Not All Guns Are Created Equal

Seven killed at a Sikh temple.  Twelve killed and 58 wounded at a movie theater.  What do these two mass murders have in common?  The weapons used.

When we talk about gun control, gun advocates repeat the old refrain:  “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  While there’s truth in that, we should also add:  “the type of gun used can make one murder into a mass murder in a matter of seconds.”

The shooting two weeks ago in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was accomplished with three weapons:  a 12-guage, pump-action shotgun; a Smith & Wesson M&P15 semiautomatic rifle; and a Glock 0.40-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

To kill 12 people and wound 58, the shooter had to fire a huge number of rounds in a matter of a few minutes.  The gunman started with the shotgun, which probably fired about 5 rounds, then switched to the semiautomatic rifle, which was fitted with a 100-round ammunition barrel.  He sprayed the crowded theater with a shower of bullets until the ammunition barrel jammed, then he dumped the rifle and pulled the semiautomatic pistol.

Now, the semiautomatic rifle he used is an AR-15, which is similar to the military’s fully automatic M-16.  The AR-15 rifle used to be restricted for civilian purchase and use under the 1994 assault weapons ban.  The ban expired in 2004, and politicians have been too cowardly to renew it ever since.  The high number of casualties and wounded in the Aurora shooting is a direct result.

The 0.40-caliber Glock pistol is similar to 9-mm handguns, which are popular with drug gangs and are used in the vast majority of mass murders in the U.S.  Gun control advocates have been trying for decades, with the help of the nation’s police departments, to restrict the manufacture and sale of 9-mm handguns for those very reasons.  We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that the man who shot up a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, yesterday also used a 9-mm handgun as his weapon of choice.

In debates about gun control we should always remember that not all guns are created equal.  Some can raise the death toll from two or three people to a dozen within a matter of minutes.  As a society we have to ask ourselves:  should we allow everyone the freedom to rain death on the maximum number of people in the shortest amount of time?

Is a few people’s “fun”—the ability to spray targets at the local gun range with a semiautomatic weapon—worth the lives of so many innocent and unsuspecting people, some as old as your beloved grandparents, and some as young as the unborn child lost by a pregnant woman wounded in the Aurora, Colorado, shooting?

The answer is no.  Gun control is not the all-or-nothing proposition that the NRA would have you believe.  The type of gun matters, and Americans and the politicians who represent us need to realize that sooner and not later.