A Brief History
On February 15, 2018, the nation mourns as the United States is rocked by another mass shooting at a school, this time a public high school in Florida. A former student, 19-year-old Nicholas Cruz, is charged with the murder of 17 people and wounding another 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. His apparent weapon, an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle.
Digging Deeper
Gun grabbers reflexively blamed the gun, calling the AR-15 pattern rifle an “assault weapon.” Despite its appearance, the AR-15 is NOT an assault weapon, the definition of an assault weapon including an ability to fire on full automatic (machine gun) mode. Critics of such rifles immediately pointed out the prevalence of the AR-15 as a weapon of choice in recent mass shootings. All rifles and semi-automatic carbines that look like military weapons are targeted for proposed bans that would theoretically make the country safe.
Gun enthusiasts point out the fact that rifles account for a tiny fraction of the murders in the United States, military styled rifles account for only 1.4% of murders by firearms annually, and prior to the much ballyhooed “assault weapon ban” of 1994 (that expired in 2004) Americans were actually 11 times more likely to be beaten to death than killed with an “assault weapon!” Banning these guns is a solution looking for a problem.
Critics of the MSR, (Modern Sporting Rifle, which is what enthusiasts call the AR-15 and similar rifles) also condemn the large capacity magazines (often 20 or more rounds) as making those guns particularly deadly. Gun critics also frequently refer to these civilian/military clone weapons as “high powered,” “high caliber,” or “needlessly high powered.” In fact, the cartridges used by the AR-15 (the .223 Remington or 5.56mm NATO) are on the lower end of power for rifle caliber weapons and are far less potent than the typical deer hunting calibers such as 30-06 or 12 Gauge shotgun slugs. (5.56mm has an energy of 1196 foot pounds out of a long barrel, but only around 1000 foot pounds out of a typical 16 inch barrel favored by Americans. The 30-06 packs a whopping 2820 foot pounds of energy, massively more potent than the normal AR-15 round! Typical 12 Gauge shotgun slugs pack between 2600 and over 3000 foot pounds of energy, nearly triple the power of the AR-15.) The other most prevalent assault weapon, the AK-47, also has many civilian type copies that shoot only semi-automatic, and those are normally in 7.62 X 39 mm caliber, another relatively anemic caliber that produces only 1500 foot pounds of energy.) Clearly, these so called “assault weapons” are not frighteningly powerful, they just look cool and hold a lot of rounds.
So what can we do to keep AR-15 style guns out of our schools? Well for starters, we could reexamine the laws that allow 18-year-olds to buy rifles, including AR-15’s! Although you have to be 21 in the US to buy a handgun, Federal law allows 18, 19, and 20-year-olds to buy rifles and shotguns. If we are to honor our shooting heritage by allowing 18-year-olds to buy guns (even though they are not allowed to buy a beer), perhaps we could limit their purchase to single shot firearms. Just an idea. After all, a disproportionate number of school shooters are students or recently former students of those schools and making them wait until they are 21 just might prevent some of these horrible incidents. Probably 40 to 50% of the AR-15 pattern guns in the US are owned by military veterans and active duty or retired police officers. The majority of AR-15 owners are over 35-years-old and a large chunk of those are college educated. As many as 10 million AR-15 semi-automatic rifles and carbines are in American civilian hands, as are another untold number of other large magazine capacity military style weapons, such as AK-47 and SKS style semi-auto rifles, Ruger Mini-14’s, M-1 Carbines, and the like. These tens of millions of guns (out of the 300+ million civilian owned firearms in the US) are rarely used in crimes, but when they are, the media frenzy would have you think otherwise.
After the “assault weapons” ban of 1994 expired in 2004, murders in the United States went on an historic slide, decreasing by over 40% in the following decade. Other violent crimes also decreased, but you would never know it based on media coverage. Since 1994 guns owned by Americans have more than doubled, but shootings haven’t. Virtually all states now have legal concealed carry laws, with more Americans than ever before in our history legally carrying handguns, and yet crime has gone down!
As we have stated in the past, the identification of people that present a threat needs to be improved, a topic much more important than the guns themselves. Nick Cruz appeared to be a weirdo, based on his social media rants about guns and bombs and his desire to kill people. The news is reporting him to have been a White Supremacist, and the reason he was expelled from his high school was over making threats! And yet, authorities did nothing to seize his weapons, place him on a “no buy” list, or make a mandatory mental assessment of him. News reports that the FBI was alerted to the danger posed by Cruz twice but failed to do anything or even notify local authorities is troubling.
To this author, it is obvious that new laws and procedures need to be enacted to screen people that others identify as dangerous, while still protecting the civil rights of those so identified. People placed on a prohibited list from buying or owning guns need to have a quick and reliable recourse to prove their trustworthiness, and accusers must face reasonable cause that the accused dangerous person is indeed dangerous. A system of evaluating people so accused and the appeal of negative decisions needs to be quick and reliable. A new structure to deal with this problem needs to be set up. Along these lines, prohibited people, such as violent convicted felons that possess guns illegally even though family and friends know those people have a firearm, need to have those family and friends face a legal obligation to report such illegal possession of guns to authorities.
Blowing off the fact that demented people can alternatively use bombs, fire, or motor vehicles to commit mass murder instead of guns is ridiculous. In recent years, bombs, fire and motor vehicles have been employed as effective weapons of murder. Truly, it is people control that needs to be addressed! Or at least I think so. Question for students (and subscribers): Feel free to tell us what you think about “gun control,” semi-automatic military looking guns, and the mental health issues involved in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Rottman, Gordon. The Book of Gun Trivia: Essential Firepower Facts. Osprey Publishing, 2013.
Street, Christopher. Gun Control: Guns in America, The Full Debate, More Guns Less Problems? No Guns No Problems? Create Space, 2015.
Time-Life. History of the Gun in 500 Photographs. Time-Life Books, 2016
Winkler, Adam. Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. WW Norton, 2015.
The featured image in this article, an image by Formulanone of the school in June 2008, has been released by the copyright holder of this work into the public domain worldwide.
