There has been greater movement towards new legislation for more gun control after the school shooting that left 20 children and six staff members' dead in Newton, Connecticut. But has this worked before?
In 1994, Congress passed a Federal Assault Weapons Ban. The ban was in effect from 1994 until 2004 but was not renewed by Congress.
Nine years into the ban, there were 75,584 aggravated assaults throughout the state of Texas. 16,352 of them were done with firearms. In 2011, when there was no assault weapon ban, there were 63,330 aggravated assaults and 13,998 of them were done with firearms.
Congress originally passed the ban after a string of mass killings was committed by criminals with assault weapons back in 1994. The ban outlawed future manufacture and importation of several specific firearms. This included some automatic and semi-automatic guns.
The term assault weapons is an incorrect term said Chief Deputy, Roger Short of the Potter County Sheriff's Office. "That was a liberal term created by liberals in Washington to confuse people, to intimidate people and to scare people into thinking all these things is bad."
Bernie Stokes of Panhandle Gunslingers explains that it doesn't make a difference what kind of gun you have. Every time you pull the trigger, one bullet goes out. "It doesn't matter if you have a 10-round capacity magazine or a 20-round capacity magazine. A trained shooter can drop the one magazine, put the other one in and be fine and not waste 5 seconds doing it," he said.
Violent crime statistics have been going down throughout the nation. Law enforcement suggests that gun control will not prevent future tragedies from happening. "If you got someone determined to do wrong, you're not going to stop them unless you stop them with equal to or superior force than they're using. That's the only thing that's going to stop them," said Short.
