No one questions the lethality of firearms. Lethality is why they were invented. These machines deserve respect, but not irrational fear. Current gun control arguments are based on fear rather than facts. Let’s be clear that we have many laws, both state and federal, that address control of firearm possession, so now it is a matter of degree.
The Founders embedded the right to bear arms, noting that citizens needed to be prepared to answer a call to arms through a militia, knowing from recent history that their liberty from the oppression of England was purchased by the citizenry absent a standing army. The argument for banning firearms to one degree or another rests largely on the assumption that this need for a militia has long expired. It would be 142 years before federal law placed limitations on firearm ownership.
The National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 restricted ownership of sawed-off rifles and shotguns, as well as machine guns and silencers reputedly used by the gangsters of the era of Prohibition. The NFA was challenged and the Supreme Court ultimately declared that the prohibited firearms were not needed for a militia, letting the law stand. The tax enforcement division of the Treasury Department added the “F” to its name, becoming the ATF. The Federal Firearms Act (FFA) of 1938 required licensing and record-keeping by gun sellers and prohibited felons from owning firearms. In the aftermath of violence in the 1960s, the Gun Control Act of 1968 replaced the FFA, banning other “destructive devices, mandating serial numbers, and prohibiting the importation of some firearms types.
In 1986 the Firearm Owners Protection Act was passed by Congress to provide some protections for gun-owning citizens. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 was enacted, initiating required background checks. The flurry of state and federal regulations and their court challenges has continued to define what the 2nd Amendment means. The current court has given several victories to citizens and groups advocating for less regulation.
The primary demon to advocates of gun control (which can mean anything from stricter regulations to outright prohibition and confiscation) is the popular rifle platform known as the AR-15. To those not familiar with these scary-looking guns, the monolithic AR-15 is thought to be a machine gun with tremendous destructive power responsible for a huge chunk of America’s violent crime.
First the “AR” does not stand for automatic rifle or assault rifle, but for the first producer of the piece in the 1950s, the ArmaLite company. The Colt brand kept the designation. The verbiage of those who want the AR-15 to disappear label this popular sporting rifle as an assault weapon, a weapon of war, and one with no sporting use. This belies the fact that, while the AR-15 looks like the M16 I carried in the Army, it does not support machine gun type fire, and the primary bullet is about the size of many Americans’ first gun, the ubiquitous .22. It will not blow a hole in you.
While reporters ache to be able to announce that an AR-15 was used in the latest mass shooting, its appeal to such shooters is as much a reflection of the media’s obsession as their own. We can’t deny its appeal to the young person donning the persona of a powerful mass killer, but neither can we deny that there are 44 million AR-15s in the hands of law-abiding citizens who shoot for sport, hunting, or preparing to defend their castle. The venerable rifle style represents only a 10th of the nearly 400 million privately owned firearms in the U.S.
Seldom acknowledged by the purveyors of those who want firearms ownership to be dictated by the mentally ill or delusional killers of the headlines, rifles are among the least instruments of murder. Of 14,000 murders in the most recent available FBI homicide data, only 364 were attributed to any kind of rifle, much less the particular AR-15 type. Handguns, which are not as passionately uniformly feared by regulators were used in about half of the murders.
No one talks about “knife crime”, but those sharp things killed 1,476 victims. We don’t call it “blunt instrument crime”, but rocks and hammers killed nearly 400. The category of hands and feet crime shows a body count of 600 – nearly twice that of even the meanest rifle.
People of good conscience can advocate for anything they think is good for the country, but passing laws based on fear and headlines serves neither safety nor liberty.
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