a definition was technically impossible.2 The terms "assault rifle" and "assault weapon" are not interchangeable. Assault rifles are machine guns. Assault rifles are called "automatic" weapons because the loading and firing of a fresh cartridge is automatic as long as ammunition remains and the trigger is depressed. Such weapons have been common since the Wehrmacht's World War II introduction of the MKB(H)42. Though legal under federal law and under the statutes of 46 states, machine-gun ownership has been strictly regulated since the National Firearms Act of 1934 and, according to the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, there are perhaps one or two documented misuses of machine guns in the last 60 years by their legal owners. Though sometimes cosmetically similar, "assault weapons" are not machine-guns. Assault weapons encompass an amorphous group of guns that can only fire a single shot with each squeeze of the trigger. Assault weapons are functionally identical to other common hunting and target rifles such as the Remington 7400, Valmet Hunter, Ruger Ranch Rifle, Springfield Armory National Match target rifle, and many others. The reloading of a fresh cartridge is automatic, but the firing is not, hence all these guns are "semi-automatic." Semi-automatic weapons have been common since the development of the Borchardt pistol in 1893. Typically assault weapons fire low or intermediate power cartridges (e.g. 9mm Parabellum, 5.56x45mm, 7.62x39mm) with non-expanding bullets that have been designed to wound rather than kill. Such cartridges are considerably less deadly than most high-power hunting cartridges (e.g. .243 Winchester, 30-06, .300 Winchester Magnum) with expanding bullets, which, by definition, are designed to kill.3 Assault weapons sometimes share cosmetic similarities with military weapons, but the Council has not explained how cosmetic features make some guns more deadly than functionally identical weapons. Except for their "spray fire" assertion discussed below, the Council has cited no data demonstrating that a gun is more deadly by virtue of a plastic stock, a pistol grip, a durable finish, a flash suppressor, luminescent night sights, or a bayonet lug. While cosmetic features such as these may have an ominous military appearance to some, these features have little public health relevance; after all, America is not suffering from an epidemic of night bayonetings. How a person uses (or does not use) a gun is far more important than how the gun looks. Even the capability of accepting "high capacity" magazines is an unreliable distinction since most common semi-automatic hunting and target rifles, including all those cited above, are capable of accepting factory or after-market "high capacity" magazines. Kleck, in Point Blank, the encyclopedic 1991 review of the literature on guns, violence, and gun control, makes the public policy implications clear: The difficulties with this political compromise [of eliminating only some semi-automatic weapons] are obvious. If semi-automatic fire and the ability to accept large magazines are not important in crime, there is little reason to regulate [assault weapons]. On the other hand, if these are important attributes, then it makes little crime control sense (though ample political sense) to systematically exclude from restriction the most widely owned models that have these attributes, since this severely limits the impact of regulation.4 No functional features uniquely distinguish assault weapons from their "sporting" counterparts. Because there is no consistent definition, comparison of data from different jurisdictions is impeded and legally defining assault weapons as a class is impossible. Because the class cannot be defined, the California and other bans have attempted to ban guns by manufacturer and model. This approach has also failed. Despite California's ban of over 60 models of assault weapons, cosmetic changes in banned guns allow the legal sale of functionally identical weapons. For example, substituting a thumbhole stock for a pistol grip stock turns a banned "AK-series" gun into an unrestricted MAK-90, a gun neither more nor less lethal. One of the Council's sources, gun control advocate Sugarmann, candidly stated that the public's confusion over these weapons works to his political advantage: The semiautomatic weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semiautomatic assault weapons - anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun - can only increase that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.5 High capacity, rapid-fire, and lethality issues Whether or not a gun has a large ammunition capacity is generally irrelevant because few criminals or police officers even use the capacity of an old-fashioned "six-shooter." Of course, the rare exceptions, such as the 1989 Stockton incident and the 1993 "101 California Street" incident are "newsworthy" and highly sensationalized. For example, in the average 1989 New York City shooting incident, the perpetrator fired 2.55 shots (down from 2.66 in 1988), of which 11.8% hit someone.6 The situation is relatively unchanged in 1992 and, contrary to frequent, but vague, assertions about the police being "outgunned", the New York City Police fire 40% more rounds per incident (3.92 with a hit percentage of 29%) than criminals (2.76 with a hit percentage reduced to 8.2%).7 As another example, in Philadelphia, fewer rounds are fired from the average semi-automatic weapon used in crime (1.6) than from the average revolver (1.9).8 Such data rebut the "spray fire" imagery of the Council. These figures undercut the Council's assertion of increased criminal firepower from assault weapons. The Council cited only anecdotal and unsubstantiated sources to conclude: "Clearly the injuries from assault