Why Congress won’t ban assault weapons

But the Democratic-led Congress isn’t seriously considering any such proposal, and even gun-control advocates have stopped pursuing it as a top priority.

The reasons behind shelving the ban are both political and practical: Passing such legislation in a closely divided Senate, when Republicans as a party have for years opposed nearly all gun legislation, isn’t feasible. A Justice Department study of the decadelong ban that ended in 2004 also showed its effectiveness was limited. And there are 20 million AR-style rifles in America and little public appetite for seizing them.

As thousands of Americans prepare to attend March for Our Lives rallies in Washington and across the country Saturday, a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons has become less popular. Half of registered voters favor it, while 45% oppose it, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week—the lowest level of support since Quinnipiac first asked the question in 2013.

“I would love to have an assault-weapons ban. Nobody should be running around with an AR-15," said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii). “However, I’m very clear also in the need—and the urgent need—to enact some kind of legislation that will provide more gun safety than we have now. And I have to say it’s a pretty low bar, but we need to at least get to that point."

The Democratic-controlled House didn’t include an assault-weapons ban in a gun-control package that passed this week just hours after the mother of 10-year-old Lexi Rubio, a victim of the Uvalde, Texas, mass killing, tearfully asked for it in a congressional hearing. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) has promised a separate hearing on an assault-weapons ban, but she hasn’t committed to bringing legislation to the floor for a vote by the full House.

Bills to ban semiautomatic weapons like AR-15 style rifles haven’t come close to passing since the federal ban expired in 2004.

The political landscape has shifted dramatically since 1994, when former President Bill Clinton, along with a coalition of Democrats, police leaders, and moderate suburban Republicans, outmaneuvered the National Rifle Association to push the ban through as part of a broad anticrime bill.

Now, Republicans almost uniformly oppose such a ban, while law-enforcement groups spend their time lobbying on other issues. Meanwhile, gun-control groups still support a ban but are placing a priority on less-divisive measures such as red-flag laws, which allow law enforcement, and sometimes family members, to petition courts to take guns temporarily from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others.

The 1994 law banned the manufacture of 19 weapons by name, including Colt’s AR-15. It prohibited semiautomatic rifles—guns that can fire one shot after another with each squeeze of the trigger—that had detachable ammunition magazines and at least two military-style features, such as a pistol grip or a bayonet mount. New magazines holding more than 10 rounds also were outlawed. Guns and magazines that were already in circulation before the ban were grandfathered in.

Gun makers quickly figured out how to produce similar weapons without the prohibited features and sold their guns under new names. Colt called its post-ban rifle the Match Target.

The post-ban guns looked a little different, and they were sold with 10-round magazines instead of 30-round magazines. But they still fired the same bullets as fast as a shooter could pull the trigger. By 1999, multiple gun makers were producing more AR-15s than ever before.

A 2004 report for the Justice Department found that the ban’s “effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement."

AR-15 sales have soared since the ban lapsed, spurred in part by periodic calls to ban them again. Before the 1994 ban, Americans owned approximately 400,000 AR-15s, according to government estimates; today, there are approximately 20 million AR- style rifles in private hands, according to industry estimates.

“[The ban] was so full of holes that it was only useful at the margins and that was 30 years ago," said Matt Bennett, a veteran of the Clinton White House and co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way. “In the interim period, there have been tens of millions of assault weapons put into private hands, and those won’t be coming back even with a ban."

Mass shootings have increased in frequency and deadliness, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“It is reasonable to argue that the federal ban could have prevented some of the recent increase in persons killed and injured in mass shootings had it remained in place," one of the authors of the 2004 assessment, Christopher Koper, an associate professor of criminology at George Mason University, wrote in 2020.

But, he added in the 2020 paper in Criminology & Public Policy, an academic journal, that is mainly because of the ban’s restrictions on magazine capacity.

Democrats in Washington have shifted their focus from banning AR-15s to raising the minimum age for buying them to 21—the same as handguns. The gunmen in Buffalo and Uvalde both purchased their weapons shortly after they turned 18.

Americans support, by 74% to 24%, raising the minimum legal age to buy any gun to 21, according to the new Quinnipiac poll.

The gun-control package that passed the House largely along party lines this week included provisions to raise the minimum age for buying semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s from 18 to 21, and to ban high-capacity magazines.

Gun groups and many Republican lawmakers argue that 18-year-olds who can serve in the military and vote should also be allowed to own semiautomatic rifles.

The Senate’s bipartisan talks have been focused instead on measures that would make juvenile records accessible for background checks, boost funds for mental-health programs and school security, and provide federal grants to encourage states to pass red-flag laws.

Some Republican senators say they are open to federally raising the minimum purchase age for assault weapons. But Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the lead Republican negotiator in the Senate, said that it doesn’t yet have 60 votes in the Senate.

“I’m not saying that could never happen," he said. “But right now I don’t see it."

Seven states—California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Vermont, Washington and just this month New York—have already raised the minimum age to 21. The majority did so after a 19-year-old attacker armed with an AR-15 killed 17 people in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Florida’s then-Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, signed his state’s bill weeks after the Parkland shooting. Now a senator, Mr. Scott said he opposes federal legislation because he thinks it should be up to each state whether to raise the purchase age.

The state bans have prompted court challenges. In May, a federal appeals court panel threw out California’s law, ruling 2-1 that it violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, which worked on the case, said his organization would also challenge any federal law in court.

Amy Hunter, a spokeswoman for the NRA, said the group opposes any attempt to raise the age limit. “To prohibit young adults from purchasing firearms would be to contend that these individuals are law-abiding and responsible enough to defend their country and enforce the law, but cannot be trusted to follow the law," Ms. Hunter said.