Ban expiration has little effect on C-U

By Craig Colbrook

While the federal Assault Weapons Ban expired Monday, it remains to be seen if the effects of the expiration will be felt locally.

University Police Lt. Dave Nelson said the campus area may feel the impact as much as other areas because of University rules that were already more restrictive than the federal ban.

“The University of Illinois has specific laws and regulations that other places don’t,” Nelson said. “For instance, in 1968 they put in a law that restricts all weapons from U of I property. That includes firearms, but isn’t limited to them.”

Nelson said Illinois’ gun control laws will also help make up for the lack of a ban but cautioned that those laws don’t exist everywhere.

“Illinois has strict gun control legislation,” he said. “The ban perhaps did less for us than for other states because we have laws they don’t have. If those laws are followed, the expiration will perhaps have less effect on us than on other areas of the country. I think there’s a misconception about the expiration. You can’t go buy a machine gun now; you still can’t own a machine gun in Illinois.”

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In fact, Nelson said in his experience Illinois laws like the Firearm Owners Identification Act might have done more to prevent gun related crimes than the Assault Weapons Ban did.

The expiration of the ban will not change the University Police’s tactics much, Nelson said, because even under the ban and Illinois’ stricter laws, certain weapons were still available.

“Just because you had the ban, it’s not like, poof, the weapons were gone,” he said. “They were still out there. Our officers are trained in several different high stress, firearm scenarios and we’re prepared to do that with or without the ban.”

However, Brooke Anderson, a community organizer with the Champaign County Health Consumers, said the expiration will have a definite effect simply because it will be easier to get certain weapons.

“Just because the ban expired, there will be an increased interest in getting these weapons,” Anderson said. “We believe the expiration will cause an increased presence of these weapons on our streets and in the hands of criminals.”

Tony Hutchison, owner of Tony’s Guns and Ammo, 2311 Roland Drive, agreed that it would be easier to obtain the weapons.

“The only difference I’ll see is a difference in prices,” Hutchison said. “Now that they’ve lifted the ban, prices will be cheaper.”

Hutchison said this was because the ban made it illegal to manufacture certain weapons, not sell ones that were already made. Gun distributors simply stockpiled the quantities they already had and sold them at higher prices.

“It didn’t slow the market down any,” he said. “I haven’t had any problem locating AK-47s or anything.”

Nelson said this was part of the weakness of the ban, along with the fact that it concentrated on add-ons to the weapons, not the weapons themselves.

“The ban’s major issues were bayonet lugs, magazine capacity and flash suppressors,” Nelson said. “If a gun had a certain combination of those three things, then it would be illegal, but not just the gun itself.”

Anderson acknowledged that the ban had its weaknesses.

“The law that expired was not as effective as it should have been,” she said. “There were many loopholes that allowed manufacturers to still make very similar weapons. That’s why we were trying to strengthen the laws.”

Still, Anderson said the law had its place, citing a Violence Policy Center report based on FBI data that said one out of every five police officers killed in the line of duty is killed by an assault weapon. Because of that, Anderson said 158 local and county police departments in Illinois supported the renewal of the ban, as well as 2,000 police departments nationwide.

“We believe these military-type weapons have no place in our streets,” she said. “We’ll continue to campaign for the renewal and strengthening of the federal ban, as well as passage of a statewide ban in lieu of or until we get one at the federal level.”