Texas Congresscritter Sheila Jackson-Lee is generally good for entertaining stupidity, and this is no exception.

Jackson Lee: There Was ‘Seismic Increase of Carnage Across America Using Automatic Weapons’ after Assault Weapons Ban Expired
Jackson Lee said, “I have committed, over the years, having introduced bills dealing with the ban on assault weapons post-2004, as you well know, Ayman, that’s when it ended. And we saw the seismic increase of carnage across America using automatic weapons. And in the instance of Buffalo and the instance of Uvalde, having gone there on Sunday, meeting with and just listening to the sheer desperation of families and children. That was an AR-15 as well.”

I’m sure even the most casual TZP reader caught the main problem, but let me take this a point at a time.

I’ll start with that skyrocketing use of “automatic weapons, known legally as machineguns. Happily for us, TZP tracks machinegun use, so the data I want is readily available.

Right off, I hope you noticed that machinegun use is pretty darned rare. The next thing to notice is that prior to the misnomered “assault weapon ban” (it banned zero existing firearms) in 1994, there had been ONE reported machinegun use since 1981.

Next, note that after the “AWB” expired in 2004 there… huh, zero machine uses for the next 13 years.

That doesn’t look like much of a correlation between the AWB expiration and automatic weapon use. But do take a look between those red lines indicating when the AWB was in effect.

Three machinegun uses.

Lessee… virtually no machinegun uses prior to the ban, a “jump” (kinda statistically meaningless really, seeing as how small the samples are) during the ban, and a drop to nonexistent use once the ban expired. If I suffered a traumatic brain injury and turned into a Dimocrat, I’d probably think that the “assault weapon ban” caused machinegun use.

Heck, if I were a Dimocrat, I’d probably think the AWB caused machineguns.

But on to the point that probably had folks muttering before all that. I had recently had cause to revisit the “Assault Weapon Ban” of 1994. It didn’t address automatic weapons — machineguns — at all.

It shall be unlawful for a person to manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon.

Machinegun use “increased” (though it didn’t) post-AWB? Jackson-Lee might as well have noted that US egg production increased post-AWB. At least that actually happened. But showing a cause and effect relation between the two might be a little difficult.

But Jackson-Lee’s real point is in that final sentence.

That was an AR-15 as well.

It was actually a Daniel Defense DDM4, not a Colt AR-15 (how many people realize that “AR-15” is a registered trademark of Colt?), but we understand that she’s attempting to “smear” all AR-pattern rifles as “automatic weapons”…

Just as Josh Sugarmann intended

“The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”

The lie lives on. Along with this classic repeated by Jackson-Lee.

So, there’s a gathering around recognizing that assault weapons kill. They killed 19 children and two teachers.”

The known psycho wielding the rifle (singular) killed those people, with a rifle.

100+ million people with tens of millions of AR-pattern firearms DID NOT.

But blame the 0.000005% of inanimate objects for the actions of <0.000001% of gun owners.

 

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