President Joe Biden spoke to Buffalo and called for an “assault weapon” ban following Saturday’s shooting that left ten dead.
Biden stated, “We can keep assault arms off our streets.” It’s been done before. It was what I did last time we passed the crime bill. The violence decreased. Shooting went down.”
Biden was talking about the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons when he mentioned that such firearms had been banned before. The ban was in effect from 1994 to 2004. However, Biden claimed that the ban had reduced violence. Instead, the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice released a report showing that the ban had minimal impact — at best.
Breitbart News noted that the Washington Times quoted Christopher Koper’s 2004 NIJ report. “We cannot clearly attribute the ban with any of our nation’s recent drops in gun violence.” In fact, there has not been a discernible decrease in the lethality or injuriousness gun violence. According to the NIJ report, “The ban on gun violence is likely to have minimal effects at best and may not be reliable in measuring.”
This report emphasized that “assault weapon” were not used in gun crimes prior to the ban.
