You’re wrong Scott.
The study you cite claims:
“Following implementation of the ban, the share of gun crimes involving AWs declined by 17% to 72% across the localities examined for this study (Baltimore, Miami, Milwaukee, Boston, St. Louis, and Anchorage), based on data covering all or portions of the 1995-2003 post-ban period.”
AW refers to the semi-automatic (one shot per trigger pull) military-look firearms actually covered by the ban. Evans clearly stated that the use of automatic weapons–machine guns that were in now way addressed by the 1994 law–went down.
Having defined what a semi-automatic weapon was himself, Evans was clearly attempting to trick readers into thinking that the 1994 bill banned machine guns, when it did nothing of the sort, just as he lied when he said gun dealers were responsible for selling guns to anyone with cash without background checks.
Evans purposefully misled his audience, and we now see that The Daily Beast has gone back and tried to clean up after Evans.
Also this was not an official DOJ study, hence the warning on the very first page:
“This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice.
To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally funded grant final report available electronically in addition to
traditional paper copies.
“Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.”
You’ll also note that the study was done in just six communities, which Evans attempted to imply represented a national average.
No matter how you try to slice this, no matter how you try to defend this, Evans is a very experienced newspaperman who knew precisely what he was doing when he tried to mislead his readers.
That you’re apparently willing to be mislead… well, that says more about you than anyone else.
