New Fox News Op-ed: New Assault Weapons Ban Will Not Reduce Crime In This Country

My new piece at Fox News starts this way:

It is pretty hard to seriously argue that a new so-called “assault weapons” ban would reduce crime in the United States. Even research done for the Clinton Administration couldn’t find that the federal assault weapons ban reduced crime.

There are no academic studies by economists or criminologist that find the original federal assault weapons ban reduced murder or violent crime generally. There is no evidence that the state assault weapons bans reduced murder or violent crime rates – even some evidence that they caused murder to rise slightly. Since the federal ban sunset in September 2004, murder and overall violent crime rates have remained virtually unchanged.

In fact, when the assault weapon's ban sunset in September 2004 there was no explosion of murder and bloodshed as gun control advocates feared. Immediately after the law expired murder rates fell and they fell more in the states without state assault weapon bans than the states with them.

But yesterday, Eric Holder, the new U.S. Attorney General, offered a new justification: “I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.” . . .

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