Assault weapons should be banned

The argument

The assault weapons ban needs reviving. Banning assault weapons has been shown to reduce gun deaths, and it has wide support among the American public, which means the case does not depend on persuading people of something they reject — the measure is already popular and already has a record behind it. The mechanism is availability. Criminals and murderers use assault weapons and semi-automatic weapons because they are readily available, not because these are the only weapons that would serve. If they were restricted, fewer people intending murder would be able to obtain one, and those who still acted would have to use guns that fire fewer rounds per minute. That is why the measure matters even if it does not prevent every attack: in a mass shooting incident, the rate of fire determines how many people can be hit before the shooting is interrupted, so restricting these weapons would drastically reduce the number of people an assailant could kill in a short space of time. The harm is reduced even where the attempt is not stopped. Set against that is the question of what is lost by restricting them, and the answer offered is nothing. These weapons have no legal use. They are not designed for hunting, and they are not suited to it. They are military-grade weapons designed to inflict damage on humans, which is the purpose they were engineered for and the purpose they perform in a mass shooting. They have no role in day-to-day life, so a ban would remove a category of weapon that contributes uniquely to the lethality of attacks while taking away no lawful activity that depends on it.

Context

In 1994, Bill Clinton passed a bill banning assault weapons. However, it expired after 10 years and George W. Bush chose not to renew the ban, allowing assault weapons to reenter the public market.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Banning assault weapons will have no impact on the homicide rate. Criminals will simply move to other weapons. In countries with exceptionally stringent gun laws, there are still murders and homicides - they just use other weapons. If assault weapons were banned, murderers would simply use rifles and handguns. Also, an owner may want to keep an assault weapon for sport or protection. The majority of assault weapon owners use their guns for pleasure on a shooting range. Why should they be punished and have their guns taken away because of a few bad apples?

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] It may limit the number of deaths, but it won't limit the number of mass shootings.

Framing

- The good of the community comes above that of the individual. - Individual rights are not unassailable.

Further reading

Abrams, Daniel. “Ending the Other Arms Race: An Argument for a Ban on Assault Weapons.” Yale Law & Policy Review, vol. 10, no. 2, 1992, pp. 488–519. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40239389. DiMaggio, Charles, et al. “Changes in US Mass Shooting Deaths Associated with the 1994–2004 Federal Assault Weapons Ban.” Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, vol. 86, no. 1, 2019, pp. 11–19. Crossref, doi:10.1097/ta.0000000000002060. Gius, Mark. “The Impact of State and Federal Assault Weapons Bans on Public Mass Shootings.” Applied Economics Letters, vol. 22, no. 4, 2014, pp. 281–84. Crossref, doi:10.1080/13504851.2014.939367.