30 Years Ago Today, The Clinton Assault Weapons Ban Was Signed Into Law

Gather round, folks, because today we’re going to do a deep dive into gun control history. Today is the 20th anniversary of the expiration of the Clinton Assault Weapons.

September 13, 1994 is a date which will live in gun rights infamy. That was the date that President Clinton scribbled his name and in a direct attack on law-abiding gun owners, He signed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 law that was created at the behest of the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex.

You know it better as the Clinton “assault weapons” ban of 1994. The bill made it illegal for law-abiding Americans to purchase firearms with dangerous features like threaded barrels and folding or telescoping stocks. It also outlawed new magazines that held more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Police statistics prior to the passage of the ban made it clear how useless the AWB would become in that the weapons targeted by the law were hardly ever used by criminals.

Such pesky details, however, didn’t stop the Clinton Administration from pushing for the gun control law. Reeling from a poor public approval rating, Clinton and congressional Democrats has a whole were hurting from their soft-on-crime reputation. So, as the ban was rolled out and crime-rates were falling, they adopted a tough-on-crime and back-the-blue narrative to try to appeal to middle America.

In those days, the political environment around gun rights was bleak. There was an outright assault on gun ownership. The nation was just emerging from an historic crime-wave fueled by the war on drugs. Gun control was seen by all right-thinkers as the logical thing to do. On state and local levels, a wave of gun control laws had been passed.

California’s Republican Governor, George Deukmejian, signed the Golden State’s first assault weapons ban, the Roberti–Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989 into law. Major cities were banning the legal ownership of handguns. The nation’s capital had banned handguns in 1976 and Chicago outlawed them in 1982.

The media, of course, were pushing the anti-gun narrative hard back then…just as they do now.

Two former Republican presidents joined a crazy Georgia peanut farmer in calling on Congress to enact the ban.

As I said, it was a dark time for gun owners.

The Clinton Administration took full advantage of the anti-freedom hysteria, supporting Democrats and like-minded Republicans in Congress. The assault on the Second Amendment on the federal level had began. HR 3335 was introduced in 1993. And for the most part, the process that the bill went through was a performative dog and pony show. Republicans then, like many do now, betrayed gun owners and then tried to hide their complicity.

During the vote wrangling in Congress, Pres. Clinton was pulled on the heart-strings of law-abiding, but politically uneducated Americans to drum up support for the ban.

In the end, the bill passed Congress and one of the key votes was cast by Republican Rep. John Kasich. He was so crucial to the bill’s passage that Clinton sent him this letter as a thank you . . .

With his victory secured, Clinton used the ban as campaign tool for the 1996 presidential election and pushed the tough-on-crime and back-the-blue narrative to win over middle-of-the-road voters.

And while that was going on, New York City’s Republican Mayor, Rudy Giuliani was pushing gun control by trying to sue gun manufacturers out of business.

Again, it was a dark time for gun owners and those who valued gun rights. But as the old saying goes, it’s always darkest before the dawn. And the bill only passed because it had a sunset provision. Stay tuned for Part 2.

 

Luis Valdes is a former law enforcement officer and detective, and is currently the Florida State Director, Outreach Director of Puerto Rico & US Virgin Islands, and National Spokesman for Gun Owners of America. You can follow Luis on X via @RealFLGunLobby.