Biden proposed gun ban would have little impact on crime

 Sarah Westwood:

President Joe Biden this week pushed for a ban on military-style weapons as an answer to the nation’s rise in gun violence.

But critics say little evidence supports the notion that such a ban, in force for a decade from 1994 to 2004, would reduce the crime rates gripping most cities in America.

And some jurisdictions are struggling to enforce gun laws already on the books, raising questions about how they would find the resources to enforce even stricter ones.

“The vast majority of gun murder in the United States involves handguns and has for a very long time,” Stephen Gutowski, founder of the gun policy website The Reload, told the Washington Examiner. “An 'assault weapons' ban is very unlikely to have a significant impact on overall crime, everyday crime.”

Guns that fall into the “assault weapons” category are indeed used in just a fraction of crimes , data show.

According to an analysis from the National Institutes of Health, “most estimates suggest less than 7%” of the firearms used for “crime in general” were "assault weapons."

Most of the violent crimes that occurred in 2020 were committed with handguns, FBI data show.

Rifles, on the other hand, were responsible for fewer homicides in 2020 than knives or a perpetrator’s fists and feet. Rifles, which typically fall into the loosely defined "assault weapons" category, were specified as the weapon in less than 3% of homicides in 2020. Handguns were specified as the weapon in 45% of homicides.
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The fact that they are so rarely used in crime may be one of the reasons the media plays up their use.  Biden continues his history of trying to restrict the ownership of weapons other than shotguns which he doe apparently possesses.