Why banning AR-15s and other assault weapons won’t stop mass shootings

Why are gun rights supporters worried about bans on so-called assault weapons?

But, some say, if assault weapons are so similar to other guns, what’s the big deal about banning them? Just like the minority of criminals that uses assault weapons can switch to the other guns (an argument that the bans will be futile), so law-abiding citizens can do the same (an argument that the bans won’t harm lawful self-defense). Why get so upset about it? Let me offer a few explanations for why gun rights supporters are indeed so worried — you can agree with them or disagree with them, but I hope you at least conclude that they are plausible. 1. To begin with, some gun rights supporters just think that people should be free to choose what devices they own — whether self-defense devices or any other devices — unless there’s a very strong reason for restricting that liberty. If you think that a ban would save thousands of lives, that may qualify as a strong reason; but if you think that a ban would be ineffectual, then you can oppose it on basic liberty grounds.  3. Moreover, consider the political question as dynamic, rather than static. People are worried about mass shootings, or street crime, or whatever else. Many people say, “We’ve got to do something — let’s ban assault weapons.” Critics argue, “Assault weapons bans won’t do any good.” The response: “We’ve got to do something!” And then an assault weapons ban is enacted. But mass shootings will keep on happening. Even assault weapons ban supporters agree with that; many mass shooters already use guns other than assault weapons, and even those who prefer those weapons will either keep getting them or will switch to other, comparably deadly, weapons. Assault weapons ban supporters believe that assault weapons bans will do a bit of good, not that they’ll eliminate or even vastly reduce mass shooting deaths. Assault weapons ban opponents believe the bans won’t reduce mass shooting deaths at all. No-one thinks the bans will solve the mass shooting problem. So then what will people say? “We’ve got to do something — let’s ban [whatever guns are being used now instead of assault weapons].” Critics argue, “Such a ban won’t do any good.” The response: “We’ve got to do something — and we as a country have already decided, with the assault weapons ban, that we should try to deal with gun crime by banning various classes of guns.” After all, the argument will go, we’re not quitters; we’ve embarked on a path of trying to save lives by banning guns; whether or not one ban works, let’s try another and then another until we find something that does.  And this is especially worrisome to gun rights supporters precisely because the case for banning assault weapons seems so factually weak to them. If the precedent established is that we ban weapons that really are very different from ordinary guns (e.g., antiaircraft missiles), precisely because we have reason to think that they are vastly deadlier than the alternatives, then that’s not a precedent that’s likely to lead to many bans on ordinary guns. But if the precedent is for banning guns that are very similar to other ordinary guns, surely it’s reasonable to worry that other ordinary guns will be next in line. 4. Of course, if you disagree on the facts, and think that assault weapons really are materially more dangerous than other guns that would remain allowed, you can argue that assault weapons bans will save many lives and are worth the risk of setting a bad precedent. It’s just that gun rights supporters generally don’t share your view of the facts, and have a plausible argument for that factual perspective. And, of course, if you think that other ordinary guns should be banned, then it makes sense for you try to ban assault weapons (as the Violence Policy Center and Krauthammer argued). Just don’t fault gun rights supporters for “paranoia” when the thing they fear is the very thing you’re trying to accomplish.

In her Jan. 18 letter, “No right to military weaponry,” D.W. Gregory displayed an apparent lack of understanding about the very thing she railed against. She wrote that “the issue is not shotguns, hunting rifles or even handguns . . . .” and “I would not deny anyone the right to self-defense.” Unfortunately, this is exactly what the author is doing by helping to organize the March on Washington for Gun Control and writing that “there is no reason why semiautomatic weapons ought to be widely available to civilians.” Many modern shotguns, hunting rifles and handguns are semiautomatic weapons, which simply means that they use the energy from the bullet being fired to eject the spent casing and load a fresh bullet or shotgun shell into the chamber. Even sporting rifles such as the Bushmaster AR-15 use this old technology. Addressing violent crime and mental health problems makes far more sense than banning old technology, like the semiautomatic shotguns I use to go trap and skeet shooting on the weekends. Let’s focus on keeping guns out of the hands of criminals rather than on the inanimate object itself. ****Steve King** , Alexandria**

First assault weapons, then roadsters?

The March 23 editorial “Banning assault weapons” stated that the “legitimate need to own AR-15s is minuscule.” This phrase is fairly accurate: Most people do not _need_ an AR-15. But what about those who _want_ one, whether it is for their personal safety, target-shooting or any other legitimate purpose? Personally, I don’t need a 300-horsepower, two-seat car, but I wanted one and I acquired one. Do sports cars kill a disproportionate number of people compared with minivans and staid four-door sedans? It’s possible, but if so, I certainly hope that they won’t be banned. Banning AR-15s from law-abiding, tax-paying citizens amounts to the same thing. The freedom and rights of the people would be infringed upon, with more control of individuals being taken by the government. ****Rich Townsend,** Catlett **

Assault weapons must be banned in America

The only reasonable response to the massacre in Orlando is to ban the sale of military-style assault weapons. All else, I’m afraid, is just noise. If this ensconces me in an ideological corner, I’m fine with that. If it insults the Constitution, so be it — any other response would do far greater harm to our freedoms. Or we could argue for a while and then do nothing. We’ve tried that course of action many times, and it doesn’t work. An Islamic State sympathizer was able to go into a gun store days or weeks ago and buy both a pistol and an AR-15-style semiautomatic assault rifle, which he used to kill 49 men and women at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Had he been armed with the pistol alone, he still would have killed people — but not so many. Keeping military-grade combat weapons out of the hands of maniacs should not be a controversial idea. The Second Amendment enshrines the right to keep and bear arms, and the Supreme Court has ruled that this is an individual right, not a collective one. The court has made clear, however, that this does not preclude reasonable gun control measures. Not all weapons must be considered suitable for private hands. When the framers wrote of “arms,” they were thinking about muskets and single-shot pistols. They could not have foreseen modern rifles or high-capacity magazines. They lived at a time when it was impossible to imagine one man barging into a crowded room and killing more than one or two people before having to reload and surely being subdued. Today it is not only imaginable but also tragically commonplace. No hunter needs an AR-15 to bring down a deer. None of us needs such a weapon to defend our families against intruders. And for those who believe assault rifles offer protection against a hypothetical tyrannical government — or who perhaps consider the present government tyrannical — I have sobering news: If and when the black helicopters come, they will be accompanied by tanks. Why focus exclusively on the guns? Because other proposed solutions would violate the letter and spirit of the Constitution — and surely wouldn’t work anyway. One of the presidential candidates — I don’t want to sully this column with his name — has suggested a ban on Muslim immigration. The idea would be laughable if it were not so dangerously un-American. First, it would be useless. The Orlando murderer — I don’t want to use his name, either — was born not overseas but in New York, just like the presidential candidate in question. And in the San Bernardino, Calif., killing spree, also inspired by the Islamic State, the wife was an immigrant but the husband was born in the United States. The self-radicalization of American citizens is not going to be solved by banning all believers in Islam from entry. Which would be impossible, of course. I suppose immigration officers could ask every foreign visitor whether he or she is a Muslim, but then what? If the answer is no, wave them through? Stop them for further questioning if they “look” Muslim, whatever that means? Don’t you think Islamic State operatives might be smart enough to have Bibles in their carry-ons rather than Korans? Attempting such a prohibition would also be obscene in a nation that enshrines religious freedom in the First Amendment. Enough said about this loathsome idea. Another possible response would involve more vigilant surveillance. The Orlando shooter had been interviewed by the FBI at least twice because of alleged extremist leanings or connections. He was apparently on a terrorism watch list for a time but was removed after authorities decided there was no need to keep him under suspicion. By all means, Congress should immediately ban gun sales to anyone on such a watch list. But that wouldn’t have helped in Orlando. No level of surveillance remotely permissible under the Constitution would allow authorities to detect all instances of self-radicalization and act on them. We put people in jail for what they do, not what they think. Should there be universal background checks for gun purchases? Yes, of course. But the Orlando killer passed a background check. It is not possible to have a free society without the presumption of innocence. Freedom is possible, however, without the right to buy military weapons designed for killing sprees. Banning them would not end mass killings, but it would mean fewer deaths. If we do not act, the blood of future victims will be on all of our hands. _Read more fromEugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A;._ **Read more on this topic:** Charles Kaiser: Fellow gay people, don’t forget: We are a battle-hardened movement Jonathan Capehart: A horrible day for Orlando, gay pride and U.S. history E.J. Dionne Jr.: Will Orlando drive us from our corners? The Post’s View: Orlando mass shooting an ‘act of terror, act of hate’ The Post’s View: The gun debate America needs to have

A gun-free society

Maybe it’s time to start using the words that the NRA has turned into unmentionables. Prohibition. Mass buyback. A gun-free society. Let’s say that one again: A gun-free society. Doesn’t it sound logical? Doesn’t it sound _safe_? Wouldn’t it make sense to learn from other developed nations, which believe that only the military and law enforcers, when necessary, should be armed — and which as a result lose far, far fewer innocent people than die every year in the United States? Yes, even saying these words makes the NRA happy. It fuels the slippery-slope argument the gun lobby uses to oppose even the most modest, common-sense reforms. _You see? Background checks today, confiscation tomorrow._ And yes, I understand how difficult it would be. This is a matter of changing the culture and norms of an entire society. It would take time. But the incremental approach is not succeeding. It sets increasingly modest goals, increasingly polite goals: close a loophole here, restrict a particularly lethal weapon there. Talk about gun safety and public health. Say “reform,” not “control.” In response, a few states have tightened restrictions, a few states have loosened them. But as a nation — in Congress — we are stuck. Meanwhile the strategy of modest reform has its own vulnerabilities. Every time there is a mass shooting, gun-control advocates argue again for legislation. But almost every time, opponents can argue that _this_ shooter wouldn’t have been blocked from buying a gun, or that _this_ gun would not have been on anyone’s banned list — and so why waste time (and political capital) on irrelevant restrictions? To be clear, I believe the NRA is wrong on this, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is right. Modest restrictions can help and have helped. The one-gun-a-month law can reduce crime. The gun-show loophole should be closed, and closing it would prevent some criminals from obtaining weapons. Every gun in a home with children should have a trigger lock. But how many members of Congress will risk their jobs for modest, incremental reform that may or may not show up as a blip on the following year’s murder statistics? We’ve learned the answer to that question. Fine, you say, but then why would those same members commit political suicide by embracing something bigger? They won’t, of course. Congress will not lead this change. There has to be a cultural shift. Only then will Congress and the Supreme Court follow. As we’ve seen over the past 15 years with same-sex marriage, such deep cultural change is difficult — and possible. Wyatt Earp, the frontier mentality, prying my cold dead fingers — I get all that. But Australia was a pioneer nation, too, and gave up its guns. Societies change, populations evolve. And people are not immune, over time, to reason. Given how guns decimate poor black communities every day — not just when there are mass shootings, but every day — this is a civil rights issue. Given how many small children shoot themselves or their siblings accidentally, it is a family issue. Given the suicides that could be prevented, it is a mental health issue. On average 55 Americans shoot themselves to death every day. Every day! The Supreme Court, which has misread the Second Amendment in its recent decisions, would have to revisit the issue. The court has corrected itself before, and if public opinion shifts it could correct itself again. If it did not, the Constitution would have to be amended. It sounds hard, I know. But it’s possible that if we started talking more honestly about the most logical, long-term goal, public opinion would begin to shift and the short-term gains would become more, not less likely, as the NRA had to play defense. We might end up with a safer country. There are strong arguments against setting a gun-free society as the goal, but there are 100,000 arguments in favor — that’s how many of us get shot every year. Every year 11,000 Americans are murdered. Every year some 20,000 kill themselves with guns. Without guns — with only kitchen knives at hand — some of those people would die. Most would still be living. Maybe it’s time to start talking about the most logical way to save their lives. _Read more fromFred Hiatt’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more about this issue here:** Paul Waldman: President Obama just identified the one thing that could make real gun reform possible Firmin DeBrabander: We can’t advance the goals of Black Lives Matter without addressing gun control James Hohmann and Elise Viebeck: Oregon shooting injects gun debate into Democratic primary Ruth Marcus: Is this the mass shooting that will finally shame us into acting?

To save lives, shrink gun magazines

_Jason Ross is a writer in New York._ With the White House poised to announce gun restrictions, many are wondering about the possibilities. Banning assault-style weapons is a no-brainer for many Americans. The argument practically makes itself: Assault? No, thank you! The fine writer Philip Caputo, a Vietnam veteran who was shot by an AK-47 while reporting in Lebanon, attested in The Post last month: “I am intimately familiar with what these weapons are designed to do, and that is to kill people.” Indeed. But AK-47s and AR-15s are hardly alone in that regard. The technology of firearms owes its existence to man’s desire to kill other men. For many years, combat guns and hunting guns were one and the same. That changed after World War II with the creation of the assault rifle. But the breakthrough innovation of these guns — their use of medium-powered cartridges — actually makes them less lethal than many other rifles. In fact, their civilian variants typically bear just one indisputably sinister element: high-capacity magazines. A more aggressive approach is also gaining steam among the left: banning all semiautomatic weapons, the large group to which assault-style rifles belong. This century-old technology allows guns to be cocked only once, thereafter firing a single shot for every pull of the trigger. Is such rapid-fire capability too great to allow in civilian hands? Perhaps. But, then, what should we do about manually actuated weapons that shoot almost as fast? Remington offers a black, pump-action .223-caliber rifle to police departments. Anyone looking at it — or being shot at by it — could be excused for mistaking it for an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Unfortunately, by targeting guns’ form rather than their function, the efficacy of type-specific gun bans is questionable. The enforcement prospects, though, are downright frightening. There are probably at least 3 million assault-style weapons in American hands. As for semiautomatics in general — shotguns, rifles, pistols — the number is many times that. Buying them back would cost billions. Seizing them would provoke violent clashes as the “Come and take it” crowd lived out its wildest fantasies. The country needs a solution that limits the killing power of civilian weapons across the board — regardless of action type — while keeping enforcement costs and social unrest to a minimum. Luckily, we already have it: magazine control. The magazine is the part of the gun that holds the cartridges. The standard magazine for a 9mm semiautomatic handgun holds 17 rounds. Assault-weapon magazines typically carry 30. Those magazines drop out at the press of a button, to be replaced by fresh ones. Let’s replace them with smaller ones. Lower-capacity magazines will fundamentally transform the character of these guns. Put a five-round magazine in an AR-15 and you no longer have an assault-style weapon. You have the world’s ugliest varmint rifle. A Glock becomes a plastic six-shooter, capable of holding a burglar at bay but not capable of a Virginia Tech-style rampage. Most hunting rifles and shotguns would be unaffected, as they typically hold five rounds or fewer. Some existing guns with firmly attached magazines exceeding the limit could be exempted without creating a loophole for new guns. Others would need to be modified by gunsmiths to remain legal. The federal assault-weapons ban passed in the 1990s capped the magazines of some guns but not others — an inevitable result of focusing on gun types rather than gun capabilities. The poor results gave Congress cover to let the law expire in 2004. Today, just six states limit magazines in some way. The politics of passing such a law are uncertain. What’s clear is that a limit on magazine capacity undercuts the hardest punch of the pro-gun side — “They’re taking away your guns!” — and leaves most hunters unmolested. Can New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) say the same about his proposal to ban assault weapons? In fact, the biggest threat to magazine control might be from my allies in this fight: liberals. Few of my Wilco-listening brethren own guns. Many don’t understand how they work, and some actively loathe them. Will they see magazine control as a half-measure to be spurned? Or will they realize that the most effective assault-weapons law might be the one that melts down a grand total of zero assault weapons? **Read more from Opinions:** Tim Kaine: Are we ready to reduce gun violence? The Post’s View: The NRA’s simplistic response to Newtown E.J. Dionne Jr.: Gun sanity Eugene Robinson: Stop the gun madness Ruth Marcus: Beating the NRA at its own game

The Supreme Court leaves politicians room to reform gun laws

Federal, state and local lawmakers should take note of the Supreme Court’s decision this week not to hear a challenge to a Chicago suburb’s ban on semiautomatic assault weapons. A recent series of horrific mass shootings, including one with the kind of weapon that Highland Park, Ill., has banned, underline government’s legitimate interest in regulating gun ownership to safeguard public safety. Lawmakers in Washington and state capitals should take note that they have the leeway — not to mention the obligation — to reform this country’s lax gun laws. The court announced Monday it would not review a lower-court ruling that upheld the 2013 ordinance prohibiting semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. “[W]eapons of choice in mass shootings” was the apt description from the opinion by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. It noted that the Supreme Court’s landmark _District of Columbia v. Heller_ decision upholding a constitutional right to keep arms for self- defense also allowed reasonable regulation by legislatures, including the ability to prohibit “dangerous and unusual weapons.” Seven states reached similar conclusions about the need to ban these frighteningly lethal weapons, and their recent use in the terrorist-inspired shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., has brought renewed calls for reimposition of a national ban. These weapons are designed for war, and prohibition makes sense. But there should be no illusion that such a move, alone, would provide the solution to gun violence, of which mass shootings and the use of assault weapons comprise just a small part. Similarly, efforts to prevent people on the no-fly list from buying weapons would do little to tackle larger issues of gun accessibility. A variety of strategies is needed, including stiffening the low standards for legal gun ownership, designing better systems to prevent those who are disqualified from circumventing barriers to gun possession and encouraging the adoption of technology to make guns safer. Instead of holding up possible policies to the impossible test of whether they could have prevented the most recent tragedy or would end all gun crime, proposals should be grounded in the research into what works and what offers the most promise for reducing homicides, suicides and accidental shootings. Laws requiring gun purchasers to obtain a license from law enforcement authorities would meet those tests. Not only has research shown the efficacy of gun permitting in reducing homicides and suicides, but gun owners are generally willing to put up with a little inconvenience if it helps foster public safety. Before passing on the Highland Park ordinance, the Supreme Court opted out of reviewing San Francisco’s law requiring handguns to be disabled or locked away when they are not being carried. It also declined to consider a challenge to a New Jersey law barring most residents from carrying guns in public. We don’t know whether, as some have speculated, the justices are having second thoughts about the _Heller_ decision; we do know that lawmakers can and should take action to address this country’s unacceptable toll of gun violence. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: America has to do more to prevent gun violence Fareed Zakaria: Change your gun laws, America The Post’s View: America’s deadly game on guns

The killings assault weapons enable

In his Jan. 26 letter, “Assault weapons are legal and safe,” Brett Weeks argued that assault weapons are inanimate objects and are not responsible for shootings. In other words, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. In a sense, Mr. Weeks is correct. Assault weapons don’t typically go around murdering people without someone pulling their trigger. Unfortunately, the “guns are not killer robots” defense doesn’t address the main concern of people who favor an assault-weapons ban. The issue is that assault weapons make it exceedingly easy for a single person to gun down dozens of people in no time at all. Sure, assault weapons don’t kill people on their own, but let’s get real: They make better killers of bad and delusional people. ****Owen S.M. Davies** , Washington**

On gun control, banning semiautomatics isn’t the answer

I was at the NRA gun range in Fairfax County the other day, shooting an AR-15 “assault rifle.” It’s eerie to hold at first, as if the gun was not merely the same kind used in several recent mass killings but the same one. And when you hear the blast from that supersonic .223-caliber bullet, the thought that someone would use such a weapon on elementary school children makes you want to put it down. Ban it. Take it away. Beat it into a plowshare. For a moment, the proposal by gun control advocates to outlaw the rifle actually seemed to make sense. It was the relief that accompanies any quick fix to a vexing problem. Doing something is better than doing nothing, President Obama says. Except that blaming the gun really is doing nothing. The more I fired the AR-15, the harder it was to pretend that any gun was somehow more dangerous than the person holding it. Who would use a weapon to kill and why? Those ought to be the most pressing questions in the gun debate, not which weapon they use. There are too many to choose from. And no gun law magic act will make any of them disappear. I don’t particularly like the AR-15, although it is one of the most popular rifles in the country. Three million have been sold, according to an NRA researcher. But to define it as an assault rifle because of how it looks — with a pistol grip, adjustable stock, flash suppressor and “high capacity” magazine — is silly. You want to see a dangerous-looking gun, look at the one President Obama was photographed skeet shooting with at Camp David last summer. That shotgun of his was big enough to take down a woolly mammoth. When I pulled the trigger on the AR-15, one high-powered round came out. Maybe I hit something; maybe I didn’t. Obama can’t miss. He could clear a room with one double-barreled blast. Why ban one and not the other? And once you start banning semiautomatics, where do you stop? If gun control advocates were truly serious and not just well meaning, they’d be focusing a lot more on education and mental health. For instance, everybody knows that our children are being adversely affected by violent video games. So why aren’t schools deconstructing video games as part of the curriculum, explaining to students how the military uses these same war games to condition troops to kill without remorse? Show students, frame by frame, how they are being gamed by the gamers and how profits are made by making them mentally ill. This is not to give my fellow gun owners a free ride. If gun control advocates lack imagination, some of the solutions to gun violence offered by the gun lobby strike me as unrealistic. Arming teachers? George Lyon, with whom I enjoy target shooting and who owns that AR-15, thinks that’s the way to go, along with much of the country, according to recent polls. Lyon, a D.C. resident and lawyer, was part of a legal fight against gun control that resulted in the Supreme Court loosening gun laws in the city. Now he wants the D.C. Council to consider a proposal for protecting the city’s public schools: “On a voluntary basis, school staff would undergo training designed and supervised by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and be sworn in as DC Reserve Police Officers,” the plan reads. The job of these “School Shield Officers,” as they are called, would be to “serve as the last line of defense against a lethal threat to innocent students, pending the arrival of responding officers.” To get some idea about the shooting skills that a shield officer would need, Lyon set up a “hostage rescue” exercise for me to try: I would use several kinds of guns — including the AR-15 — to shoot a paper target where the bad guy’s head was partially visible behind a “hostage.” At just 20 feet away, muscles in the hand tighten. Just the idea of having to make a sure shot — on a stationary piece of paper, no less — causes the nerves to twitch. No amount of training could prepare a “volunteer” to make that shot in real life. Keep your guns, folks; but keep them out of the schools. Let that be the place where students learn not to need one.

The NRA is wrong: This is exactly the right time to talk about guns

THE WEEK after the Orlando terrorist attack, we are told, is no time for a debate on gun control. Expanding the list of people who cannot legally own guns or tightening background checks would not have stopped this particular tragedy. Omar Mateen, an American citizen inspired by some combination of radicalism, hate and despair to kill 49 people at a gay nightclub, was not on a terrorist watch list. Better background checks may not have stopped him. If assault weapons were banned, he might have used other kinds of guns. If the government mandated smart guns, Mateen’s fingerprints would still have allowed him to pull the trigger, because he was the legitimate owner of the weapons he used for his slaughter. The National Rifle Association and other extremists use a form of this jujitsu every time a mentally ill person or a hater uses the efficient killing machines known as guns to inflict mass death. But in an era of lone-wolf radicalization, the aftermath of a homegrown terrorist attack is exactly the time to talk about sensible limits on gun ownership. After Sandy Hook would have been the right time. After Umpqua would have been the right time. Headline-grabbing mass shootings remind us of how good guns are at killing people. They also remind us — or should — that a rational government would regulate such dangerous products, just as it regulates cars, pharmaceuticals and other more useful things. Of course the government cannot legislate an end to gun violence. But it can take measures that would reduce gun violence without infringing on constitutional rights. Congress is debating ways to end gun sales to suspected terrorists, a policy that lawmakers realize must come with due-process protections for those under suspicion. Even if it would not have prevented Orlando, this reform might force the next homegrown terrorist to work harder to find his firearms, raising attention as he does, or to give up. Another proposal would deny guns to people who have misdemeanor hate-crime convictions, which poses fewer due- process issues. But these ideas are hardly the only, or the most important, gun-control reforms that lawmakers should be considering. Research increasingly shows that universal background checks could help cut gun violence; without them, merely adding to the list of people who cannot legally own guns is not as effective. Requiring safeguards such as fingerprint readers, meanwhile, would stop children and suicidal family members from shooting themselves or others with a weapon stored at home. Banning high-capacity magazines would at least force mass murderers to reload more often. If Congress unleashed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study gun violence, the government would have the data to know which set of policies would work best and which ideas would less usefully restrict gun ownership. Tragedies would still happen, and the NRA would still argue that the rules are useless. But, over time and on average, fewer people would die. That is a legitimate goal. **Read more on this topic:** Eugene Robinson: Assault weapons must be banned in America The Post’s View: The gun debate America needs to have The Post’s View: A depressingly endless loop of mass shootings Colbert I. King: Why is America so hostile to gun control?

