Fact check: Claim about AR-15s, abortion fails to account for 1994 assault weapons ban

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·4 min read
309

The claim: Abortions were banned before AR-style semi-automatic rifles

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had given Americans the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years, some social media users spread an out-of-context comparison between abortions and AR-style semi-automatic rifles

"I will never forget that abortions were banned before AR-15s," reads a Facebook post shared June 25.

The post generated over 1,500 interactions and 600 shares in less than a week. Similar posts have amassed thousands of interactions on Facebook and Twitter.

But the comparison leaves out key information.

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AR-style rifles were banned between 1994 and 2004 under federal law, experts told USA TODAY. This took place after Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 and before the watershed ruling was overturned on June 24.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

A weapons ban took effect in 1994

While it's accurate to say AR-15s remain legal and Roe v. Wade has been overturned, the controversial weapons have been banned before.

The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, commonly called the assault weapons ban, took effect in 1994, an attempt by Congress to reduce mass shootings, according to Louis Klarevas, a firearms law expert and research professor at Columbia University. President Bill Clinton signed the act into law on Sept. 13, 1994.

The act prohibited the manufacture, importation, possession and sale or transfer of high-capacity magazines that held more than 10 bullets and assault weapons not already legally owned prior to Sept. 13, 1994, when the act took effect, Klarevas said.

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The ban only applied to certain assault weapons as defined by the law, and this included AR- and AK-style semi-automatic rifles, according to Klarevas. The law also defined assault weapons based on their features to prevent gun manufacturers from circumventing the law by simply giving a firearm a new model name and number, he said.

"If a semiautomatic firearm had at least two of the enumerated features identified in the law for that class of weapon, then it was also deemed an assault weapon," Klarevas said.

There were loopholes in the law, however.

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ABC News reported that many guns were still used legally because modifications could be made on weapons to skirt the ban. There was also nothing illegal "about owning or selling such a weapon or magazine that had been created before the law was signed," according to ABC News.

A sunset provision ending the ban in 2004 was added as "a political compromise to secure enough votes in Congress to get it to pass," Klarevas said. There was no political support to extend the ban in 2004 since Republicans by then had taken over both houses of Congress.

The claim's implication that all abortions are banned is wrong. The Supreme Court's June 24 ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade. But it did not ban abortions outright.

The ruling left it to the states to decide whether and how to regulate abortion. While some states have implemented abortion bans or additional regulations, other states have let abortion remain legal and available.

Our rating: Missing context

Based on our research, we rate MISSING CONTEXT the claim that abortions were banned before AR-style semi-automatic rifles. The claim ignores a decade-long previous ban on these weapons. A 1994 federal law banned the manufacture, sale or possession of AR-15-like rifles that a person did not already legally own, and this ban lasted until 2004.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Claim that abortions were banned before AR-15s misleading