The shooting in Boulder, Colorado yesterday immediately generated a tsunami of ‘news’ reports which included references to an “assault rifle” used by the perpetrator. Before the facts were even known, Biden already had his teleprompter ready to decry “high capacity magazines” and “assault weapons”. He boasted that he previously authored the 1994 ban on “assault weapons” which was allowed to expire in 2004. Why was it allowed to expire? Because it didn’t work![i]
Setting aside the hysterical white male supremacy drivel that spewed forth from the Leftist press, I’d like to remind my readers of some hard facts:
1. AR, as in AR-15, does NOT stand for “assault rifle” as so many ignorant politicians and reporters allege. It is a reference to the Armalite Company’s model AR-15, which was a scaled down version of the earlier AR-10 rifle designed by Eugene Stoner, a design engineer. Thanks to Stoner and Armalite, the M16 military version capable of fully-automatic (a.k.a. “select-fire”) was developed. Over 8 million M16’s have been manufactured and most of the U.S. military adopted it at one time or another as standard issue.
2. The AR-15 style rifle, which is manufactured by many companies, is NOT capable of fully-automatic/select-fire operation. It may LOOK like an M16 or M4 (another military version), but it is, by definition, NOT an assault rifle. It is a semi-automatic weapon, which means the trigger must be pulled each time it is fired. An assault rifle, by contrast, has the fully-automatic capability of a machine gun. For a layman’s discussion of what IS and what is NOT an assault weapon, here’s an excellent article on the subject. It is incredibly naive, inaccurate and misleading to equate the term “assault rifle” with any rifle that looks like an M16, M4 an AK47 (the other of the two most popular military rifles in the world) or any other semi-automatic or even a “scary looking” single shot pistol. I was appalled to see in the officer’s report on the Boulder shooting the misuse of the term, which shows just how successful the anti-gun-lobby has been in bastardizing the definition!
3. If the shooter hadn’t used an AR-style semi-automatic pistol/rifle in the incident, are there other weapons he could have used? The answer is YES! Here are some examples of very powerful semi-automatic shotguns that don’t look scary but could have indeed been used, with the same tragic effect.
4. As an aside, it is a fact that the greatest school mass murder in U.S. history was not Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, University of Texas – Austin or Columbine. It was the 1927 Bath, Michigan bombing, which claimed 44 lives, 38 of them children. In other words, a committed murderer has many weapons available to him (or her). If the Boulder shooter didn’t have ready access to a semi-automatic, AR style rifle and was bent on murdering innocent civilians yesterday, he had lots of other options.
5. If all 300 million-plus guns in the hands of private citizens vanished on a Monday at the snap of a finger, how many guns would there be in America by the end of the week, and in whose hands would they be? The answer, many, and they’d be in the hands of criminals who would have free rein.
6. While it’s a slogan, it’s nevertheless a true one: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” While the anti-gun lobby wants you to believe this isn’t true, this article describes just a few, documented examples of this principle. Had another good guy with a gun (officer Eric Tally was obviously one) been present yesterday, how many of the ten lives that were lost might have been saved?
7. “Of all murders recorded in 2018 by the FBI, rifles accounted for 297 deaths. Handguns accounted for 6,603 deaths, and shotguns and all firearms not described otherwise accounted for 3,365 deaths[ii].”
So when all the hyperventilation and anti-gun rhetoric spews forth over the next days and weeks, quoting directly from the article referenced in the footnote:
“The last point to declare once again and for all is the inarguable fact that prohibits a piecemeal or total gun ban from ever working: A criminal intent on committing a mass shooting, murder, or other crime will not decide against it because he or she must use a handgun, or shotgun, or some other gun instead of an “assault rifle.”
An assault weapon ban never has not changed that and it never will. The only thing a gun ban does is restrict the Second Amendment rights of Americans. To argue a certain type of firearm should be prohibited from ownership by Americans in a factually useless attempt to reduce shootings is to fail to grasp the scope and intent of the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment was not written by those who escaped tyranny for the purpose of hunting. Nor was it written to provide a means for the individual’s self-defense. It was written to ensure American citizens will always have the physical force which might some day be required to once again protect liberty and their Constitutional rights from tyranny. In 2020, perhaps even those on the far left of the political spectrum would concede such a necessity exists.”
[i] For a comprehensive exposé, see the article here entitled “Did the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban Work?“) And if you want to read the official federal sponsored study entitled “Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003” you can read it here.
[ii] ibid.