Gun bans don’t stop gun deaths

The March 23 editorial “Banning assault weapons,” concerning a bill to do just that in Maryland, was ironic. As an argument for the measure, the editorial cited the 2002 killing spree of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo because they used a weapon akin to the AR-15 to shoot 13 people in the Washington area. The irony is that there was an assault-weapons ban in place at the time, and it did not stop these individuals from committing their criminal acts. So much for the effectiveness of assault-weapons bans. ****Dan Mierzwa,** Stephens City, Va. **

Eliminate detachable magazines

President Obama proposed to ban military-style assault weapons and limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds [“Gun agenda faces an uphill campaign,” front page, Jan. 17]. This proposal echoes similar ones from many gun-control advocates. For example, in a Jan. 16 op-ed, “Clip the capacity to kill,” Jason Ross stated that if the AR-15’s magazine capacity were limited to five rounds, it would no longer be an assault weapon. Perhaps so, by prevalent definitions, but it is important to remember that as long as a gun’s magazine is detachable at the push of a button, as is the case with an AR-15, a shooter on a rampage with such a gun could carry extra, pre-loaded magazines, quickly exchange an emptied one for a full one, and continue shooting with only a few interruptions. With a 10-round magazine, the limit proposed by the president, there would be very few interruptions. A much more effective approach would be to combine a limit on magazine capacity — say, to five rounds — with the requirement that the magazine must be fixed, not detachable, and with no insertable clips. Such a magazine can be reloaded only by a manual, time-consuming, one-shell-at-a-time process. A deranged person would have a much harder time killing many people with such a gun than with one with a detachable magazine. ****Nellie Clem** , Lovettsville**

The unexpected way an assault weapons ban could reduce mass shooting casualties

A ban on assault weapons — similar to the one enacted by Congress in 1994 — could be effective at reducing the number of people killed and injured in mass shooting attacks similar to the one in Orlando. But not necessarily for the reasons you might think.     For that reason, legislation limiting the number of rounds that guns can carry to 10 or fewer could be one way to make it more difficult for shooters to injure lots of people.   Garen Wintemute, head of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine, told The Post at the time that these numbers provide "about as clear an example as we could ask for of evidence that the ban was working."

Gun rights supporters often point out that so-called assault weapons that some people seek to ban aren’t materially different from other guns that will remain allowed. I think that’s factually right (and some pro-gun-control liberals, such as my colleague Adam Winkler, agree).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Assault weapons aren’t fully automatic; they are semiautomatics, like many tens of millions of other guns out there. They aren’t unusually powerful — “assault rifles” are generally more powerful than handguns, because generally rifles are more powerful than handguns, but many ordinary hunting rifles (such as a .30-06) are more powerful than many assault weapons (such as the .223s that were used in the San Bernardino, Calif., shooting). The features that are often used to distinguish them, such as bayonet lugs, barrel shrouds, and pistol grips, don’t actually make them materially deadlier. (Magazine size may be relevant to deadliness, though it’s not clear that magazine size limits are a good idea; but in any event, magazine capacity is a separate matter from assault weapons bans as such, since large magazines can fit all sorts of guns.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But, some say, if assault weapons are so similar to other guns, what’s the big deal about banning them? Just like the minority of criminals that uses assault weapons can switch to the other guns (an argument that the bans will be futile), so law-abiding citizens can do the same (an argument that the bans won’t harm lawful self-defense). Why get so upset about it? Let me offer a few explanations for why gun rights supporters are indeed so worried — you can agree with them or disagree with them, but I hope you at least conclude that they are plausible. 1. To begin with, some gun rights supporters just think that people should be free to choose what devices they own — whether self-defense devices or any other devices — unless there’s a very strong reason for restricting that liberty. If you think that a ban would save thousands of lives, that may qualify as a strong reason; but if you think that a ban would be ineffectual, then you can oppose it on basic liberty grounds. 2\. Beyond this, as I’ve noted over the last two days — see the Violence Policy Center post and the Charles Krauthammer post — some _supporters_ of gun bans have argued in favor of assault weapons bans precisely because they can help lead to broader bans (such as bans on handguns). If some of your opponents think a restriction is good because it will lead to something much broader, you might be forgiven for taking them at their word.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 3. Moreover, consider the political question as dynamic, rather than static. People are worried about mass shootings, or street crime, or whatever else. Many people say, “We’ve got to do something — let’s ban assault weapons.” Critics argue, “Assault weapons bans won’t do any good.” The response: “We’ve got to do something!” And then an assault weapons ban is enacted. But mass shootings will keep on happening. Even assault weapons ban supporters agree with that; many mass shooters already use guns other than assault weapons, and even those who prefer those weapons will either keep getting them or will switch to other, comparably deadly, weapons. Assault weapons ban supporters believe that assault weapons bans will do a bit of good, not that they’ll eliminate or even vastly reduce mass shooting deaths. Assault weapons ban opponents believe the bans won’t reduce mass shooting deaths at all. No-one thinks the bans will solve the mass shooting problem. So then what will people say? “We’ve got to do something — let’s ban [whatever guns are being used now instead of assault weapons].” Critics argue, “Such a ban won’t do any good.” The response: “We’ve got to do something — and we as a country have already decided, with the assault weapons ban, that we should try to deal with gun crime by banning various classes of guns.” After all, the argument will go, we’re not quitters; we’ve embarked on a path of trying to save lives by banning guns; whether or not one ban works, let’s try another and then another until we find something that does. That’s the way democratic politics so often works; not in every instance, to be sure, but often enough. When a law is adopted, many people accept that it’s right, and use it as a basis for arguments by analogy. If it doesn’t seem to be working, many people don’t want to quit; they just want to try more and harder. (Consider, among other things, the first decades of the war on drugs.) Arguments against the first law often don’t work quite as well against the second and third — once the basic principle is established, further debate just seems like “haggling over the price.” And once “don’t just stand there, do something” (even when the something doesn’t seem very likely to work) is accepted as the right approach, it tends to lead to doing something else and then something more.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And this is especially worrisome to gun rights supporters precisely because the case for banning assault weapons seems so factually weak to them. If the precedent established is that we ban weapons that really are very different from ordinary guns (e.g., antiaircraft missiles), precisely because we have reason to think that they are vastly deadlier than the alternatives, then that’s not a precedent that’s likely to lead to many bans on ordinary guns. But if the precedent is for banning guns that are very similar to other ordinary guns, surely it’s reasonable to worry that other ordinary guns will be next in line. 4. Of course, if you disagree on the facts, and think that assault weapons really are materially more dangerous than other guns that would remain allowed, you can argue that assault weapons bans will save many lives and are worth the risk of setting a bad precedent. It’s just that gun rights supporters generally don’t share your view of the facts, and have a plausible argument for that factual perspective. And, of course, if you think that other ordinary guns should be banned, then it makes sense for you try to ban assault weapons (as the Violence Policy Center and Krauthammer argued). Just don’t fault gun rights supporters for “paranoia” when the thing they fear is the very thing you’re trying to accomplish.

It’s already too late for gun control to work

It seems obvious: Restrict gun access, and people will be safer. Indeed, in all four presidential debates, Hillary Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine have pushed for background checks on private transfers of guns. Clinton says this will “keep guns out of the hands of those who will do harm.” But theory and practice don’t always match. Too often, gun bans or background checks don’t stop criminals and instead disarm law-abiding citizens, particularly poor minorities. This only makes life easier for criminals.   Some think that background checks are the answer. Indeed, after each mass public shooting, President Obama calls for background checks on the selling of guns through private transfers. But these new rules wouldn’t have stopped the attackers. Since at least 2000, all of America’s mass shooters obtained guns without going through private transfers. Some of the attacks occurred in states that already have these background check laws.  Meanwhile, other law-abiding citizens are left in a lurch. People who have been mistakenly stopped from buying guns are forced into a costly appeals process that frequently requires them to hire lawyers. These “initial denials” affect certain racial groups more than others. Hispanics are more likely to share names with other Hispanics, and the same is true of blacks. Because 30 percent of black males are forbidden to buy guns because of their criminal records, law-abiding black males are especially likely to have their names confused with those of prohibited people.     But Noble warned, “You can’t have armed police forces everywhere.” He also suggested that it is essentially impossible to stop killers from getting weapons into these “secure” areas. He concluded by posing the question, “Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past, with an evolving threat of terrorism?” The answer is an emphatic yes.

Michael Gerson: Gun policy’s slippery slope

Following the Aurora shooting, some gun-control supporters began immediately hunting through the wreckage for scraps of political advantage. That showed all the sensitivity and consideration of starting a food fight at a funeral. It is one thing to draw lessons from tragedy. It is another to hang a political banner on an occupied cross. At the proper time, however, the drawing of lessons is appropriate. What happened in a movie theater outside Denver was not an act of God — not the moral equivalent of an earthquake or a meteor strike — but the act of an apparently mentally unbalanced man with access to destructive weaponry. The quest to separate the mentally ill from modern armaments may well be hopeless. But it is at least worth a discussion. There are two questions to consider. First, would tighter gun-control laws — say, one banning the AR-15-style weapon that James Holmes allegedly used — have prevented the Aurora shooting? It is a difficult case to make. A committed, intelligent mass murderer will find a way. Gun-control laws do not reduce massacres in the same manner that OSHA regulations reduce industrial accidents. Massacres are purposely monstrous violations of the law, which marginal changes in the law are unlikely to prevent. But there is another question: Given the existence of mental illness, criminal gangs and various ideologies of violence, what is a rational design for our gun laws? How do we preserve the right of self-defense and respect the rights of sportsmen while complicating the plans of the violent? The goal of gun control, in this case, is not to prevent specific crimes but generally to limit the destructive options of criminals. This is a perfectly constitutional enterprise. In the Supreme Court’s _Heller_ decision — which recognized an individual’s right to gun ownership under the Second Amendment — Justice Samuel Alito took pains to point out that the court was not overturning a variety of restrictions on that right, including prohibitions against gun possession by felons and the mentally ill, and gun bans in schools and public buildings. The guarantees of the Second Amendment are no more absolute than the guarantees of the First. The right to keep and bear arms does not mean the right to keep and bear tanks, shoulder-launched missiles or fully automatic machine guns. All gun-control policy — unavoidably, by necessity — is conducted on a slippery slope. The legal treatment of assault weapons, or of high-capacity magazines, is a prudential judgment, not a constitutional one. Restricting general access to certain destructive technologies is difficult but not hopeless. Fully automatic weapons — the kind that keep firing until the trigger is released — are heavily regulated and difficult to obtain. Is there any doubt that if a fully automatic machine gun had been readily available at his local Bass Pro Shopsthe Aurora killer would have bought and used one? The assault-weapons ban in place from 1994 to 2004, however, was not particularly successful. In prohibiting 19 brands of weapons (along with copycats), the law’s judgments seemed arbitrary. A gun that resembles a military rifle is not inherently more lethal than an aesthetically innocuous weapon. But the law’s prohibition of high-capacity magazines — capped at 10 rounds — strikes me as prudent. A 100-round, drum-style magazine — the kind that police say the Aurora suspect had in his AR-15 — is highly useful to someone intent on mass murder. It is less useful for an average citizen intent on self-defense, unless he fears home invasion by a foreign army. Such laws are always a balance. In this case, the gain in public safety would be relatively small — restricting access to a destructive technology used by killers at Aurora, Tucson, Fort Hood and Virginia Tech. But the burden on gun rights would be minimal. Defenders of high-capacity magazines argue that they are more convenient at the gun range, since you can fill up a large magazine before leaving home. There is a constitutional difference between the argument “I need to defend myself from aggression” and “I’d prefer to reload less at the range.” I am open to the idea that other measures — particularly improving the capacity of the mental health system to identify people with emotional problems — should have a higher national priority. Reasonable gun laws are not a panacea. But neither are they a threat to the Constitution. They merit a debate — driven not by ideology but by prudential judgments on public safety. **_michaelgerson@washpost.com _ ** **Read more about the Aurora shootings and gun control at PostOpinions:** Eugene Robinson: A tragedy we will not try to avert The Post’s View: Colorado shootings show that U.S. gun laws make no sense Marc A. Thiessen: Aurora is not Fort Hood

Everything you need to know about the assault weapons ban, in one post

When Adam Lanza shot 26 people in Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, police say he largely relied on a Bushmaster AR-15 "assault-type weapon," a semiautomatic rifle that could rapidly fire multiple high-velocity rounds. He was also equipped with magazines that held 30 bullets each. Advocates of stricter gun control argue that it shouldn't be so easy to have access to weapons that powerful — or to magazines capable of holding so many bullets. And so, on Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she would introduce new legislation to ban assault weapons at the start of the next Congress. President Obama has also said that he'd support a federal ban. But how much would this legislation do? Back in 1994, Congress passed a federal assault-weapons ban that lasted 10 years. Experts who have studied the law tend to agree that it was rife with loopholes and generally ineffective at curbing gun violence — though it might well have reduced mass shootings. Here's a look at what the 1994 law actually did, where it failed, and whether it could be reworked to significantly reduce gun violence. **What counts as an "assault weapon"?** The trouble all starts here. There's no technical definition of an "assault weapon." There are _fully automatic_ weapons, which fire continuously when the trigger is held down. Those have been strictly regulated since 1934. Then there are _semiautomatic_ weapons that reload automatically but fire only once each time the trigger is depressed. Semiautomatic pistols and rifles come in all shapes and sizes and are extremely common in the United States. Congress didn't want to ban all semiautomatic weapons — that would ban most guns, period. So, in crafting the 1994 ban, lawmakers mainly focused on 18 specific firearms, as well as certain military-type features on guns. Complicated flow charts laid it all out. Certain models of AR-15s and AK-47s were banned. Any semiautomatic rifle with a pistol grip and a bayonet mount was an "assault weapon." But a semiautomatic rifle with just a pistol grip might be okay. It was complicated. And its complexity made it easy to evade. **What did the 1994 ban actually do?** For the 10 years that the ban was in effect, it was illegal to manufacture the assault weapons described above for use by private citizens. The law also set a limit on high-capacity magazines — these could now carry no more than 10 bullets. There was, however, an important exception. Any assault weapon or magazine that was manufactured _before_ the law went into effect in 1994 was perfectly legal to own or resell. That was a huge exception: At the time, there were roughly 1.5 million assault weapons and more than 24 million high-capacity magazines in private hands. **Did the 1994 law have loopholes?** Yes, lots. Even after the ban took effect, it was not difficult for someone to get their hands on an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine. A 2004 University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice explained why. For starters, only 18 firearm models were explicitly banned. But it was easy for gun manufacturers to modify weapons slightly so that they didn't fall under the ban. One example: the Colt AR-15 that James Holmes used to shoot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., last summer would have been outlawed. Yet it would have been perfectly legal for Holmes to have purchased a very similar Colt Match Target rifle, which didn't fall under the ban. Meanwhile, here were already more than 24 million large-capacity magazines in existence before the federal ban took effect in 1994. Indeed, as soon as Congress began working on the law, manufacturers boosted production of weapons and magazines in anticipation of higher prices. Dangerous weapons were still plentiful. **Did the law have an effect on crime or gun violence?** While gun violence did fall in the 1990s, this was likely due to other factors. Here's the UPenn study again: "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence." One reason is that assault weapons were never a huge factor in gun violence to begin with. They were  used in only 2 percent to 8 percent of gun crimes. Large-capacity magazines were more important — used in as many as a quarter of gun crimes. But, again, the 1994 law left more than 24 million magazines untouched, so the impact was blunted. **Did the law have an effect on mass shootings?** That's possible, though not certain. As this chart from Princeton's Sam Wang shows, the number of people killed in mass shootings did go down in the years the ban was in effect (save for a surge in 1999, a year that included Columbine):  Because mass shootings are relatively rare, it's difficult to tell whether this was just a random blip or caused by the ban. Still, the number of mass shootings per year has doubled since the ban expired. That's suggestive, at least. **Why did the ban lift in 2004?** The **** original assault weapons law was written so that it would expire after ten years. When 2004 came around, some Democrats tried to renew it, but there wasn't much interest in Congress. A few states, including New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey, still have their own versions of the law on the books. **Could the ban have worked if it had lasted longer?** In his 2004 assessment of the law, the University of Pennsylvania's Christopher Koper argued that any federal ban would likely take many years to have an effect, thanks to all the exemptions. If Congress actually managed to reduce the number of high-capacity magazines, that might slightly reduce the number of gunshot victims. But, Koper added, the research here was fairly thin and any predictions were "tenuous." **Would it be possible to tighten the law?** In theory, yes. Back in 1996, Australia imposed a much stricter version of the assault weapons ban after a mass shooting. The Australian version avoided many of the loopholes in the U.S. law: Not only did the country ban all types of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, but it also spent $500 million buying up nearly 600,000 existing guns from private owners. As Wonkblog's Sarah Kliff pointed out, Australia's law appears to have curbed gun violence. Researchers in the British Medical Journal __write that the ban was “followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides.” Still, an Australia-style ban would face much more difficult hurdles in this country. For starters, there are more than 200 million guns in circulation in the United States, making a buyback much more costly. And a full ban would likely face heavier resistance here, both from the courts and the public. Even Feinstein has promised that her new version of the assault weapons ban would still "exempt over 900 specific weapons." Gun-control advocates aren't quite ready to propose overly sweeping measures. **Related:** Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States.

What to do about monsters?

The mass murder of little children is like other acts of unadulterated evil beyond the comprehension of sane and decent men and women. After the shock and the grieving, the first step to addressing this and other horrors is some humility. Given the number of false news reports (and inane instant commentary) we don’t know enough about this crime to know what if any mental-health care measures, gun control, or security systems could have prevented this shocking act. It is a mistake however to either do nothing on the theory “Crazy people do bad things and we can’t stop them” or to willy-nilly start passing laws (especially ones like the assault weapons ban, which addressed only the appearance of semiautomatic assault weapons). Neither the First nor Second amendments nor the personal autonomy of the mentally ill can be absolute. Abraham Lincoln is generally credited with the expression “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Nor a death sentence for innocents in movie theaters, schools, malls and other gathering spots. It would be a welcome change of pace to resist the urge to introduce a mass of legislation or to use action or inaction as a political weapon. It makes far more sense, as Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) suggested on Sunday, to convene a serious commission to delve into the nexus of culture, mental health and gun laws. (In fact he’ll have free time next year and should head it up.) There is a huge body of criminology and other factual evidence to review that would assist in reaching some well-defined, sensible steps that would diminish (albeit not eliminate) these mass shootings. The more thoughtful the investigation and the better the information, the more likely agreement can be reached. The worst thing would be a rush to introduce sweeping legislation unfocused on the issue at hand — generally young, mentally troubled males getting access to deadly weapons. It would serve the grandstanders’ purposes but accomplish little else. It is a misnomer to say we haven’t had a debate on gun control; what we have is an uninformed one untethered to facts and unserious in zeroing in on the worst crimes, mass murder of innocents. Maybe this time it will be different.

What to do about monsters?

Maryland should not exempt the AR-15 from an assault-weapons ban

JUST DAYS after Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) pulled the plug on an assault-weapons ban in Congress, lawmakers in Maryland are also getting cold feet about mounting a frontal challenge to the gun lobby by prohibiting sales of some of the most lethal firearms. We disagree with Mr. Reid’s move on moral grounds; as President Obama said, the victims of mass murders deserved a congressional vote on assault weapons. But at least the Senate leader was operating according to strategic logic: Lacking the numbers to overcome a likely Republican filibuster, he was reluctant to force a floor vote that could imperil the reelection prospects of several of his fellow Democrats. By contrast, the Maryland lawmakers now wavering on banning military-style weapons include Democrats who are highly unlikely to face a serious challenge in a general election. In fact, a number of them represent districts in Montgomery County where large majorities of voters favor gun control. They should favor prohibiting the sale of assault weapons such as the popular AR-15 because it’s the right thing to do to promote public safety and it would reflect the interests of their constituents. After all, a variant of the AR-15 was used by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo when they stalked innocent victims during their killing spree in the Washington area in 2002. Seven of the pair’s 13 victims were shot in Maryland. Nonetheless, the AR-15 is the most notorious of the weapons that several lawmakers in the House of Delegates say they may exempt from the ban on prohibited firearms in Gov. Martin O’Malley’s gun legislation, which passed the state Senate. This is illogical. Advocates of the AR-15 portray it as a weapon popular with sportsmen and hunters. They argue that since it fires bullets singly, it’s not inherently more dangerous than a handgun. The reality is that there is a reason various types of AR-15s, and other assault weapons, have been favored by mass murderers, including Adam Lanza, who killed 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December. They are equipped with an array of military features designed to inflict maximum harm on multiple people in a short time span. A pair of Montgomery County Democrats, Dels. Luiz R.S. Simmons and Kathleen M. Dumais, both members of the House Judiciary Committee, said they were inclined to exempt the AR-15 from the weapons ban. Both said they’d been swayed by the pleadings of gun advocates who have flooded the legislative halls in Annapolis in recent weeks. But the reality is that the number of Marylanders with a legitimate need to own AR-15s is minuscule. By contrast, repeated, tragic and bloody experience in Maryland and elsewhere in the United States makes plain the overwhelming need for a comprehensive ban on assault weapons. **Read more on this subject:** The Post’s View: Maryland should take a lesson from Missouri on gun laws

A change in gun laws could prevent tragedies

After another mass shooting, gun lobby-backed politicians push the tired narrative that we can’t prevent gun violence, so why even try. In his recent column, Glenn Kessler reviewed Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) claim that “None of the major shootings that have occurred in this country over the last few months or years that have outraged us, would gun laws have prevented them.” To test this claim, Mr. Kessler considered just a dozen mass shootings since 2012 (although there have been more than 60 during that time period). Consider the shooting in Charleston, S.C., for example. The shooter’s history of drug use prohibited him from buying firearms, but because of an NRA-backed provision to current law, a gun dealer was allowed to sell him the murder weapon after a three-day wait because the FBI hadn’t completed its check of his criminal history. Everytown for Gun Safety has been calling on Congress to close this so-called “Charleston loophole” by amending current law. Another example is the December 2014 mass shooting in Westover, W.V. The shooter, barred from possessing guns because of a prior domestic violence crime, was able to evade a background check and buy his gun from an unlicensed seller he met through Facebook. A federal law requiring background checks on all gun sales would have stopped this sale. Both of these shootings could have been prevented with stronger gun laws. Mr. Rubio’s view of what constitutes a “major” shooting is narrow. Everytown’s position is that every shooting is “major” for the people who are involved and for our nation as a whole, which stands idly by and allows this carnage to recur. In a country in which 88 people are killed with guns and hundreds more are injured every day, we can’t diminish any shooting and normalize ourselves to daily gun violence at rates that no other developed country experiences. ****Ted Alcorn** , New York ** The writer is research director for Everytown for Gun Safety.

Supreme Court refuses to hear challenge to Connecticut, New York weapons ban

The Supreme Court declined Monday to review bans on a lengthy list of firearms that New York and Connecticut have classified as “assault weapons,” the latest example of the justices turning down an opportunity to elaborate on an individual’s right to gun ownership. With an emotional debate about gun control reigniting across the street at the Capitol, the justices without comment said they would not review lower-court decisions upholding the laws. Connecticut’s ban was expanded shortly after a gunman used one of the military-style semiautomatic weapons on the list to kill 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012. The decision Monday was not a surprise, as the justices have previously declined to review other lower-court decisions that uphold bans passed by cities and states. Maryland, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and New, Jersey as well as many cities and towns, have similar laws. None of the legal challenges to them have been successful in lower courts. These prohibitions were enacted after a federal ban expired in 2004. Attempts to revive the federal ban have failed, although advocates are trying in the wake of the massacre at an Orlando nightclub that left 49 victims dead. Like other laws, Connecticut’s ban includes semiautomatic guns and high-capacity magazines, covers popular weapons such as AR-15s and AK-47s, and names more than 180 weapons that cannot be sold. But the individuals and organizations challenging the law said the state is an “outlier” in banning weapons that are popular and protected in the rest of the country. “In truth, the odd assortment of firearms Connecticut calls ‘assault weapons’ are mechanically identical to any other semiautomatic firearm — arms that, as no one disputes, are exceedingly common and fully protected by the Second Amendment,” the challengers said in their petition to the court. Gun rights advocates have urged the court to review such bans, saying that they violate the court’s 2008 decision in _District of Columbia v. Heller_ , which said individuals have a right to gun ownership for self-protection. After recognizing the individual right for the first time in _Heller,_ which covered the federal enclave of the District, the court made clear in a subsequent case that state and local governments, like Congress, could not prohibit individual gun ownership. But the court has not shown any interest since then in elaborating on what exactly that right covers. And in the process, the justices have passed up the chance to scrutinize lower-court decisions that have upheld the laws banning certain weapons as well as laws requiring tight restrictions on those who can legally carry guns outside their homes. When the Supreme Court declined last December to review a lower-court decision upholding such a ban, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia wrote that a similar law flouts the court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. Scalia died in February. They criticized lower-court decisions that have allowed jurisdictions to impose what Thomas called “categorical bans on firearms that millions of Americans commonly own for lawful purposes.” The lower court said the legislators in Connecticut were justified in banning the weapons. “Because the prohibitions are substantially related to the important governmental interests of public safety and crime reduction, they pass constitutional muster,” a unanimous panel of that court decided.

