Ban on assault weapons could deter US mass shootings: study

CANBERRA - Hundreds of lives might have been saved had a federal assault weapons ban been in place throughout the past four decades in the United States, a New York University study found.

Australian media outlet The Conversation on Wednesday reported the study which evaluated the effect of a 10-year federal ban on assault weapons on mass shootings in the United States.

During the ten years between 1994 and 2004, when the ban was in place, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, the study showed.

After the ban expired, however, the country saw an "almost immediate - and steep - rise in mass shooting deaths."

The risk of a person in the US dying in a mass shooting was 70 percent lower during the period in which the assault weapon ban was active, while the proportion of overall gun homicides resulting from mass shootings was also down, with nine fewer fatalities related to mass shooting per 10,000 shooting deaths, according to the data.

The study suggested that had the federal assault weapons ban been in place from 1981 through 2017, 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths might have been prevented.

It is difficult to say conclusively that reinstating the assault weapons ban would have a profound impact on curbing mass shootings, as Americans have been allowed to purchase and stockpile such weapons over the past 18 years, it said, "but given that many of the high-profile mass shooters in recent years purchased their weapons less than one year before committing their acts, the evidence suggests that it might."