Speaking from Buffalo, New York Tuesday morning President Joe Biden falsely claimed the ban on semi-automatic sporting rifles from 1994 to 2004 cut down on violence and shootings. He made the statement while pushing for gun control after a teenager killed ten people in a local grocery store over the weekend.
BIDEN: "We can keep assault weapons off our streets. We've done it before. I did it when we passed the crime bill last time." pic.twitter.com/41ktuGrBfw
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 17, 2022
This is a claim Biden has repeatedly made while attempting to take advantage of tragedy. But according to data provided by the Department of Justice, the ban cannot be credited with reducing violence or mass shootings.
From a previous Townhall VIP fact check:
A 2004 Department of Justice funded study from the University of Pennsylvania Center of Criminology concluded the ban cannot be credited with a decrease in violence carried out with firearms. The report is titled "An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003."
"We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury," the summary of the report on the study's findings states. "The ban’s impact on gun violence is likely to be small at best, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. AWs [assault weapons] were used in no more than 8% of gun crimes even before the ban."
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