From: Terry M. Wintroub
Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:17:43 -0400
Subject: [firearms-alert] LTE White Plains, NY, Journal News


Sent via their website 4/24/04

Terry



Your 4/21/04 JournalNews.com piece "Assault weapons ban urged" 
[http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/042104/b04w21guns.html] 
propagates some seriously bogus disinformation. I suppose your reporting 
was accurate, in that those people said what you said they said. But why 
would you disseminate, unchallenged, such falsehoods?

Five times you assert and one time you quote the assertion that there is 
a federal ban on "assault" weapons. There IS NO such ban. The 1994 law 
in question banned the new manufacture or importation of certain guns 
and ammunition magazines. All existing guns and mags covered by the law 
remained legal to own, sell, and use. The affected guns never "left our 
streets". See United State Code Title 18 Section 922 subsection (v) at 
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/922.html

All that law did was temporarily make the existing versions of those 
guns more expensive. Even that increase was temporary.

The law affected certain guns by name, so manufacturers changed the 
names. The law affected certain guns based on their cosmetic features, 
so manufacturers changed the cosmetic features. But the post-law 
versions of the guns were functionally identical to the pre-law 
versions. They are all semi-automatic (i.e. one trigger pull, one shot) 
weapons. They all shoot the same ammo that they did before the law.

The only lasting effect of the law is that the huge numbers of existing 
magazines that hold more than ten rounds became more expensive and 
stayed more expensive. That's because the mags were "banned" on the 
basis of a non-cosmetic feature.

This "ban" was an exercise in legislative stupidity. It accomplished 
nothing substantive. It didn't affect crime rates, shootings, police 
shootings, firearm accident rates or anything else it was supposed to 
bring about. All it did was allow politicians to posture about how tough 
on crime they had been. See "The Impact of the 1994 Federal Assault 
Weapon Ban on Gun Violence Outcomes: An Assessment of Multiple Outcome 
Measures and Some Lessons for Policy Evaluation", Christopher S. Koper1 
and Jeffrey A. Roth, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 17, No. 
1, 2001. 
http://titania.ingentaselect.com/vl=11241754/cl=35/nw=1/rpsv/ij/klu/07484518/v17n1/contp1-1.htm

A mere reporter uncritically prints what others say. A journalist does 
his own research and provides factual support or refutation of what 
these quoted parties say. Unlike a reporter, a journalist helps prevent 
his readers from being hoodwinked. Let's hope that Richard Liebson 
becomes a journalist quickly, before he misleads any more unsuspecting 
Journal News readers.

Terry Wintroub
Lawrenceville, NJ