Guns: To What Extent? - Publicus

While the issue of gun control has been a hot topic among Liberals and Conservatives for the longest time, the real dispute here seems to be over whether assault weapons and other "weapons of mass death" should be allowed in the home. There is overwhelming evidence that keeping a handgun or rifle in a household is conducive to peace of mind, so while that's still a very interesting topic, both Civis and I agree on the matter, making it not a very interesting debate at all.

Personally, I agree with Civis to some extent on the matter of assault weapons. Assault weapons, which are firearms that have been developed from earlier fully-automatics into semi-automatic civilian versions, are slightly over-the-top: you don't buy ten gallons of paint if you only want to paint one chair. Regardless, the issue becomes one of personal liberty.

In 2001, criminologists Koper and Roth published a paper titled "The Impact of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapon Ban on Gun Violence Outcomes: An Assessment of Multiple Outcome Measures and Some Lessons for Policy Evaluation," in which they found that "any likely effects from the ban will be very difficult to detect statistically for several more years." Also, they "found no evidence of reductions in multiple-victim gun homicides or multiple-gunshot wound victimizations." If this study is true in stating that a ban on assault rifles doesn't significantly change homicide rates, there is no reason why people shouldn't be allowed them in their homes.

While, as stated before, assault rifles are superfluous to most civilians, they should not be banned so long as they provide no serious threat to one's security, which, as of yet, they do not. Assault weapons do not have a particular bloody history in civilian use, and there is no reason they should. As long as treated with respect, as any gun deserves, there is no reason why they should not be allowed into the hands of collectors and avid marksmen.