Faith in gun bans: Magical Thinking

My brother Chris and I were once again asked to offer up a rebuttal to an editorial in USA Today newspaper [recently]. Unfortunately, the paper rescinded the offer when Chris Cox, executive director of NRA’s lobbying division, offered to do the job. This is the longer version of what we had to say.

In their editorial, the USA Today editors called for a ban on “assault weapons.” They talked about various attacks utilizing “assault weapons,” mentioned the previous ban, which lasted from 1994 to 2004, and made excuses for the ban’s failure to prevent, among other things, the Columbine horror. USA Today called for bans on magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds, citing “research” from Johns Hopkins – which happened to be funded by Mike Bloomberg – claiming that if a new ban “only prevented 20 percent” of incidents involving “assault weapons” and/or “high-capacity” magazines, 100 lives would be saved. The numbers were grabbed from thin air and lacked any grounding.

The faith in bans is pure magical thinking. There is nothing to suggest that any of the proposed bans or restrictions would prevent 20 percent of any sort of crime or misuse – none. Real research into the 10-year Clinton ban on “assault weapons” showed that it was completely ineffective. The ban prohibited cosmetic features such as folding stocks and “prominently protruding pistol grips” (that’s what the law said). Gun prohibitionists claimed that guns built without those features to comply with the restrictions were “exploiting loopholes.”

The editors suggested that the problem with the ’94 ban was that its definitions were too loose and easily sidestepped by manufacturers. They decried the “ever-powerful gun lobby” for standing in the way of “logical changes by twisting any move to limit the sale of certain kinds of guns into a menacing attempt to take away all guns.” That’s an odd thing to say in the context of endorsing the expansion of one failed gun ban to encompass even more guns. Even as they deny the existence of the slippery slope, these same people will be back calling for an even broader ban and even stricter limits on magazine capacity until the ban covers virtually all guns beyond single-shot .22 rifles and double-barreled shotguns. It happened in Australia, which Hillary cites as a good example to follow.

It’s easy for people with no knowledge of firearms to imagine they can distinguish “certain kinds of guns” and just ban them. Those of us who have some knowledge of firearms recognize the magical thinking at work. There are only a few variations in basic action styles. Slide-actions, pump-actions, lever-actions and bolt-actions are all variations of a basic theme: a bolt is moved to the rear by some manual mechanism, ejects the spent case and as it moves forward into battery, it strips a round of ammunition from a magazine and locks it in the chamber ready for firing. Semi-autos, also known as autoloaders, function in the same manner, but rather than the operator powering the action, energy from the fired round and springs are harnessed to accomplish the maneuver.

Since a magazine is nothing more than a box or tube with a spring in the bottom, the only thing that limits a magazine’s capacity is the depth of the box or length of the tube, and the effectiveness of the spring. Therefore, any magazine-fed firearm can be modified to carry virtually any number of rounds in its magazine.

And of course these proposals ignore the fact that long guns – including all of the so-called “assault rifles” – are only used in about 2 percent of gun crimes in the U.S. The other 98 percent of crime guns are handguns. Can anyone imagine a scenario in which today’s advocates of an “assault weapon” ban would not eventually turn their attention to the most common guns used by criminals and in suicides? And once they start down that road, where can we expect the road to end? Will they be satisfied with just limiting magazine capacity after a demented coward attacks another Bible study group and uses his 10-rounds to kill nine people? Will magazine capacity be cut back to a limit of six or seven rounds? They tried that in New York. Will they insist on banning all semi-auto handguns as they now want to ban all semi-auto rifles? What about 8-shot revolvers and speed loaders? Jerry Miculek can hit a target with 12 shots from a 6-shot revolver in under 3 seconds. Do we ban the revolver or just ban Jerry Miculek?

While the Orlando shooting is the worst mass shooting in modern history, it is not the worst mass murder, or even the most deadly attack on a nightclub. That diabolical record belongs not to a fanatical Muslim nor racist deviant, nor even a suicidal lunatic. It belongs to a jealous drunk who, in 1990, decided to take revenge on his ex-girlfriend who worked at the Happy Land Social Club. His weapons were two matches and less than a gallon of gasoline. Eighty-seven people perished.

Guns don’t cause, or even enable mass murder. The cause is evil in the human heart. No magical solutions like banning “assault weapons,” expanding background checks, or giving the AG power to delete gun rights without due process are going to solve – or even favorably impact on – the problem. Restricting good people will not keep evil people from committing evil acts, and it won’t save lives.

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