weapons are taxing hospital emergency departments in large urban areas." The authorities for the Council's assertions? Newspaper articles in which a 5% increase in multiple gun shot cases over 10 years was assumed, but not demonstrated, to be due to assault weapons; a two day survey of one emergency room in Los Angeles County embellished by anecdotes from four surgeons; other articles that, without any evidence at all, assumed, but did not demonstrate, the wounds they treated were due to assault weapons; and a "background paper" from the same California Attorney General's Office that denied the existence of their 1988 Helsley2 and 1991 Johnson9 studies documenting the minuscule prevalence of assault weapons amongst crime guns. The Council writes "...assault weapons are meant to be spray fired from the hip," citing a partisan source, Handgun Control Inc., as authority. Though the Council cites Assault Rifle Fact Sheet 1: Definitions and Background of the non-partisan Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security for explanation of gun nomenclature, the Council failed to concede that pertinent portions of the Fact Sheet note these weapons are designed for aimed fire, not "spray fire," and show that any person who shoots a semi-automatic gun rapidly without aiming will rarely hit anything. The Council repeated the erroneous claim that these weapons are "easily converted to full automatic fire." Current law requires that all guns undergo an extensive evaluation by the federal firearms regulatory agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), to prove that they cannot be easily converted to fully automatic fire. In an April 3, 1989 New York Times article, a BATF official stated that no gun available at that time could be easily converted to machine-gun fire. A hint of the infrequency of conversions can be gleaned from the observation that about 6 of the 4,000 guns seized annually in Los Angeles have evidence of attempted conversion.10 Though some have claimed a particular lethality for assault weapons, a literature review finds instead that assault rifle and weapon wounds more closely approximate handgun injuries than rifle injuries: [M]any AK-47 shots will pass through the body causing no greater damage than that produced by non-expanding handgun bullets. The limited tissue disruption produced by this weapon in the Stockton schoolyard is consistent with well documented data from Vietnam... as well as with controlled research studies from wound ballistic laboratories.11 In general, it is the size and location of the wound that determines the lethality of penetrating injuries. Whether knife or gun, a small wound in a vital area can be deadly where a much larger wound in a non-vital area may only injure. A larger wound, of course, increases the chance of encountering and injuring a vital structure. For firearms, larger wounds are more likely from larger bullet diameter ("caliber"), from expanding bullets, and, in certain cases, from tumbling, yawing, or fragmenting bullets. It is the location and size of the permanent wound channel, the tissue actually destroyed, that primarily determines lethality; the effects of temporary stretching ("cavitation") of elastic tissues or the sonic "shock wave" from a bullet's passage have been greatly exaggerated.12,13 Obtaining a wound in a vital area, of course, depends upon shot placement which is a reflection of marksmanship mitigated by chance; the more skillful the marksman, the smaller the role of luck. Discredited theories relating kinetic energy or velocity to wounding potential have no place in the scientific debate. The Council repeated such myths about "high velocity" bullets, "shock waves," "cavitation," and assault weapon wound ballistics that have been definitively dispelled.11,12 The Council expressed its horror of the single shock wave of a high velocity bullet, failing to note that the average Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy utilizes about 2,000 shock wave pulses, each of which is three times that of the "high velocity" bullet, without any evidence whatsoever of soft tissue damage.11 The vogue of undue concern over "cavitation" in elastic human tissue has justifiably passed, though without the Council's notice. The Council cited a newspaper interview of a surgeon who thinks inelastic watermelons are an appropriate human tissue simulant.14 If "watermelon wound ballistics" were valid, deceleration injury from a one foot fall would similarly crack human tissue. One must wonder whether the Council wisely or carefully selected the best scholarship available. The unrepresentative nature of gun trace requests The only evidence offered by the Council that assault weapons are a problem of the magnitude suggested by the media are the Cox Newspaper articles. The Cox reporters used gun trace requests to reach their rebuttable conclusion that 11% of crime guns were assault weapons. While the Council fleetingly acknowledged, "The sample of firearms for which traces are requested is not likely to be representative of all firearms used in crime," the Council uncritically accepted the Cox article as best evidence despite over two dozen studies presented below suggesting that the Cox figures exaggerate the assault weapon problem by a factor of three to more than one hundred, depending on the locale studied and the definition of assault weapon used. Gun traces are not representative of the criminal prevalence of gun use any more than the index of a research journal reflects the prevalence of disease. Journal indices and gun traces reflect a level of interest in the topic or the gun. No study corroborates the Cox or other gun trace data. In a Report For Congress on assault weapons, the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress has shown that the BATF