Chicago-Area Mayors Push For Illinois ?Assault Weapons? Ban Despite Rare Use In Crimes
??Assault weapon? is an invented term. In the firearm lexicon, there is no such thing as an ?assault weapon.? The closest relative is the ?assault rifle,? which is a machine gun or ?select fire? rifle that fires rifle cartridges. In most cases so-called ?assault weapons? are cosmetically similar to military guns but are functionally identical to and less powerful than hunting rifles.?
-GunFacts 6.1, a popular firearms reference book
As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a handful of other predominantly suburban mayors pleaded for more gun ?control? yesterday- including a ban on ?assault weapons? in Illinois- here?s an interesting tidbit that both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune picked up on Thursday:
Only about 300 of the 7,000 firearms the Chicago Police Department has taken off the streets in 2012 would be classified as so-called assault weapons.
This according to Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy yesterday.
And, considering the strong push right now by Mayor Emanuel and these other politicians to ban these semi-automatic firearms, the question begs to be asked:
How many of the 518 murders in Chicago this year (per the Crime In Chicago blog this morning) were from ?assault weapons??
I suspect not many.
You see, according to the Congressional Research Service (who did tremendously-thorough research for me back when I was a U.S. Senate staffer) in a November 14 report on gun ?control? legislation:
According to a 1997 survey of 203,300 state and federal prisoners who had been armed during the commission of the crimes for which they were incarcerated, fewer than 1 in 50, or less than 2%, used, carried, or possessed a semiautomatic assault weapon or machine gun.
In other words, in these 200,000-plus crimes, ?assault weapons? were used less than 2 percent of the time.
This echoes other research I?ve come across showing usage of these guns in crimes and homicides is only in the single digits percentage-wise.
Informed parties on both sides of the gun ?control? debate have known this for some time now.
Therefore, is it no wonder that many Americans suspect this latest push to ban ?assault weapons?- now being taken up by some Chicago-area mayors- is not so much about the ?gun? as much as it is ?control??
Sources:
Spielman, Fran. ?Rahm Emanuel and area mayors want state ban on assault weapons.? Chicago Sun-Times. 20 Dec. 2012. (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/17138022-418/rahm-emanuel-and-area-mayors-want-state-ban-on-assault-weapons.html). 21 Dec. 2012.
Byrne, John. ?Emanuel presses for gun control moves while public is at ?tipping point?? Chicago Tribune. 20 Dec. 2012. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-emanuel-mayors-gun-control-1221-20121221,0,3826210.story). 21 Dec. 2012.
Krouse, William J. Gun Control Legislation. Congressional Research Service. 14 Nov. 2012. (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32842.pdf). 21 Dec. 2012.
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