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.