By John R. Lott. Jr.
Archived at JohnRLott.com

Published Wednesday, July 20, 2005 at Columbus Dispatch

When the federal assault-weapons ban expired in September, its fans claimed that gun crimes and police killings would surge dramatically. Sarah Brady, one of the nation’s leading gun-control advocates, warned, "Our streets are going to be filled with AK-47s and Uzis." The Columbus City Council racheted-up the rhetoric, claiming the banned guns are "the weapons of choice for terrorists."

Well, more than 10 months have gone by and the only casualty has been gun-controllers’ credibility. Letting the law expire only showed its uselessness. In fact, the FBI announced last month that the number of murders nationwide fell by 3.6 percent last year, the first drop since 1999. Murders declined in both halves of last year from year earlier levels.

Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assaultweapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders last year than the 43 states without such laws, suggesting that doing away with the ban actually reduced crime. States with bans averaged a 2.4 percent decline in murders; in three states with bans, the number of murders rose. States without bans saw murders fall by more than 4 percent.

And the drop was not just limited to murder. Overall, violent crime also declined last year, according to the FBI, and the complete statistics carry another surprise for gun-control advocates: Guns are used in murder and robbery more frequently then in rapes and aggravated assaults, but after the assault-weapons ban ended, the number of murders and robberies fell more than the number of rapes and aggravated assaults.

It’s instructive to remember just how passionately the media hyped the dangers of "sunsetting" the ban. It was even part of the presidential campaign: "Kerry blasts lapse of assault-weapons ban," one headline said. A search of a computer database of news stories turned up more than 560 articles in the first two weeks of September that expressed fear about ending the ban. Yet the news that murder and other violent crimes declined last year despite the ban ending produced just one very brief paragraph in an insider political newsletter.

Despite the media bias, the irrelevance of the assault-weapons bans to crime rates was to be expected. Not a single published academic study has ever shown that these bans have reduced any type of violent crime. Even research funded by the Clinton administration didn’t find that it reduced violent crime.

Why? Simple: There’s nothing unique about the guns that these laws ban. The phrase assault weapon conjures up images of the fully automatic weapons used by the military, but the weapons in the ban actually function the same as any semiautomatic hunting rifle. They often fire the exact same bullets with the exact same rapidity and produce the exact same damage.

Yet, while this lesson has been learned everyplace else, Columbus is the only jurisdiction in the country to pass a new assault-weapon ban after the federal law sunset. Even gun-control-friendly states such as Illinois and New York saw new assault-weapon ban bills die in their legislatures this year. Nor have other cities joined in.

In addition, the Columbus ban goes much further than the old federal assault-weapons ban it is claims to replace. Indeed, in some ways, the law is much more restrictive than even Washington, D.C.’s regulations on rifles. The law bans any semiautomatic rifle with a detachable magazine and a stock covering the barrel that allows the "bearer to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being burned." That covers virtually all semiautomatic rifles.

There are a few guns, such as the M1 Garrand used by soldiers during World War II, that have a fixed magazine, but it is hard to think of any massproduced rifle that isn’t covered by the second restriction. The law effectively bans any mass-produced semiautomatic hunting rifle on the market.

While the federal ban proved useless, Columbus’ third attempted gun ban seems even more destined for failure. Only law-abiding citizens would obey the ban. And even if preventing criminals from getting these rifles actually mattered, it is hard to believe that a citywide ban would actually prevent them from getting access. Disarming the innocent hardly seems an effective way of reducing crime.

The Columbus law is so extreme that Ohio Rep. James Aslanides, RCoshocton, announced that he will introduce legislation that forbids cities from enacting their own gun laws. Most states have some restrictions on locally-enacted gun regulations.

Even for lawmakers, predictions must eventually matter. If legislators can’t see that these laws have failed to deliver as promised, it’s hard to know when facts will make a difference.

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

On Thursday, July 21, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Columbus City Council candidate Phil Harmon has filed the first of what may become several lawsuits against the City of Columbus, challenging Columbus’ assault-weapons ban and asking the court to prevent it from going into effect.

From the story:

Harmon, a longtime activist and lawyer and one of six candidates running for three seats on the council this fall, filed the suit yesterday in Franklin County Probate Court.

Harmon said the suit challenges the constitutionality of the entire law. But he filed in probate court, he said, because there’s no provision in the law allowing people to sell or transfer weapons to relatives if they die or need a guardian. Harmon practices estate law.