Allowing guns on campus will invite tragedies, not end them

_Daniel Webster is a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. Ronald Daniels is president of Johns Hopkins University._ Texas this year became the eighth state to require state colleges and universities to allow civilians with permits to carry concealed guns in public places. As a result, the University of Texas at Austin — a school that 50 years ago suffered the trauma of the nation’s first campus mass killing — must allow guns to be brought onto campus. To those behind the campus-carry movement making such inroads in Austin and other state capitals, that’s a good thing. This effort is based on the belief that allowing more guns in public places will lead to less violence. But does the evidence support this premise? A new report released by Johns Hopkins University, with co-authors from Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts at Boston, surveys the best available research and says no. Proponents of expanding civilian gun-carrying argue that many mass shootings occur because perpetrators know victims will be unarmed and defenseless due to legal restrictions on carrying in public places. They also contend that citizens, if armed with firearms, can effectively end the carnage of active shootings. But the latest research on mass shootings, much of it detailed in a new book by report co-author Louis Klarevas, tells a different story. First, the overwhelming majority of fatal mass shootings occur in places where guns are allowed. Second, when rampage shootings do occur, gun-wielding civilians rarely are able to stop them. Effective and responsible use of a firearm under the conditions of an active shooter requires significant training and the ability to make good decisions and shoot accurately under the most challenging circumstances. Even some trained law-enforcement officers perform poorly under such circumstances. These facts explain why the best research shows that right-to-carry gun laws do not decrease mass shootings or the number of people shot in those incidents. Campus-carry proponents have turned to another equally specious argument: If guns were permitted at colleges and universities, victims of sexual assault could use them to fend off their attackers. This argument, too, is starkly at odds with the best evidence. If carrying a gun were effective in warding off would-be rapists in a nation where civilian gun-carrying is not uncommon, you would expect many to report using a gun in this manner. Yet a study by Harvard’s David Hemenway using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey from 2007 to 2011 showed that out of the 62 cases in which a respondent reported being a victim of a violent crime and using a gun in self-defense, not one involved a sexual assault. In fact, once a crime is in progress, the use of a gun by a victim in self-defense did not affect his or her risk of being injured one way or the other. The fact is that the evidence for guns as a deterrent to campus crime is weak or nonexistent. And profound evidence shows that the college environment is particularly ill-suited to gun possession. The risks and interconnectedness of violence, alcohol abuse and reckless behavior are elevated among college-age youths. The frequency of binge drinking among college students is a deep and enduring problem, and the evidence from studies of criminal assaults both outside and inside the home and comparisons of victims who are treated at hospitals for nonlethal assault-related injuries with homicides shows that the presence of firearms dramatically increases the risk of death and injury during altercations. Freely inserting firearms into this environment is a recipe for tragedy. Similarly, a recent study of campus shootings conducted by Everytown for Gun Safety  (founded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also is a major donor to Johns Hopkins University) shows that the vast majority are neither mass shootings nor active-shooter incidents but instead involve situations where the presence of guns is shown to be far more lethal — interpersonal disputes, targeted attacks, accidents and suicide. Suicide attempts that lead to hospital treatment or death rise dramatically and peak during the college years, and they have been increasing in recent years. A large body of research ranging from comparative studies of households where suicides have occurred and ones where they have not, studies examining the association between states’ suicide rates and gun ownership, and evaluations of laws designed to restrict firearms access of high-risk individuals clearly shows that access increases the risk of suicide. Should this not be a serious consideration for those advocating for guns on campus? A university should be a place where ideas are celebrated and contentious views are faithfully explored. Here, we seek evidence that can shine light on our darkest challenges. As the president of Johns Hopkins University and a gun violence researcher at the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, we work with city leaders and partners in the community to find solutions that can improve lives — and save them, in Baltimore and beyond. We oppose guns on campus not in the hackneyed stereotype of liberals scolding from the ivory tower but as a result of a searching examination of relevant research, as well as a common-sense assessment of reality. What the evidence to date shows — and what we hope state legislators across the nation who are pondering such measures will consider — is that campus-carry laws will invite tragedies on college campuses, not end them. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: The gun debate America needs to have Colbert I. King: Why is America so hostile to gun control? Letter to the Editor: Guns are unwelcome on college campuses

Sanders is wrong about the lawsuit we filed after our son’s murder in Newtown

_Mark and Jackie Barden are plaintiffs in the case _Soto et. al v. Bushmaster_. _ Our son, our sweet little Daniel, was just 7 when he was murdered in his first-grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. We are among the 10 families suing the manufacturer, distributor and retail seller of the assault rifle that took 26 lives in less than five minutes on that terrible day. We write in response to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s comments about our lawsuit at the recent Democratic presidential debate in Michigan. Sanders suggested that the “point” of our case is to hold Remington Arms Co. liable simply because one of its guns was used to commit mass murder. With all due respect, this is simplistic and wrong. This case is about a particular weapon, Remington’s Bushmaster AR-15, and its sale to a particular market: civilians. It is not about handguns or hunting rifles, and the success of our lawsuit would not mean the end of firearm manufacturing in this country, as Sanders warned. This case is about the AR-15 because the AR-15 is not an ordinary weapon; it was designed and manufactured for the military to increase casualties in combat. The AR-15 is to guns what a tank is to cars: uniquely deadly and suitable for specialized use only. We have never suggested that Remington should be held liable simply for manufacturing the AR-15. In fact, we believe that Remington and other manufacturers’ production of the AR-15 is essential for our armed forces and law enforcement. But Remington is responsible for its calculated choice to sell that same weapon to the public, and for emphasizing the military and assaultive capacities of the weapon in its marketing to civilians. Indeed, Remington promotes the AR-15’s capacity to inflict mass casualities. It markets its AR-15s with images of soldiers and SWAT teams; it dubs various models the “patrolman” and the “adaptive combat rifle” and declares that they are “as mission-adaptable as you are”; it encourages the notion that the AR-15 is a weapon that bestows power and glory upon those who wield it. Advertising copy for Remington’s AR-15s has included the following: “Consider your man card reissued,” and “Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered.” Of course, causing forces of opposition to bow down is exactly what the AR-15 was engineered to do — in combat. But history has shown us, time and again, that it is innocent civilians in malls and movie theaters, and children in their classrooms, who have been made to bow down to the singular power of a gunman wielding an AR-15. This is not a theoretical dispute. The last thing our sweet little Daniel would have seen in his short, beautiful life was the long barrel of a ferocious rifle designed to kill the enemy in war. The last thing Daniel’s tender little body would have felt were bullets expelled from that AR-15 traveling at greater than 3,000 feet per second — a speed designed to pierce body armor in the war zones of Fallujah. Sanders has spent decades tirelessly advocating for greater corporate responsibility, which is why we cannot fathom his support of companies that recklessly market and profit from the sale of combat weapons to civilians and then shrug their shoulders when the next tragedy occurs, leaving ordinary families and communities to pick up the pieces. Remington and the other defendants’ choices allowed an elementary school to be transformed into a battlefield. Our case seeks nothing more than fair accountability for those choices. **Read more about this topic:** Marie-Claude Duytschaever: Stop the flow of guns that killed my grandson in Newtown, Conn. Eugene Robinson: The tragic choice we make about guns Sue Klebold: If guns had been harder for my son to buy, Columbine might not have happened

Obama pledges more action on guns

NEW ORLEANS — President Obama promised Wednesday to lead a national discussion about gun control after the deadly mass shootings last week in Colorado, wading into the gun issue more extensively than at any other time in his presidency. Even this week, White House press secretary Jay Carney indicated that the president was unlikely to push for new gun legislation, citing persistent opposition in Congress. But Obama told the National Urban League here that he believes a lot of gun owners would agree that “AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers,” not civilians on American streets. The president called the Aurora massacre an “extraordinarily heartbreaking tragedy.” But, he added, talk of reforming gun laws after similar mass shootings has too often been “defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere.” Obama’s speech seemed sure to intensify the debate on gun control. The president’s comments were striking because he has generally been cautious on the politically potent issue of firearms — to the point that some prominent politicians and advocates had criticized him, accusing him of barely addressing gun regulations in the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Aurora. Obama’s opponent in the presidential election, Mitt Romney, weighed in earlier Wednesday, saying that he saw no need for new gun restrictions after the Colorado rampage, allegedly carried out by a failed graduate student who used an assault rifle, a Glock semiautomatic handgun and a shotgun. “I don’t happen to believe that America needs new gun laws. A lot of what this young man did was clearly against the law, but the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening,” Romney told “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams in an interview taped in London as he embarked on a week-long foreign trip. Romney acknowledged that as governor of Massachusetts he supported a bill that banned assault weapons, but he said he opposed a similar measure for the rest of the country. “We can sometimes hope that just changing a law will make all bad things go away. It won’t,” Romney said. “Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential to improve the lots of the American people.” Obama gave few specifics Wednesday evening about what changes, if any, he might seek on guns, although his reference to AK-47s was sure to hearten advocates of an assault-weapons ban like the one passed during the Bill Clinton presidency, which expired in 2004. The current president, however, hasn’t advocated such a measure. In his speech, Obama declared gun violence a national tragedy that reaches beyond mass shootings such as those in Aurora and in Tucson — where six people were killed and 13 wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in a January 2011 attack — and into the lives of innocent people struck down by criminals every day. “For every Tucson or Aurora, there is daily heartbreak,” Obama said. “Violence plagues the biggest cities, but it also plagues the smallest towns.” Obama said that laws should be better enforced and that guns should be kept out of the hands of people with mental illness. Although he reiterated his commitment to uphold gun owners’ Second Amendment rights to responsibly bear arms, he blamed Congress for inaction on what he called common-sense restrictions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Well-funded gun-rights organizations such as the National Rifle Association exert great power in Congress, and public-opinion polls show that a declining number of Americans feel the need for stricter gun laws.

After Sandy Hook: What can be done to curb gun violence in America?

**Matt Bennett:** After the catastrophe in Newtown, the gun debate has radically changed. Gun safety advocates, so long frozen out of the discussion in Washington, now suddenly have momentum on our side. Where before we were trying to thread a tiny needle—to find a small measure or two that could escape or survive the wrath of the NRA—now we are preparing to embark on a negotiation. Like any negotiation, both sides should come to the table with a list of demands. The NRA’s list is already clear: nothing. No new gun laws. On our side, some are proposing renewal of the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. And renewing it with some updates would be an important step. As Brad Plumer has detailed, the ban would outlaw the sale of assault rifles like the one used at Sandy Hook, as well as high-capacity clips that allow such rapid carnage. That’s good, but it’s not enough. It’s been nearly 20 years since the last significant federal gun safety legislation. There is more we can do to reduce gun violence without infringing the rights of law-abiding gun owners. No new law is going to end gun crime or put a stop to future mass shootings. But now that the NRA has been forced into a negotiation, we should go in with a list of serious demands. **New to Think Tanked? FollowThink Tanked on Twitter.** **Roger Pilon:** The Newtown tragedy cries for a change in public policy, but if we’re serious about wanting to reduce the carnage from random mass shootings, stiffer gun control laws are no answer. Marginal gains might be had from, say, regulating gun show transactions or large round magazine sales. But as study after study has shown, no credible correlation can be drawn between such laws and gun violence. As in most such cases, the Newtown guns were legally obtained, after all. Our mental health policies doubtless need attention, but that’s a complex issue, fraught with civil liberties implications – like gun control itself. Self-defense is one of our oldest, most basic rights, as the Supreme Court held when it ruled that the Constitution protected the qualified right of individuals to own guns. That brings us to a practical answer that does have promise. The best protection against an unstable person with a gun is another person with a gun. That’s why the police have guns. But they can’t be everywhere. As they raced to the Sandy Hook School, or Virginia Tech, or Columbine, the killing of defenseless people continued. Yet as David Kopel shows in the Wall Street Journal, we have many examples, as recently as last week at a mall in Oregon, where ordinary citizens with handgun permits saved many lives. We’ve learned that the Sandy Hook principal “lunged” at the killer. Suppose she’d shot him. How many children would be alive today if she had? Gun-control advocates often recoil from such suggestions. Perhaps they believe we can confiscate 300 million guns from law-abiding citizens. That won’t happen. What we can do, if we’re serious, is reduce the risk with trained and armed people in otherwise “gun-free zones.” Do I wish it were otherwise? Yes. But it’s not. That’s the real world. **Donna Cooper:** Let’s face it: Nothing is certain. We often employ expensive cancer treatments with less than a 50 percent chance of success because it is imperative to use all the tools we have to save lives. Yet when it comes to measures to stop dangerous individuals from legally purchasing guns, the demand for guaranteed solutions paralyzes lawmakers. Since the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, there have been 21 more mass murder killings that have cut short 187 lives and injured at least 167 innocent victims. All of these mass shootings were committed by disturbed individuals who often used semi-automatic weapons. The facts of these tragedies suggest it’s time to get serious about mental health as one way of helping save lives. While most people suffering with mental illness are not dangerous, the National Threat Assessment Center finds that 78 percent of youth who gunned down others in school attacks had histories of suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts. Yet only 34 percent of these individuals ever had a mental health evaluation prior to the attack and a mere 17 percent had been previously diagnosed with a mental health or a behavioral disorder prior to the attack. This lack of professional intervention is especially troubling in light of the fact that from 2009 to 2011, states cumulatively cut more than $1.8 billion from their budgets for mental health services. And federal budget cuts are expected to take a much larger toll on services. We need well-funded public mental health protocols that mimic successful physical health strategies, including periodic check-ups, research and testing of new treatments and care for those diagnosed with illness. **John Hudak:** In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, President Obama wants to act, but can he? This question has sent media, analysts and citizens scrambling for answers since his words at the Memorial Vigil Sunday night: “…I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this…” In some ways, the president’s formal options to change policy in a direct way are quite limited. Yet, his informal powers to influence the media narrative, public opinion and Members of Congress may be the true source of his power in this arena. Presidents typically find the power to act in a direct way through power delegated from Congress or through vague provisions in federal or common law. However, in the context of gun control/rights, Congress and the courts have been clear and have offered the president little discretionary power. The president can direct the attorney general to increase enforcement of weapons trafficking and illegal sales. Yet, meaningful gun control policy must come from a legislative remedy rather than an executive one. Instead, the president can use the informal and persuasive powers of his office to try to move and shape legislative proposals to address this issue. He must work with and within Congress—rather than around Congress—to achieve his goals. Outside of gun control, the president can direct funding priorities (grants, contracts, etc.) toward research into mental health issues, school safety, and gun violence. This research can inform legislators as to the best solutions. In addition, the president can use what is learned from this tragedy to develop regulations related to the Affordable Care Act to maximize coverage, access, and treatment for mental health care. Beyond these areas, solutions generally require Congressional action. **What are your ideas on reducing gun violence? Share your thoughts below.**

What do many mass shooters have in common? A history of domestic violence.

Despite research documenting a connection between domestic violence and mass shootings, we still don’t focus on domestic violence enough in the wake of such a shooting. A mass shooting tends to trigger passionate arguments about gun control and mental health services; discussion of how to respond to domestic violence often doesn’t even come up.  Mass shootings are terrible tragedies, no matter what contributes to them. And it’s certainly important to consider all the factors that could go into preventing them. The available evidence indicates that one of the first things we should do is start taking domestic violence seriously.

To stop mass murders, control access to guns

The July 25 front-page article “Another day, another incomprehensible massacre” discussed the need to restore a sense of community to minimize mass shootings . A sense of community is needed for many reasons, and I work everyday to strengthen community both at work and as a volunteer. However, with our present lax laws on gun ownership and access to guns, I am less likely to reach out and invite strangers, especially those on the fringes of society, into my home than I was before Americans accepted the “new normal” of massacres by lone gunmen every few weeks. If we want ordinary people to reach out to those who have little support , don’t we need to first address the prevalence of guns? Why do we need 310 million guns in a nation with about that many people? I love helping people, but not at the risk of getting shot — or worse, having my loved ones shot. ****Sabrina S. Fu** , Ellicott City** ● I must dispute the headline “Another day, another incomprehensible massacre.” The latest massacre targeting strangers in a public place — a Louisiana movie theater — is totally comprehensible. The human species has always had deranged people who are violent and likely always will. Our society makes guns readily available to just about anyone. As long as mentally ill people have access to guns, these horrible events will continue. Every system is set up to get exactly the results it gets. Until we change our system of readily available guns, we will have no change in the results: regularly occurring horrible tragedies. What is incomprehensible is our refusal to address the real issue. ****Libby Garvey** , Arlington**

After mass shootings, Republicans make it easier for people to get guns

As news of the historic extent of Orlando’s mass shooting spread, so did the “thoughts and prayers” of many politicians, an oft-heard response as these acts of terrorism become increasingly common. The question immediately became: Would there be any action? Mass shootings had seldom led to new federal laws before. Advocates of gun control asked when the United States would finally take new steps to limit Americans’ access to guns, particularly assault rifles like the one used in the attack. Advocates of gun rights argued that more access to guns, so people could defend themselves, was the answer. It turns out these aren’t idle arguments.  “Mass shootings potentially lead to policy changes by focusing attention on gun violence, even if they do not provide new information or change politicians’ preferences,” write the authors, Professor Michael Luca, Professor Deepak Malhotra, and doctoral student Christopher Poliquin, all of Harvard Business School. On net, the research shows, mass shootings result in a higher number of laws that loosen gun control rather than tighten it. “One caveat," Poliquin said in an interview, “is that we can’t say much about the magnitude of the changes in those laws.” It’s possible that the impact of one major tightening law would outweigh that of five minor loosening laws, for instance. The study examined all state-level gun control legislation and mass shootings within the United States from 1989 to 2014. It found that a mass shooting in a state caused 2.5 more gun control bills to be proposed in its legislature’s next session, a 15 percent increase. For each additional death in the shooting (beyond the four required by their definition of a mass shooting), this figure increased by 2.5 percent. “This does not imply that politicians and policy makers are over-reacting” in proposing all the additional bills, the authors write. It’s possible the crises “create opportunities” to alleviate gridlock and make change. The authors compared mass shootings to the policy impact of individual homicides. A single death in a mass shooting causes the same increase in bill proposals as 66 people dying in individual homicide cases. That means the average mass shooting has the same legislative effect as a 240 percent increase in the number of homicides in a state. And it’s not just bill introductions. Legislative sessions following mass shootings saw not only the 15 percent increase in gun control bills but a 10 percent uptick in the number of these bills enacted into law. For Republican-controlled legislatures, this means 75 percent more laws that loosen gun control restrictions. For Democrat-controlled legislatures, this means a small but statistically insignificant increase in laws tightening firearm regulations. What can we expect out of Florida’s legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, then? The extent of the Orlando shooting was so large its impact can’t be predicted by these models; it will likely see a significant legislative response. “Policymakers may use mass shootings as an opportunity to propose bills that are consistent with their ideology,” the authors write. “Anecdotally,” Poliquin added, “we have seen states respond to big mass shootings with tighter laws.” At the same time, “we shouldn’t expect the politicians in Florida to suddenly change their opinions dramatically around gun control,” implying the legislature is likely to loosen gun control. This pattern has held true historically. Connecticut’s Democrat-controlled legislature responded to the 2012 shooting at a school in Newtown by expanding its assault weapons ban, and banning high-capacity magazines and armor-piercing bullets. Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature, by contrast, passed a law allowing guns to be carried on more government properties following the 2014 shooting in Fort Hood. As the debate surrounding gun control heats up once again, it’s unlikely that the marginal few bills will magically end the debate or make mass shootings a rarity. But our elected representatives will do a bit more than sit, think and pray.

The Morning Plum: The question every member of Congress should answer

Every member of Congress, Democrat and Republican, needs to be asked this question: Do you believe people should be able to buy guns in America without undergoing a background check designed to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from getting their hands on lethal weapons that can ultimately be used in crimes and mass killings? In one sense, this is arguably the most important question at the heart of the gun debate. But it’s being obscured by the widespread media focus on the assault weapons ban. To read many accounts is to come away believing that the assault ban is the centerpiece of Obama’s package of initiatives — and that because the ban faces a tough road in Congress, Obama’s whole proposal is _doooooomed_. But this is just flat out wrong. Obama’s package of proposals designed to beef up the background check system is in many ways more important than the assault weapons ban. A universal background check is the top priority of many gun control advocates. And the politics of background checks are considerably more favorable to Obama and Democrats then much coverage suggests. Worse, the focus on the assault weapons ban is allowing members of Congress to dodge the very difficult political question of whether they favor fixing the background check system. For instance, Senator Lindsey Graham’s statement comes out against the proposed ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, but _doesn’t say word boo_ about the universal background check, even though that is the lead proposal Obama unveiled. There’s a lot of chatter to the effect that the House GOP leadership won’t allow a vote on any of Obama’s proposals. In the case of background checks, however, historical precedent suggests the contrary. In the wake of the Columbine massacre in the late 1990s, public pressure — mobilized by then- President Bill Clinton — forced the GOP controlled House and Senate to allow votes on requiring background checks for all gun show sales and other gun provisions. Though Republicans were hostile to the bill, they ultimately relented and allowed votes on it. It passed the Senate but failed in the House, but that doesn’t mean it would fail this time. The point is that public anger in the wake of horrific massacres has been known to break the GOP’s determination to block votes on gun regulations — particularly one as rational as improving the background check system. A New York Times/CBS poll finds that 92 percent of Americans support background checks on all would be gun buyers. Eighty five percent _of Republicans_ agree. So do 93 percent of gun households, and 85 percent of _NRA households_. You could not ask for a clearer case where the NRA and the “gun rights” brigade represents what can only be called an extreme fringe position. At some point, Republicans — and “pro gun” Democrats — will be challenged to oppose this common sense step that’s overwhelmingly supported by the American people. The assault weapons ban appears important to Obama, but if he gets universal background checks plus a host of other measures, such as ones increasing criminal penalties on “straw purchasers” and banning high capacity magazines and armor piercing bullets, that could constitute a major achievement in its own right. Senators and members of Congress must not be allowed to dodge this: Do they support background checks into would be buyers of guns, or don’t they? *** How to improve the background check system:** The Post editorial board lays out a clear explanation of how Obama’s proposals would accomplish this and why it should be a top priority for the country. *** Dems mock House GOP retreat:** Politico reports that top House Republicans at a retreat are struggling to come to terms with just how unpopular the party has become, and are generally doing soul searching about the way forward. Meanwhile, the DCCC is out with a new Web video recapping Tea Party extremism on the debt ceiling and Sandy aid and the general GOP division it’s fomented. Thought: Forcing a choice between gutting popular social programs on the one hand and destroying the economy on the other isn’t likely to help matters. *** The latest on filibuster reform:** As Jonathan Bernstein notes, it really isn’t looking good, and liberal activists and outside groups really need to step up their game to pressure Senate Dems to act, lest this opportunity slip by for good. *** Another Republican is open to universal background checks:** Here’s another: This comes after Chuck Grassley and GOP Rep. Phil Gingrey said the same. It’s going to be very interesting to see how Republicans justify opposing this, given that it doesn’t infringe on the rights of the law abiding in any way. Also see E.J. Dionne’s must read on how extremists control the gun debate and the urgent need to break their hegemony over it. *** Yes, universal background check can pass Congress:** Sean Sullivan says what few others are willing to say: Sullivan puts the odds of passage at 75 percent. So, no, Obama’s gun package isn’t necessarily doomed. *** Why the gun debate may be different this time:** The New York Times gets this right: Yes. Also, keep in mind that each proposal can be introduced separately — and they have broad support. Obama was right to lay down an extremely ambitious initial proposal as a starting point. *** The NRA has gone too far:** Ron Fournier has a good piece taking apart that wretched and dishonest NRA ad invoking Obama’s daughters. As Fournier notes, the NRA’s game is to imply we must choose between improving security in schools and doing more to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, a false choice that’s central to the organization’s strategy of deception and obfuscation. Also: Given the NRA’s historic success in whipping up an impassioned minority to cow lawmakers, I’ll be very curious to see what that looks like. *** The NRA ad is also highly misleading:** Glenn Kessler does a nice job taking apart the substance of the ad. As he notes, Obama’s proposals actually include provisions for improving school security. And check out the bit about armed guards at Sidwell. *** Understanding how the NRA really works:** The Post has an excellent overview of the NRA’s success in cowing state legislatures to expand “gun rights” on the state level. This demonstrates, again, that the NRA’s achievements rest heavily on its ability t _o rapidly mobilize an intense emotional response around a single issue_ to frighten lawmakers into doing its bidding. Much of what it does — such as the video about Obama’s daughters, which is designed to stoke resentment and rage — should be seen through this lens. *** How the NRA pressures Congress, Dems included:** Relatedly, do check out the Post’s nifty infographic detailing which members of Congress get NRA money. Note that over two dozen House Dems have received NRA cash — keep an eye on how they respond if the NRA keeps up the despicable tactics. What else?

There is no reason mass killers can still legally buy their weapon of choice in America

IT IS no coincidence that the same type of weapon was used to massacre schoolchildren in Connecticut, moviegoers in Colorado, office workers in California and, on Sunday, revelers at a nightclub in Florida. The killers knew the best way to achieve their sick goal of dispatching as many people as possible: Use assault-style weapons capable of firing dozens of rounds in seconds. “The people we’re talking about, once they get into ‘I want to kill a lot of people,’ it’s not a leap for them to see that these guns are made and designed for war,” Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center told the New York Times after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. Nor should it be a leap for a civilized country to prohibit the sale and ownership of weapons designed for war. After the country’s worst mass shooting, and before another American venue is turned into a slaughterhouse, Congress should reinstate the ban on assault-style weapons and the high-capacity ammunition magazines that make them even more lethal. Authorities said that the gunman responsible for Sunday’s carnage at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, in which 49 people were killed and 53 others wounded, was armed with an AR-15-type assault rifle he had recently purchased legally. It is the kind of weapon that has been used with horrifying frequency. According to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine, 7 of 8 high-profile public mass shootings since July of last year involved assault-style weapons. A lawyer representing the families of those killed and injured in the Sandy Hook school shooting, in a lawsuit against the manufacturer and distributor of the gun used to kill 26 children and adults, characterized assault weapons as “the gold standard for mass murder of innocent civilians.” A ban on assault weapons was in effect from 1994 to 2004. There were some imperfections in the law, but rather than fix those Congress bent to pressure from the national gun lobby and let the law lapse. Even more grotesque was Congress’s failure to implement a ban on assault weapons and other common sense gun reforms proposed by President Obama in the wake of 6-year-olds being slaughtered in their classrooms in Connecticut. We have no illusions that the horror of Orlando will cause Congress to jump up and take action. But for the first time in a long time, gun control is being talked about as part of the campaign for president. Before Sunday’s events, Hillary Clinton had made gun law reform a centerpiece of her campaign, and on Monday she called for reinstating the ban on assault weapons. Weapons of war belong in the armed forces, not in gun shops that cheerfully furnish them to those with one goal only: killing as many innocents as possible, as quickly as possible. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: Gun violence in America is out of control The Post’s View: The gun debate America needs to have The Post’s View: A depressingly endless loop of mass shootings David Ignatius: Trump’s Islamophobia helps to motivate the Islamic State

Why bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ are unlikely to reduce mass shooting deaths

Lots of people have been calling for bans on so-called “assault weapons,” often arguing that such bans would reduce mass shooting deaths. But I doubt this would work, because, despite the name, “assault weapons” are no deadlier than other weapons. 1\. To begin with, note that assault weapons are _not_ fully automatic weapons (which is to say machine guns). Fully automatic weapons have long been heavily regulated, and lawfully owned fully automatics are very rare, very expensive and almost never used in crimes. Rather, assault weapons are a subset of semiautomatic weapons, generally semiautomatic handguns and rifles.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 2\. Semiautomatic handguns and rifles — of which there are probably at least about 100 million in the country, and likely more — are undoubtedly extremely deadly; but the subset that is labeled “assault weapons” is not materially deadlier than the others. One way of recognizing that is looking at the definition in the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban; the ban lists several types of guns by name, and then provides these generic definitions:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico As you might gather, bayonet mounts, barrel shrouds, pistol grips and the like don’t make guns materially more lethal. A grenade launcher might, but grenades themselves are already extremely heavily regulated, and in any event, rifles with grenade launchers aren’t relevant to mass shootings or, to my knowledge, crime generally. Guns that fit these categories may _look_ more dangerous; but they aren’t more dangerous.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 3. What makes a gun deadlier? Longer barrels do, since they give the bullet more time to accelerate; that’s why rifles are deadlier than handguns, all else being equal. Accuracy does, but (for obvious reasons) no one is trying to ban guns that are especially accurate, at least setting aside possible arguments related to high-end sniper rifles. Caliber does, because wider bullets are generally heavier bullets, but assault weapons aren’t defined by caliber size. The amount of gunpowder (and possibly some other attributes of the gunpowder) in a round does, because that too affects muzzle velocity, but assault weapons aren’t defined by this. For instance, the .223 rifles that are often labeled “assault weapons” have a much lower muzzle energy than familiar hunting rifles such as the .30-06. The type of bullet might matter (for instance, hollow points used in handguns tend to be deadlier but also are more effective for lawful self-defense, since they tend to stop the attacker more reliably), but that too isn’t a function of whether the gun is an “assault weapon.” The ability to fire relatively quickly used to matter, centuries ago when early weapons took many seconds to reload, but these days pretty much all semiautomatics and revolvers (and even other guns) fire quickly enough for any criminal’s needs; and again assault weapons aren’t defined by rate of fire. Indeed, if you’re trying to hit what you’re aiming at, you need to take time to aim again after every shot, since the recoil will have moved the barrel. Magazine size might matter, though I suspect it matters little given the ease of replacing a magazine (true for all semiautomatics, and to a lesser extent even for many revolvers) — for more on magazine size limits, see this August 2012 post. But in any event, high-capacity magazines can fit many guns that aren’t “assault weapons.” Banning assault weapons as such would thus have basically no effect on the lethality of gun crime, or of mass shootings more specifically.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 4\. For more on all this, see Prof. Gary Kleck’s “Targeting Guns _“_ (pp. 110-118). Kleck is a very serious gun policy scholar; though he has generally come to be skeptical of gun control, he is highly respected, and the book on which “Targeting Gun”s is based — Kleck’s earlier “Point Blank” — won the American Society of Criminology’s Hindelang Award in 1993 for being the “book, published within three (3) calendar years preceding the year in which the award is made, that makes the most outstanding contribution to research in criminology.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico If I’m right on this, then banning assault weapons is likely to have as little effect on mass shootings as banning whiskey would have on drunken driving. Even if we concluded that drunk drivers were disproportionately drunk on whiskey, banning whiskey would just mean that the drunk drivers will shift to vodka, gin, tequila or other alcoholic beverages that are just as dangerous as whiskey. The same is true for the so-called “assault weapons.”

Guns in America, after the Orlando mass shooting

Eugene Robinson’s assertion that the only response to the Orlando massacre is banning assault weapons regardless of the Constitution is wrong [“Assault weapons must be banned,” op-ed, June 14]. Instead of new laws, we can amend the Constitution. And promulgating unconstitutional laws because one doesn’t agree with the Constitution is an egregious breach of faith. Because the founders saw that we needed a federal government that would allow the free practice of multiple religions without imposing a state religion, the people agreed to a secular constitution. This means that rather than basing laws on divine law, on the Ten Commandments or on sharia, we agreed to base them on the Constitution. We do not need the people saying it’s too bad if laws insult the Constitution. The Constitution can be amended, and as U.S. culture changes, the Constitution needs to change to reflect that. If we want different laws, don’t insult the Constitution; amend it. ****Michael Cardinale** , Springfield** **Eugene Robinson correctly noted** that the framers could not have visualized the mass effect of modern weapons when they wrote the Second Amendment and its guarantee of a “right to keep and bear arms.” They did, however, understand the concept of freedom, which is what compelled them to pen these words. The irony of Mr. Robinson’s opinion is that it was narrowly confined to just a single section of the Bill of Rights. Mr. Robinson didn’t mention the equally historically accurate fact that when the framers wrote of a “freedom of the press,” they could not possibly have imagined anything like the modern, high-speed printing presses that regularly generate the pages upon which Mr. Robinson’s words are printed — let alone the lightning speed and global reach of the Internet. ****Philip Eveland** , Chantilly** **Eugene Robinson had it absolutely right** regarding banning assault rifles and banning gun sales to anyone on the terrorist watch list. This is the time to move on this imperative, while the nation’s wounds are fresh, after the Orlando tragedy. President Obama can bring this issue front and center by challenging the Republican congressional leadership to answer why possession of assault rifles and semiautomatic weapons by potential terrorists is in the best interest of the country. ****Rob Rudick** , Takoma Park** **I applaud the editorial board’s call** for banning **** assault-style weapons in order to reduce mass shooting deaths [“Killing machines,” June 14]. But it should be noted that such a ban would have a much broader effect: It would reduce the culture of fear that spurs more firearm purchases, ultimately leading to more gun deaths. Mass killings, many involving semiautomatic weapons, garner extensive media coverage in a way that domestic killings, suicides and urban homicides do not. While these horrific massacres actually account for a relatively low percentage of our overall gun deaths, this saturated coverage perpetuates the fear and anxiety that lead to more gun purchases. And studies show unequivocally that more guns equal more gun deaths, whether they be from homicide, accident or suicide. Australia implemented a serious ban and buy-back on these high-powered weapons in 1996, not a deficient law like the one in place in the United States for a decade. Not only has Australia not had a massacre since, but also the suicide and overall homicide rates fell sharply. Australians now live in a country that feels (and is) safe. We can, too. ****Tracy Zorpette** , Washington** **Presumptive Democratic presidential** nominee Hillary Clinton, in her remarks about the Pulse shooting, should have been accurate and not inflammatory [“Trump expands call for ban on Muslims,” front page, June 14]. “Weapons of war” were not used in the attack. The shooter’s gun looked like an AR-15, but it did not operate like it. The FBI concluded that the Orlando shooter could be removed from a terrorist watch list, so he was able to purchase a gun and go through a background check. He didn’t get a weapon with “no questions asked,” as Ms. Clinton suggested. Just ask the American Civil Liberties Union about his rights. ****John Tani** , Nellysford, Va. **

Mass shootings are distracting from the real danger of guns in America

Every mass shooting reboots a similar debate about gun control. How could we have stopped the latest slaughter? Should we ban high-capacity magazines? Increase mental health screenings? Require universal background checks for gun purchases? Following the San Bernardino, Calif., attack, the New York Times published its first front page editorial in nearly 100 years on Saturday. It called on politicians to ban “certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In a speech last night, President Obama also asked Congress for tighter regulations on assault weapons, as well as laws to prohibit people on no-fly lists from getting guns. “The fact is that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies — no matter how effective they are — cannot identify every would-be mass shooter, whether that individual is motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “What we can do — and must do — is make it harder for them to kill.” What nobody can say for sure, though, is how many mass killings would be prevented by stricter gun laws. And a bigger question is whether it makes sense to focus so much on how the nation’s gun policies would affect mass shootings — so rare and idiosyncratic that some researchers say you can't formulate statistically sound observations about them. To put things in perspective: Guns kill about 33,000 people a year in the United States. Two-thirds of those deaths are suicides; about 11,000 are homicides.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico By the most expansive definition, mass shootings have taken 462 lives this year so far. That is according to Shootingtracker.com, which counts every incident in which four or more people were shot. But most of those events are not the kind of indiscriminate public murders that spur national conversations about guns. Stanford researchers maintain a separate database of mass shootings that don’t seem to be related to gangs or drugs. By their count, 159 have died in such events as of Nov. 24. Factoring in the latest shootings, perhaps 180 people have lost their lives in this way. No matter which statistic you use, mass shootings account for a tiny fraction — just a few percent — of gun-related homicides in the United States, much less gun-related deaths in general. “In many ways, these events are a red herring,” says Jonathan Metzl, a professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt who has published a paper in the American Journal of Public Health on why scholars focus too much on mass shootings. The paper by Metzl and colleague Kenneth MacLeish argues that "many scholars who study violence prevention hold that mass shootings occur too infrequently to allow for statistical modeling, and as such serve as poor jumping-off points for effective public health interventions."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Metzl added: “The pro-gun side will say, ‘look a mass shooting happened in a place like California or Colorado, where there are gun control laws.’ They generalize from this unpredictable event, to draw conclusions about the failure of gun control writ large.” “In a way, that’s comparing apples and oranges,” he says. “What you really want to figure out is if everyday violence goes down when you have successful gun-violence prevention efforts.” The push to regulate assault rifles is another symptom of how mass shootings distort the gun-control debate. As Nick Baumann pointed out in the Huffington Post, not only are assault-rifle bans difficult to write — How do you get people to agree on a definition? How do you tighten the loopholes? — but assault weapons are not responsible for most shootings in America. Handguns are.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It remains unlikely for Americans to enact the kinds of gun restrictions that could significantly curtail shootings, such as the type of gun-surrender program employed successfully by Australia. But Metzl points out that by ignoring everyday shootings, we may be missing out on some of the low-hanging fruit.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “There are aspects of gun violence that are predictable,” he says. “Everyday violence is linked to alcohol use, it's linked to past histories of violence. It’s linked to social networks of violence.” He elaborates in the paper: That's useful context when we consider the reasons that gun violence overall may have declined in the U.S. over the past 20 years.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Because mass shootings dictate the national conversation about guns, these sorts of issues get overshadowed. For instance — even if expanded background checks might not have stopped the shootings in San Bernardino, in Roseburg, Ore., in Lafayette, and in Charleston, they might save lives in ways that don't make the news. Tighter gun laws could discourage suicides. Laws that restrict the gun rights of domestic abusers could prevent murders at home.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico These kinds of laws might not necessarily stop the next terrorist attack or mass shooting. But they might save many more lives — lives that are currently, quietly, at risk.

The issue is civilian version of military weapons

Courtland Milloy’s Jan. 16 Metro column, “A staunch defender of civil (and gun) rights,” definitely provides something to ponder for advocates of gun registration, but it is worth noting that Charles (Chuck) Hicks and his family members used a shotgun and rifle to fend off attacks by the Ku Klux Klan; they did not use an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, nor other civilian versions of military weapons that have been on the market only since the late 1970s — the era in which mass shootings have escalated dramatically. Many of the tragedies we see today are a direct result of the gun industry’s efforts to shore up their profits at the expense of public safety. Speaking for myself alone, the issue is not shotguns, hunting rifles or even handguns; it is weapons of mass slaughter. Mr. Milloy’s underlying assumption is that restricting civilian access to military weapons equates to “infringing on Second Amendment rights.” I would not deny anyone the right to self-defense, but this argument does not hold up. You can’t buy a bazooka, you can’t drive a Sherman tank down the highway, and there is no reason why semiautomatic weapons ought to be widely available to civilians. ****D.W. Gregory** , Silver Spring** The writer is a volunteer to the steering committee for the March on Washington for Gun Control.

Forget new gun control: Citing Orlando, House may roll back existing D.C. gun laws

The mayor of the District of Columbia argued last week that assault rifles are “only meant to devastate humans,” and that following the massacre in Orlando, Congress must “finally do something” about guns. But it’s safe to say that this is not what Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, a Democrat, had in mind: House Republicans on Monday introduced measures that would effectively wipe out existing gun-control laws in the District, which are among the country’s most restrictive. Under one measure, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the District would be prohibited from spending money to enforce laws regarding which residents and visitors can carry firearms. Another, authored by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), would prevent D.C. from limiting concealed-carry permits to those with a “good reason” to do so. And a third, also by Massie, would keep the District from enforcing its gun-free zones, such as those around D.C. public schools and government buildings, where firearms are now prohibited. Massie, who has attempted to roll back D.C. gun laws before, said in a statement emailed to reporters that he wants to let residents and visitors to the nation’s capital arm themselves in hopes of preventing an Orlando-style attack. “Gun control is not the solution. The only practical way to have prevented this tragedy is by eliminating gun-free zones where security is inadequate to protect law-abiding citizens who are otherwise capable, willing and endowed (by their Creator with the right) to defend themselves,” Massie wrote. “I introduced these amendments to reduce the likelihood of a similar tragedy in DC.” Taken together, the proposals could supercede a court fight that for now has kept the city’s gun laws intact. They could instead force the District to let almost any gun owner in the 50 states bring a firearm into the District — and that fits a theme for Massie. After the attack on a gay nightclub that killed 49 last week in Orlando, Massie tweeted a picture of himself with an assault rifle and said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun — responsible AR-15 owner for 20 yrs #2A.” The measures, known as “riders,” are a frequent tool that conservative federal lawmakers use to dictate spending on social and criminal justice programs in the District, where most voters are Democrats. In recent years, the House has voted to keep the area from using its local revenue to fully implement a successful ballot measure to legalize marijuana. The House also perennially uses a rider to block the District from using its tax dollars to subsidize abortions for low-income residents. The measures must clear a procedural hurdle Tuesday in the House Rules Committee. They could be brought for a vote on the House floor as early as Wednesday. If passed, the riders would have to be debated with Senate budget negotiators. Last year, the House also used a rider to try to strike down a D.C. law banning discrimination over employees’ reproductive decisions. That passed the House but the Senate refused to accept it. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Al.) has again filed an amendment to keep the District from spending any money to implement the law. In a twist, advocates for marijuana legalization said they think there will be a close vote this year on a rider to keep the District from spending money to legalize pot. A bill to give states more leeway on marijuana policy passed the House last year with more than 40 Republican members in support. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, who has been leading a new charge for D.C. to become the 51st state, sent out a tweet Tuesday saying Massie’s bill illustrated the need: “One of the many reasons DC deserves full statehood & representation in Congress. Our residents agree,” she wrote, adding the hastag “DCStatehood”. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting representative to the House, can do little to stop the riders, but she introduced several of her own, seeking a vote on Republican measures that would block the District from spending local tax dollars as it sees fit. “This week, House Republicans once again look to violate their self-proclaimed principles of local control over local affairs by imposing undemocratic riders on the District of Columbia,” Norton said in a statement. “If members want to step all over D.C. home rule and our right to self-government, I am going to force them to do it on record and in front of the American people.”

Second Amendment limits must have strong grounds for implementation

While I agree with much of Garrett Epps’s review of Michael Waldman’s “biography” of the Second Amendment [“Do individuals have an unlimited right to possess guns?,” Book World, June 1], one sentence undermined this otherwise workmanlike analysis. Along with criticizing Mr. Waldman’s “rhetorical excesses” and analytical weakness, Mr. Epps assailed the “contemporary claim that gun ownership (unlike other constitutional freedoms) cannot be limited at all.” No serious advocate of the individual right to armed self-defense argues that the Second Amendment protects a boundless liberty. Governments certainly can outlaw personal rocket launchers, say, or prohibit the mentally ill or violent felons from possessing firearms. But for gun regulations to be constitutional — as many existing ones are — their proponents need to do more than defeat straw-man arguments about an absolute Second Amendment. As with any constitutional right, those advocating burdens need to have very good reason for doing so. The problem is that mass shootings provoke calls to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens in ways that studies have not shown to reduce gun violence. That includes ammunition limits, waiting periods, registration requirements and, especially, “assault weapon” bans. ****Ilya Shapiro** , Washington** The writer is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.

Don’t discount the possibility of action this time

Obama just wrapped up his speech announcing what many are characterizing, rightly, as the most sweeping set of gun law reform proposals in generations. As expected, he proposed a comprehensive set of improvements to the background check system, a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, and ending a freeze on research into gun violence. The 23 executive actions he proposed fall somewhat short of the “tyranny” the right pretends to fear. A few quick notes: **1) Obama led with the push for universal background check.** It’s key that this was the first proposal he mentioned, because it’s a reminder that — despite all the focus on the political viability of the assault weapons ban — instituting a universal background check is actually a higher priority for many gun control advocates. What’s more, the emphasis on improving the background check system is good politics. It doesn’t go directly to the question of limiting law abiding people’s access to certain types of weapons. When the “gun rights” crowd screams “tyranny,” most Americans will find the idea that government is violating the rights of the law abiding by beefing up efforts to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from getting killing machines just doesn’t pass the common sense test. Judging by early returns, this could also be something that some Republicans can support — it allows Obama to claim the sensible center. **2) Despite what you hear, something may actually pass Congress this time.** Commentators ceaselessly claim the assault weapons ban can’t pass Congress. And, yes, it very well might not. But that simply doesn’t mean that the other proposals won’t. If Obama can achieve only some of the proposals, such as universal background checks, a ban on high capacity magazines, and more research into the causes of gun violence, not to mention all the other improvements he’s pursuing via executive order, that will be a real achievement. Again, none of these go directly to the question of whether to limit access to certain types of guns. In particular, the case for the high capacity mag ban only touches on the volume and speed of firepower, and is an easy common sense argument to make. “It’s hard to marshal a political argument on behalf of civilians having the ability to shoot hundreds of rounds in a few seconds,” Robert Spitzer, the author of the Politics of Gun Control, tells me. As for the House GOP not allowing a vote on these proposals, history suggests otherwise: In the wake of the Columbine massacre in the late 1990s, Republicans controlled the House and did allow some gun control measures to go to a vote. They failed, but that doesn’t mean all efforts will fail this time. The point is that precedent shows that horrific, high profile massacres can break the will of Republicans to bottle up legislative responses. What’s more, the push for an assault weapons ban — which is a tougher sell politically, because the difficulty of defining assault weapons requires a technical argument — could actually help other measures pass. You could easily see just enough Republicans opposing it in order to give themselves cover to support some of the other proposals. “The assault weapons ban may prove to be an important bargaining chip in this process, in exchange for support for other measures,” Spitzer says. *** Obama signaled a major political push lies ahead.** Conservatives screamed about Obama’s use of children at today’s event, and it’s not hard to understand why: It shows that Obama is going to mount a major public relations push to sell his proposals — one that, crucially, frames the battle as one over whether we are capable as a society of acting to protect our children from violent death. “The emphasis on much of the rhetoric has been on humanizing the issue and keeping the focus on protecting children,” Spitzer says. Expect that to continue.

Eugene Robinson: On guns, take action now

We are not helpless to stop the massacre of innocent children. We must begin — today, right now, this minute — taking guns out of the hands of madmen, and the first step should be a ban on military-style assault weapons such as the rifle used to turn a Connecticut school into a slaughterhouse. That won’t be enough to end all the carnage, but it will save some lives. It is admirable that President Obama, members of Congress and other elected officials are deeply horrified and saddened by what happened Friday in Newtown. But the moment calls for action, not words, and politicians who are too craven or stupid or ideologically rigid to finally move forward on gun control will have the blood of future victims on their hands. We must begin with the guns. Yes, there are other factors that play their roles in these mass shootings. We need to talk about mental-health issues. We need to explore why the assassin is always a troubled young man whose alienation was noticed by others but not adequately addressed. We need to examine the impact of hyper-violent video games on impressionable minds. We need to remember that horrors such as Columbine, Blacksburg, Aurora, Tucson and Newtown are statistically insignificant compared to the everyday bloodshed on our streets and in our homes. But we have to start somewhere. If we wait for a perfect, comprehensive, foolproof solution, we’ll do nothing. Tough, aggressively enforced, nationwide gun control is the most effective single initiative we could undertake, and shame on us if we wait another month, another week, another day. The National Rifle Association and other apologists for murder will object, of course. They will say that Connecticut’s gun control laws are already among the nation’s toughest, and yet they failed to prevent Adam Lanza from annihilating 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, his mother and himself. Therefore, these sophists will argue, gun control doesn’t work. What a crock. The truth is that gun control is ineffective because laws considered “tough” are, in reality, tragically weak. There is no reason an everyday citizen needs to possess a Bushmaster AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle — the gun used not only in Newtown but in the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shootings and as recently as last week in a deadly shooting at a shopping mall near Portland, Ore. At the very least, these high-powered weapons developed for use by soldiers, not hunters, should be outlawed — and surrendered to authorities for destruction. Lanza’s mother had the Bushmaster and several other guns in her arsenal, and because of the Second Amendment, it is hard to imagine legislation that could have eliminated all of them. But she knew her 20-year-old son had profound psychological problems. She should at least have been required to keep her weapons under lock and key, securely out of his reach. If you buy a gun for “protection,” it probably will never be fired in anger. There is almost no chance you will ever use it to defend yourself against an intruder. Much more likely than the home-invasion scenario is that you will use the weapon on yourself or someone you know — or that someone else in the household will use it, perhaps on himself or herself, perhaps on you. That some right-wing lawmakers and commentators have responded to Newtown by calling for teachers, principals and campus security guards to be armed is beyond obscene — and beneath contempt. More guns, with amateurs firing every which way, surely would have meant more dead children and more grieving families. “We can’t tolerate this anymore,” Obama said Sunday at the Newtown memorial service, the fourth such sad ceremony he has attended during his four years in office. “These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change,” Obama said. “We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.” We can, and we must. We should begin with a strict assault weapons ban. Here are 20 reasons why: Charlotte Bacon, 6. Daniel Barden, 7. Olivia Engel, 6. Josephine Gay, 7. Dylan Hockley, 6. Madeleine Hsu, 6. Catherine Hubbard, 6. Chase Kowalski, 7. Jesse Lewis, 6. Ana Marquez-Greene, 6. James Mattioli, 6. Grace McDonnell, 7. Emilie Parker, 6. Jack Pinto, 6. Noah Pozner, 6. Caroline Previdi, 6. Jessica Rekos, 6. Avielle Richman, 6. Benjamin Wheeler, 6. Allison Wyatt, 6. **_eugenerobinson@washpost.com _ ** **Read more from Opinions:** Jennifer Rubin: Resist the urge to rush new laws Jonathan Capehart: Yes, we must ‘do better than this’ Jonathan Bernstein: After Newtown, wait first, then use politics E.J. Dionne Jr.: We should mourn — and get angry Joseph A. Califano Jr.: Gun control in the lame duck The Post’s View: Time to talk about gun control Alexandra Petri: There are no words

Are laws limiting magazine capacity to 10 rounds constitutional?

