Did Mass Shootings Triple After the “Assault Weapons” Ban Expired?
President Biden, in his widely-televised June 2nd speech on gun control, made the following statement.
“And in the 10 years it [the 1994 “assault weapons” ban] was law, mass shootings went down. But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, mass shootings tripled. Those are the facts.”
Is this true? Did “mass shootings” triple after the ban expired? No, this is not true.
“The new mass-shooting database shows that there were 31 mass shootings in the decade before the 1994 law, 31 in the 10 years the law was in force (Sept. 13, 1994 to Sept. 12, 2004) and 47 in the 10 years after it expired. As noted, some of that increase stems from population growth.”
One thing that may have changed after the expiration of the ban is the definition of “mass shooting,” and, moreover, how this term is leveraged by the media to promote the democrat gun control agenda.
“According to NPR, as of May 15 there had already been 213 mass shootings in the United States. In fact, The Washington Post reported that there were at least 12 mass shootings over Memorial Day weekend alone. Does that seem like more mass shootings than you’ve heard all over the news this year? If so, it’s probably because the definition of a such instances differs among groups.”
President Joe Biden did not tell the truth when he said “mass shootings” tripled after the expiration of the 1994 “assault weapon” ban. Additionally, American media is largely in the democrat, and anti-gun camp.
Also note that there is no legal definition of the often-used term “assault weapon” or “assault rifle.” That is the reason it appears in quotation marks. Can we trust anything we are told regarding “assault-weapons” and “mass shootings”?
