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In reply to the discussion: Assault weapons ban dropped from Senate bill [View all]SunSeeker
(52,218 posts)Some 51 percent support a ban on semi-automatic handguns.
http://www.standard.net/stories/2013/01/14/poll-most-americans-support-assault-weapons-ban-armed-guards
And the 10-year AWB that expired in 2004 absolutely had an effect. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence examined the impact of the Assault Weapons Ban in its 2004 report, On Target: The Impact of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapon Act. Examining 1.4 million guns involved in crime, "in the five-year period before enactment of the Federal Assault Weapons Act (1990-1994), assault weapons named in the Act constituted 4.82% of the crime gun traces ATF conducted nationwide. Since the laws enactment, however, these assault weapons have made up only 1.61% of the guns ATF has traced to crime."
http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/reports/on_target.pdf
According to a 2004 study from the University of Pennsylvania, the number of people killed in mass shootings did go down generally during the years that the ban was in effect. The study found that gun crimes involving assault weapons declined by as much as 72 percent in the localities examined after the ban went into effect. The number of mass shootings per year has doubled since the ban expired in 2004.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/newtown-connecticut-shootings-assault-weapons-ban-work/story?id=18000724&page=2