what is an assault weapon?

[SecularMotion]

36. Here's one effect of the Assault Weapons Ban

Last year in Virginia, guns with high-capacity magazines amounted to 22 percent of the weapons recovered and reported by police. In 2004, when the ban expired, the rate had reached a low of 10 percent. In each year since then, the rate has gone up.

"Maybe the federal ban was finally starting to make a dent in the market by the time it ended," said Christopher Koper, head of research at the Police Executive Research Forum, who studied the assault weapons ban for the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department.

Congress is considering legislation to reinstitute the assault weapon ban's prohibition on high-capacity magazines, a measure strongly opposed by gun rights advocates.

The pattern in Virginia "may be a pivotal piece of evidence" that the assault weapons ban eventually had an impact on the proliferation of high-capacity magazines on the streets, said Garen Wintemute, head of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012203452.html