Whenever there’s a mass shooting where the shooter uses an AR-15, the call goes up for a ban on assault rifles, an idea which was tried back in 1994, but only lasted for ten years and wasn’t really a ban. Not only did the 1994 statute allow current assault rifle owners to keep possession of their weapons, but gun makers could make a few cosmetic changes in the look and the feel of the AR and other assault-style guns which didn’t really change the essential lethality of the product at all.
The odds that Congress will vote another assault rifle ban are slim, if only because this is the kind of issue where members of the GOP House caucus who might be willing to consider such a law are now beginning to worry about primary challenges next year from the alt-right, and anything which smacks of gun control is a toxic enough issue to determine the outcome of a close vote.
On the other hand, the shooting this week not only took place in a Southern, pro-gun state, but also took the lives of three children and three adults in a private, church-based school. Which makes it a little more difficult to promote gun ownership as some kind of God-given ‘right.’
Aside from the fact that the design of the AR-15 makes it a more efficient gun to use when a shooter wants to kill as many people as possible in a public space, what we will also no doubt begin to learn is how owning an AR-15 answers some kind of basic psychological need for white men to prove they are still a privileged group even when the objective basis for privilege, like good-paying manufacturing jobs have all been shipped overseas.
This is an argument made by a Professor of Psychiatry, Jonathan Metzl, whose book, Dying of Whiteness, is a clever approach to understanding how Donald Trump was able to capture white, working-class support. He references studies which see the ownership of guns, particularly assault rifles, as affirming masculinity at a time when ‘broad-shouldered, white men dominated the culture’ as well as holding those well-paying factory jobs which have disappeared. [p. 74.]
The idea that the assault rifle is a symbol for masculine pride and authority may sound kind of obvious, but it happens to be an argument which has little, if anything, to do with why assault rifles are popular to the point that they wind up in the hands of people like Audrey Hale. In fact, the gun really started selling when the gun industry began referring to the AR-15 as a ‘modern sporting rifle,’ precisely to obscure its history and development as a military gun.
The idea that a weapon which could fire 90 military-grade rounds in less than 3 minutes would be sold as ‘sporting’ equipment was a brainchild cooked up by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) which had been getting reports from big-box chain stores like Cabela’s that women were reluctant to bring their children into retail locations which sold military guns.
The picture at the top of this page is from the website of Daniel Defense, the company that made the assault rifle used to kill 19 students and 2 teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX last May.
I owned and operated retail gun shops in three states (SC, NY, MA) between 1981 and 2014. Did I sell hundreds of assault rifles over that span of years? I did.
I can’t recall a single customer who bought one of those guns from me and said that he was either affirming his manhood, or trying to protect himself, or any of the other reasons which are given out to explain the popularity of this gun.
Customers bought assault rifles in my shop for the same reason they bought any other kind of gun: they had some extra cash in their pocket and they wanted to buy another gun.
The entire gun industry rests on the simple truth that every consumer item either develops a following or the item stops being displayed on store shelves.
Which means that the only way to get rid of the violence caused by the use of an AR-15 is to take the gun off the shelves.
Mar 29, 2023 @ 18:28:00
I suspect you are right that the only way to stop them from being sold is to either ban them outright, which is unlikely, or license them like we do NFA items, which is also unlikely since both would require an act of Congress. The New Mexico legislature had a bill being heard to ban this year them but that never got a floor vote.
Meanwhile, yep, the people I know who have these black rifles are almost all people with good jobs and advanced degrees who don’t need their “Man Card” reissued. They own black rifles simply because they are fun to shoot and to some of us, yep, the military heritage is of interest for the same reason the military heritage of the M1911, M9, and Garand are of interest. Period.
But finding the rare Audrey Hale’s within the millions of otherwise normal Americans who own these guns is finding the needle in the haystack before the needle finds you.
Mar 29, 2023 @ 23:37:56
The people who yell the loudest to take guns away normally don’t know the first thing about guns and don’t care to know. These are usually the same people who want to deplete our military, defund the police, release thousands of prisoners from our jails. And there continues to be a constant drumbeat for gun control and take guns out of the hands of lawful gun owners.
I hear many people say guns only belong in the hands of our defunded police officers and our military who missed its recruiting goal by 15,000 active-duty solders last year. But when we have another elementary school shooting like Uvalde they wonder how we could have such a systemic failure.
Maybe before we talk about the way to get rid of the violence caused by the use of an AR-15 is to take the gun off the shelves we should simply ask why, why is this happening.
Remember there will still be over 20 million AR-15 style rifles on the streets of America if they are taken off the shelves.
Apr 01, 2023 @ 06:49:30
One thing I’m not sure of is why the idea of putting semi-automatic centerfire rifles on the NFA isn’t of more interest in congress than an “assault weapons ban”? You’d arguably make it much much harder for a mass shooter to get one and those who wanted one would still be able to get one with a thorough background check.
I think it’s a win-win. Maybe in exchange you offer to remove suppressors from the NFA?
Apr 01, 2023 @ 11:07:17
That’s an idea, but I believe this may have been addressed in the Property Requisition Act in 1941. For a comprehensive analysis, see Stephen P. Halbrook, “Congress Interprets the Second Amendment: Declarations by a Co-Equal Branch on the Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms,’ 62 Tennessee Law Review 597 (Spring 1995)