One of the biggest pieces of mis-information going through the media reports regarding the Colorado shooting were that James Holmes was armed with an "AR-15 assault rifle." The problem is that the AR-15 is not an assault rifle. Another thing people say is that "military assault rifles need restrictions, people shouldn't just be allowed to go out and buy them."
This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions about firearms, that assault rifles are readily available to civilians. They aren't. The problem is that too many don't know just what an assault rifle is.
Simplified, an assault rifle is a rifle with automatic fire capability that fires rounds from magazines. It is thus classified as a machine gun (a gun that fires rifle rounds automatically---a sub-machine gun fires pistol rounds automatically), and is not protected by the Second Amendment. The word "arms" in the Second Amendment does not cover machine guns. M-16s and AK-47s that have automatic fire capability are assault rifles. Yes, you can buy them, but doing so involves the following:
1) 6 - 9 month waiting period
2) Background check
3) Fingerprinting
4) A bunch of paperwork and approvals
5) About $10K to $20K
Owning them is a privilege. Now, the AR-15 (one of the weapons Holmes had) is the civilian variant of the M-16. It looks the same, but mechanically it is not. It has no automatic fire capability. It is a semi-automatic rifle that fires rounds out of a magazine. For comparison, numerous hunting rifles are also semi-automatic and fire rounds out of a magazine. In fact, there's now even a lot of crossover between the two as there are AR-15s meant for hunting now and hunting rifles that are based off of military platforms. In fact, hunters have been adopting military rifles to use for hunting since World War II. Some weapons are used for multiple purposes, hunting, police, military, sport shooting, home defense, etc...The AR-15 is thus not an assault rifle. It's just a semi-automatic rifle that fires rounds from a magazine. Yes, it may "look" military or menacing, but that means nothing.
Here is a Browning BAR (semi-automatic hunting rifle that uses magazines):
Here is an AR15 (semi-automatic rifle that uses magazines):
Now the AR-15 may "look" menacing or "military" but it mechanically at its core is no different than the Browning BAR. There isn't something that magically makes the AR-15 more dangerous then the Browning BAR. IN FACT, the standard AR-15 is too weak to even be used for hunting, as the rounds are too small. The hunting variants use a larger-caliber round. Which means many a "civilian" hunting rifle are actually more powerful and can do more damage than a regular AR-15 (as it takes a more powerful weapon to take down a large animal than a human). And the one shown in the picture above isn't even a full rifle, it's what's called a carbine, which is a shortened version of the rifle that can fire the same rounds, but at a slower velocity and less range.
Here is the AR-15 Predator hunting rifle:
Now here is version of the Remington 870, a pump-action shotgun that Holmes also had:
Looks like a "civilian" gun. Now here's another version of the same gun:
All the same weapon, but some models look "civilian" while others look "military." Again, how the weapon "looks" doesn't tell what kind of weapon it is. Remington 870s are used for everything, hunting, home defense, sport shooting, military, law enforcement, etc...
Regarding the word "arms" in the Second Amendment, they are defined as the following:
"Weapons commonly owned by ordinary law abiding citizens that they would be expected to muster to militia conscription with."
In the event of such a thing, you'd expect to see people showing up with AR-15s, various other semi-automatic rifles, shot guns, pistols, and so forth. All of this is important because had Holmes gone in with a fully-automatic weapon, say an M-16 with a 100 round drum, and cries for gun control were occuring, the ridiculousness is that such weapons are already heavily regulated. Regulating people's ability to buy weapons such as the AR-15 thus wouldn't do anything to address the issue of criminals acquiring assault rifles.
People such as Senator Dianne Feinstein who talk about how people shouldn't be allowed to buy "military-grade assault weapons" just do not understand what they're talking about. As said, there is nothing about an AR-15 that makes it some special deadly military weapon that can kill far and above other rifles. She is going by the appearance of it. She said people shouldn't be allowed to buy weapons meant for "close-quarters combat," weapons meant to kill people. Well first off, a rifle is a rifle, hunting rifle or military platform. In the hands of a skilled person, it's not going to matter much. Two, there isn't some special difference between humans and animals. Biologically, humans are animals. A high-functioning animal, but still an animal, and quite a savage one in its raw state (we invented civilization so as to be able to live peacefully and even within those, violence occurs). A rifle meant for hunting is going to kill a human just as it will kill animals. Not all rifles designed for military use can kill large animals (regular AR-15s are bad for this), but when adopted to use larger rounds, they can, and a regular AR-15 is fine if you need to shoot small animals.