gun trace system is inappropriate for statistical purposes: The [B]ATF tracing system is an operational system designed to help law enforcement agencies identify the ownership path of individual firearms. It was not designed to collect statistics... Two significant limitations should be considered when tracing data are used for statistical purposes: * First, the firearms selected for tracing do not constitute a random sample and cannot be considered representative of the larger universe of all firearms used by criminals, or of any subset of that universe. As a result, data from the tracing system may not be appropriate for drawing inferences such as which makes or models of firearms are used for illicit purposes; * Second, standardized procedures do not exist to ensure that officers use consistent definitions or terms in the reports of circumstances that lead to each trace request. Some trace requests do not even identify the circumstances that resulted in the request.15 No crime need be involved to initiate a gun trace, for example, efforts to return stolen guns to rightful owners and guns found incidental to other investigations are included amongst gun traces. When a gun trace is tabulated as "related to organized crime," it does not mean a crime was committed, only that the officer requesting the trace suspected the gun might be that of a gang or Mafia member.15 The unreliable nature of gun traces is clear. For example, in 1989 in Los Angeles, a hotbed of drug gangs and violent crime, assault weapons represented approximately 3% guns seized, but 19% of gun traces.4 Other data There are limitations on sources of data other than gun traces. The inconsistency of attempts to define assault weapon in the few jurisdictions that, to date, have even made the effort, makes data comparison difficult. Also, the uncaptured guns of unsolved crimes cannot be represented amongst either seized weapons or traced weapons. Compilations of firearms forensics data are also hampered by incomplete responses by a fraction of polled agencies. Despite these caveats, the preponderance of data currently available indicates that assault weapons, even in the hotbeds of violent crime, account for generally 1% to 3% of crime guns4 which approximately equals their estimated representation amongst all guns in the USA.16 This is shown in essentially all studies and reports: Jurisdiction Data Year(s) Findings Akron17 1989 2.0% of seized guns* Baltimore City18 1990 1.5% of seized and surrendered guns Baltimore County, MD17 1990 0.3% of seized guns Bexar County, TX19 1987-92 0.2% of homicides (includes San Antonio) 1987-92 0.0% of suicides 1985-92 0.1% of seized guns California2 1987 2.3% of seized rifles** California9 1990 0.9% of seized guns Chicago20 1988 1.0% of seized guns Chicago suburbs21 1980-89 1.6% of seized guns Connecticut22 1988-92 1.8% of seized guns Denver23 1991 0.8% of seized guns Florida State 24 1989 3.6 of seized guns**(also documented declining use of assault weapons since 1981) Miami 1989 1.4% of homicides** Miami 1989 3.3% of seized guns** Los Angeles10 1989 3.0% of seized guns** Massachusetts25 1984-89 0.9% of homicides (study excluded Boston) Massachusetts26 1988 1.9% of homicides Massachusetts25 1985-91 0.7% of all shootings (including suicides) Minneapolis27 1987-89 0.3% of seized guns New Jersey28 1988 0.0% of homicides New Jersey29 1989 0.0% of homicides New York City30 1989 0.5% of seized guns New York City7 1992 0.0% of seized guns Oakland31 1990 3.9% of seized guns Oakland32 1991 3.7% of homicides Philadelphia8 1985 & 1990 0% of seized guns San Diego33 1988-90 0.3% of seized guns San Francisco17 1988 2.2% of seized guns Washington, DC 34 1988 0.0% of seized guns Washington, DC 35 1991 3.0% of seized guns * "seized" weapons were not necessarily used in crime ** assault weapon or assault rifle broadly defined In 1990 the Federal Bureau of Investigation noted that 12 0f 810 (1.48%) deaths of law enforcement officers during the past decade involved assault weapons and also discussed the dearth of information on the criminal use of these firearms.15 The US Department of Justice "Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991" suggests that less than 1% of inmates had been armed with, though not necessarily used, a "military-type weapon" (undefined) while committing the offense for which they were incarcerated.36 More New York City police officers were attacked in 1992 with roach spray, wood chisels, fire extinguishers, radio amplifiers, or any other of a readily available array of household objects than were attacked with assault weapons.7 The Council has neither acknowledged the confounding evidence, nor made an attempt to dispatch it. While none of the studies cited can be claimed to epitomize the scientific method, all but one of the studies suggest that claims about assault weapons have been grossly exaggerated. A call for better designed studies is appropriate, but, at the present time, the Council's report founders with its sole datum from the Cox Newspaper articles. Philip McGuire of Handgun Control Inc. has publicly stated that assault weapons are not a problem, but he speculated that they might become a problem in the future.37 When confronted with criticism regarding the lack of substantiation, the Council has expressed similar fears that assault weapons might become a problem.19 What about such potential problems? Since these weapons have been with us from 30 to 100 years, there has been ample time for problems to appear and to be documented by sound data. While there are important caveats in considering any current data and the definitive analysis of assault weapons in crime has yet to be done, an objective individual is justified in skepticism of claims that assault weapons are the "criminals' weapon of choice." [CONTINUED]