A federal district court has refused to issue a preliminary injunction blocking Sunnyvale, California’s ban on magazines with more than 10 rounds. ( _Fyock v. City of Sunnyvale_ (N.D. Cal. Mar. 5, 2014).) A large part of the court’s rationale was that “a prohibition on possession of magazines having a capacity to accept more than ten rounds applies only the most minor burden on the Second Amendment,” and I think that’s both correct and legally relevant.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University A gun with a larger than usual capacity magazine is in theory somewhat more lethal than a gun with a 10-round magazine (a common size for most semiautomatic handguns), but in practice nearly all shootings, including criminal ones, use many fewer rounds than that. And mass shootings, in which more rounds are fired, usually progress over the span of several minutes or more. Given that removing a magazine and inserting a new one takes only a few seconds, a mass murderer — especially one armed with a backup gun — would hardly be stymied by the magazine size limit. It’s thus hard to see large magazines as materially more dangerous than magazines of normal size. It is conceivable that a magazine size ban will help limit the deadliness of some rare mass attacks, if the murderers comply with the law and don’t get a black-market magazine; the Jared Loughner killings, according to press accounts, were stopped when Loughner stopped to reload and was tackled by several people. But given that only a tiny fraction of gun homicides involve more than 10 shots fired (see Kleck, _Point Blank_ , p. 79, and Kleck, _Targeting Guns_ , p. 123), that mass shooters who really want large-capacity magazines will likely be able to get them even if they are outlawed, that mass shooters can and generally do carry multiple guns, and that only very rarely will people be able to tackle someone during the second or two that he needs to reload, I suspect that large-capacity magazine bans will do next to nothing (or perhaps outright nothing) to save lives.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Still, these same reasons probably mean that the magazine size cap would not materially interfere with self-defense, if the cap is set at 10 rather than materially lower. First, recall that until recently even police officers would routinely carry revolvers, which tended to hold only six rounds. Those revolvers were generally seen as adequate for officers’ defensive needs, though of course there were times when more rounds are needed. Second, the ability to switch magazines in seconds, which nearly all semiautomatic weapons possess, should suffice for the extremely rare instances when more rounds were needed (though to take advantage of this, the defender would have to make a habit of carrying both the gun and a spare magazine). For one of the apparently very rare situations in which civilians acting in self- defense shot many rounds, and might well have found higher-capacity guns especially useful, see Massad Ayoob’s account of the Beverly Hills Jewelry Store (Richmond, Va.) robbery. But even there the defenders fortunately had enough people and enough guns to succeed even without the large magazines.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And indeed this analysis — focused on the degree to which the law burdens a constitutional right — is similar to what we see in other areas of the law, though subject to the qualifier that all analogies across different constitutional rights are necessarily limited (they are, after all, analogies and not identities). For instance, the government may limit the volume of music or constrain sound amplification generally, even though that would necessarily diminish to some extent the potential audience for such music or political advocacy. Substantial restraints on the ability to reach the public would be unconstitutional, but more minor ones — when they don’t discriminate based on the content of the speech — are generally constitutional.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Similarly, while the Court has concluded that the Constitution protects abortion rights, it has said that restrictions on such rights are unconstitutional only when they create a “substantial burden” on women who seek abortions. While there’s the obvious risk that restrictions that aren’t very burdensome will be followed by broader and broader one, courts solve this by saying that they’ll step in when the music volume restrictions or abortion restrictions become too burdensome, not by saying that all such restrictions are categorically unconstitutional. More broadly, even if bans on magazines with more than 10 rounds are unwise, not all unwise restrictions are unconstitutional. That’s true for speech restrictions. It’s true for abortion restrictions. And I think it’s true for gun restrictions as well. UPDATE: For more on “substantial burden” inquiries in constitutional law, and why they’re likely to make sense in right-to-bear-arms cases — as well as how they’ve been used in such cases at the state constitutional level in the past — see pp. 1454-1461 of this article (“Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms for Self-Defense”).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Assault-weapons ban subject of emotional Senate hearing

The father of a 6-year-old boy killed in the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., wept Wednesday as he showed pictures of his son to senators and urged them to defy the political odds by implementing a new ban on military-style assault weapons. Neil Heslin recounted that when he dropped off his son, Jesse Lewis, at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, the boy told him, “It’s going to be okay.” “He told me it’d be okay,” Heslin said. “And it wasn’t okay. . . . I saw something that shouldn’t happen at an elementary school.” Members of the audience wept as Heslin spoke. The emotional testimony came during a lengthy Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the proposed assault-weapons ban, one of four Democratic-sponsored bills that the panel plans to begin debating Thursday. Other proposals include a plan to expand the nation’s gun background-check system, make gun trafficking a federal crime for the first time and provide more federal funding to school districts to revamp school security plans. Republicans on the committee say they will exercise their right to delay consideration of the bills for another week. The assault-weapons ban, introduced last month by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), would prohibit almost 160 specific military-style firearms. The list includes semiautomatic rifles or pistols that can be used with detachable or fixed ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and have specific military-style features, such as pistol grips, grenade launchers or rocket launchers. Unlike a similar but narrower law that expired in 2004, the new ban would be permanent. Feinstein’s bill has 21 co-sponsors, all of them Democrats. Feinstein used video examples during the hearing to demonstrate how easily shooters can fire rounds from some of the weapons she hopes to ban. “The need for a federal ban has never been greater,” she said, citing law enforcement officials and state governments who are pushing Congress to strengthen gun laws. A majority of Americans support banning assault weapons, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. But most Senate Republicans and a mix of moderate Senate Democrats — many of whom face reelection next year — believe that any prohibition on specific rifles and shotguns is a politically untenable position in a country that still broadly supports Second Amendment rights. That makes passage in the full Senate all but impossible. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) granted Feinstein’s request for a hearing as a courtesy, according to aides. Senators heard from eight witnesses, including John Walsh, the U.S. attorney for Colorado, and Edward Flynn, Milwaukee police chief. Tempers flared when Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) quizzed Walsh and Flynn on prosecutions of people who fail gun background checks. “I want to stop 75,000 people from buying guns illegally,” Flynn told Graham, his voice rising. “That’s what a background check is.” When Graham asked Flynn how many background-check cases he had referred for prosecution, the chief snapped back: “We don’t chase paper. We chase armed criminals.” William Begg, an emergency-room doctor who treated injured survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting, told lawmakers that the victims were hit by up to 11 bullets each, citing the state coroner’s report. “When a child has three to 11 bullets and it’s an assault-type bullet, it explodes in the body,” he said. “. . . That’s not a survivable injury.” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s ranking Republican, said the previous ban did little to deter mass shooters or reduce gun-related violence. “When something has been tried and not found to work, we should try different approaches rather than reenacting that which failed,” Grassley said. He suggested that the committee is more likely to advance the other bills up for consideration and suggested finding ways to bolster the government’s funding for mental-health research. _Discuss this topic and other political issues in thepolitics discussion forums._

Guns or butter? We can’t afford either

The president seems either to not understand the legislative process very well or to remain undecided as to whether he wants progress or more political fighting on the gun violence issue. How else to explain why he threw into his anti-gun violence plan giant, unattainable items such as an assault-weapons ban (which we couldn’t adequately define in 1994 and didn’t work) alongside some common-sense items such as armed school guards and funding for mental health? Opponents will focus, just as the president did, on the big issue — the assault-weapons ban — and insist that the whole package is kaput before it lands in the relevant Senate and House committees. In effect, President Obama included a poison pill in his own legislation. He would have made it much harder on opponents of any gun restrictions if he had culled the list down to a more manageable size, emphasizing mental health care and detection of mental illnesses and keeping guns out of the hands of the seriously mentally ill. Matt Miller speaks for many voters on this point: “I’m all for universal background checks, tighter assault-weapon bans, limits on high-capacity magazines, and ambitious and well-funded gun-buyback programs. But unless we also find more effective ways to identify and treat people who are dangerously mentally ill, we’ll never stop tragedies like Newtown (or Aurora, or Tucson, or Virginia Tech).” So why didn’t the president start on the point on which we can all agree, rather than picking a fight on items over which there is almost certainly no agreement? Ya got me. A number of the anti-gun provisions make no sense. Take the limit on high-capacity magazine clips. The president wants a limit of 10 rounds. Maybe gun owners want 70. So they compromise at 25. Does this make mass shootings less deadly? A deranged shooter might instead wear a holster for easy access to additional weapons, or he might just switch out an empty magazine for a full one, which takes a few seconds. And what about all the high-capacity clips out there already? Would it take 10 years or 100 to get rid of them? It is the lack of common sense in these measures (which seem to come from people who know very little about fighting crime or about guns) and willingness to paint opponents as irresponsible or anti-child that is so grating, not to mention unconducive to progress. I would also add a fiscal point. The package costs $500 million. We don’t have the money for this or many other things. This is, in part, the argument for entitlement reform, which is crowding out spending on priorities liberals (e.g. gun enforcement) and conservatives (e.g. defense) prefer. The question is not whether we should throw Grandma over the cliff but whether some rich grandmas can pay for more of their health care so we can protect kids in school from madmen (as well as do many other things for the poor and young, the unemployed and untrained). Veronique de Rugy and Jason J. Fichtner (h/t Jim Pethokoukis) speak to the issue of entitlement crowd-out, explaining that entitlements and debt payments combined have grown from 38 percent of the budget in 1970 to 64 percent in 2012 and, if we continue on this path, to 82 percent in 2040. These are transfer payments that go, in large part, from young to old without regard to progressivity. The authors argue: “This is no surprise as the federal government faced its fourth year of trillion dollar deficits and spent an unprecedented $3.5 trillion (in current dollars), or about $11,200 per person, in 2012 alone. As deficits continue to pile onto the national debt, interest payments continue to grow significantly as a result. Hence, the primary drivers of government spending today and into the future are the continual growth in entitlements and interest payments on the federal debt that crowd out all other areas of the budget.” It would be nice if the president would have scaled down his gun ambitions and recognized that if he wants to pursue projects like this he should start negotiating on the debt ceiling and entitlement cuts. That, unfortunately, is too much to ask.

Standing up to the NRA

In his Dec. 23 Sunday Opinion commentary, “Guns _do_ kill people,” Philip Caputo made powerful points in the penultimate paragraph: “Not only do regulations in most states prohibit hunters from entering the field with the firepower of an infantry platoon, it’s considered unsportsmanlike. Apparently, we value the lives of our deer and ducks more than we do the lives of our children.” If semiautomatic weapons are too powerful to use on ducks and deer, they surely have no place in U.S. suburbs, towns and cities. That means banning certain classes of weapons, not turning our schools, malls and other places of assembly into armed camps. The National Rifle Association (NRA) and its most rabid supporters seem intent on turning the United States into a version of Afghanistan or a video game, where nearly everyone is armed to the teeth. That is not what the Framers of the Constitution intended; it is certainly not what the vast majority of Americans want. It is time to control the killing machines — and it is time for Congress to stand up for everyday Americans rather than kowtowing to the NRA. ****Ken Brill,** Bethesda**

“Banning assault weapons won’t reduce gun crime or deaths. Worse, the bans may make it harder to enact more effective gun control laws.”

My colleague at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law Adam Winkler — a gun control supporter — writes in the Los Angeles Times:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Read the whole thing.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Assault weapons ban likely won’t be included in Senate gun bill

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid on Tuesday declared politically dead the effort to ban military-style assault weapons, a setback for President Obama and gun-control advocates who are pushing the Senate to move quickly on bills to limit gun violence. Reid (D-Nev.) is preparing to move ahead with debate on a series of gun-control proposals when the Senate returns from a two-week Easter recess in early April. Although he has vowed to hold votes on measures introduced after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn., in December, Reid told reporters Tuesday that the proposed assault-weapons ban isn’t holding up against Senate rules that require at least 60 votes to end debate and move to final passage. The proposed ban, “using the most optimistic numbers, has less than 40 votes. That’s not 60,” Reid said. Still up for consideration are three other bills approved last week by the Senate Judiciary Committee: bipartisan legislation to make gun trafficking a federal crime, a bipartisan measure to expand a Justice Department grant program that provides funding for school security, and a Democratic proposal to expand the nation’s gun background check program. Reid is working to determine whether to merge the three bills into one comprehensive package or to hold separate votes on each measure, said aides familiar with ongoing negotiations. The decision will be based on whether one or all of the bills receive enough support to ensure final passage, they said. “I want people to have the ability to vote on assault weapons, mental health, safety in schools, federal trafficking, clips — everything,” Reid told reporters. “But I cannot do that until I get a bill on the floor, and it’s been very clear that the Republicans want us to have bills coming to the floor that have gone through committee.” The assault-weapons ban is the most ambitious and controversial proposal backed by Obama. Introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the bill would bar almost 160 specific semiautomatic weapons and rifles and assorted military-style parts, and would limit the size of ammunition magazines to 10 rounds, banning the larger magazines used in some of the more recent and brazen mass shootings. The ban has 22 Senate Democratic co-sponsors, including Feinstein. A bill limiting the size of ammunition magazines was originally introduced by Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), but was merged with Feinstein’s measure and approved by the judiciary panel. Feinstein said Tuesday that Reid has assured her that the assault-weapons ban will earn an up-or-down vote in the full Senate, probably as an amendment to one of the other bills under consideration. A separate up-or-down vote can then be held on the ammunition proposal, she said. “Obviously I was disappointed,” Feinstein said Tuesday, but she acknowledged that including her bill in any comprehensive package would sink the prospects of passing gun-control legislation this year. “The enemies on this are very powerful; I’ve known that all my life,” she added, referring to the National Rifle Association. “But I’m confident this bill would be constitutional.” White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that Senate Democrats’ decision is not a setback for Obama’s gun-control efforts. He said that the bill can still be brought up as an amendment and that there should be a concerted effort to pass it. “We’re going to work on this. We’re going to find the votes,” McDonough said, according to a transcript. “It deserves a vote, and let’s see if we can get it done.” Still unresolved is whether Democrats can secure Republican support for expanding the gun background check program. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) is working with other Democrats to find potential GOP co-sponsors for a revised bill with exceptions for firearm exchanges between family members or close friends. But talks have been hampered by disagreements about whether to establish a record-keeping system for non-commercial gun transactions. Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said gun-control advocates are hoping that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) will give what Glaze called his “hyper-conservative” stamp of approval to the background check proposal. “That would give a lot of moderate Democrats and other Republicans some cover, which for whatever reason they feel we need, but if not we press on,” Glaze said. Of all the gun measures under consideration in the Senate, he added, universal background checks are “the biggest policy fix with the greatest public support and the most momentum.” Nine in 10 Americans support expanding the nation’s background check program, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. As Congress prepares to leave for a recess, the White House is quietly coordinating with advocates to ensure that they remain united in message and focus as they lobby senators of both parties who have not taken a public stand on the issue, according to people familiar with the talks. Glaze said his group, founded by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), has hired several dozen field operatives and sent them to states where polling shows overwhelming support for an expanded background check program, including Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana and Nevada. As part of its outreach, Glaze said the group plans to mobilize more than 900 mayors and hundreds of police chiefs and shooting survivors to stage events in congressional districts aimed at pressing lawmakers to support expanded background checks. The group is planning a “national day of action” on March 28 that will include petition drives, rallies and news conferences. The objective, Glaze said, is “to pound the point home on these members that their constituents are watching, and if Congress can’t find a way to support a reform that has the support of 90 percent of the public, that’s going to be a pretty hard decision to defend.” Separately, Organizing for America, an Obama-backed advocacy group, is planning its own day of action on March 28 to galvanize support around the gun-control proposals, a spokesman said. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who is co-sponsoring Feinstein’s assault-weapons ban, said that personal stories from the victims of gun violence are resonating most effectively with his colleagues. “I think we have growing momentum on our side,” he said. “Newtown was a call to action and I think we’ve made tremendous progress. Three-plus months ago, this issue was politically untouchable. This time is different.” _Discuss this topic and other political issues in thepolitics discussion forums._

The argument against common-sense gun control crumbles

AS THE country has been jolted from mass shooting to mass shooting, the gun control debate has become depressingly routine. Advocates of tighter restrictions on firearms invariably call for better background checks, banning largecapacity magazines and other measures that would make gun deaths less likely. Gun zealots answer that even the most common-sense reforms aren’t relevant because they wouldn’t have prevented the mass shootings that keep horrifying the nation. The forces of “no” keep Congress from acting. On Friday, FBI Director James B. Comey offered a revelation that casts new light on that impasse. Dylann Roof, Mr. Comey told reporters, should have failed a federal background check. The 21-year-old racist admitted to illegal narcotics possession in February, which should have prevented him from purchasing a firearm. Instead, Mr. Roof bought the .45-caliber pistol allegedly used in the attack on Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church from a South Carolina gun store without setting off alarm bells. Bureaucratic wires between South Carolina and Washington got crossed, and a federal analyst didn’t see Mr. Roof’s admission. Mr. Comey’s revelation should, first, inspire a lot of soul-searching among federal law enforcement. They aren’t responsible for Mr. Roof’s virulent racism, but they failed in the narrow area of responsibility that the nation entrusted to them. Congress has stifled the study of gun violence and the enforcement of gun laws in the past. But this appears to be a the fault of a poorly operating database. Mr. Comey’s admission should also drive home what should be an obvious point: A tightened, functional background-check system and other simple measures would erect real and practical barriers to people attempting to buy guns for nefarious purposes. If the system had worked correctly in this case, Mr. Roof would have been turned away at the gun store counter. If Congress had tightened up the system’s rules years ago, he would have had a harder time looking elsewhere, such as at gun shows. If federal and state lawmakers weren’t so in thrall to the pro-gun fringe, friends, family members and other potential sources would have faced clear and high penalties for giving Mr. Roof a weapon without taking him to a gun store to get checked out first. It’s entirely appropriate to talk about imposing basic gun laws in the wake of any mass shooting. All of them underline the fact that guns are shockingly efficient killing machines that no responsible government would ignore. Even if better gun laws wouldn’t prevent every rampage or end street crime, they would certainly cut down on gun deaths from all sorts of causes by making it tougher to obtain and use firearms illegally. But in the case of Mr. Roof, gun activists now can’t easily fall back on the argument that better gun laws couldn’t have helped. Maybe Mr. Roof would have been so determined to start a race war that he would have eventually found a gun. Maybe not. What’s clear is that it didn’t have to be so simple for him. The country should have tried harder to stop him — and should be trying harder to stop the other Dylann Roofs still out there. That means law enforcement can’t be asleep at the switch. And it means that Congress should finally pass more common-sense gun limits that would make it harder to skirt the system. **Read more about this topic:** E.J. Dionne Jr.: How America can free itself from guns Kathleen Parker: An impotent gun-control solution Danny Franklin: Framing the danger of guns as a public health risk will change the debate over gun control Fareed Zakaria: The solution to gun violence is clear

If guns had been harder for my son to buy, Columbine might not have happened

_Sue Klebold is author of “A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy.”_ I am not an expert on guns. I have never owned one, and my husband and I never kept one in the house. So when it comes to gun safety and reducing the number of mass shootings that take place in our country, I would be the last person to suggest there are easy answers. But I do have a tragically personal vantage point on the issue. Nearly 17 years ago, my son Dylan, and his friend Eric Harris, walked into Columbine High School carrying an array of firearms and explosives. They killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded more than 20 others. It was an incomprehensible tragedy that I have lived with every day of my life since. Why did Dylan do it? How could this have happened? These questions have consumed my every waking moment. Gun rights advocates, and many legislators, say that the solution to stopping horrific shooting tragedies such as Columbine or Sandy Hook or Charleston or Santa Barbara or San Bernardino or Roseburg is not to restrict or regulate our access to firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution, but to focus more attention on mental health. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people, they claim. In the tragic instance of a mass shooting, guns are merely the instruments of a disturbed mind. And in fact, the overwhelming majority of gun owners act responsibly and safely. They would never fire on an innocent person, much less a child in a school. By focusing on guns, gun rights activists say, we miss the real challenge we need to address: identifying and getting help for those at risk because they are not brain-healthy. And that is the approach I have taken in thinking about Columbine and my son. A number of factors brought Dylan to Columbine High School that morning to hurt his fellow classmates. There were the deep depression and suicidal thoughts that he had been living with and that I was unaware of. There was his distorted belief that he was unloved and unlovable. There was the bullying that made him feel like an outsider at Columbine to an extent I will never know. There was his friendship with Eric and the ways each reinforced the anger and pain of the other. After spending the past decade interviewing experts, analyzing Dylan’s journals, talking with my family members, revisiting the days and years leading up to Columbine and working with others in suicide prevention, I realize there were signs, however unclear, that I might have recognized, knowing what I know now. But it was only after my son took part in what at the time was the worst school shooting in history that I — or anyone else close to Dylan — had any idea that there was anything wrong with him. Before Columbine, I would have told you with absolute certainty that I would know if there were anything amiss with my son, and even more so if anything were seriously wrong. But that raises an important question with regard to gun violence: If there are no flashing neon signs to alert us when someone needs help, how can we know who is and who is not mentally stable enough to be responsibly armed? I’m convinced that by recognizing the signs that a child is struggling early on, we can get our children the help they need — before another Columbine takes place. So I am firmly in the camp of those who say we must focus more attention and resources on those who suffer from mental-health issues. I applaud the fact that since Columbine, a growing number of schools are making strides in identifying when kids are in crisis. But much more needs to be done. Having said that, I still cannot help but believe that Dylan and Eric would not have been able to take the lives of so many if they had not had such easy access to guns. As I later learned, Dylan and Eric — both of whom were minors — secretly attended a gun show where they bought the shotguns they would use in the massacre and met a young man who sold them a TEC-9 semiautomatic pistol. Is our right to gun ownership under the Second Amendment so absolute that we cannot, at the very least, restrict access to certain kinds of weapons to protect the most vulnerable among us — especially teenagers, whose judgment at the best of times is compromised by hormones, impulsivity and immature decision-making? Is our right to bear arms so vital to what it means to be an American that there can be no limit on those rights whatsoever, whether raising the legal age at which one can purchase a gun, as we did with the drinking age or conducting more extensive background checks or restricting access to assault weapons designed for the battlefield? Again, the issues are challenging, and both gun rights advocates and gun-control advocates have valid points of view. I only know that every night as I go to bed, I can’t help but see the face of my son and the faces of the 13 people he and Eric killed and wonder what might have been. **Read more about this topic:** The Post’s View: Gun violence in America is out of control Jay Dickey and Mark Rosenberg: How to protect gun rights while reducing the toll of gun violence The Post’s View: 2015 was a grim year for American gun violence The Post’s View: A depressingly endless loop of mass shootings

Laws can do only so much

In his March 27 letter [“Gun bans don’t stop gun deaths,” letters, March 27], Dan Mierzwa made the point that, when the United States had an assault-weapons ban, some still were able to obtain and use such weapons to kill, thereby making the gun ban ineffective. By that measure, our laws against murder, rape, robbery are ineffective since some still do murder or rape or rob. Should those laws be repealed? ****Irma E. Forger,** Palmyra, Va.**

Eliminate gun loopholes for domestic abusers

The debate over measures to reduce gun violence poses a cruel paradox. The most effective steps are politically unthinkable and likely unconstitutional. More restrained approaches, such as tighter background checks and reduced ammunition magazine sizes, have proved maddeningly impossible to maneuver through the political process and are open to the charge that they would not stop the killing. This critique is correct but unpersuasive. With hundreds of millions of guns in circulation, small tweaks will not stop the carnage; certainly no single tweak alone will. Yet that is an argument for achievable half-measures, not for paralysis. And despite the otherwise gridlocked politics of gun control, there may be a sliver of political hope for proposals to address a relatively small but especially heartbreaking aspect of the problem: the lethal mix of guns and domestic abuse. Since the 1990s, federal law has barred those convicted of domestic abuse from legally buying guns. But existing law suffers from a “stalker gap,” a “boyfriend gap” and a “restraining-order gap.” Individuals convicted of misdemeanor stalking offenses are not barred from passing background checks and buying guns. In addition, abusers who are not married, do not live together or do not share a child — those in dating relationships — aren’t covered by the ban. More controversially, although abusers subject to permanent restraining orders cannot legally possess or purchase guns, no such prohibition applies in situations where only a temporary order is in place. In other words, the protections are lowest at precisely the point when women are in the greatest danger. The numbers demonstrate both the gender gap in the nature of violent crime and how deadly these loopholes may be. As to the gender gap: Women are less likely than men to be the victims of violent crime, but when they are, the perpetrator is far more likely to be someone they know. Between 2003 and 2012, one-third of female murder victims were killed by a male intimate partner, compared with 2.5 percent of men, according to figures analyzed by the Center for American Progress. More than half of these killings were committed with guns. The numbers are staggering: 6,410 deaths, slightly fewer than the total number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, according to a study by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, having a gun in the house increases the risk of intimate-partner homicide by eight times compared with households without guns — and 20-fold when there is a history of domestic violence. As to the loopholes: One study of female murder victims in 10 cities found that 76 percent of women murdered by a current or former intimate partner experienced stalking in the preceding year. The share of victims killed in dating situations is rising; nearly half of those killed by intimate partners in 2008 were murdered by boyfriends, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And in the 17 states that have expanded gun prohibitions to those subject to temporary restraining orders, overall intimate-partner homicides fell by nearly one-fifth. Nor do violent abusers simply turn to other methods when deprived of guns; according to Michigan State University criminologist April Zeoli, prohibiting those subject to domestic-violence restraining orders from having guns reduces not only firearm homicides but also murders by other means. Could confronting domestic violence be an exception to the general gridlock on gun violence? Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group co-founded by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after the Tucson shooting, has launched an effort to push for federal and state changes. In Congress, a proposal by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that would close the stalker and boyfriend gaps just attracted a Republican co-sponsor, Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk; a companion bill in the House, by Michigan Democrat Debbie Dingell, is also backed by a Republican, Robert Dold of Illinois. A separate proposal, by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), would also bar those subject to temporary restraining orders from having guns, subject to later review. Unsurprisingly, if sadly, the National Rifle Association opposes even the Klobuchar-Dingell bill, saying it would “turn disputes between family members and social acquaintances into lifetime firearm prohibitions” and “manipulates emotionally compelling issues such as ‘domestic violence’ and ‘stalking’ simply to cast as wide a net as possible for federal firearm prohibitions.” Tell that, please, to the father of a daughter murdered by her boyfriend. Tell it to the sister of a young woman killed by a man who plea-bargained his stalking offense down to a misdemeanor. Emotional manipulation? Please. At that, the NRA has no parallel. _Read more fromRuth Marcus’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook._ **Read more on this topic:** Fareed Zakaria: Change your gun laws, America The Post’s View: The argument against common-sense gun control crumbles E.J. Dionne Jr.: How America can free itself from guns Colbert I. King: I’m a gun owner. The NRA doesn’t speak for me. Charles Krauthammer: Another massacre, another charade

The Senate’s moment on guns

THREE MONTHS have passed since the killing of 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown, Conn., and already the sense of urgency for new gun-control legislation is starting to wane. Apoll by CBS News published March 26 shows that 47 percent of those questioned favor making gun laws more strict, down from 57 percent in December. Thirty-nine percent would keep laws as they are, compared to 30 percent after the shootings. This is all the more reason why all eyes will be on the Senate after it returns from an Easter recess. The Judiciary Committee has sent four proposals to the floor for the first big test of whether the Newtown slayings will lead Congress to enact serious additional restraints on gun violence. We were among those who hoped that the Newtown shootings — in which Adam Lanza mowed down the first-graders and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School with a semiautomatic assault rifle, a Bushmaster XM15-E2S — would prompt Congress to reimpose the ban on such weapons. They were designed for war and have no place in hunting, target practice or self-defense. The previous, decade-long ban expired in 2004, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has led the push for a replacement. But politics must be the art of the possible. Unfortunately, support for Feinstein’s bill is insufficient in the Senate to defeat a filibuster. Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has announced that her proposal will be excluded from the baseline legislation but will get a separate vote as an amendment. Reid’s logic is sound; at this juncture, tactics matter. It is important that the Senate pass legislation, rather than just make a point. At the same time, it is even more important that the Senate move to restrict high-capacity ammunition magazines. What makes a semiautomatic weapon dangerous is the ability to fire repeatedly without reloading. The danger is amplified by magazines that hold up to 30 bullets. If they are limited, say, to 10 bullets, forcing a shooter to change magazines could provide precious moments to save lives and stop the assailant. Mr. Lanza used 30-round magazines and got off at least 154 shots in five minutes. Unfortunately, Mr. Reid has not put a limit on high-capacity magazines in the baseline bill. We hope the Senate will have the wisdom to approve one as an amendment. The Senate also is expected to vote on making background checks universal for gun purchases, which would close a major loophole that has allowed private sales to be conducted in the shadows. Still at issue are the record-keeping requirements. Currently, background checks at a gun dealer lead to a paper record that the dealer preserves for 20 years. While this system is cumbersome, it is better than nothing, and it provides law enforcement investigators with a starting point for tracing a gun used in a crime. We believe private sales should include similar record-keeping requirements, consummated at a licensed dealer, with a paper record. The gun debate has been predictably intense, but now comes the moment of truth. We hope the Senate will not falter. ****

Gayle Trotter: ‘Guns make women safer’

Gayle Trotter of the conservative Independent Women's Forum testified that banning high-capacity magazines would hurt women. "Guns make women safer," Trotter argued, because they eliminate the advantage violent criminals might have in size and strength. "Using a firearm with a magazine holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, a woman would have a fighting chance even against multiple attackers."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "Scary-looking guns" also inspires more fear in an attacker, she said. "Young women are speaking out as to why AR-15's are their weapons of choice" -- they are lightweight and accurate. (A recent op-ed in the National Review made this case.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Trotter went on to argue that concealed-carry laws and armed guards deter crime, while gun-free zones and new gun regulations only create easy targets "where madmen can wreak havoc." She cited research finding that concealed-carry laws decrease crime. The Post's Factchecker has looked into that study and found that the conclusions are actually much murkier and disputed by other researchers.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Canadian gun enthusiasts and their truly bad timing

OTTAWA – The timing for Canadian gun enthusiasts couldn’t have been much worse. Just a few weeks ago, they presented an online petition to Canada’s Parliament urging the government to loosen its severe restrictions on the AR-15 rifle. More than 25,000 Canadians signed the petition from a group calling itself the Lawful Firearm Owners of Canada urging the government to take the AR-15 off the list of officially “restricted” firearms and allow it to be used for hunting. Right now, the AR-15 can generally only be used at gun ranges, and users face tight rules on transport of the weapon.    Incidents like the Orlando massacre are simply fueling prejudice against the rifle, he continued. “The media is doing a wonderful job at assassinating it. It’s just a gun.” “We have never had a single crime committed in Canada by an AR-15," he said. "The AR-15 didn’t create the problem any more than fertilizer and diesel fuel [used to make improvised bombs] create problems.” Canada makes it a lot harder than the United States for people to walk in off the street and buy a firearm. Gun shops are few and far between and the process for buying a gun takes time. And magazines for guns like the AR-15 are restricted to five bullets. To legally own a gun, you have to apply for a firearms license, and take a mandatory day-long safety course. If it’s a restricted weapon like an AR-15 you have to take a second course. The RCMP advises on its website that any applicant has to anticipate a 45-day wait for an application to be processed, which includes a mandatory 28-day holding period. And there are background checks. Gun lovers in Canada had considerable political sway under the previous government led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which in 2012 abolished a mandatory long-gun registry covering all rifles and shotguns. The registry was deeply unpopular in rural areas.  As for the AR-15s, some politicians don’t think the rules are strict enough. Elizabeth May, leader of Canada’s Green Party, expressed consternation that the AR-15 is legal in any form. “It’s horrific that such weapons exist.”