In addition, does Senator Feinstein think hunting rifles are only meant for shooting at long-range? Does this make hand guns, meant for close-range, "military-grade assault weapons?" Weapons meant for close-range fighting are not more dangerous than ones meant for long-range shooting. Sub-machine guns like the Uzi and MP5 (which fire pistol rounds) are meant for close-range fighting, but you would not do infantry work or go hunting anything big with one of those. They are used when you need a really small weapon where distance and caliber aren't that important. SWAT teams sometimes use MP5s for example.
Something that should also be remembered is that the Second Amendment isn't about hunting. It is so that citizens can form militias when required, protect themselves, and in extreme cases, resist a tyrannical government. During the times the Second Amendment was written in, citizens were expected to own literal military arms. The difference of course is that then military arms were muskets and at most cannon, today military arms are everything from battle tanks to attack helicopters to nuclear weapons and so forth. But by this, one could probably make the argument that fully-automatic assault rifles are protected by the Second Amendment, even though legally right now it has been determined that they are not.
If you buy more then two firearms at once, I believe that such a purchase must be reported to the government by the seller (so if you buy four AR-15s in one purchase, the government will learn about it).
Some other things to consider:
1) The 1997 North Hollywood shootout, where two guys clad in body armor and assault rifles were fighting the police. This during the Assault Weapons Ban, in one of the most anti-gun cities, in the most anti-gun state in America. A lot of good the laws did in stopping those guys.
2) A year ago to this week, a man killed 78 people in Norway, a country with very strict gun laws.
3) Tear gas is not legal for civilians, but Holmes still somehow acquired it.
Gun Crime in the United States
So for the claims made by people such as myself who say that gun control laws mostly result in the disarming of the law-abiding citizens, why is it that the United States has such high levels of gun violence? The simple answer is certain socio-economic factors:
1) Inner-city crime. Most gun-violence in the United States occurs in the major metropolitan areas (ironically the areas with strict gun control), and of those, mostly in the inner-city areas. The inner-city areas tend to be populated by poor black people where gang violence is very common. This is due to a long-list of things ranging from social engineering policies that created bad incentives for poor women to give birth to children without a father, to the problem of drugs being prevalent in these areas, which not only leads to many men impregnating women and then not sticking around to help father the child, but also outright warfare over the drug trade.
2) Unlike some of the European nations which are relatively uniform race and culture-wise, the United States is a huge salad-bowl of races, ethnicities, cultures, languages, religions, etc...many of which do not like one another. This leads to more violence and makes the country more complex to govern then say Sweden. An example for example could be the outright race war that has been occurring between blacks and Hispanics in certain major cities in California.
3) America overall, for other reasons, has tended to have higher rates of crime and violence than other nations. For example, even back when England had gun laws akin to what the United States had, violence was still less in England (which today has more restrictive gun laws). It would be wrong to say that guns drive violence, as the Swiss own outright assault rifles in large numbers, and the Israelis also have a large ownership of guns, yet both of these nations experience low levels of gun violence.
Gun violence is not so much "gun" violence as it is violence due to racial and ethnic hatreds, drug warfare, and so forth in which guns just happen to be used. Such violence would occur regardless. Humans have been slaughtering one another for thousands of years without guns, so lack of guns is not going to stop anything. And this is making the HUGE assumption that one could actually eliminate the black market for guns. Drugs are already illegal, but they are prevalent. Alcohol was once outlawed, but it was prevalent. Drunk driving is illegal right now, but yet thousands of people get killed by drunk drivers every year. When a wolf slaughters sheep, further disarming the sheep is not the answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment