Conservative Gun Mythology vs Mass Shootings and Street Crimes

  

“It’s kind of like a ‘spray and pray’… There’s so many rounds coming out at such a high velocity in such a small amount of time.” Det. Pat Hoffman of the Los Angeles Police Department’s gun unit

Today’s blog goes beyond the logically flawed Heller vs District of Colombia, the 2008 Supreme Court decision that held effectively that the Second Amendment – originally passed to support citizen militia in a time of flintlocks and muskets – created a basic right for Americans to own guns. Beyond the unambiguously false NRA axiom that only a “good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun”… in a world where only one in thirty-five gun homicides is justifiable and where adults in  households with a gun are twice as likely to result in an unjustified gun homicide (seven times more likely to result in death) than households without. See my recent Reasonable Gun Control Laws Don’t Work if They Are Not Enforced blog for the research. Today’s blog even goes beyond the 3-D printed proliferation of ghost guns, many of which do not show up on airport x-ray machines.

There wasn’t a single large magazine or rapid-fire long gun or pistol in existence when the Second Amendment was passed in 1789. Yet somehow many states are allowing military grade semiautomatic assault rifles and handguns to be carried legally by civilians, often openly or even concealed without a permit. The number of mass gun killings in the United States has soared to new heights (depths?) in lockstep with such efforts to liberalize gun ownership. Just watching a remake of Westside Story reminds us that gangs used to go to extremes with knives, pipes and chains… but not guns. The appearance of a single revolver, near the end of the movie, sent shockwaves to the two rival gangs. Guns available at guns stores and gun shows have become increasingly automated and lethal since that musical was written in the 1950s.

If you consider overseas mass criminal homicides today (other than during wars or comparable conflicts), they are mostly bombs (e.g., Islamist suicide attacks in Israel or in Mumbai in 2008) or vehicular ramming (e.g., the 2016 truck rampage in Nice). The attempted mass killings via knifepoint have all been quickly contained. There is no National Knife Association saying that the “only a good guy with a knife can stop a bad guy with a knife.” Today’s blog is just about how easy, and pervasive, the process is to change a “legal” semiautomatic weapon into being fully automatic and illegal gun. More than the mere rapid-fire assist of the mostly banned “bumpstock” added to a semiautomatic assault gun.

This newer simple mechanical “adjustment” released over 100 bullets in the mass shooting in Sacramento on April 3rd. A converted assault weapon, changed from semi to fully automatic with a slight retooling, showed how fast such a machine gun, with a large magazine, can kill and injure. 6 dead, 12 injured, some critically. Simply, converted weapons are finding themselves all across the United States, ramping up murder rates significantly. 

Writing for the April 7th Los Angeles Times, Libor Jany, Richard Winton and Kevin Rector explain: “[A semiautomatic gun is easily] modified with a so-called ‘auto-sear’ or ‘switch’ [pictured above] to boost its firepower. The conversion devices are illegal, and authorities say they are turning up at crime scenes across the U.S. with alarming frequency…

“Semiautomatic handguns and rifles require shooters to pull the trigger each time they want to fire a bullet. When retrofitted with a switch, however, these types of weapons become fully automatic and can fire hundreds of rounds per minute, according to Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency room doctor at UC-Davis who studies gun use. Switches, which are small cube-shaped attachments that afix to a gun’s firing mechanism, can be readily purchased on illicit websites or made with a 3D printer.

“‘Basically, what a ... switch does is let you put a machine gun in your pocket or on your belt,’ said Wintemute, director the California Firearms Violence Research Center at the university. In a scenario where crowds are present, as in Sacramento, a gun with a switch paired with a magazine that holds a large number of bullets can easily result in greater bloodshed, he said.

“The switch devices are classified as machine guns by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and possessing one is a federal offense. And yet, Wintemute says, instructions for installing one on a gun can be found online and require little to no technical expertise… The ATF, the federal agency responsible for regulating guns in the U.S., seized about 1,500 weapons modified with switches in 2021, compared with about 300 in 2020, said agency spokeswoman Ginger Colbrun. The sharp jump, Colbrun noted, was part of a longer upward trend in the number of weapons found with switches.

“On Wednesday [4/6], Sacramento police said that a preliminary investigation suggested at least five shooters may have been involved Sunday in unleashing the fusillade of bullets that struck 18 people, six of them fatally. Amid the carnage along K Street in the shadow of California’s Capitol, Sacramento police detectives found a stolen gun that had been ‘converted to a weapon capable of automatic gunfire.’… The discovery confirmed suspicions authorities had developed after hearing audio recordings of the gunfire on social media. Officials estimate at least 100 shots were fired. Police said in a statement that although they hadn’t yet established a motive, ‘it is increasingly clear that gang violence is at the center of this tragedy.’… 

“Handguns retrofitted with switches have surfaced at other California crime scenes. Gunmen used them in the deadly shooting of federal guards in Oakland in 2020, as did gang members in the killing of four people in Fresno the year before.” The pattern is repeating itself explosively all across this gun-obsessed nation, the only country on earth (not at war) with such a proliferation of guns. Next time an hard-on-crime conservative tells you about how gun rights must be preserved and expanded in this country, let them know that their attitude is directly responsible for the rising number of gun crimes, especially homicides, here in the United States.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the United States had lived for over 200 years without a ubiquitous constitutional right to own and use a gun, until a logically/constitutionally incorrect 2008 Supreme Court Heller vs DC ruling literally distorted the plain meaning of the Second Amendment to create such a right... for the first time in our history.