I do a lot of reading and learning here, but very little talking. I have been in a number of debates recently regarding the merits of Senator Feinstein's proposals, and took the time to organize my thoughts:
As the parent of two young children, I am as sickened and disturbed as anyone about the recent mass shooting that transpired in Connecticut. As a firearms owner and concerned citizen, I would like to share my opinion regarding what measures would and would not be effective to prevent further tragedy.
There has been a lot of demagoguery in the media concerning 'assault weapons' and 'high capacity magazines', with the implication being that limiting magazine capacity and banning semi-automatic rifles would provide a significant remedy to the problem of public mass shootings and gun violence as a whole.
Unfortunately, history teaches us that while semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines are sometimes used in public mass shootings, other types of weapons with limited ammunition capacity can produce equally deadly results when used against defenseless victims. Laws banning semi-automatic rifles (which are not 'machine guns' and actually fire no faster than pistols) and regulations limiting magazine capacity to ten rounds would neither stop nor mitigate these killings. Evildoers would adapt to any potential 'assault weapons' ban by turning to other weapons that have in the past been used with the same deadly results, and to any magazine capacity restriction by bringing more guns and magazines on their rampage. As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh pointed out, banning 'assault weapons' to prevent mass shootings would be like banning whiskey to prevent drunk driving. Just as the drunks would turn to gin and vodka, mass shooters would continue to have equally effective alternatives to carry out their plans.
Edmond, Oklahoma postal worker Patrick Sherrill murdered 14 and wounded 6 using three pistols with magazine capacity ranging between 7 and 10 rounds. He did not meet effective resistance despite survivors noting that they could tell when he was changing magazines by the noise it created. The massacre ended after Sherrill murdered everyone in the work area of the building and subsequently took his own life.
At the Dunblane, Scotland school massacre Thomas Watt Hamilton murdered 17 and wounded 15. He carried 743 rounds of ammunition and fired 109 times. Hamilton perpetrated this crime with four pistols ranging in capacity between six and thirteen rounds. The massacre ended when Hamilton committed suicide after expending just over one seventh of his ammunition. The police had not yet arrived, and Hamilton had not met any effective resistance despite having to reload his firearms numerous times. The conclusion of the British government was that removing semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines from society was not sufficient to prevent mass shootings; pistols had to be banned as well.
Even after this measure was put in place, public mass shootings did not disappear from the UK. During the 2010 Cumbria shooting, George Fisher murdered 12 and wounded 11 with only a breech loading hunting shotgun and a .22 bolt action rifle.
At the worst public mass shooting in American history, Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho used two pistols and a mixture of ten and fifteen round magazines to murder 32 and injure 23. The perpetrator carried nearly 400 rounds of ammunition, and fired approximately half that number before committing suicide. Despite the fact that Cho reloaded no fewer than 17 times, he did not encounter effective resistance during any of these magazine changes. The Virginia Tech Review Panel later concluded that limiting all of the perpetrator's magazines to ten rounds would not have made a difference.
At Columbine, Eric Harris used a Hi Point carbine and a pump action shotgun. These weapons were neither 'military style' nor considered to be 'assault weapons'. His accomplice Dylan Klebold possessed a banned 'assault weapon' with a 52 round magazine. Despite the fact that Harris' magazines were limited to no more than ten rounds, he fired nearly twice as many times (121) as his accomplice (67) by repeatedly changing his magazines. The massacre ended with the suicide of both perpetrators before police entered the school.
In 1938, a crazed gunman in Tsuyama Japan murdered 29 people and wounded 3. His only firearm was a Browning A5, a shotgun with a fixed internal magazine with a capacity of only four rounds. In addition, he carried a sword and an axe. Despite this surprisingly low magazine capacity, the killer met no effective resistance before committing suicide.
During the Aurora, Colorado shooting, James Holmes opened fire with a pump action shotgun (which is neither an 'assault weapon' nor has a high ammunition capacity). He then transitioned to an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle which quickly jammed due to the inherent unreliability of its extended capacity magazine, and was discarded. Holmes continued the massacre by transitioning to a handgun and retaining his shotgun. The loss of his 'assault weapon' with the extended capacity magazine was no obstacle to Holmes' rampage, nor did the need for Holmes to reload his remaining firearms create an opportunity for effective resistance. As one witness described, "Every few seconds it was just: Boom, boom, boom. He would reload and shoot and anyone who would try to leave would just get killed." (LA Times July 20 2012 ) The massacre ended when responding police officers took the shooter into custody after he returned to his car to change clothes.
