An 'Assault Weapon' Ban Won't Stop Mass Shootings
Yesterday's mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has predictably provoked renewed calls , long on outrage and short on logic, for a federal ban on so-called assault weapons. "We don't want your prayers," writes New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi, responding to Donald Trump's post-massacre tweet . "What we want from you right now is to ban assault weapons; we want you to make it impossible for civilians to have AR-15s. Period. We want YOU, elected officials, to stop killing our children while praising God. You know nothing of God, because if you did, you phony liars, you'd stop the killing without question by changing the law."
Americans own something like 15 million AR-15-style rifles, which have been one of the biggest-selling firearm categories during the last decade or so. These guns are almost never used to commit violent crimes. According to the FBI , rifles of all kinds accounted for just 3 percent of firearm homicides in 2016, while handguns accounted for 65 percent. Contrary to what you may have heard, handguns are also by far the most common choice for mass shooters. A Mother Jones review of mass shootings from 1982 through 2012 found that 66 percent of the weapons were handguns, while just 14 percent would qualify as "assault weapons" under the definition used in a 2013 bill sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). More recent data show a similar pattern.
Politicians, activists, and journalists who have decided to blame mass shootings on "assault weapons" either do not acknowledge these facts or wave them away. "While semi-automatic handguns still account for the vast majority of weapons used in mass shootings across the United States," says The Miami Herald , "semi-automatic rifles are increasingly common weapons of choice." How can certain kinds of guns be "weapons of choice" when other guns are chosen much more often?
First, it is clearly possible to carry out attacks similar to yesterday's, which killed 17 people, without using "assault weapons." Nine of the mass shootings with the 20 highest death tolls involved handguns or long guns that are not covered by Feinstein's bill. That includes the third deadliest mass shooting, which killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, as well as two other attacks that killed 17 or more people.
Second, the fact that the perpetrators of the deadliest mass shootings tend to favor "assault weapons" does not mean that choice makes the attacks deadlier than they otherwise would be. That proposition seems pretty doubtful in light of the "assault weapon" definitions used by legislators, which are based on appearance rather than lethality.
The latest version of Feinstein's bill covers any semiautomatic rifle with a detachable magazine if it also has a pistol grip or forward grip, a grenade launcher or rocket launcher, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel, or a folding, telescoping, or detachable stock. Those features may help explain why some mass shooters like the looks of these guns (just as Feinstein hates the looks of these guns), but they do not explain why one mass shooter kills 10 people while another kills five.
Feinstein's bill does not apply to the millions of "assault weapons" that are already in circulation, so it would not actually "make it impossible for civilians to have AR-15s," as Linda Stasi recommends. But even if the government could magically make all the guns targeted by Feinstein disappear, there is no reason to believe it would have a noticeable impact on the frequency or lethality of mass shootings. The notion that legislators can "stop the killing...by changing the law" is perennially appealing, but it is completely divorced from reality.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/15/an-assault-weapon-ban-wont-stop-mass-sho
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Bruce, it has become obvious in recent years that certain deranged wanna be mass murderers fixate on the "AR 15". I would agree that is unfortunate for those who like the gun and would like to keep buying it and fawning over it, but the situation is what it is. The AR-15 has come to symbolize random mass shootings at places such as movie theaters , country music concerts, schools, churches, restaurants, etc. and it has that stigma attached to it.
Love another gun and let this one pass into history.
Nope. I should not be forced to give up my right, or accept a ban on a certain weapon because of the actions of a deranged individual. Deal the the deranged individual, not the gun. As this article points out, banning the gun is not stopping the deranged.
Nobody is claiming that banning that gun, or even any assault style guns, would stop all mass murders. But no one can also claim that the unavailability, in the future, of those style guns won't stop one, or minimize the number of deaths in an incident.
The question for you is, how many children's lives is your gun worth? If you could save even 1 innocent child's life by giving up your gun, would you? If not, how many would it take for you to give it up?
"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the law abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless"
Lysander Spooner.
Your question is ambiguous. Banning all assault weapons will not stop the evil.
Translation: My owning a gun is more important than your child's life.
Well, at least you're being honest about it.
Your child's life is in more danger from a drunk driver than a school shooter. Do you want to ban cars? It would be much easier, since driving a car is not a right protected by the Constitution.
Stop with the strawman arguments.
Yes, please do.
Pot meet kettle.
You still haven't answered my question. How many innocent lives is your gun worth?
One. Mine. My weapon is worth my life. It is my right to life that allows me to use that force necessary to protect it, up to and including deadly force if the situation calls for it, within the laws of the state. And that natural right to life is what the civil right to arms is protected for by the Constitution. The civil right protects the natural right because the government cannot guarantee that protection of the natural right for every citizen.
Two, Three, Four, and Five. My wife, my son, and my two daughters. The government cannot guarantee their safety either. So it is up to me to provide for it. Using my civil right. My wife has the ability to exercise that right as well. As do my son, and my two daughters. And they do so, to protect the lives of my grandchildren.
Six and up. Any civilian I encounter that needs protection. I carry when I volunteer at the VFW on BINGO nights. One old lady once asked me why I have a gun. I told her "To protect you". She said "That's good enough for me."
17 people, mostly children died in this tragedy. And it is a tragedy. Borne on the hands of a mentally unstable individual. I'm truly sorry for the families and that community. Yes, they had a right to live. But so did the 26 children killed by a drunk driver in the Carrollton Bus Crash. My heart cried for them as well. That crash resulted in the formation of the MADD movement. A movement that went after the root cause of the deaths: Drunk Driving. Not the object, a truck.
But here you would go after not the root cause, but the object, a weapon. And in doing so, you tell me my life, and the life of my family and those I come in contact with are not worth the protection my civil right allows, because of the actions of a mentally unstable individual.
So in reality, you ask the wrong question. It's not my weapon that killed those kids. What you should be asking is how many lives are worth the privacy of one individual's mental state.
So, a typical Republican belief. "I got mine, fuck you."
If that's the way you want to look at it, go for it.
I agree with you well-written comment. What we really need on this issue is people to share each other's perspectives.
Right now, the NRA and its lobbying arm is doing us all a disservice. The noise-level rose with LaPierre poking his finger into the chest of everybody who has an opposing point during his speech at CPAC. It was the worse case of using death as a sounding board I have seen this year. The NRA has an overarching agenda that no one has drilled down to when the discussion stays up "here."
So Uncle Bruce I ask you, what is at the heart of the NRA's intense resistance ('throwing up smokescreens") to solid, constructive gun change? And, is the NRA satisfied that it has done right by the "American people," by keeping the status quo?
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
But people with guns kill lots of people.
Uncle Bruce! I am not pointing this video at you. But, I wanted you to see it, because I value what you wrote and showed in pictured about predators on your ranch. This is powerful. And, we need to hear the stories of "what could have been" from more of these people. It could help focus the debate. Peace. I think this is powerfully moving information.