Eugene Robinson: Harry Reid should have called for an assault-weapons vote

Shame on Harry Reid for killing any prospect of an assault weapons ban. I understand why he did it, but that doesn’t make it right. In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama spoke with fiery eloquence about the cost of gun violence in shattered lives. “They deserve a vote,” the president said of the victims, challenging Congress to take a stand on reasonable legislation to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of killers. Reid obviously disagrees. The Senate majority leader decided Tuesday to abandon a proposal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would have banned the sale of some military-style firearms — weapons designed not for sport or self-defense but for killing enemy soldiers in battle. The Nevada Democrat said he was dropping the measure — without a vote — because it would surely fail. “I’m not going to try to put something on the floor that won’t succeed,” Reid said. “I want something that will succeed. I think the worst of all worlds would be to bring something to the floor and it dies there.” He’s wrong. The worst way to respond to the shocking massacre in Newtown, Conn., would be to let political self-interest stand in the way of meaningful action. The parents of those 20 slain children deserve a vote on the assault weapons ban. The families of the 30,000 Americans who will be killed by gunfire this year deserve a vote. Bringing the measure to the floor of both the Senate and the House is the least Congress can do. We all know what’s happening here. Senate Democrats face a tough battle next year to hold on to their slim majority. Going on record in support of legislation that the gun lobby so vehemently opposes could cost some vulnerable incumbents their seats — and potentially make Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) the majority leader. Reid said he could muster barely 40 votes for Feinstein’s weapons ban. Even if all 53 members of the Democratic caucus supported it, the measure would still fall short of the 60 votes needed to break an anticipated GOP filibuster. And in the event that the measure somehow made it out of the Senate, it would be dead on arrival in the House. So why should Senate Democrats go out on a limb for something that’s so unlikely ever to become law? The answer isn’t political, it’s moral. The answer is that this is a moment not to do the expedient thing but instead to do the right thing. It is true that prospects are brighter for other proposals on gun violence. The most important is expanding and toughening the current system of background checks for gun buyers. Despite the National Rifle Association’s opposition, sentiment for universal background checks — covering not just dealers but also ostensibly “private” sales at gun shows — seems close to a consensus. I don’t mean to downplay the significance of background checks, which could save lives by keeping guns out of the wrong hands. But let’s not fool ourselves: The biggest factor in gun violence is the gun. Until we begin to deal with the weapons themselves, we are working at the margins. Despite what the NRA wants us to believe, guns do kill people. Yes, mental health is a serious issue. Yes, the violence in movies and video games is shocking. But these other factors do not begin to explain why there is so much more gun violence in the United States than in other industrialized countries. Surely there are disturbed young men in Britain who are watching violent movies or playing violent video games at this very moment — just like their American counterparts. Yet the U.S. death rate from gun violence is 40 times higher than the British rate. Why? What could make such a huge difference? The biggest factor has to be that British law makes it hard to buy a gun and U.S. law makes it easy. Don’t blame the Constitution; even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in an opinion striking down the District’s handgun ban, noted that the right to keep and bear arms is not absolute. Blame Congress for not imposing reasonable controls on instruments of death that too often turn petty arguments into tragedies — and that allow disturbed individuals to turn their most warped fantasies into reality. Reid and his colleagues in the Senate are experts in political arithmetic. I’d love to hear them explain their calculations to the parents of Newtown. **Read more on Opinions:** Jonathan Capehart: Assault weapons ban get the Hook Eugene Robinson: A grieving father’s plea for an assault weapons ban Jason Ross: To save lives, shrink gun magazines The Post’s View: Bullet overkill

Menaced by an absolutist reading of the Second Amendment

The National Rifle Association’s apologists already are offering the usual alternatives to stricter gun controls, as stated by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.): “We need to look at what drives a crazy person to do these kinds of actions and make sure that we’re enforcing the laws that are currently on the books” [“Cries for sterner laws, as well as those for caution, ring out anew,” Dec. 15]. But the fact is that the crazed and disturbed will always walk among us. What we must do is strive to deny them the ability to engage in mass murder. It is in this sense that our current absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment is wrong. If the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to have automatic weapons, then surely it gives them the right to have rocket-propelled grenades, too. The more rational interpretation is that the Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms within the context of a real, functioning society. The idea that the Framers, who could not have even conceived of a semiautomatic pistol or a .223-caliber assault rifle, intended these weapons to be available to all is absurd. ****Michael L. Goldberg,** Arlington**

Legal decision casts doubt on Maryland’s assault weapons ban

A federal appeals court on Thursday cast doubt on the legality of Maryland’s 2013 ban on semiautomatic high-capacity assault weapons that passed after the mass shootings at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. The 2-to-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sends the gun-control law back to a lower court for review, but allows the existing ban to remain in place. Chief Judge William B. Traxler Jr., writing for the majority, found that the Maryland law “significantly burdens the exercise of the right to arm oneself at home” and should have been analyzed using a more stringent legal standard. The law bans more than 45 types of assault weapons in addition to high-capacity magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Proponents said such weapons are disproportionately used in acts of mass violence and rarely for self-defense. A federal law banning assault weapons expired in 2004, but six other states, including California, Massachusetts and New York, have similar bans. The Maryland law was challenged by a group of gun-store owners and individuals who said the prohibited firearms are not military weapons and are used for lawful purposes such as self-defense, target practice and hunting. Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D), who helped pass the law as a state senator, said Thursday that the court majority got it wrong. “I think it’s just common sense that the Second Amendment does not give people a right to own military-style assault weapons,” he said. In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Robert B. King wrote: “Let’s be real: The assault weapons banned by Maryland’s [law] are exceptionally lethal weapons of war” and as such, he said, not necessarily protected by the Second Amendment. King, a Bill Clinton appointee, noted that the panel’s ruling is at odds with several other federal appellate courts that have considered similar bans, including the D.C. Circuit. In 2011, the D.C. Circuit upheld the city’s prohibition on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. “To put it mildly, it troubles me that, by imprudently and unnecessarily breaking from our sister courts of appeals . . . we are impeding Maryland’s and others’ reasonable efforts to prevent the next Newtown,” King wrote, listing other sites of recent mass shootings that concluded with San Bernardino, Calif. Traxler, also a Clinton appointee, and Judge G. Steven Agee, an appointee of George W. Bush, acknowledged in their opinion the split with the other courts, saying, “We are not a rubber stamp.” In an unusually pointed response to King, the judges also chastised their colleague for seeming to infer “that we will bear some responsibility for future mass shootings. In our view inferences of this nature have no place in judicial opinions and we will not respond beyond noting this.” Specifically, the court’s opinion Thursday directs U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake, who sits in Baltimore, to apply a strict standard of legal review when considering the government’s interest in protecting public safety. Chris Cox, the executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement Thursday that the “highest level of judicial scrutiny should apply when governments try to restrict our Second Amendment freedoms.” Gov. Larry Hogan (R) also opposed the ban when it passed the Maryland legislature, but has said he now accepts it as state law. Hogan’s spokesman declined to comment Thursday. Frosh said the state would either ask for a rehearing of the case by the full 4th Circuit or seek review from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has so far declined to take up the question of whether cities and states can prohibit these types of weapons after its landmark 2008 decision that declared an individual right to keep a firearm in the home.

Simple choices on gun safety

When it comes to the dangerous and often deadly intersection of guns and domestic violence, the question is very simple: Do you stand with the victims of domestic violence, or do you stand with domestic abusers? Put another way, do you think survivors of domestic abuse deserve even the most basic protections, or do you think their abusers should be armed? This shouldn’t be a hard question to answer. It shouldn’t be a hard stand to take. But this year, Virginia’s legislature failed to get even this simple question right in a vote that is indicative of its attitude toward gun safety legislation and even the most modest measures to prevent gun violence. In 2014, 112 men, women, boys and girls were killed by a family member or intimate partner in Virginia. That accounts for nearly one-third of all homicides in Virginia last year. Sixty-four were killed with a firearm. In many cases, these innocent victims were killed by known abusers who had been charged with crimes. Because of lax laws and deadly loopholes in Virginia, these dangerous individuals got their hands on a gun and used it to take an innocent life. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are things we can and must do right now to protect survivors of domestic abuse and all Virginians from gun violence. Last year, my team and I worked with Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), public safety advocates and Democratic legislators to craft legislation to keep guns out of the hands of abusers. The Republican-controlled Senate Courts Committee defeated the bill until a justified uproar  forced it to reconsider , pass it and shuffle it off to a different committee to be defeated more quietly. Passing that bill should have been simple. In the upcoming legislative session, our delegates and senators will have another chance to get that vote right and to finally show Virginians they care about preventing gun violence. In fact, bills will be introduced to enact common-sense measures, supported by Virginians of all political persuasions from every corner of the state, to make our communities safer and to reduce the threat of gun violence. These common-sense measures would require background checks for all gun purchases and reinstate former governor L. Douglas Wilder’s (D) one-handgun-per-month law, a landmark achievement to reduce the flood of handguns into our communities that was recklessly repealed in 2012. These measures won’t affect law-abiding gun owners in the least. They won’t burden anyone or infringe on anyone’s rights. They will simply make it harder for criminals and dangerous individuals to access this means to kill. Too many Virginians already know personally the cost of continued inaction on gun violence. Every Virginian grieved with 32 families and a community after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. Everyone in the commonwealth grieved with the Parkers, the Wards and the Gardners after the recent tragedy at Smith Mountain Lake. And unfortunately, hundreds more families across the commonwealth have had to find a way to carry on without someone they loved. Their names may not be known to us, but every person lost to gun violence was someone’s son or daughter or father or mother. We can’t continue as though there is nothing we can do. We can’t pretend that gun violence is some natural phenomenon we are powerless to stop. McAuliffe and I aren’t waiting for the next tragedy. Under his  Executive Order 50, we are moving forward with initiatives to protect Virginians from gun violence by strictly enforcing existing laws against illegal sales and purchases of guns and keeping guns out of sensitive state buildings where they don’t belong. We’re going to do all we can through executive action, but of course, these initiatives are no substitute for the progress we could make through legislation. In the upcoming legislative session, our lawmakers will have a chance to say whether 4,300 gun crimes in the past year and 5,200 gun deaths in the commonwealth over the past five years are enough. Virginians are demanding it, and it’s time our voices are heard. **Read more about this issue:** Fareed Zakaria: Change your gun laws, America Dana Milbank: After Navy Yard shooting, RIP for gun control The Post’s View: The arguments against common-sense gun control crumbles Dana Milbank: After mall shooting, no closer to gun control reform Colbert I. King: I’m a gun owner. The NRA doesn’t speak for me.

The numbers back up Mr. Clinton

Glenn Kessler made a good case in his Jan. 13 Fact Checker column “Clinton’s gun remark is off the mark,” but the data he presented in a section labeled “Shootings before, during and after assault ban” bring out a fact consistent with Bill Clinton’s point: Gun violence has risen sharply in the United States since the ban on assault weapons expired in 2004. Those data show that during the 10 years of the ban there were 16 mass shootings (an annual average of 1.6 shootings), while in the eight succeeding years there have been 27 (3.4 per year). Moreover, two pages after Mr. Kessler’s column in the Jan. 13 newspaper, The Post reported, “High-capacity magazines saw drop during ban, data indicate.” That article went on to show that the drop was followed by a sharp rise after the federal ban of such magazines lapsed. These magazines have been used in a number of mass killings since the ban expired. ****Edward M. Cohen,** Arlington**

The last assault-weapons ban didn’t work. Will the new one be different?

On Thursday, lawmakers in Congress formally unveiled the "Assault Weapons Ban of 2013." The proposed bill (pdf) would reinstate the ban on certain semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines that was in effect from 1994 to 2004, along with some extra tweaks.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Those extra tweaks deserve a closer look. Many experts have argued that the previous assault-weapons ban was fairly easily circumvented — in part because it's difficult to define what an “assault weapon” actually is, and in part because there were already millions of such weapons in circulation. A University of Pennsylvania study concluded that these loopholes undermined the 1994 law's effectiveness. (That study also found that the law appeared to have little effect on gun violence, not least because assault weapons were used in just a small portion of gun crimes.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University So what's different about the new proposed assault-weapons ban? A couple of big things: **— The new ban would cover more firearm models than the 1994 ban did.** Alex Pappas of the Daily Caller screen-grabbed a list of all the specific firearm models that would be prohibited under the new ban — 157 in all:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University *[WSU]: Wayne State University This list is more detailed than the previous assault-weapons ban, which focused on 18 specific firearms models. Yet one of the big problems with the 1994 law was that it was often relatively easy for gun manufacturers to come up with similar types of guns that weren't on the list of explicitly barred firearms. Could that happen again? That's a key question. **— The new bill broadens the definition of "assault weapon" slightly.** In addition to the specific firearm models banned above, the new bill will also prohibit any semiautomatic rifles, handguns or shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and "have one or more military characteristics" (such as folding stocks or pistol grips for rifles, or threaded barrels). The same goes for rifles or handguns with fixed magazines that can accept more than 10 rounds.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This is a slight change from the 1994 ban, which prohibited any semiautomatics with detachable magazines and _two_ or more "military characteristics." Supporters are hoping that this small tweak will make it marginally more difficult for gun manufacturers to work around the law.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "One criticism of the '94 law was that it was a two-characteristic test that defined [an assault weapon]," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein at a news conference today, according to Mother Jones. "And that was too easy to work around. Manufacturers could simply remove one of the characteristics, and the firearm was legal. The bill we are introducing today will make it much more difficult to work around by moving a one-characteristic test."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **— The new ban would tighten regulations on existing assault-weapons and high-capacity magazines.** One of the reasons the 1994 ban had such a limited reach was that it grandfathered in roughly 1.5 million assault weapons and 24 million high-capacity magazines that were already in private hands. In fact, gun manufacturers actually boosted production of weapons and magazines in the months before the ban took effect. As a result, there were plenty of assault weapons already in circulation.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The new assault weapons ban would still have an exemption for assault weapons that are already lawfully owned — "No weapon is taken from anyone," Feinstein said. But the bill would require background checks for the sale or transfer of any assault weapons that are grandfathered in. The bill would also forbid the sale or transfer of high-capacity magazines that were owned before the ban. These restrictions could prove difficult to enforce in practice — after all, there's no national gun registry tracking who owns what weapon. To that end, the bill has a provision requiring all assault weapons and high-capacity magazines produced before the ban takes effect to be engraved with serial numbers and date of manufacture. **— The bill would also require current assault-weapons owners to "safely store their firearms."** This is another change from the 1994 law, though it's not clear how this would be enforced.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **— States and localities could conduct "voluntary buy-back programs."** The bill would allow localities to use federal grants for voluntary buy-back programs for grandfathered assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **— The new ban wouldn't sunset after 10 years.** This is arguably the biggest change. Some gun-control advocates have argued that the 1994 assault- weapons ban might have been more effective if it hadn't been allowed to lapse. In his big study (pdf) of the law, the University of Pennsylvania's Christopher Koper argued that the effects of any ban would be bound to only occur gradually, in part because so many currently-owned weapons and magazines were exempted.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This time around, Feinstein said she's designing the ban to be permanent, rather than letting it expire after a decade. "The purpose of this bill is to dry up the supply of these weapons over time," she said. "Therefore there is no sunset on this bill."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Further reading:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University \--A full summary (pdf) of the bill.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University \--Everything you need to know about the 1994 assault-weapons ban    *[WSU]: Wayne State University \--The assault-weapons ban is only one aspect of Obama's proposals to reduce gun violence. He's also pushed things like universal background checks and giving law enforcement more power to trace guns. See here for the full list.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

‘Military-grade’ is a meaningless description of firearms

In his May 1 Local Opinions essay, “I don’t want your military-grade weapons in my neighborhood. So sue me,” Ryan Albert referred to “military-grade” weapons. This means nothing more than a “military-grade” boot. That a firearm outwardly resembles a weapon used by our military does not mean it functions the same way. You can put a Corvette body on a Volkswagen, but it won’t perform like a Corvette. Mr. Albert singled out the AK-47 and AR-15 firearms and wrote that they should be owned only by military personnel and police forces. Police firearms are no more dangerous than semiautomatic shotguns used for hunting. Short-barreled rifles, suppressors and select-fire firearms are highly regulated by the National Firearms Act. Intelligent and productive discussions on private ownership of firearms should be based on facts, not emotional reactions. ****Jim Rush** , Gaithersburg**

The San Bernardino shooting

Regarding the Dec. 3 front-page article “14 slain at California office party”: Some say the solution to mass shootings, such as the one in San Bernardino, Calif., on Wednesday, is to arm more people. That is not the way I want to live. I don’t want to have to don a gun along with my wallet, car keys and cellphone. I don’t want to be prepared for a shootout every time I go to a restaurant, theater or mall. I don’t want the expenses of guns, ammunition and firing-range practice. I don’t want to kill or maim anybody. I want people who would harm others to be denied access to guns so that I can enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” without having to even think about guns, much less defend myself from them. I think the great majority of Americans agree. ****Charles Holliman** , Alexandria** **California already has universal background checks** , magazine limits and an “assault weapons” ban — basically, everything on the gun-control wish list. The reason these laws didn’t prevent Wednesday’s shooting is because gun control does not stop evil. When are we finally going to realize this and address the cause of the problem instead of using tragedies to advance a liberal political agenda? ****Michael A. Garcia** , Winchester** **Why should terrorists bother** killing innocent Americans when the American people are busy doing that for them? After the latest incident, Americans will declare shock and horror and as usual shed crocodile tears and gnash their teeth, but in the end the gun lobby will prevail. ****Alan Huckerby** , Chantilly**

Clinton calls for a new ban on assault weapons, 12 years after the last one expired

In September 2004, as the expiration date approached for the federal assault weapons ban, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) called on Congress to renew it. As a junior senator, he'd supported the measure; as a presidential candidate, he knew that the Republican majority in the Senate was going to let it die. There was little appetite for a fresh debate on gun rights, but for a few days, Kerry tried to have one, arguing that the ban could be saved if the president showed leadership.   The 1994-2004 ban expired, and in 2008 and 2012, there was no similar campaign by Democrats to promote an assault weapons ban. But in interviews since the Orlando shootings, Hillary Clinton has called for the ban to return, and linked the easy availability of semiautomatic weapons to terrorism. "We’ve got to keep weapons of war off our streets, as well as blocking suspected terrorists from buying guns," the presumed Democratic presidential nominee said Monday on "CBS This Morning."  Increasingly, Democrats wonder whether the threat of terrorism will change that. "The fears have certainly been borne out," said Bob Shrum, Kerry's 2004 campaign strategist. "The issues are more salient today than they were then, because the focus then was on dangers overseas. You had President Bush saying, 'We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here.' You don't hear that anymore." Kerry, Shrum said, did not start talking about assault weapons because it polled well. "We had no expectation that it was politically powerful," he said. "It’s more powerful now because we have a combination of domestic terrorism and an ability to go into any gun show and buy an AR-15."

Grassley: ‘The problem is greater than guns’

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he welcomes his committee’s discussion of what to do after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. But he made clear: "The problem is greater than guns alone."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Seeking to steer the debate beyond recent proposals on gun control, Grassley noted that society as a whole is more corrosive, that the government should do more to bolster mental health programs and that video game manufacturers may also hold some blame.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "I share Vice President Biden’s disbelief of manufacturer denials that these games have no effect on real-world violence," Grassley said. He was referring to recent White House meetings the vice president had with entertainment executives, who pushed back against suggestions that violent video games played a role in inspiring recent shootings. "Above all, we should not rush to pass legislation that will not reduce mass killings," Grassley added. "Banning guns based on their appearance does not make sense. The 1994 assault weapons ban did not stop Columbine. The Justice Department found the ban ineffective. Scholars have indicated that refining or expanding such legislation will not cut gun violence." Grassley was referring to Clinton-era Department of Justice studies that found that the 1994 assault weapon ban had not helped drive down the rate of violent crime – a point disputed by congressional Democrats. Grassley also expressed skepticism of proposals to limit the size of ammunition clips, noting that any such proposals "can be circumvented by carrying multiple guns, as many killers have done." "We hear that no one needs to carry larger magazines than those that hunters use to shoot deer,” Grassley added. "But an attacking criminal, unlike a deer, shoots back." Despite his concerns with those proposals, Grassley said he believes there is room for agreement on passing laws that would make gun trafficking a federal crime. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) has proposed such legislation and Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) unveiled a similar bill Wednesday – the first bipartisan proposal addressing gun violence introduced since the Newtown shootings.