Beyond it being ineffective, a magazine ban is also impractical. If magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds were banned, we are confronted by the reality that there are tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of them already in circulation. Laws are not going to make high capacity magazines disappear from the world any faster alcohol disappeared during prohibition, and prospective mass murders would undoubtedly be able to obtain them on the black market. Despite it being illegal in Norway to purchase rifle magazines with a capacity greater than three rounds, Anders Brevik managed to obtain high capacity magazines as well as bombs (which were also illegal) for use in his politically motivated rampage that left 77 dead. If an individual intent upon committing a list of felonies desires a simple object made from sheet metal and a spring, that demand is going to be met.
Even in an unlikely scenario where high capacity magazines could not be obtained illicitly, it would not be difficult for criminals to modify 'legal' low-capacity magazines to accept a larger number of bullets. In many instances, the length of the magazine is dictated by the size of the round in relation to the length of the pistol grip of the firearm. If the magazine did not reach a certain length, that magazine would be impossible to insert or remove from inside the pistol grip of the gun. In order to limit a magazine to a ten round capacity without rendering it useless, a pin or artificial floor is set inside the magazine to prevent more than ten rounds from being loaded. Anyone with a dremel tool and evil intent would be able to return ban compliant ten round pistol magazines to their original configuration in less time than it took you to read this letter.
Given the evidence presented above, some might admit that a ban on semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines is unlikely to mitigate our nation's problem with public mass shootings due to the availability of equally effective alternatives and impracticality of removing them from society. Still, they might feel that we should try anyway in order to do something. As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi recently asked, who needs a semi-automatic rifle or a magazine with a capacity of more than ten rounds? Are they not killing machines designed for the battlefield, and nothing more than the tools of mass murderers and delusional psychopaths?
The truth is that many honest, law abiding citizens including myself own a semi-automatic rifle for home defense. While violent attacks by criminals inside the home are rare, they are much more common than public mass shootings (which occur twice per year on average in the US). I choose to be prepared for the same reason that I wear a seat belt, store a fire extinguisher, and carry life insurance. If you feel that keeping a firearm in your house is a liability, that is your business and I respect it. I personally feel that I have enough training, skill, and responsibility to effectively deploy a firearm in the unlikely but finite chance that my family was in jeopardy.
I prefer a .223 semi-automatic rifle (I prefer the term defensive carbine) to a shotgun for home defense because it is lighter and has far less recoil. Like a pistol or revolver, it also fires one projectile with each pull of the trigger instead of the nine fired by the shotgun. I prefer the defensive carbine to a pistol because I can shoot it much more accurately. Additionally, the .223 round is designed to fragment upon impact with a barrier such as drywall, thus making it less likely to harm innocent bystanders than even a typical pistol bullet. For these reasons, defensive carbines are recommended by numerous experts in the fields of self defense and law enforcement as being appropriate for personal self defense in and around the home. All firearms, including revolvers and bolt action rifles, were originally developed to be used on a battlefield. This does not preclude them from being appropriate for certain civilian applications.
It is easy for someone whose only experience with firearms comes from television to sincerely believe that no honest civilian would need to fire more than a few shots to thwart any reasonably foreseeable threat. In Hollywood, the good guy never misses and the bad guy always falls down and stops fighting after the first shot. Sadly, this is a myth.
According to a 2006 study by the RAND Center on Quality Policing, officers hit their intended target 18% of the time during firefights and 30% of the time when the suspect does not fire back. Even a well trained defender might not hit a bad guy who is moving and shooting back the first, third, or even fifth time. Last August, two NYPD officers encountered an active shooter near the Empire State Building. It took the officers 16 shots to stop the perpetrator's aggression. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a tenacious advocate of an 'assault weapons' ban and magazine restrictions, defended the officers actions as reasonable and appropriate. If it takes the NYPD 16 rounds to stop one active shooter on the street, why should I be limited to ten rounds to stop two aggressive felons in my home? And is it unreasonable for me to want a defensive carbine that I can shoot more accurately than a pistol?
