Gun Control & RKBA

No one (other than you) mentioned (without any justification or links providing actual proof) rates of ownership.

Moving on to the facts, the assault weapon ban(?) was, as usual with restrictionists, a grand misnomer. First, it was not a ban and second, the ever shifting definition of an assault weapon was then a list cosmetic and ergonomic features making these rifles neither more nor less deadly.

As it is known, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 did not ban anything other than the new sales of the ill defined rifles. The actual effect of the law was to secure the status of AR type rifles as the most popular type of rifle for new purchases to the present day.

BComplex said, "When assault rifles were banned during Clinton, we had far fewer deaths." Anyone with a passing command of English takes this to mean that the decrease in deaths was due to the 1994 law. I am curious how someone can conclude that the 1994 law is responsible for the both the 11% drop in handgun deaths (1994-1995) and the 6% drop in deaths due to all other guns (1994-1995).

Clearly the majority of the decrease in deaths was in those where a handgun was used [ https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf ] while the typical handgun was not the subject of the law under discussion. This took place even while the one year population grew by over 3 million. That is rather dramatic and unrelated to any rifle law. This same BJS link also demonstrates that, from 1994 to 1995 and 1996, the percentage of deaths due to non-handguns actually increased.

You say, "What the rest of us see is that gun death rate did indeed rise after the awb expired in 2004..." Indeed, it rose from 2004 through 2006 then began dropping again in 2007 through 2011 despite the lack of the law under discussion. What I see here is that you first disagree with me that firearm homicide rate has continued to drop in the years after 2004. I grant that the drop was not monotonic. The 2006 peak at 3.94 per hundred thousand dropped to 3.18 in 2011. Then you shift to saying that all of these decreases were more to do the prevalence of ownership than the because of the absence or presence of the law.

So where exactly do you stand on the concept behind the 1994 law? You said, "...the drop in gun owner rate probably played a bigger role in the reduction in violent crime and murder rates." I happen to think that AWB type laws lose votes and don't really affect crime.

Freedom is wonderful thing. You shifted the focus here from AR-15 type rifles (introduced by ace3csusm in post #4 and an apparent call for AWB like laws by BComplex) saying that I'm wrong to explain that firearm homicide rates continued dropping after 2004 but that all of this has to do with rate of ownership, a new topic. I also am free to point out the 2016 to 2017 drop in firearm homicides had nothing to do with dolt45 taking office. [ https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls ] This again says nothing about an AWB.

So where exactly do you stand on the concept behind the 1994 law?