Boom, Boom, Boom, Bang!

Let’s start with a basic premise. Even under the most recent Supreme Court pro-gun-lobby decisions, the right to gun ownership is not absolute. In the 2008 Heller vs District of Columbia, a case that ruled against Washington D.C.’s attempt to impose very strict gun controls on our rather violent nation’s capital, ultra-right wing Associate Justice, the late Antonin Scalia who wrote the majority opinion, said: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited…. Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Scalia went on to say that bounds of acceptable gun control restrictions are hardly settled law, noting that the courts will be called upon to make further decisions as more cases wend their way up the judicial appeals ladder. Remember, the Second Amendment was drafted by James Madison in 1789, a time when muskets were the weapons of choice, single shot, muzzle-loading flintlocks, and the constitutional wording was clearly cast to allow citizen soldiers (that “well regulated militia” mentioned in the opening phrase) to keep and hold their weapons. There was a horrible subtext back then, one scholars seldom talk about, that farmers also needed weapons to stop slaves from running away. Rifles could do that from a reasonable distance.

America was then primarily rural. Hunting was just one more way of gathering food, and while it was a sport to a few, to most gun owners it was simply a way to put meat on the table. It is not exactly a mystery why guns became so much a part of the fabric of American history, why the West was ultimate so “wild-wild.” Pistols evolved in that Western culture, less for hunting and more for self-protection where law enforcement was sparse at best, sometimes several riding days away. Rifles were always the hunting weapons of choice, and their longer range made them particularly well-suited for military applications as well.

The addition of gun chambers for more bullets and, later, remove-and-replace magazines, added the ability to fire without reloading, valuable both in hunting and in war. Clearly, only a few shots were needed in the former, and the high-capacity magazine had little purpose except in combat. Rapid fire, either fully or semi-automatic, was simply not a hunting necessity; it was a soldier’s dream or worst nightmare.

The other reality about guns is that except for the most recent advances in military hardware, the basic design of functional pistols and rifles hasn’t changed much in 75 years. So if you have a pistol that worked in 1965, make of steel with big solid parts, with a little oil and maintenance, that weapon probably works just as well as it did when it was first purchased… and probably works with reasonably the same efficiency as some if its newer counterparts today. Sure a Glock maybe is a tad lighter or its removable magazine holds more bullets, but you can get shot just as dead with either gun. A shotgun is a shotgun. A basic rifle hasn’t changed much either.

The biggest changes in guns in civilian society has been, however, the introduction of military features on “buy it and take it home” guns available almost everywhere in the United States. And since guns tend to last an eternity, if you are a gun-maker and want to increase your sales, the answer lies in using that addictive phrase “cutting edge technology” to lure consumers back into the marketplace, especially that 3% that owns half the guns. That lots of American small arms manufacturers have faced or are facing bankruptcy tells you how brutal the gun market is, when guns last forever. If a gun-maker pours hard cash into the commercial lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association to make sure laws do not get in the way, the path to profitability has to be in convincing consumers to step into military capacity assault weapons.

And while there many weapons to choose from, the rifle that has caught the eye of the largest group of American gun-buyers is the semi-automatic killing machine, where its bullets literally rip the guts out of a living target: the AR-15. The NRA is proud to tell us that there are now at least 15 million AR-15s in civilian hands across the US. It is the weapon so many Second Amendment advocates scream it is their most basic right to own. But there is absolutely no clear Constitutional right to this gun. Sorry AR-15 aficionados. None.

While the Centers for Disease Control maybe statutorily prohibited from spending additional money in maintaining gun homicide statistics, there is enough information around to understand the scope of the problem. Even the CDC can tell you that 38,000 Americans died by gunshot in 2016, roughly the same numbers as were killed in automobile accidents. Oddly, even as handguns are easier to conceal, it is the ubiquitous rife that has become the mass killer’s weapon of choice… and in particular, the antipersonnel-directed, AR-15.

“An analysis by The New York Times found the weapon was used to slaughter at least 173 people in mass shootings since 2007. Included were mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut; Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California.

“As America delves into yet another heated gun debate in Congress and on the internet, Patch turned to federal data and an expert to get a clearer picture of what gun violence actually looks like in America. Here's what we found.

“There were 15,070 murders in the United States in 2016, the most recent year that FBI data and gun trace information from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms were available. That includes 1,930 murders in California.

“The FBI defines ‘murders’ as nonnegligent manslaughters and homicides. They do not include suicides and accidental shootings.

“Nearly 75 percent of the country's murders were committed using a gun, but rifles — meaning any rifle, not just AR-15s — were used in just 374 of them. That's about 2 percent of all murders and 3 percent of all murders in which a gun was used.” Patch.com, March 6th.

I’ve blogged and provided statistics on how murder rates are linked to the number of available guns; more guns never stems that deadly tide. An angry person with a knife has to work really hard to inflict a mass killing, likely to be restrained before that would be possible. A semi-automatic rifle in the same hands? Rage pulls too many trigger fingers, and too many guns out there (over 300 million in the US) defies the ability to lock-away these weapons from crazies and felons who want them. That there are so many children who have died from gut-ripping bullets dispense from an AR-15 tells you that there are a lot of Americans out there who treasure the right to own “cool military-grade rifles” over the lives of their children. You’ll notice how few of those children who have survived assault by a crazy armed with an AR-15 support the notion of more teachers with guns in their classrooms.

I’ll leave you today with some interesting NRA-related statistics, including some published in the in the New England Journal of Medicine on March 7th: “For all the fiery rhetoric issued during annual meetings of the National Rifle Assn., [that] new research suggests that life gets a bit more peaceful in hospital emergency departments when the country’s most ardent gun-rights advocates attend their yearly confab… The rate at which Americans head to ERs seeking treatment for gun injuries dips during the days that the NRA typically holds its annual convention compared with three- and four-day periods just before and after the meeting, a new study shows…

“During the non-meeting days included in the study, the rate of ER visits for firearm injuries was 1.49 per 100,000 total visits. During the NRA conventions, which are typically held for three or four days in April or early May, that rate fell to 1.19 per 100,000.” Los Angeles Times, March 8th. Think about that. It says a whole lot. Want more numbers?

While the NRA spends as much on lobby efforts as say, the American diary industry, and disburses millions to support candidates who tow the NRA line, the real power is its ability – enhanced under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling – to defeat candidates through tsunamis of negative advertising attacking candidates who favor almost any form of gun control legislation… indisputably the NRA’s most effective weapon:

“[In the 2016 election, the] NRA poured $14.4m into supporting 44 candidates who won and $34.4m opposing 19 candidates who lost, according to CRP. Its only big loss was in Nevada, for the seat vacated by the Democratic minority leader, Harry Reid.” The Guardian (U.K.), November 17th. It is precisely this “attack advertising” that sends fear into the hearts of candidates and more than a little influence into the minds of voters. Think about that even more. Picture a defenseless mommy with a baby at home alone when an intruder crashes the front door, a real NRA ad. That for every 30 gun homicides there is only one that is legally justified seems to escape notice.

I’m Peter Dekom, and this entire country needs to mount an “active shooter drill” that bans military assault weapons… but the NRA will deploy its massive cadres of “politicians on its payroll” to make sure that never happens unless enough of us vote those “bought and paid for”  legislators out of office.