I’m glad Mr. McConnell is ‘open’ to suggestions on guns

Regarding the June 15 news article “McConnell: GOP ‘open’ to denying terrorists guns”: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, “Nobody wants terrorists to have firearms,” and that he and other Republicans were “open to serious suggestions from the experts as to what we might be able to do to be helpful.” I guess I’m one of those “experts.” I’m a former Marine, trained to use the military version of the assault weapons favored by recent terrorist shooters, and I’ve been involved in gun-policy debates since I served on the House Judiciary Committee more than 30 years ago, when I represented Maryland as a Democrat in the House. I urge Mr. McConnell and his colleagues to study what works in countries that have high rates of gun ownership but low rates of gun violence. Canada is a good example. Hunting is popular there, and many people own handguns as well as rifles. But the rate of gun violence is low, and mass shootings are very rare. Military-style assault weapons are essentially banned in Canada, and everyone seeking to buy a gun is subject to a background check that includes interviews with people who know the applicant. We don’t have to accept this carnage. There are common-sense steps we can take, and it’s encouraging that Mr. McConnell is “open” to them. ****Michael D. Barnes** , Chevy Chase** The writer is a former president of the Brady   Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Assault weapons are legal and safe

In his Jan. 18 op-ed column, “The ‘impossible’ is now within reach,” Eugene Robinson wrote: “Guns don’t have rights; citizens do.” This is both precisely the point and trying to have it both ways. As the legal owner of a so-called assault weapon, I have every right under the Second Amendment to that weapon as long as I use it legally and responsibly. Mr. Robinson quoted from Justice Antonin Scalia’s mention in _D.C. v. Heller_ of “dangerous and unusual” weapons, but Justice Scalia was not referring to assault weapons, which are neither dangerous nor unusual: There are millions of such weapons in this country, making them common, and as long as they are responsibly handled, they are no more dangerous than any other firearm. The phrases “gun violence” and “gun rights” are used to shift the focus and responsibility from the shooter to the gun itself. Guns are inanimate objects, capable only of doing what the shooter wishes. You can’t state on one hand that guns don’t have rights and on the other claim they are responsible for violence. Only people are responsible for violence. I do not understand why I should have my rights abridged because of the criminal actions of a disturbed individual in Newtown, Conn. ****Brett Weeks** , Gambrills**

Caving under NRA fire

THE BUREAU of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was set to ban armor- piercing 5.56mm “green-tip” bullets. Then the letters started coming in — more than 80,000 comments in total, mostly hostile to the agency’s proposal. One stung most of all: A dispatch signed by 236 members of Congress blasted ATF’s plan as “untenable” and “preposterous.” The bureau announced Tuesday that it is putting its proposal on hold, before the public comment period even closes. The National Rifle Association declared victory and warned that “every gun owner in America needs to understand Barack Obama’s hatred of the Second Amendment has not changed.” What’s “untenable” and “preposterous” about this episode is the federal government’s paralysis in the face of the NRA, which construes nearly every potential gun regulation, no matter how sensible, as an intolerable violation of the Constitution. Though the NRA accused Mr. Obama of trying “to impose his political agenda through executive fiat,” it was Congress that decided, in 1986, to ban ammunition that criminals could use to pierce the body armor worn by police. Today’s dispute concerns how wide a loophole Congress wrote into the law when it also decided at that time to permit the continued sale of ammunition primarily intended for sporting purposes. The green-tip ammunition has been sold under that exception because it couldn’t be used in handguns. Until recently, that is: A handgun for sale can fire green-tip bullets — legal, armor-piercing ammunition that can be loaded into a concealed weapon and fired at police officers. If Congress’s 1986 armor-piercing bullet ban restricts the sale of anything, ATF pointed out in its recent policy proposal, ammunition that meets those criteria shouldn’t be allowed on the market. ATF’s critics in Congress point out that the bullets have become popular for use in semiautomatic AR-15 rifles, which aren’t typically found at crime scenes. (Never mind that just such a gun was used in the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn.) Even if that weren’t so, the bullets should be off the market now that they pose precisely the sort of threat to police that Congress legislated against in 1986. Taking them off the market would not be a stealth ban on AR-15 rifles. The rifles can use other types of bullets. ATF hasn’t withdrawn its proposal. It says it needs more time to evaluate the public comments that it has received and to study some substantive issues raised in them. The agency, however, won’t specify what those issues are. Once it processes the blowback, it should defend its sensible position. The proposed ban on certain armor-piercing bullets won’t end gun violence; background checks are more important. It’s not even the important gun-related issue on the table at the moment; significant gun legislation is pending in several states. But it is the correct and sensible interpretation of the law. That should be sufficient. **Read more on this issue:** The Post’s View: Virginia Republicans dismiss gun safety bills The Post’s View: Gun-happy Ga. lawmakers put public safety at risk John McCarthy and Glenn F. Ivey: The path forward on gun violence The Post’s View: A year after Newtown, gun control has moved to the states

Gun control in the United States

Julia Baird’s Aug. 25 op-ed, on the murder of Christopher Lane in Oklahoma [“Die by the gun”], was revealing. Ms. Baird reported that Australians are shocked by the death and that one of their politicians blames the National Rifle Association for blocking background checks at gun shows. She also cited a few studies that claim Australian gun legislation has reduced firearms murders but none that claim the opposite. Essentially, she reduced an atrocity to another tired debate on gun control. Let’s look at the facts. Background checks at gun shows? The alleged shooter in Oklahoma was 15 years old; his accomplices were 16 and 17. No state permits the sale of firearms to minors. The alleged killers, self-identified thugs, took pictures of themselves with a hunting rifle and a semiautomatic pistol. “Assault” weapons? Not involved. High-capacity magazines? No. Apparently the crime was committed with a .22 revolver. Revolvers do not use magazines, and their capacity typically runs from five or six cartridges to as many as nine for smaller-caliber weapons such as a .22. In short, none of the favored nostrums of the anti-gun crowd was relevant to this crime. Thugs of any age can obtain and use firearms despite gun- control legislation. It may come as news to some advocates, but lawbreakers break laws, including those covering guns. ****J.L. Smith** , Bethesda** ● Australian Julia Baird explained that restrictions placed on semiautomatic weapons in her homeland, prompted by a 1996 massacre of 35 people, have led to a gun homicide rate in Australia that is about 3 percent of our own. The Australian experience, she suggested, amply justifies the bewilderment Down Under over why more is not done here to stop horrendous shootings, such as that of her countryman Christopher Lane. Ms. Baird was preaching to two audiences: One is the choir, a majority of the populace that needs no convincing that Newtown, Conn., and similar incidents go hand-in-hand with the proliferation of semiautomatic weapons; the other, as post-Newtown discourse makes clear, is a minority whose wishes and economic interests are protected and insulated from change by elected officials driven by electoral fear and utterly deaf to rational consideration of the lesson Ms. Baird thoughtfully detailed for us. ****David W. Brown** , Alexandria**

The role of the mental-health system in preventing tragedy

We are former mental-health therapists who take exception to the notion that the sole solution to gun violence is to put more money into mental-health services. Laws now allow hospitalization of people who admit to homicidal ideation. If any of the mass shooters had done so, the system would have worked. Very few ever have. Our mental-health system is based as much on the notion of individual rights as our gun laws are. No one can be forced into treatment or forced to take medication, except in very limited circumstances. So, unless they self-identify and seek treatment, and admit to having homicidal ideation as well as to having a plan and the means to carry it out, how would these potential shooters be identified? Most of them are loners, so it’s unlikely others would know of the plan. Blaming mental illness for every mass killing and saying the solution is more mental-health services is facile. Guns don’t kill people, but people with guns do, and figuring out who they are ahead of time would be tremendously difficult, even with more money in the mental-health system. ****Bob and Becky Hornyak** , Dumfries**

Logic wins out on a Maryland gun law

WHEN THE Supreme Court declared in 2008 that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own guns, the justices were careful to assure that various gun control measures could still pass constitutional muster. For example, the court wrote that “weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned.” Since then, appeals courts have had to sort out how that logic applies to specific state-level gun laws. The latest is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which considered a challenge to Maryland’s restrictions on military-style rifles — often referred to as assault rifles — and high- capacity magazines. The appeals court rightly found that Maryland’s law is perfectly reasonable — and that the alternative logic dissenters favored is exceptionally dangerous. For all of the ink the court spilled, its decision centered on a few basic principles. The rifles and magazines that Maryland restricted are military- grade, bear features that make them exceptionally deadly and are unnecessary for self-defense. The court noted that “large-capacity magazines enable shooters to inflict mass casualties while depriving victims and law enforcement officers of opportunities to escape or overwhelm the shooters while they reload their weapons.” Good guys with large magazines also may fire many more shots than necessary, endangering bystanders. Military-style rifles, meanwhile, bear a combination of features that increase their lethality: They fire heavy ammunition; they bear flash suppressors that can conceal a shooter’s location; they can accept grenade launchers, night sights and bayonets. Throughout, the court could point to a variety of specific examples of mass shootings, from Newtown to San Bernardino to Virginia Tech to Orlando, in which the devices Maryland’s law regulates were used. More children might have escaped Sandy Hook Elementary School’s classrooms, for example, if the shooter did not have a 30-round magazine. That the magazine was not even larger than that — some can hold up to 100 rounds — may have saved the lives of nine children who escaped as the gunman reloaded. Given the Supreme Court’s plain language about M-16s, it is no stretch of logic to find that the Second Amendment does not protect owning these military-style weapons and accoutrements, or that Maryland had an interest in restricting them. The court’s dissenters argued that military-style rifles and large-capacity magazines are popular tools for self-defense and other legal activities, and as such the government has practically no latitude to restrict ownership of them — or, in effect, to do much of anything else in the realm of gun control. This is illogical; an extremely lethal weapon may be popular, but that does not make it constitutionally protected. Moreover, “the weapons that Maryland sought to regulate here are emphatically not defensive in nature,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III responded in a concurring opinion. “If this statute is struck down, it is difficult to see what class of non-automatic firearms could ever be regulated. If these weapons are outside the legislative compass, then virtually all weapons will be.” Neither the majority on the 4th Circuit — nor a reasonable reading of the Constitution — demands that extreme result. **Read more here:** Eugene Robinson: Assault weapons must be banned in America The Post’s View: Gun violence in America is out of control David Ignatius: The one clear lesson of San Bernardino: Block access to the deadliest weaponry Fareed Zakaria: Change your gun laws, America

Robert A. Levy on gun rights after Newtown shooting

_Robert A. Levy was a driving force behind the landmark 2008 case_ District of Columbia v. Heller, _in which the Supreme Court struck down the District’s gun laws and recognized an individual right to keep and bear arms. Not only was he one of the lawyers on the case, but he also personally funded the litigation. Levy, who is also chairman of the board of the D.C.-based Cato Institute, spoke with Style’s Eva Rodriguez on Thursday. What does the defender of gun rights think of the talk about new gun regulations in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., shootings? You might be surprised. Below are edited excerpts._ I can imagine a shop owner in the midst of a riot and he says he needs multiple rounds to protect his store and his family. I can also imagine the multi-victim killings like we had in Newtown, where there’s a reasonable argument that innocent lives might have been saved if these magazines had been banned and if the ban had been effective. So I think if government can show . . . the benefits of banning high-capacity magazines, then I have no doubt that such a ban would survive a court challenge. There are three problems that occur to me. One is that homemade magazines are easy to assemble; it’s just a box with a spring. The second is there is not any effective way to confiscate maybe 25 million high-capacity magazines that are now in circulation. And third, a significant number of existing firearms are configured for 12- to 19-round magazines. So I think a ban on any size of less than 20 rounds would meet with great, great resistance. All of that said, I don’t share the NRA’s view that we shouldn’t consider a ban on high-capacity magazines. I think a ban on magazines of 20 rounds and above seems to me to be reasonable. We had an assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004. The New York Times, after the ban expired, reported that despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns, expiration of the assault weapons ban has not set off a sustained surge in sales or caused any noticeable increase in gun crime. There are, of course, millions of these so-called assault weapons, and they’re used by millions of Americans for all sorts of things, including hunting, self-defense, target shooting, even the Olympics. Criminals use handguns because assault weapons are expensive and they’re difficult to conceal. Now, [the Supreme Court] said that the Second Amendment would likely pose no barrier to outlawing weapons that are not in common use and are especially dangerous. And we have proof of that because fully automated weapons, like machine guns, have been essentially banned since 1934. I don’t consider myself an expert on the technical features of firearms, and so I’m not prepared to say exactly which weapons would go on the list and which shouldn’t, but I think experts should be able to come up with a pretty good list — obviously not needed for self-defense, obviously dangerous, not in common use. And that would be the new assault weapons ban. The NRA and the gun lobby had argued that each new gun regulation was a step down this slippery slope, leading ultimately to confiscation. . . . That clearly is what some radicals among gun controllers had in mind. But this is a new environment now. I think [the Supreme Court’s decisions] have taken the slippery slope argument pretty much off the table because [the court] has now established — for the first time ever — some hard-and-fast rules. There’s some wiggle room in those rules, to be sure. But at least we do know now that there’s an individual right to defend yourself, and a wholesale ban on a type of weapon that does have self-defense utility and that is in common use is not going to be permitted by the Supreme Court. Criminals don’t register firearms. I mean, what the heck? Why would a guy who’s not deterred by a law against murder be deterred by a law that says he has to register a firearm? It’s only law-abiding citizens who register weapons, so I’m pretty skeptical about the value of registration. On the other hand, I’m not adamant about resisting it. Again, I think the burden is on government to come up with some evidence [that it improves public safety], and so far they haven’t met that burden. Survey data suggest that less than 2 percent of guns used by criminals are bought at gun shows and flea markets, and that includes the sales through [federally] licensed dealers at gun shows. The public doesn’t really realize this, but . . . not all sales at gun shows escape background checks. It’s only private sales. If I go to a gun show and sell my weapon to you, then there’s no background check. But if a dealer sells a weapon to you at a gun show, then the same background check has to occur that occurs if he sells it out of a store. And any dealers — retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers — have to be federally licensed. . . . If technology facilitated truly speedy background checks — and by that I mean 24 hours max — and if there was some reasonable assurance that privacy rights weren’t being violated, then I’d have no objection to extending [background checks] to cover private sales at gun shows. It’s not because I’m convinced that they would do any good. But I think it would get us past this particular debate and let us address options that might be more effective, including earlier detection and treatment of mental illness and, frankly, the NRA’s proposal, which I think is a good idea, for armed guards at school. The one thing that’s pretty clear is that the existing [background information database] is not being provided the information it needs to keep the weapons away from mentally deranged people. Whether that information is so intrusive that it does create civil liberties problems I’m not prepared to say, because I don’t know enough about the subject. But I add, though, that I do think this is not a legitimate function of the federal government. I think this is part of a state’s police power, which includes protecting residents against rights-violating activities, such as the criminal use of firearms.

Restricting gun access could have lessened bloodshed

On Dec. 15, the same day The Post reported on the school massacre in Connecticut, it carried this brief item in The World Digest: In central China, a knife-wielding man injured 22 children and one adult at a primary school. The attacker in Connecticut killed 20 children and six adults. Why the difference between 23 wounded and 26 killed? The attacker in China had a knife; the attacker in Connnecticut had several guns and lots of bullets. Controlling access to guns is not the only solution to such massacres, but it is one of several essential steps to reduce the killing. ****Ted Knap,** McLean**

Gun rights? Try gun pride: GOP candidates display firearms machismo

JOHNSTON, Iowa — Ted Cruz strode Friday into a shooting range here, where assault rifles and handguns were displayed on the walls and boxes of ammunition were stacked up for sale, to deliver tough talk following this week’s massacre in California. “You don’t stop bad guys by taking away our guns. You stop bad guys by using our guns,” Cruz thundered to a roomful of Second Amendment activists. The Republican senator from Texas vowed that after he is elected president, any “lunatic” or “jihadist” who attempts to harm innocent Americans will “encounter the business end of firearms.” There was a time when politicians professed their enthusiasm for gun rights by donning camouflage and hunting pheasants. Now, Republican presidential hopefuls campaign in active shooting ranges. They invite the media to watch them fire assault rifles or demolish the tax code with an AR-15. Or, as Cruz did in August, they wrap strips of raw bacon around the barrel of a machine gun to cook them with the heat of gunfire. “Machine-gun bacon,” Cruz said in a video, taking a piece of meat off the gun to taste it. “Ha-ha, ha-ha.” Republican politics have hardened from gun rights to gun pride, as candidates embrace and show off the more militaristic features of weaponry. “If you’re a Republican candidate these days and can’t handle a firearm, all you can run for is the border,” said Mark McKinnon, a veteran GOP media strategist. “Republicans are all about being tough on crime, tough on terrorism and just plain tough.” But the flashy displays of machismo come at a time of heightened anxiety for many Americans because the weapons displayed at such events are often the same or similar to the types of guns being used for mass murder with greater frequency, such as the recent shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., and Colorado Springs. Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, called the Republican field’s eagerness to campaign at shooting ranges and other firearms facilities “shameful” and “disturbing.” Gross said the candidates “are all just trying to outdo each other to try and demonstrate that this is a debate over constitutional rights rather than what it is, which is a debate over what we can do to keep guns out of the hands of people that shouldn’t have them.” Most of the 14 GOP presidential aspirants agree on gun policy — they oppose further restrictions, such as universal background checks for purchases or banning assault weapons. The near-unanimity on the issues means that candidates are trying to differentiate themselves with imagery and optics, attempting to appeal to the GOP’s most intense gun-rights supporters. “In the Republican coalition, Second Amendment folks are a high-propensity group,” GOP strategist Rick Wilson said. “They will come out to vote. They will walk through icy rain. They will walk through blazing heat.” Fergus Cullen, a former state GOP chairman in New Hampshire, said many Republican stalwarts in his gun-loving, Live-Free-Or-Die state are gun-rights activists. “The absolutists on gun rights — allow guns on campuses, arm high school teachers, et cetera — are loudest and get the most attention,” Cullen said. This explains why, with two months until the Iowa caucuses kick off the 2016 nominating contest, Cruz staged an event at CrossRoads Shooting Sports in the Des Moines suburb of Johnston. This was Cruz’s second visit to CrossRoads; his first, in June, generated controversy when the Associated Press released a photograph depicting a poster image of a gun aimed at the candidate’s head. Cruz shot targets in the range during his June visit, though he did no shooting on Friday. At Friday’s event, Cruz sought to portray himself as the presidential field’s toughest defender of gun rights. He announced a national Second Amendment coalition, which includes more than 24,000 people. One of the coalition’s leaders, Sgt. Patrick Perkins, who is a co-founder of the veterans group Heroes Hunting, had a handgun in his waist holster as he introduced Cruz. On the side of the room hung a poster explaining, “What happens when the trigger is pressed?” Cruz spoke briefly about the San Bernardino shooting, saying it was the product of “the evil of radical Islamic terrorism.” He warned of the dangers of “disarming the citizenry.” The Second Amendment, he said, not only grants people the right to keep and bear arms to protect their families, homes and lives but also is a “fundamental check on government.” “We need to target the bad guys,” Cruz said. “But on the flip side, what is it that keeps us safe? What keeps us safe is we are free people who have the God-given right to protect our homes, our families and our lives.” Cruz is hardly the only candidate who plays up his affinity for firearms. Some others, such as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, grew up in rural cultures and have been building their gun collections since childhood. Graham rose before dawn one Saturday in June to shoot skeet with about two dozen donors in Utah. Before a televised debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in September, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) stopped at a nearby gun range and shot at a stack of boxes labeled “IRS Tax Code” with an AR-15 assault rifle. As Paul coolly fired at his target, his instructor praised his aim after each loud, booming shot. “Right in it,” the man told him. “Perfect.” The Facebook pages of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum feature videos of them at gun ranges in key early voting states. One shows Huckabee in orange earmuffs and protective glasses firing five shots in 10 seconds at an Iowa range. Afterward, he inspects where his shots hit his target, which was a silhouette of a human torso. In another, Santorum shoots an AK-47 assault rifle at a South Carolina range. “That’s pretty intense!” he says. Other candidates with more city-slicker backgrounds, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, have shied away from such blatant gun worship. Christie and Bush do not own guns, a Washington Post review of the Republican field conducted earlier this year found. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) owns a handgun, but he has not held any campaign events at shooting ranges this year. Democratic leaders have tried to exact a political cost on Republican reluctance to give any ground in their staunch defense of gun rights. They pushed two gun-control measures in the GOP-controlled Senate on Thursday. One would have expanded background checks for guns purchased online and at gun shows. The other would have prevented individuals on the terrorism watch list from purchasing firearms. Both failed. “The gun show thing — it’s not a ‘gun show loophole.’ People keep saying that. It is an individual — I decide I want to sell my gun to a friend of mine. So now you have put an extraordinary burden on me to go out and conduct a background check, and I’m liable if I get it wrong,” Rubio said Friday on “CBS This Morning.” Campaigning Friday in Sioux City, Iowa, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, a vocal gun-control advocate, struck a note of amazement in saying that the Senate voted down “a bill that would have prevented anyone on the no-fly list from buying a gun.” “If you’re too dangerous to fly in America, you’re too dangerous to buy a gun in America,” she said. Back in Johnston, Cruz told the crowd of gun enthusiasts that they “scare the living daylights out of a whole lot of folks,” including Clinton. He urged them — “passionate fighters,” he called them — to arm themselves to protect their families. As Cruz shook hands and posed for pictures following his remarks, one could hear the piercing sound of gunfire. Target shooting had commenced. __ Sullivan reported from Washington. Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

Mr. Obama grasps for a moment of urgency

PRESIDENT OBAMA moved with admirable dispatch in launching a process Wednesday aimed at quick action on gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. The president was both sensible and specific. Yet the real test will be whether he can seize the moment while the nation is still attentive. It won’t be easy. He will almost certainly face opposition to any legislation from the powerful gun owners and manufacturers lobby. Mr. Obama correctly described the problem as larger than firearms. He alluded to the need to make access to mental health care “at least as easy as access to a gun.” He referred to the glorification of violence and guns in American popular culture. These thoughts have run through everyone’s mind in the days since Adam Lanza’s rampage, and they deserve a soul-searching national debate. Mr. Obama singled out three areas where concrete actions can be taken to limit the spread of weapons similar to the Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle that Mr. Lanza used to mow down his victims. The first would be to reinstate the ban on the sale of military-style assault weapons, which expired in 2004. The second would be to prohibit the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips that enable an assailant to kill more people faster. The third would be to close a loophole that permits the sale of weapons at gun shows without full background checks. All of this can be done, Mr. Obama pointed out, without damaging the Second Amendment or infringing on the activities of responsible gun owners. The president asserted that a “majority” of Americans support these measures, but public-opinion surveys show that it is not a large majority. Slightly more than half of those questioned in recent polls favor the assault-weapon ban, and about 6 in 10 would outlaw the high-capacity ammunition clips. These sentiments can shift. A moment like this — a time when people are moved by tragedy and gripped by urgency — is often fleeting. Mr. Obama and those in Congress who share his goals must not miss this window. Mr. Obama seems to sense this, promising specific proposals “without delay” and to advance them in his State of the Union address. The Justice Department drew up a list of recommendations last year to reduce gun violence — proposals that the president could implement by executive order, without waiting for Congress — but the ideas were shelved until after the election. We hope that Vice President Biden, who has been put in charge of the administration’s effort, will immediately pull them off the shelf. Mr. Obama reminded us anew that the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., was caused by an individual wielding a military-style weapon. These firearms were intended for battlefields, not for self-defense or hunting. We agree with the president that “we should be able to keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few from buying a weapon of war.” If swiftly turned into law of the land, that would be a start toward responding to the horror of last Friday’s killings. **Read more on this issue:** Greg Sargent: Obama shows true leadership on guns Charles Schumer: A middle ground on gun limits The Post’s View: No ‘excuse for inaction’ on gun control Matt Miller: Buy back guns — and boost the economy Dana Milbank: Slow-walking gun control

E.J. Dionne: Rationalizing gutlessness on guns

Talk about power: The gun lobby barely had to say a word before the media sent advocates of saner gun regulation shuffling off in defeat. In a political version of Stockholm syndrome, even those who claim to disagree with the National Rifle Association’s absolutist permissiveness on firearms lulled themselves into accepting the status quo by reciting a script of gutless resignation dictated by the merchants of death. It’s a script built on half-truths and myths. For example, polls showing declining support for gun control in the abstract were widely cited, while polls showing broad backing for carefully tailored laws were largely ignored. Arguments that gun regulation won’t accomplish anything were justified with citations of academic studies that offer mixed or inconclusive verdicts. In the wake of last week’s killings in Colorado, these studies were deployed to hide the elephant in the room: Our country is the scene of more gun deaths than any other wealthy nation in the world. And it isn’t even close. A study last year in the Journal of Trauma-Injury Infection & Critical Care analyzed gun death statistics for 2003 from the World Health Organization Mortality Database. It found that 80 percent of all firearms deaths in 23 industrialized countries occurred in the United States. For women, the figure rose to 86 percent; for children age 14 and under, to 87 percent. Can anyone seriously claim that our comparatively lax gun laws had nothing to do with these blood-drenched data? Some of the evasions are couched in compassion. We are told that the real answer to mass slaughter lies not in better gun statutes but in more attentiveness to those afflicted with psychological problems. Yes, we need better treatment for the mentally distressed. But while we build a better system of care for mental illness — and, by the way, nobody talks concretely about how to create and pay for such a system — isn’t the more direct solution to ban semi-automatic weapons and oversize magazines so that when someone does go off the rails, it won’t be possible for him to shoot off close to 100 rounds in 100 seconds? And why shouldn’t we make it harder for such a person to buy the instruments of slaughter online? Regulations, it is said, just won’t work. Bad people will get guns somehow. But if that were true, why did the assault-weapons ban work? If regulation is futile, why do we bother to regulate safety in so many other ways? We manage to prevent needless deaths through rules on refrigerators, automobiles and children’s toys, yet politics blocks us from keeping up to date on the regulation of firearms, whose very purpose is to kill. We’re told that no laws will end all human tragedies. That’s true. And if the standard for a useful law is that it must put an end to all tragedies and solve all problems, there is no point in passing any laws at all. Those of us who believe in sensible steps to regulate weapons are supposed to bow before this catalogue of despair and shut up. Most liberal politicians are doing just that. It does not seem to occur to them that the general idea of gun control is bound to recede in the polls when so many advocates of popular regulations give up on making their case. Bad arguments prevail when they go unanswered. That, by the way, is why it’s not enough for advocates of a sensible course on guns to think their job is over if they write one impassioned column or make one strong statement after a mass killing — and then move on to the latest campaign flap. The polls still show considerable support for practical measures to curb gun violence. For example: a 2011 New York Times/CBS News poll found that 63 percent of Americans favor a ban on high-capacity magazines; just as many supported an assault-weapons ban. The same year, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 83 percent supported financing a system in which people treated for mental illness would be reported to a federal gun registry database to prevent them from buying guns; 71 percent favored this for those treated for drug abuse. Such numbers should give heart to those who seek solutions to gun violence. Yet so many progressive donors have given up on financing the cause of gun safety. And although President Obama took an important step forward in a New Orleans speech Wednesday night, so many progressive politicians sit back and assume that the gun lobby will win again. There is a word for this: surrender. **_ejdionne@washpost.com _ ** **Read more from Opinions:** Eugene Robinson: The next massacre Charles Lane: Mayhem, made in Europe The Post’s View: Discreditable silence on gun control Jennifer Rubin: Are gun laws the answer?

