How Many Guns Are There and Who Owns Them? - Automatic And Semiautomatic Firearms

The 1986 Firearms Owners' Protection Act (PL 99-308, revised in PL 99-360) banned the transfer or possession of machine guns made after May 19, 1986. The ATF was then flooded with 80,000 applications for licenses to

TABLE 2.5

Annual firearms export report, 1998–2000
	1998	1999	2000
SOURCE: Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Report, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, various publication dates
Pistols	28,805	34,663	28,636
Revolvers	15,788	48,616	48,130
Rifles	65,807	65,669	49,642
Shotguns	89,699	67,342	35,087
Machine guns	12,529	22,255	11,719

sell or buy automatic firearms before the cut-off date. In 1989 the ATF issued an order permanently banning the importation of forty-three models of semiautomatic assault type guns following a schoolyard shooting in Stockton, California, that killed five and wounded twenty-nine. The ATF estimated that Americans owned three million semiautomatic firearms in 1989, about one-fourth of which were imported. The ATF claimed that, without the ban, an estimated seven hundred thousand to one million semiautomatic assault guns would have been imported in 1989.

The Violent Crime Control Act of 1994 (PL 103-322) banned the sale and possession of nineteen assault-type firearms and copycat models, including the Uzi, the TEC-9, and the Street Sweeper. The act also limited the capacity of newly manufactured magazines (a cartridge holder that feeds the gun chamber automatically) to ten cartridges.

According the ATF, assault guns account for less than 2% of all guns in the United States (Firearms Commerce in the United States—2001/2002). However, assault guns accounted for about 6% to 8% of guns used in crimes each year.

Those in favor of gun control contend that semiautomatic firearms are lethal and effective killing tools that should be banned because they are suitable only for military or criminal purposes. The National Rifle Association (NRA) defended the use of semiautomatic firearms for hunting, informal target shooting, and competitive target shooting. The NRA further claimed that many other guns offer criminals the same capacity to kill and that the only way to stop their use is to control the criminals, not the weapons. On September 13, 2004, the assault weapons ban expired.

Imported Assault Weapons

According to a report by the Violence Policy Center, a national non-profit educational foundation that conducts research on violence in America, efforts to keep foreign made assault weapons out of the United States have not been successful (Target America: Can the Flood of Assault Weapons Be Stopped? March 1998). The center, while noting that assault weapons are difficult to define in legal terms, blames the ATF for failing to treat assault weapons as a distinct class of firearms. Because the agency relies on specific gun-by-gun analysis, manufacturers can make slight cosmetic modifications that change little, if any, of a gun's characteristics. To gain import approval, for example, foreign manufacturers often "sporterize" their weapons. This allows them to claim on the application for import approval that the particular firearm is suitable for "sporting purposes." This loophole also means that U.S. companies could manufacture "copycat assault weapons." In its report United States of Assault Weapons in July 2004, the Violence Policy Center estimated that one million new assault weapons have been manufactured for sale in the United States since the passage of the ban in 1994.

In 1997 the ATF approved import permits for 150,000 foreign-made assault rifles and was considering permits for another 600,000 assault rifles, including the Uzi. President Bill Clinton, who favored tight controls on guns, reacted with an order to suspend all outstanding import permits and to review the ATF's interpretation and implementation of the "sporting purposes" test, a provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968. They decided that modified semiautomatic assault rifles with the ability to accept large-capacity magazines holding more than ten rounds of ammunition are unsuitable for sporting purposes. In April 1998 President Clinton ordered the ATF to prohibit the importation of such weapons. As of 2004, the Violence Policy Center charged that imported modified assault weapons continue to flood the domestic market because of loopholes in federal laws.