
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 10, 1995                   TAG: 9507100133
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

ASSAULT WEAPON POPULARITY GROWS

About 1.3 million U.S. residents faced an assailant armed with a gun during 1993, and the use of semiautomatic weapons by juveniles is rising fast, particularly in murders, the Justice Department said Sunday.

Of the victims of rape, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault by offenders carrying a firearm that year, 86 percent, or 1.1 million, said the weapon was a handgun, the department reported.

The Justice Department did not make a comparison with previous years because new methodology used for the first time to compile the report for 1993 was different from that used to produce earlier federal statistics on gun crime. However, Handgun Control Inc. - applying its own methodology to various figures available for earlier years - said the 1993 Justice Department figure represented an 18 percent increase in victims of handgun crime from 1992. Handgun Control is a 400,000-member group that lobbies to regulate handguns,

Murder was the crime that most frequently involved firearms - in 70 percent of the 24,526 homicides in 1993, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistic reported. Four out of five were committed with handguns.

The report comes while the Republican-controlled Congress is considering legislation to eliminate the 1994 federal ban on 19 assault weapons - which are semiautomatic pistols or rifles - and to weaken the Brady law which requires a waiting period before the purchase of a handgun.

President Clinton has made clear he would veto a repeal of the assault weapon ban. Last weekend, he praised the Brady law and proposed expanding the ban on bullets that can pierce bullet-resistant vests.

A study of Virginia criminals found that 18 percent of juveniles carried a semiautomatic pistol at the crime scene compared to only 7 percent of adult criminals. A 1991 study of juvenile inmates in four states found that, just before they were locked up, 55 percent owned a semiautomatic pistol and 35 percent owned a military-style automatic or a semiautomatic rifle.

``One thing has shown a dramatic increase in crime statistics: crime by young offenders,'' said Professor Gene Stephens of the University of South Carolina College of Criminal Justice. ``What might have been an assault with fists and knives in the past now becomes a homicide because kids have automatic and semiautomatic weapons and handguns.''

by CNB