White men have much to discuss about mass shootings

_Charlotte and Harriet Childress are researchers and consultants on social and political issues. They are the co-authors of “Clueless at the Top: While the Rest of Us Turn Elsewhere for Life, Liberty, and Happiness,” on outdated hierarchies in American culture._ Imagine if African American men and boys were committing mass shootings month after month, year after year. Articles and interviews would flood the media, and we’d have political debates demanding that African Americans be “held accountable.” Then, if an atrocity such as the Newtown, Conn., shootings took place and African American male leaders held a news conference to offer solutions, their credibility would be questionable. The public would tell these leaders that they need to focus on problems in their own culture and communities. But when the criminals and leaders are white men, race and gender become the elephant in the room. Nearly all of the mass shootings in this country in recent years — not just Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, Tucson and Columbine — have been committed by white men and boys. Yet when the National Rifle Association (NRA), led by white men, held a news conference after the Newtown massacre to advise Americans on how to reduce gun violence, its leaders’ opinions were widely discussed. Unlike other groups, white men are not used to being singled out. So we expect that many of them will protest it is unfair if we talk about them. But our nation must correctly define their contribution to our problem of gun violence if it is to be solved. When white men try to divert attention from gun control by talking about mental health issues, many people buy into the idea that the United States has a national mental health problem, or flawed systems with which to address those problems, and they think that is what produces mass shootings. But women and girls with mental health issues are not picking up semiautomatic weapons and shooting schoolchildren. Immigrants with mental health issues are not committing mass shootings in malls and movie theaters. Latinos with mental health issues are not continually killing groups of strangers. Each of us is programmed from childhood to believe that the top group of our hierarchies — and in the U.S. culture, that’s white men — represents everyone, so it can feel awkward, even ridiculous, when we try to call attention to those people as a distinct group and hold them accountable. For example, our schools teach American history as the history of everyone in this nation. But the stories we learn are predominantly about white men. To study the history of other groups, people have to take separate classes, such as African American history, women’s history or Native American history. And if we take “Hispanic American History,” we don’t expect to learn “Asian American History,” because a class about anyone but white men is assumed not to be inclusive of anyone else. This societal and cultural programming makes it easy for conservative, white-male-led groups to convince the nation that an organization led by white men, such as the NRA or the tea party movement, can represent the interests of the entire nation when, in fact, they predominately represent only their own experiences and perspectives. If life were equitable, white male gun-rights advocates would face some serious questions to assess their degree of credibility and objectivity. We would expect them to explain: What facets of white male culture create so many mass shootings? Why are so many white men and boys producing and entertaining themselves with violent video games and other media? Why do white men buy, sell and manufacture guns for profit; attend gun shows; and demonstrate for unrestricted gun access disproportionately more than people of other ethnicities or races? Why are white male congressmen leading the fight against gun control? If Americans ask the right questions on gun issues, we will get the right answers. These answers will encourage white men to examine their role in their own culture and to help other white men and boys become healthier and less violent. **Read more from PostOpinions:** Dana Milbank: Obama on guns — too little, too late Jennifer Rubin: Eight interesting things about Obama’s anti-gun proposals E.J. Dionne Jr.: This time, the moderate is willing to fight The Post’s View: Obama’s big agenda on gun violence Robert J. Spitzer: Five myths about gun control

O’Malley says on national TV that assault weapons ‘play no purpose in a civil society’

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley spoke out more forcefully Wednesday about the need for more gun control, arguing on a national talk show that assault weapons “play no purpose in a civil society.” “It’s ridiculous,” O’Malley (D) said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “There is no other civilized nation on the planet that allows combat military weapons to be proliferated throughout our society as much as we do, and there are very few societies that bury as many children year after year after year from gun violence.” O’Malley was booked on the show a day after telling reporters in Annapolis that he is likely to sponsor legislation in the coming session of the General Assembly in response to last week’s school shootings in Connecticut. He offered few details. The governor’s largely measured tones Tuesday were replaced Wednesday by more impassioned rhetoric. “There is no reason why we should have military assault weapons any place but on the battlefield,” O’Malley, who is weighing a bid for national office in 2016, told host Chris Matthews. O’Malley recalled his days as mayor of Baltimore, when he said he would order police officers to retrieve assault weapons from the homes of criminals. “For [the police officers’] safety, if only for their safety, we need responsible bans and controls on these military, combat assault weapons,” O’Malley said. “They play no purpose in a civil society.” Matthews asked whether violent movies should be banned. O’Malley said there are other steps that can be taken. “What you can do is put sensible restrictions in place so that people who are suffering from mental illnesses ... just can’t go in and get assault weapons as easily as they can go buy a pizza.” O’Malley said “we’ve all been changed” by the Newtown shootings. “We find it too easy as a country to accept one child being shot here in a city, one child being shot there,” he said. “Events like this make us wake up.”

Guns and the GOP convention

The July 15 editorial “Tennis balls are out. AR-15s are in” was right to warn citizens wanting to enter “the event zone” at the Republican National Convention not to bring tennis balls, metal-tipped umbrellas or canned goods but noted that an AR-15 Bushmaster assault weapon is welcome. If Ohio legislators are as concerned for citizen safety as their Virginia counterparts, they also would ban the waving of small American flags on wooden sticks less than a foot long and, God forbid, with a rounded but “pointed” end. When gun-safety advocates tried to brandish these small flags at a vigil to memorialize the more than 800 Virginians killed by gun violence last year, law enforcement prohibited us from holding them aloft, while those with concealed-carry permits had a special entrance into the state office building. It is obvious these flags could be dangerous, but “guns save lives.” ****James E. Atwood** , Harrisonburg, Va.** The writer is a board member of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. **According to the July 14 Campaign 2016 article** “Cleveland weighs tension and anger in preparing for convention protests,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) will preside over a Republican convention where “no guns will be allowed” within the building nor “in the tightest security zone immediately around it.” Well, that’s a relief. How sensible. But wait! What about Americans’ inalienable Second Amendment rights? You know, the constitutional rights that allow more or less anyone to possess and play with semiautomatic assault rifles or pistols with 30-bullet magazines, anywhere, at any time? The rights that, like no others, ever, are absolute and unlimited? What about the inviolable National Rifle Association’s prescription that the solution to renegade shooters is to arm all the good guys — in school, in church, at the theater, in a dance club? Why not the convention hall? The speaker just needs to strap on his weapon and all will be safe and well. How can Mr. Ryan call a sit-in by his congressional colleagues, desperate to produce (too) modest legislation to save lives by preventing gun violence, a “political stunt” while keeping himself and all those other NRA toadies securely within a bullet-free perimeter? ****Dian Belanger** , Rockville**

Are lockdown drills necessary?

Launa Hall contended in her Nov. 2 Outlook commentary, “Rehearsing for death with my pre-K students,” that lockdown drills are disturbing and wouldn’t be needed if only we would start “controlling guns and inconveniencing those who would use them.” I would like to assume she means keeping guns away from those people who would commit homicide, although her words make no distinction between legal and illegal gun use. Gun control is her only solution — her silver bullet — to make school lockdown drills unnecessary. It’s not that simple. The Constitution allows private gun ownership; an estimated 300 million guns exist in the United States, most owned by good people. History shows that mass murderers are hard to identify and can be ruthlessly effective with a variety of tools: handguns, rifles, shotguns, bladed weapons, explosive devices and fire. Our best approach to reducing harm from mass murderers must be multifaceted, including trying to identify and treat those prone to violence, keeping guns away from them, designing and implementing defensive measures in our schools and other public facilities, providing trained security personnel, and planning and practicing school lockdown drills. ****Edward Wyse** , Springfield** ● How do our congressmen sleep at night knowing they could have prevented so many gun deaths simply by passing some common-sense gun laws? Instead, we have yet another school shooting, this one in Washington state. We’re instilling fear in a generation of young children by rounding them up and locking them in a dark closet, and we’re asking the impossible from terrified teachers. Two- thirds of school shooters get guns with sickening ease from their own homes or from relatives’ homes. Astoundingly, shooting is a leading cause of death for children and teens. Launa Hall deserves thanks for making us feel every minute of her lockdown drill. I’m screaming, too! ****Babe Healy King** , Washington** The writer is a member of the Yellow Tape Project, which aims to prevent gun violence.

The founders did not foresee America becoming a firearm free-for-all

National Rifle Association executive Chris W. Cox implied that _District of Columbia v. Heller_ was interpreted accurately and that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death puts the decision in jeopardy. Many who have carefully read the Constitution and the correspondence of the founders cannot imagine that those wise leaders would condone the automatic-weapons free-for-all that the United States has become. In the founders’ day, large urban areas such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia had prohibitions against discharging firearms within city limits and prohibitions against storing gunpowder. That the _Heller_ decision was 5 to 4 should be a clear indication that our sitting justices hardly agree on that decision. Surveys indicate that the majority of Americans, including gun owners, seek more stringent regulation of firearms than the NRA is willing to accept. Shamefully, the United States leads the developed world by far in gun-related deaths. Thirty-three thousand Americans die annually from gun-related incidents, many of which are suicides. And no matter what the NRA tells you, research consistently indicates that having a gun in the home makes you less safe. ****Jeff Holtmeier** , Silver Spring**

Colorado shootings show that U.S. gun laws make no sense

AS PRESIDENT OBAMA said in brief but eloquent remarks Friday, there is no rational explanation for the massacre that occurred in a Colorado movie theater early Friday. “Such violence, such evil, is senseless. It’s beyond reason,” Mr. Obama said. “And if there’s anything to take away from this tragedy it’s the reminder that life is very fragile. Our time here is limited, and it is precious. And what matters at the end of the day is not the small things, it’s not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives. Ultimately, it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another.” There’s something else that is senseless, though, and that is America’s gun laws. The temptation is not to mention this fact. That’s true partly because, as E.J. Dionne Jr. points out on the opposite page today, any mention of gun control is dismissed by gun-control opponents as an “exploitation” of tragedy. But it’s true also because we’ve all been worn down by the futility and repetitiveness of the debate. A massacre occurs; advocates of gun control point out the folly of total permissiveness; the laws do not change; the issue disappears until the next massacre. Well, we plead guilty to repeating ourselves. There is no rational basis for allowing ordinary Americans to purchase assault rifles. They’re not necessary for hunting, and they’re not needed for self-defense. The alleged shooter in Friday’s crime, which claimed at least 12 lives, came to the theater with two .40-caliber Glock handguns, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun and a Smith & Wesson AR-15 assault-style rifle. According to NBC News, “the weapons were legally bought from local stores of two national chains — Gander Mountain Guns and Bass Pro Shop — beginning in May.” Yes, the Second Amendment protects a citizen’s right to own a gun, but it does not preclude reasonable regulation for public safety. Yes, mass killings occur in societies with stronger gun laws, but not with such regularity — and not against the backdrop of daily gun violence, both criminal and accidental, that distinguishes the United States. We don’t expect this massacre to lead to more sensible laws. We understand the politics. Still, it’s disappointing that the president doesn’t couple his words of comfort with some reminder of the common-sense regulation that could make such tragedies less common. The politics of guns will never shift if people are too cowed or dispirited even to join the argument. U.S. gun laws make no sense. ****

Grass roots for gun control

POLLS HAVE consistently shown that the vast majority of Americans favor the expansion of background checks for the purchase of firearms. That hasn’t much mattered to Congress or lawmakers in some states, who, in obeisance to the gun lobby, have refused to enact — indeed, even consider — this and other sensible reforms. Public sentiment, though, is what gun- control advocates are counting on as they open up a promising new front in the fight for needed protections. Instead of looking for action from politicians too easily bullied, they are going straight to voters with ballot measures focused on combating gun violence. Four states — Maine, Nevada, Washington and California — will have gun-control initiatives on ballots in the Nov. 8 election. It is believed to be a record number that signals a shift in the gun-control movement away from a Washington-centered effort that has proved fruitless. The failure of Congress to enact bipartisan gun reforms in the wake of the slaughter of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School — and the success of the marriage- equality movement in building momentum from the states up — has inspired the state-by-state effort. And already there has been success with Washington state voters in 2014 giving overwhelming approval to a ballot measure requiring broader background checks for gun sales. Advocates who led that Washington grass-roots effort are back this year with Initiative 1491, which seeks approval of a law that would allow families and law enforcement to petition a court to temporarily suspend a person’s access to firearms if there is documented evidence that an individual threatens harm to themselves or others. Similar legislation, in place in Connecticut, California and Indiana, gives families, often the first to see signs of trouble in those threatening suicide or violence to others, a lifesaving course of action. In Maine and Nevada, voters will be asked to close the loophole on criminal background checks on gun purchases by extending them to all gun sales, including gun shows and online sales, with exceptions for family, hunting and self-defense. California’s initiative, sponsored by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, would implement a raft of laws, including background checks for ammunition purchases and a system for confiscating guns from felons who are prohibited from owning them. Not surprisingly, the National Rifle Association has come out in full force to try to quash the measures, so it’s difficult to predict the outcomes. But the fact that these measures managed to get to the ballot — requiring tens of thousands of signatures from voters — is a demonstration of their broad support and the new muscularity of the movement for gun control. **Read more on this issue:** The Post’s View: Common-sense gun control Fareed Zakaria: Change your gun laws, America Colbert I. King: Why is America so hostile to gun control?

McDonnell, O’Malley take opposing sides in response to Newtown shootings

Starkly different responses to theshootings in Newtown, Conn., from the governors of Virginia and Maryland on Tuesday serve as fresh reminders that one of the nation’s deepest divides on gun control runs along the Potomac River. After 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last week, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Tuesday that the commonwealth should consider arming teachers, principals and other school staff members. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley took an opposite tack, saying that “too many guns” are in circulation already and that he may propose a statewide ban on assault weapons. McDonnell (R) and O’Malley (D), the outgoing chairmen of their parties’ national governors groups, are used to deep-blue Maryland and purple Virginia differing on a host of issues. But the stakes are higher now as the shootings at Sandy Hook put pressure on elected officials to face the renewed debate over guns. During the “Ask the Governor” radio show on WTOP on Tuesday, McDonnell was asked whether teachers and principals should be armed inside schools. “I know there’s been a knee-jerk reaction against that,” McDonnell said. “I think there should at least be a discussion of that. If people were armed, not just a police officer but other school officials who were trained and chose to have a weapon, certainly there would have been an opportunity to stop aggressors coming into the schools.” Early this year, Virginia lawmakers repealed a 19-year-old law that had limited handgun purchases to one per month. They also stripped localities of the right to require fingerprints from people applying for concealed-handgun permits. Carrying a concealed weapon with a permit is legal in the state, but not at schools. “Right now we have a complete ban [at schools], and I’ve been supportive of that,” McDonnell said. “But I think that’s a discussion that is probably timely. Especially, you look at the facts . . . in Connecticut, where this person went into the principal’s office and actually killed the principal, who was lunging . . . at the perpetrator heroically to try to stop him. If a person like that was armed and trained, could they have stopped the carnage in the classroom? Perhaps.” McDonnell did not completely dismiss the idea of restricting large ammunition clips like the kind police say Adam Lanza used in Newtown, but he said he thinks the problem is rooted in mental illness and a culture that does not value life. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) noted that some people similarly argued after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre that the shootings could have been prevented if more guns were allowed on campus, drawing a sharp rebuke from some families of victims. “I think it’s an outrageous, extreme and reprehensible statement,” Connolly said of McDonnell’s comments. In Annapolis, O’Malley questioned whether arming school officials is “the most prudent course.” “It’s hard to imagine a level of weaponry that a security guard . . . would be carrying on their belt that could have resisted the sort of attack that that individual perpetrated in Newtown,” he said. O’Malley said Tuesday that he is likely to propose legislation that could include a ban on assault rifles and other gun-control measures, as well as proposals for mental-health and school safety legislation. “I think we have too many guns, and I think we have too much killing,” O’Malley told reporters at the statehouse, saying he and state lawmakers are asking “what more can we do.” O’Malley stressed that his plans are “very much a work in progress,” adding that he senses a strong will among legislators to take action in the 90-day session that will start Jan. 9. “I think there’s been a change of heart and a greater open-mindedness in the wake of the murder of the innocent in Connecticut for people to take a look at especially assault weapons,” said O’Malley, who has long favored reinstating the federal assault-rifle ban that lapsed in 2004. “You look at some of these guns, and it’s just hard to conclude that these guns should be in the hands of anyone who isn’t a soldier on a battlefield or a law enforcement officer sent into a tactical situation.” O’Malley acknowledged that a ban on assault rifles like the one the Connecticut shooter used would be “a lot more effective on the national level.” But he said that Maryland lawmakers should consider a similar prohibition and that he would “absolutely” sign a ban if it reached his desk. O’Malley also said state officials should consider limiting “the huge magazine clips” of the kind the Connecticut shooter used. In addition to gun-control measures, O’Malley said his administration is exploring issues such as the appropriate level of sharing of mental-health information and standards for school safety, which he said have been mostly left to local school boards in Maryland. In Virginia, McDonnell has asked Education Secretary Laura Fornash and Public Safety Secretary Marla Graff Decker to review recently submitted school safety audits with superintendents. He ordered the creation of a task force — made up of educators, public safety experts, legislators and others — to review school safety and make legislative and budget proposals to address any safety needs. And he announced the creation of a position within the Department of Criminal Justice Services: the school and campus safety coordinator.

Wayne LaPierre: Gun control ‘not going to make any kid safer’

National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre said Sunday that gun control measures, including an assault weapons ban, won't do anything to to prevent mass shootings like the recent elementary school killing in Newtown, Conn. "I know this town wants to argue about gun control," LaPierre said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," adding: "It's not going to work. It hasn't worked." Pressed repeatedly by host David Gregory on whether gun control played a role as one of several possible solutions to the spate of mass shootings in recent years, LaPierre didn't budge. He called the assault weapons ban being proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) a "phony piece of legislation" that is "built on lies." He said he doesn't think it will pass. "It's not going to make any kid safer," he said. "We've got to get to the real problems, the real causes, and that's what the NRA is trying to do." Gregory showed LaPierre a high-capacity clip with 30 bullets and asked whether it might help to outlaw such clips. "I don't believe that's going to make one difference," LaPierre said. "There are so many different ways to evade that even if you had that. You had that for 10 years when Dianne Feinstein passed that ban in '94. It was on the books; Columbine occurred right in the middle of it. It didn't make any difference." LaPierre on Friday launched a program that seeks to install police officers and/or armed security at every school in the country, with the idea being that armed, trained security could prevent further carnage. He said he is not bothered by criticism. "If it's crazy to call for putting police and armed security in our school to protect our children, then call me crazy," LaPierre said. "I think the American people think it's crazy not to do it."

Do citizens (not police officers) with guns ever stop mass shootings?

Backers of laws that let pretty much all law-abiding people carry concealed guns in public places often argue that these laws will sometimes enable people to stop mass shootings. Opponents occasionally ask: If that’s so, what examples can one give of civilians armed with guns stopping such shootings? Sometimes, I hear people asking if even one such example can be found, or saying that they haven’t heard of even one such example. A while back I posted about a few examples, but since then there have been some more, so I thought I’d note them. Naturally, such examples will be rare. Even in states which allow concealed carry, there often aren’t people near a shooting who have a gun on them at the time. Many mass shootings happen in supposedly “gun-free” zones (such as schools, universities, bars, or private property posted with a no-guns sign), in which gun carrying isn’t allowed in many states. And there is no central database of such examples, many of which don’t hit the national media, especially if a gunman is stopped before he shoots many victims. Moreover, at least some examples are ambiguous, because it might be unclear — as you’ll see below — whether the shooter had been planning to kill more people when he was stopped. Still, for whatever they are worth, here is a list of some such incidents (which deliberately excludes killings stopped by people who were off-duty police officers, or police officers from other jurisdictions, at the time of a shooting, as well as some other cases which struck me as borderline): 1\. In Chicago earlier this year, an Uber driver with a concealed-carry permit “shot and wounded a gunman [Everardo Custodio] who opened fire on a crowd of people.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 2\. In a Philadelphia barber shop earlier this year, Warren Edwards “opened fire on customers and barbers” after an argument. Another man with a concealed-carry permit then shot the shooter; of course it’s impossible to tell whether the shooter would have kept killing if he hadn’t been stopped, but a police captain was quoted as saying that, “I guess he [the man who shot the shooter] saved a lot of people in there.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 3\. In a hospital near Philadelphia, in 2014, Richard Plotts shot and killed the psychiatric caseworker with whom he was meeting, and shot and wounded his psychiatrist, Lee Silverman. Silverman shot back, and took down Plotts. While again it’s not certain whether Plotts would have killed other people, Delaware County D.A. Jack Whelan stated that, “If the doctor did not have a firearm, (and) the doctor did not utilize the firearm, he’d be dead today, and I believe that other people in that facility would also be dead”; Yeadon Police Chief Donald Molineux similar said that he “believe[d] the doctor saved lives.” Plotts was still carrying 39 unspent rounds when he was arrested. [UPDATE: I added this item since the original post.]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 4\. In Plymouth, Pa., in 2012, William Allabaugh killed one man and wounded another following an argument over Allabaugh being ejected from a bar. Allabaugh then approached a bar manager and Mark Ktytor and reportedly pointed his gun at them; Ktytor, who had a concealed-carry license, then shot Allabaugh. “The video footage and the evidence reveals that Mr. Allabaugh had turned around and was reapproaching the bar. Mr. [Ktytor] then acted, taking him down. We believe that it could have been much worse that night,” Luzerne County A.D.A. Jarrett Ferentino said.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 5\. Near Spartanburg, S.C., in 2012, Jesse Gates went to his church armed with a shotgun and kicked in a door. But Aaron Guyton, who had a concealed-carry license, drew his gun and pointed it at Gates, and other parishioners then disarmed Gates. Note that in this instance, unlike the others, it’s possible that the criminal wasn’t planning on killing anyone, but just brought the shotgun to church and kicked in the door to draw attention to himself or vent his frustration.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 6\. In Atlanta in 2009, Calvin Lavant and Jamal Hill broke into an apartment during a party and forced everyone to the floor. After they gathered various valuables, and separated the men and the women, and Lavant said to Hill, “we are about to have sex with these girls, then we are going to kill them all,” and began “discussing condoms and the number of bullets in their guns.” At that point, Sean Barner, a Marine who was attending Georgia State as part of the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program, managed to get to the book bag he brought to the party; took out his gun; shot and scared away Hill; went into the neighboring room, where Lavant was about to rape one of the women; was shot at by Lavant, and shot back and hit Lavant, who then ran off and later died of his injuries. One of the women was shot and wounded in the shootout, but given the circumstances described in the sources I linked to, it seemed very likely that Lavant and Hill would have killed (as well as raped) some or all of the partygoers had they not been stopped. This incident of course involves a member of the military, not a civilian, so some may discount it on those grounds. But Barner was acting as a civilian, and carrying a gun as a civilian (he had a concealed carry license); indeed, if he had been on a military base, he would generally not have been allowed to carry a gun except when on security duty. [UPDATE: I added this item since the original post.]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 7\. In Winnemucca, Nev., in 2008, Ernesto Villagomez killed two people and wounded two others in a bar filled with 300 people. He was then shot and killed by a patron who was carrying a gun (and had a concealed-carry license). It’s not clear whether Villagomez would have killed more people; the killings were apparently the result of a family feud, and I could see no information on whether Villagomez had more names on his list, nor could one tell whether he would have killed more people in trying to evade capture.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 8\. In Colorado Springs, Colo., in 2007, Matthew Murray killed four people at a church. He was then shot several times by Jeanne Assam, a church member, volunteer security guard and former police officer (she had been dismissed by a police department 10 years before, and to my knowledge hadn’t worked as a police officer since). Murray, knocked down and badly wounded, killed himself; it is again not clear whether he would have killed more people had he not been wounded, but my guess is that he would have (UPDATE: he apparently went to the church with more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 9\. In Edinboro, Pa., in 1998, 14-year-old Andrew Wurst shot and killed a teacher at a school dance, and shot and injured several other students. He had just left the dance hall, carrying his gun — possibly to attack more people, though the stories that I’ve seen are unclear — when he was confronted by the dance hall owner James Strand, who lived next door and kept a shotgun at home. It’s not clear whether Wurst was planning to kill others, would have gotten into a gun battle with the police, or would have otherwise killed more people had Strand not stopped him.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico 10\. In Pearl, Miss., in 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham stabbed and bludgeoned to death his mother at home, then killed two students and injured seven at his high school. As he was leaving the school, he was stopped by Assistant Principal Joel Myrick, who had gone out to get a handgun from his car. I have seen sources that state that Woodham was on the way to Pearl Junior High School to continue shooting, though I couldn’t find any contemporaneous news articles that so state. [UPDATE: For whatever it’s worth, Heidi Kinchen of The Advocate (Baton Rouge) notes that Myrick was in the Army reserves and in the National Guard, though he was obviously not on duty at the time of the shooting.]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Of course there’s much we don’t know about civilians and mass shootings: In what fraction of mass shootings would such interventions happen, if gun possession were allowed in the places where the shootings happen? In what fraction would interventions prevent more killings and injuries, as opposed to capturing or killing the murderer after he’s already done? In what fraction would interventions lead to more injuries to bystanders? Finally, always keep in mind that mass shootings in public places should not be the main focus in the gun debate, whether for gun control or gun decontrol: They on average account for much less than 1 percent of the U.S. homicide rate and are unusually hard to stop through gun control laws (since the killer is bent on committing a publicly visible murder and is thus unlikely to be much deterred by gun control law, or by the prospect of encountering an armed bystander). Still, people had asked for examples of some shootings in which a civilian armed with a gun intervened and brought down the shooter, so here is what I found. For an explanation of why I didn’t include the December 2012 Clackamas Mall shooting, see here. