Until January this year I lived in Elizabeth, Colorado for a year and a half which is 30 miles from where the shooting occurred 3 days ago. Many of my extended family still lives there. My brother called me in France from Cape Town to tell me it was going on in real-time, via Reddit, so I got hold of my nephew in Denver who was watching the opening of Batman, but thankfully at a different theater. It’s a connected world.
While living in Colorado I went to a gun range in Montana and played with just about every gun they had including of course a 50 caliber handgun an AR-15 and a fully automatic assault rifle that was similar but older for legal reasons. Then did a gun course later in Colorado. I don’t own any guns.
According to the news an AR-15 assault rifle was used in the Aurora Cinema Shooting on Thursday night along with a shotgun and two handguns. The AR-15 is an M-4 assault rifle used by the US military in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The main difference is that it is semi-automatic. In other words it can only fire as fast as you can pull the trigger. There are a few hacks available to fix this like bump-firing where you attach a device to the stock that keeps pulling the trigger thanks to the recoil.
I never had much of a point of view on this, but I’m beginning to strongly question why on Earth we need to be able to own AR-15 assault rifles. They tried to ban them in California but there are “California Legal” AR-15’s available. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was another half hearted attempt – the law only banned weapons made after the law passed and it expired in 2004.
The AR-15 is a mean weapon. It fires a .223 round at an extremely high velocity and a single shot to a human can do terrible damage. A single shot to the body can cause brain damage due to hydrostatic shock. Contrary to what they tell you in movies, there is no such thing as a “Flesh wound” and every gunshot wound is serious.
The idea that making the AR-15 semi-automatic somehow makes it safer is absurd. On a course I attended our instructor trained us to fire in bursts of 3 to four which is the only way to stay accurate with an assault rifle. So you’re really just removing 2 to three rounds from each shot and ensuring the shooter maintains the discipline of not holding down the trigger too long.
The AR-15 has a short barrel which makes it useless for hunting, even though a few unsporting folks use it to hunt. It’s designed for close quarters assault style combat. When you hold and point it you are hunched over the weapon in a combat stance designed to minimize recoil, present a small profile and keep you moving aggressively forward. It’s designed to very efficiently kill multiple people in close quarters in a war setting.
Magazine sizes of 60 rounds or more are available from sites like gunbroker.com for the AR-15. Imagine a single AR-15 with three magazines of 20 to 60 rounds. I don’t think “home defense” captures the possible uses for that configuration. [Edit: After writing this article I discovered a 100 round AR-15 magazine was found at the scene in Aurora according to this article.]
The argument for the need to “defend ourselves from the government” is absurd because they already have the tanks and the nukes and they’re not going to let us have any.
The argument for home defense doesn’t hold water either because your AR-15 may be up against another AR-15 or an illegal M-4 or how about 5 guys with assault rifles.
There’s never going to be a scenario where you are “fully equipped” with legal weapons to “take all comers”. So lets stop fantasizing, lets keep weapons for sport legal and stop lying to ourselves that we are somehow empowered because we have an assault weapon stored in the place you will probably be furthest from when the boogie man comes to visit.
I think that’s a terrible idea mark, instead I believe more people should carry guns. If there would have been someone else in that movie theater who had a concealed carry license and a 9mm then the situation would have been resolved much quicker. Instead everyone has to wait for the cops to show up. 10 minutes? 20 minutes? Where I live it takes police almost 40 minutes to respond to a call. Now an active shooter out here would have exhausted all his ammunition and had a chance to walk home before the police ever got to the scene of the crime. That’s why I conceal carry a 9mm that holds 19 rounds in a magazine. I do it legally as well. I also have an AR-15, a tactical Mossberg 500 12 gauge, and a 30-06 hunting rifle. What I don’t have are any mental issues or desires to kill my fellow mankind. Trying to ban something just because of one idiot doing something completely evil is a terrible thing to do. There are millions of people out there driving like idiots texting on their cell phones and killing others because of it, are you pushing to ban vehicles or cell phones? No we push to not use them together, because banning something outright is just plain un-American. Les is right, if you make legislation to keep guns out of law abiding citizens hands, then only outlaws will have guns and no one in the crowd would be able to defend themselves against an outlaw.
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334
“The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good”
— George Washington
“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
— Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficient… The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”
— Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
Commented on August 28, 2012 at 7:35 pm
First off let me say I only own a mossberg 12gauge for defense and only got that when I moved so/close to D.C.C. and have no intentions of owning an assault,but would never consider it right under any circumstance to take away others rights to own one.I’m with those who say 1 on the ball concealed carrying citizen could have stopped the batman guy ,you can’t actually think that taking AR’s away from killers are going to stop them killing?The real reason I even commented though is your not for home defense argument .You say the home invader might have one?so would I john q innocent in this be better of with an AR going against the man threatening my family or the 22 pistol you gun banners strive to leave me with.And where’s does the banning end?Probably with a bunch of dead completely unarmed citizens lying dead on the floor from gunshot wounds from criminals carrying banned assault weapons,phone in hand waiting on 911,also earlier in comment you say there designed to take out 4 or 5 guys close quarters,like in my house maybe?You also say there might be a couple of guys so in a way it seems you’ve actually made a case for them as effective home defense tool.You sure you don’t work for the gun companies?Because you had me considering some AR shopping there for a minute.
Commented on November 1, 2012 at 7:59 pm
One simple question: do you really think that making guns illegal will solve the problem of mass shootings?
It might take the guns out of the hands of the responsible. It will do very little to those that just don’t care about the law…the same people that plan and execute (no pun intended) mass killings.
We need to stop fantasizing about this fact. And lower capacity magazines just mean more 3-second reloading and a few more magazines. Best real solution might include more stringent background checks but sometimes these crazies wouldn’t have flagged anyway.
I’m not necessarily promoting more guns because let’s face it some people just aren’t responsible ‘gun people,’ but I like the fact that I have my AR15 and his friends close by. You dont see mass shootings in Israel possibly because everyone has military experience and owns guns. An active shooter would be put down before he can reload by everyone present minimizing casualties. The down side to that is that the mass murders have escalated to bombings 🙁
The crazy world we live in folks. I’m keeping mine.
Commented on December 17, 2012 at 10:03 pm
Your so naive its not even worth commenting.
Your no different then the idiot women in the 1920s who had Alcohol banned and oh how that worked out, and also you think drugs are safe….will if thats the case…how come Colombia and the entire world are in gulfed in wars on drugs because of these drug lords…you dont know what your talking about, and when someone invade our country one day or our government fails….you will be easy pray.
Commented on December 21, 2012 at 1:48 am
That is a absolute terrible idea and slap o
in the face to what this nation is built upon. The right to bare arms, its a right not a privilege and because some nut case is stupid doesnt mean that i should give up my way of life. There isnt a day that goes by that i dont use,clean, or just admire my guns, not because i am amazed by them, but because they have been passed down through my family to me. They are a part of me and will remain that way
Commented on December 28, 2012 at 11:03 pm
You need to actually find out what the AR stands for. It actually stands for “Armalite Rifle”. Secondly, an assault rifle is capable of burst and / or automatic fire. The AR-15 is not. Yes, possible to make it that way just like anything else. However, it is funny that your trying to compare this to a semi-automatic military firearms, which it is not, this weapon is not even used in the Military. It is a “variant”of the M4 and M16, but that does not mean looks are what you see as the internals are completely different. So how can it be considered an assault weapon if not used in the military? Lets first start banning vehicles, knifes, ball bats, chains etc as those are used more in killings then a AR-15 and any other fire arms. Dont hear about people blaming the damn car killing people when a drunk driver crashs into them now do you! It was the drunk drivers fault, not the vehicles. Samething here, it is complete ignorance to calim it is the weapons fault and not the person that did the shooting.
Commented on January 5, 2013 at 7:25 am
You need to be more informed, an AR isn’t actually an assault rifle, and the .223 isn’t by far the most powerful round. Most deer hunting rifles pack a larger punch. Also, an AR wasn’t even used at Sandy Hook – it was still in the car. Most Spree killers have used pistols as a matter of record. An M4 is fully automatic. And the boogie man isn’t the armed robber in night, it’s the tyrannical government that gains momentum after gun bans are enacted. So yes, high capacity magazines would be needed to fight back. (I.E. Hitler, Stalin, Mao).
Hitler banned Jews from any type of firearms in 1938, then look what happened. The second amendment was written not to allow us to hunt and target shoot, it was written so we could revolt if need be, like we did from the British.
Commented on January 11, 2013 at 9:11 am
The boogieman is the depressed/drunken/disturbed individual in the home with a gun. The odds are (backed by statistical evidence) that you’re less likely to be killed by gun wielded by a stranger than killed by a gun carried by someone you know.
Commented on January 14, 2013 at 6:55 pm
Spoken only like a neutered pucified new gen could.
Commented on May 14, 2014 at 7:18 am
Man, you are a tool of the communist democrat leftist ideology. A government who takes guns away from people does not trust them, and the people should not trust that government back.
Commented on August 8, 2014 at 12:11 am