"So if someone had a gun all his life, if I became his guardian, I’m subject to prosecution," Harmon said yesterday. "It’s just reckless legislation that needs to be corrected as quickly as possible."

As the Dispatch pointed out in an earlier article, lawsuits over the city’s two earlier gun bans have proved costly. The city paid out $140,000 for attorney fees to Stephen P. Halbrook, a Fairfax, Va., lawyer who had both ordinances declared unconstitutional in the courts. Lawsuits were fought and won by the Columbus-based People's Rights Organization.

Again, from the story:

The council is too quick to pass laws that make criminals out of law-abiding citizens, Harmon said.

"From outlawing dogs in the park, to sofas on porches, to smoking in bars, and now gun ownership, where will it stop?" Harmon said in a prepared statement yesterday.

Mentel is not on the ballot in November, but council members Kevin Boyce, Mary Jo Hudson and Maryellen O’Shaughnessy — all of whom supported the gun ban — are.

The suit says the ban is unconstitutional because it is vague and too broad.

Harmon said he and city lawyers are to meet Friday with Probate Judge Lawrence A. Belskis to discuss a temporary restraining order.

The council adopted the assault-weapons ban on July 11. The ban — which prohibits the sale, possession and transfer of rifles, shotguns and pistols fitting the city’s description of an assault weapon — is to go into effect on Aug. 11.

According to the newspaper, Harmon has challenged City Hall before. He helped lead efforts to repeal the city’s $4-a-day rental car tax, helped to gather signatures on a petition that led the Council to temporarily ban water- and sewer-line extensions into the Big Darby Creek watershed, and represented bar owners in their failed quest to overturn the city’s smoking ban.

Newspapers in Ohio are awash with editorials criticizing the NRA's decision to cancel its 2007 national convention in Columbus after the city held sham hearings in which public testimony was overwhelmingly opposing before passing a ridiculous assault weapons ban written by an anti-gun extremist group from California.

From the Cincinnati Post:

The NRA said it would hold a convention in Ohio only if the General Assembly passed a law overturning the municipal weapons ban. State Rep. James Aslanides, a Republican from northern Ohio who authored the recent state law allowing concealed weapons to be carried legally, immediately announced plans to do just that. In fact, he wants to prevent cities and other units of local government from regulating guns at all. Such a prohibition would affect Cincinnati, which has an assault weapons ordinance of its own on the books. (Because of a court challenge it is not being enforced, a city spokesperson said.)

Even though we're dubious about the effectiveness of municipal weapons bans, we think the NRA and Aslanides are way off the mark.

Columbus City Council was publicly debating the assault weapons ban when the 2007 convention was announced. It's hard to believe that NRA's planners didn't know about it, and that such an ordinance, if passed, might interfere with their ability to display a full range of weaponry on the convention floor.

A hard search has turned up nothing in the way of the NRA asserting that they were unaware of the discussions. Quite the contrary - the NRA encouraged members to attend the public meetings Councilman Mentel presented as a way to listen to the community. And the community came out and spoke - overwhelmingly - in opposition to his plans. Who can fault the NRA for believing a politician would actually listen to his constituents before passing a law that has already proven on the Federal level to be a complete failure in its intended goal of crime reduction?

Again, from the Post editorial:

There are political overtones as well. Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, a supporter of the city assault weapons ban, is seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2006. Some Coleman supporters think he was set up by an organization that views gun control advocacy as a kiss of death for a statewide candidate.

Such suggestions are ludicrous. Coleman's status as a gun control advocate was by no means a secret. On April 8, 2004, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman staged a press conference next to a jungle gym, lamenting the fact that the city was unable to protect children by posting signs banning concealed handgun license-holders. Coleman called Ohio's concealed carry law "a travesty for our city and for our state."

Not surprisingly, the political overtones the newspaper fails to address are that Councilman Mike Mentel is running for Columbus Mayor, and believes that gun control advocacy is exactly the angle he needs to play to assume power.

As for Aslanides, he's going against a venerable tradition of home rule in Ohio. Columbus, Cincinnati and the rest of Ohio's cities should be free to regulate guns, even if the NRA disapproves.

As NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre pointed out Monday, Ohio is one of only seven states that does not have this law to protect gun owners from a confusing and dangerous patchwork of firearms laws, and one of only three states left in the nation with home rule. Just as he did with a concealed carry law in 2004, Rep. Jim Aslanides now appears poised to bring Ohio up to speed with the rest of the nation.

Why do Post editors have such suspicions about progress?

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