President Joe Biden on Tuesday night repeated his false claim the 1994-2004 “assault weapons” ban reduced “mass shootings.”
Biden has made this claim in various ways during his time in the White House.
For example, on February 7, 2023, Breitbart News fact checked Biden’s claim that mass shootings tripled after the “assault weapons” ban expired.
But Breitbart News reported the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) released a report in 2004, as the “assault weapons” ban was coming to an end, that painted completely different scenario. The information in the NIJ study indicates researchers could not credit the “assault weapons” ban with any of the reductions in crime or shootings which were sporadically reported elsewhere.
The Washington Times quoted University of Pennsylvania professor Christopher Koper, author of the NIJ report, saying, “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”
The NIJ report continued, “The ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”
