From: [w--t--s] at [pitt.edu] (David C Winters)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: NYT article: NJ Assualt Ban has little Effect on Crime
Date: 2 Jul 93 18:55:00 GMT
*****
He sent me a photocopy of the clipping, and I typed it in. I take
responsibility for any spelling errers. The grammatical error I found,
I typed in verbatim. The BATF man is quoted as saying 25 MILLIMETER,
not caliber, as is typed on the paper in front of me. I have not added
the comments that popped into my head as I typed this in. My .sig'll be
added onto the end. Enjoy.
*****
BOTH SIDES SAY TRENTON'S BAN ON ASSAULT RIFLES HAS LITTLE EFFECT ON
CRIME
By Iver Peterson [Special to the New York Times]
TRENTON, June 19 - Although New Jersey's pioneering ban on
military-style assault rifles was sold to the state as a crime-fighting
measure, it's impact on violence in the state, two years after it took
effect, has been negligible, both sides agree, and debate over its
impact is colored more by opinion than by fact.
Of the tens of thousands, and possible hundreds of thousands, of assault
weapons that state officials had said were in the hands of the public,
only about 2000 have been accounted for since their possession was
outlawed, on May 30, 1991. The stores that sold the guns do not miss
the business, their owners say, and so far, no one has been sent to jail
purely for possession of one of the weapons.
And like the worried nature lovers who flocked to join the Sierra Club
or Wilderness Society in response to the Reagan Administration's
environmental policies a decade ago, worried gun owners in New Jersey
have tripled the size of the state's National Rifle Association
affiliate in the aftermath of the fight over gun control.
Membership has grown to 12000 from 4000 since 1990, when the bill was
introduced, said Cal Ellis, president of the Association of New Jersey
Rifle and Pistol Clubs, the state arm of the NRA.
AN EXAMPLE FOR OTHERS
For his part, Gov. Jim Florio can still count his defeat of the
Republican legislative majority's effort to rescind the gun ban as a
high point of his term. And with Connecticut's enactment of a similar
ban earlier this month and with New York State now considering its own
version, Mr. Florio's prediction that New Jersey would set an example
for other states is coming true.
Moreover, Mr. Florio intends to use the gun issue against his Republican
challenger in the fall's election, Christine Todd Whitman. Mrs. Whitman
has avaoided giving her views of the Governor's legislative showpiece,
and she show signs of being uncomfortable with her party's opposition to
the ban.
Still, the ban has not yet turned out to be the crime-buster that it was
sold as. "If we can get these guns out of the hands of criminals, we
will all be better off," Mr. Florio said in 1990.
Until the ban was imposed, the police were not required to keep
statistics on the number of crimes involving assault weapons. In the
years since, the statistics show them to be a tiny fraction - .026 of 1
percent - of the total.
The banned weapons are civilian versions of military rifles. They are
not capable of automatic fire, instead requiring a pull of the trigger
for each round. But their magazines hold more rounds than standard
rifles and can be fired longer without overheating. Their barrels are
also shorter, making the gun easier to conceal.
The Florio administration once estimated the number of assault rifles in
the state at 300000, but later revised the estimate to about 40000.
"We're ready to concede that there is not a really high percentage of
crimes committed with assault firearms, and we're going to make sure
that number doesn't grow," said Frederick DeVesa, first assistant
attorney general. "It's like the machine gun, which was once used in a
large number of crimes, but you don'd see that much anymore."
Machine guns were all but outlawed for civilian ownership by the Federal
government 70 years ago.
Opponents of the ban are unmoved by such an explanation. "Pure
nonsense, pure pap," said Joseph Constance, deputy chief of police on
the Trenton force and, as a Republican Mercer County freeholderand
Whitman ally, a political enemy of Governor Florio.
"Assault rifles have never been an issue in law enforcement. I have
been on this job for 25 years and I haven't seen a drug dealer carry
one. They are not used in crimes, they are not used against police
officers."
POSSESSION CHARGES INCREASE
Dominick Polifrone, head of the New Jersey bureau of the Federal Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, agrees, but nevertheless praised New
Jersey's law as an aid to law enforcement.
"I've never encountered an assault rifle," Mr. Polifrone said in an
interview. "The guns we have been dealing with are mostly 9-millimeter
handguns, .38-caliber pistols and 25-millimeter[sic] handguns, because
they're easier to conceal."
At the time the ban was enacted, mass killings with assault rifles had
occurred in California and some other states, but New Jersey had not
experienced such an incident.
According to the annual report required by the gun law, in 1992 the
incidence of crimes with assault weapons declined in all categories from
1991, they law's first full year, save in arrests for illegal
possession.
State and county prosecutors have made it a policy not to go after
simple possession of the outlawed guns and to seize them only in
connection with other investigations. This policy has strengthened the
Florio Administration's argument that otherwise innocent people have
been targeted under the gun law.
The 147 assault rifles seized since the law was enacted thus all came
from people who were stopped or searched for other reasons. About half
of them had arrest records.
MANY WEAPONS MISSING
But, said Evan Nappen, a Monmouth County defense attorney who
specializes in weapons issues, that also means more than half of those
charged with gun law violations had no records. He said he was
currently defending several people whose charges include illegal
possession of the outlawed guns.
"Some of my clients' guns were found in transportation stops, some were
confiscated under the forfeiture rules of the Domestic Violence Act, or
--------------------------------------
FOR ALL THE HEAT, A GUN LAW'S IMPACT IS MEASURED MOSTLY IN INTANGIBLES.
(one of the annoying large-type blurbs the papers always randomly insert
in their article - dcw)
--------------------------------------
pursuant to a bail or court order," he said. "None of my clients' guns
were were seized in commission of a crime. None."
Charles Sheen, owner of Sarco, a firearms and war memorabilia outlet in
Passaic Township, said that before the ban he had sold between 50 and
100 assault-type rifles of out total annual sales of about 5000 guns.*
The guns ranged in price from $250 to $800. He said loss of the
business had not affected him much.
(*: This sentance is word-for-word reproduced from the column; I didn't
mess it up when typing it in. In a word, "[sic]." - dcw)
"Those guns were never that important in this business," he said in an
interview.
During a one-year grace period that ended in May 1991, owners of the
guns could sell them to dealers or out of state or could make the guns
incapable of firing by removing the firing pin, then register the
deactivatd weapon. Owners of four types of guns used in shooting
competitions could keep them by joining a recognized shooting club. An
additional 26 gun owners turned their weapons over to the state police
to be destroyed.
No one knows what has become of the tens of thousands of other outlawed
weapons. Michael Hudak, a gun salesman at Dosil Sporting Goods in
Keansburg in Monmouth county, said three or four owners tried to sell
their guns back to him, but he refused.
"What was I going to do with them?" he said. "I'd just have to find
someone else to take them. So some of these guys lost hundreds of
dollars when they had to get rid of their guns."
*************************************************************************
Statistics:
Number of each type committed with assault weapons, each year.
1991 1992
---- ----
Murder 5 3
Armed Robbery 47 12
Aggravated Assault 23 16
Unlawful Weapon Possession70 77
...But such crimes are only a tiny percentage of the total.
Type of crime 1991 data* w. Assault weapons total committed
Murder 5 410
Armed Robbery 47 22728
Aggravated Assault 23 23720
Unlawful weapon possession 70 7050
*full data for 1992 is not yet available.
Source: New Jersey Attorney General's office.
******************
finis.
--
--
David [w--t--s] at [pitt.edu]
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Barney R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.