Contrary to what is portrayed on television, my personal experience as a physician working in a Level 1 Trauma Center tells me that an aggressive and motivated human being who is shot once, twice, three, or even five times is not always incapacitated and may still pose a lethal threat. This is corroborated by numerous incidents, such as the tragic death of South Carolina State Trooper Mark Coates. Trooper Coates was shot and killed by a suspect during a traffic stop on I-95 after striking the suspect five times in the chest with a .357 magnum revolver. The suspect not only returned fire killing Trooper Coates, but lived and is currently serving life in prison. Just yesterday, a young mother in Loganville, GA hid herself and her children in the attic from an intruder. When the intruder (who had been arrested six times in the previous four years) followed them into the attic, the mother was forced to open fire in defense of her family. She hit the suspect five times before running out of bullets. Despite the five wounds, the intruder was not incapacitated. Fortunately, he elected to flee the scene at that point rather than cause further injury.
Although home invasions and robberies involving multiple perpetrators are rare, one such incident involving multiple assailants occurred right down the street from my home a few years ago. It ended in the murder of one of my neighbors. Consider for a moment the low percentage of the time that police hit their targets under pressure, and the fact that it may take several hits to either incapacitate or scare off an aggressor. If those criminals had chosen to target your home instead of my neighbor's, and if you had to defend your family, would you want to be told that you could only have ten rounds in your magazine? While thirty rounds might be more than any civilian needs, I am certain that a ten round restriction will somewhere and someday get innocent people killed. A mass murderer can choose the distance and location at which he engages his victims, and does not have to worry about his unarmed prey shooting back at him while he reloads. The homeowner defending her children from armed criminals does not have the same luxury.
Intermixed with the conversation about public mass shootings is a reflection upon our overall homicide rate as a nation, and the role that firearms play in that statistic. I would like to point out that all rifles (not just semi-automatic rifles) are used in a tiny percentage of murders. In 2011, all rifles (including hunting rifles) were implicated in 323 of 14,612 US homicides by the FBI. During that time, more Americans were killed by hammers and clubs (496) and hands and feet (728) than rifles. Given the size of the US population and the current homicide rate, the odds of an American being killed by a rifle in any given year is approximately one in a million. As such, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a rifle. If you believe the statistics provided in Senator Feinstein's December 17, 2012 press release, then the argument for banning semi-automatic rifles becomes even weaker. According to the Senator, 'assault weapons' (rather than all rifles) have been responsible for 385 deaths since 2004. If this true, then the 48 deaths per year from assault weapons is slightly lower than the annual death toll caused by stinging insects. From a public health perspective, perhaps it would make more sense to institute bee control rather than an 'assault weapons' ban?
According to those same FBI statistics, 96% of homicide events involve only a single victim, and only 0.6% involve three or more victims. One in five thousand homicide events involve five or more victims. Given these statistics along with the tenuous nature of the claim that they truly make mass shootings worse, it is reasonable to conclude that high capacity magazines play a decisive role in extremely few if any homicides.
Both an 'assault weapons' ban and high capacity magazine ban were tried between 1994 and 2004 under the postulate that eliminating 'assault weapons' and limiting magazine capacity to ten rounds would lead to fewer murders. A study commissioned by the US Department of Justice to examine the effect of the ban on crime (Koper 2004) found no statistical evidence that the ban reduced gun murders, and postulated that renewing the ban would have no statistically detectable impact on crime due to the rarity with which such weapons were used by criminals. In a review of available academic studies on the ban, the National Research Council found that the literature "did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence" and illustrated "the relative rarity with which the banned guns were used in crime before the ban".
While I completely agree that public mass shootings are a problem urgently in need of a solution, banning defensive carbines and magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds is not it. History shows that mass murderers either get the weapons they want in spite of laws, or adapt by bringing equally effective weapons on their rampages. These proposed regulations will merely encumber honest citizens without having any effect on the ability of the criminally insane to carry out their evil ends. Instead, I propose that we focus on the murderers. The common thread behind these shootings is not the type of weapon used, but rather the mental defectiveness of the perpetrators. I fully support moves to strengthen the NCIS database with information that could prevent the mentally defective from purchasing firearms. I also support a requirement for all private firearm sales to be checked through that database. Additionally, we need to make sure that warnings from psychiatric and law enforcement professionals about individuals such as Seung-Hui Cho and James Holmes are treated with the utmost seriousness in the future. Finally, I believe that we need a response plan in place for schools and other sensitive sites to provide rapid engagement by law enforcement or other specifically trained and trusted personnel in the event of future attacks.
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Originally Posted by iGlock
