IT'S FINAL: DROPPING GUN BAN DID NO HARM AT ALL

So much for "anti-gun hysterics" and predictions of "blood running in the streets," a Second Amendment group says. Nine months after the Clinton-era "assault weapons ban" expired, the FBI has released crime statistics showing a drop in homicides in 2004 -- the first such drop since 1999. The FBI report said all types of violent crime declined last year, and cities with more than a million people showed the largest drops in violent crime.

When the Clinton ban on certain semiautomatic weapons expired last September, gun control groups warned that violent crime would escalate, including violence against children. But those "doom and gloom" forecasts have been exposed as "pure clap-trap," said SAF President Joe Tartaro. "Where is the news media on this?" Tartaro wondered. He said if the number of homicides had gone up, reporters would be writing front-page stories linking the rise to the end of the semi-auto ban. But that's not the case, and the mainstream press, with the exception of an April 28 New York Times article, has been pretty quiet about it," Tartaro said.

The FBI crime report is more proof that the rhetoric from anti-gunners is bogus, Tartaro added. "The press should now question all the other outrageous claims and predictions from the gun control crowd."

"The gun control movement is, and always has been, built on a foundation of hysteria and lies," SAF Founder Alan Gottlieb said. "From their lawsuits against gun makers to their assaults on the firearm civil rights of law-abiding American citizens, these gun grabbers have been deliberately deceitful and consistently wrong."

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Criminals and politicians love gun control: "Even by conservative estimates, more than 800,000 Americans use guns defensively against criminals each year, firing a shot less than 3 percent of the time. In contrast, police officers are more likely than private gun owners to shoot the wrong person in a given confrontation. Statistics showing that a handgun is more likely to kill its owner or an acquaintance than an assailant are deceptive. Gun owners almost never have to kill anyone to effectively defend themselves, and almost all incidents of people dying by their own guns are suicides."



Weapons of choice: "'Smith & Wesson is the handgun of choice among America's criminals.'We know this because Steve Bailey of The Boston Globe tells us so. The columnist berates the gun maker for not pursuing an agreement hatched between its former British owners and the Clinton administration to ward off lawsuits by imposing draconian restrictions on firearms dealers. 'Smith & Wesson's .38-caliber revolver is the handgun traced most often in crimes,' he proclaims. 'As the cops and ministers work the streets in Boston, the gun lobby is working the halls of Congress in Washington,' Bailey whines, anticipating the end of the federal 'assault weapons' ban. What that has to do with S&W .38s is anyone's guess, but it dovetails nicely into the Violence Policy Center's hysterical assertion that 'Drug traffickers are finding that assault weapons provide the extra firepower necessary to fight police and competing dealers. Right-wing paramilitary extremists have made these easily purchased firearms their gun of choice.'"