I am a gun owner. I am very familiar with the AR-15 because I use one in competition from time to time. I also knew the moment I read that the Orlando night club shooter used an “assault weapon” there would be calls to ban the AR-15 once again. Don’t get me wrong. What happened in Orlando is an unthinkable tragedy. Of course, we should do everything we can to avoid another like tragedy. But the thing that troubles me is how some lawmakers are quite comfortable demonizing and punishing an entire class of law-abiding citizens as if this somehow will make all of us safer. Lawmakers know full well that the vast majority – and I mean vast in the most vast sense of the word vast – of gun owners are law-abiding citizens. Just for perspective: Most “gun owners” are people who went to a dealer, filled out a federal form and purchased a gun legally. There are other ways to legally acquire a gun, like as a gift or inheritance, but those are not the ways the majority of guns are acquired. Of course, criminals don’t acquire guns that way. They get them on the street or steal them. Of all the folks sitting in prison for gun-related crimes of any kind, surveys show that far less than 1 percent of them ever tried to acquire a gun legally. The population of the U.S. is roughly 321 million. There are 450,000 gun crime people in jail. That’s 140 in 100,000 or 0.0014 percent of the total population. The total number of lawful gun owners who will commit a crime is in the range of 2.5 per 100,000 or 0.00025 percent. Furthermore, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service Research Service report, while gun ownership climbed from 192 million firearms in 1994 to 310 million firearms in 2009, crime fell sharply. The report says the rate of “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” was 6.6 per 100,000 Americans in 1993. Despite the huge increase in gun ownership, the rate fell to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2000. The rate rose from 2004 to 2005 and got up to 3.9 in 2006 and 2007, but resumed falling in 2008 and dropped to 3.2 per 100,000 by 2011. According to Pew Research, using the latest data from 2014, “The nation’s overall gun death rate has declined 31 percent since 1993. This total includes homicides and suicides, in addition to a smaller number of fatal police shootings, accidental shooting deaths and those of undetermined intent.” The “more guns, more death, more crime” argument is simply bogus. The goal should be zero gun deaths, of course, but given the reality of these numbers, shouldn’t we be crafting laws aimed at criminals instead of law-abiding citizens? (Zero drunk driving deaths would be a good goal, too, and we’ve made strides in that regard over the years. But society seems to tolerate a fair number of drunk driving deaths. We certainly aren’t going to give up our cars and our booze, now are we?) Take banning the AR-15 for example. The Armalite rifle is much maligned as a “weapon of war” by anti-gun folks, which it certainly is not. No AR-15 has ever been taken to war. The U.S. military rifle is the M4, which is fully automatic. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic. “So what?” you say. Well, the fact that an AR-15 is a semi-automatic, magazine fed, .223 caliber rifle, puts it in the same class of tons of other guns that operate precisely the same way. The difference between a garden variety AR-15 – and there are dozes of manufacturers churning them out – and say, Ruger’s Mini-14 “ranch rifle” is strictly cosmetic. The Ruger looks like a hunting rifle, with wood stocks and no sinister pistol grip, collapsible stock or accessory rail. But other than that, it’s the same gun with the same capabilities. No one is calling for a ban on the Ruger Mini-14. It just doesn’t look wicked enough, I guess. But if you were a terrorist, bent on the destruction of innocents, the Ruger would do just as well as an AR-15. And frankly, if you wanted to get really maniacal, you could get yourself any of a number of other semi-automatic rifles chambered in even more destructive calibers like .243, .270, .300 Win Mag or .308. Aside from the silliness of this type of legislation, there is a reality here that gets overlooked. Despite high-profile tragedies like Orlando and Sandy Hook, deaths from all rifles – all rifles, not just the ones I’ve mentioned – are extremely rare, accounting for only a tiny fraction of gun deaths in America. So banning AR-15s, frankly, is just a useless ploy by lawmakers to make it seem like they’ve done something to quell gun violence even though they know full well it won’t work. They know it won’t work because a previous 10-year ban on “assault weapons” produced no measurable decrease in crime or deaths caused by those rifles. Of course, that only makes sense because crimes involving “assault weapons” are so exceedingly rare in the first place. But no matter, certain members of Congress are really good at castigating folks who don’t see things there way, especially when it comes to guns. They’re trying to blame the incident in Orlando on guns instead of a domestic terrorist. Oddly, nobody tried to blame the Boston Marathon bombing on backpacks and framing nails. The current provision is aimed at keeping guns away from people who are on the no-fly or terrorist watch list, which, on the face of it, doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Who could argue? But that would have done nothing to deter Orlando shooter Omar Mateem. He was off the watch list when he bought his weapons. Beyond that, the American Civil Liberties Union – not the most conservative folks – sees big problems with that provision. In a letter sent Wednesday to the U.S. Senate opposing the “No-Fly, No-Buy” bill the ACLU said: “... regulation of firearms and individual gun ownership or use must be consistent with civil liberties principles, such as due process, equal protection, freedom from unlawful searches, and privacy. Our nation’s watchlisting system is error-prone and unreliable because it uses vague and overbroad criteria and secret evidence to place individuals on blacklists without a meaningful process to correct government error and clear their names. The government contends that it can place Americans on the No Fly List who have never been charged let alone convicted of a crime, on the basis of prediction that they nevertheless pose a threat (which is undefined) of conduct that the government concedes ‘may or may not occur.’ Criteria like these guarantee a high risk of error and it is imperative that the watchlisting system include due process safeguards — which it does not.” All that due process stuff is overrated anyway, right? Giving up your constitutional rights without adjudication is no big deal. Give the government a little more power over the people. No. Not a fan. Here’s an idea. Why not pass a federal law that adds on five or 10 years to the sentence of anyone convicted of committing a crime while possessing a firearm? I’d go for that. And how about strictly enforcing the 20,000-odd gun laws already on the books? It’s a felony for a felon to be in possession of a firearm. Start busting all those guys, especially in places like Chicago. After enough of them go away, word will get around. If we’re going to pass laws, we should pass laws that might actually have an impact and prevent gun violence. Banning this gun or that gun is a waste of time. And gun control a completely ineffective way to combat terrorism. Sadly, no amount of gun laws will stop terrorists, haters, criminals or the insane from doing evil. Better for us law-abiding citizens to retain the freedom to protect ourselves.
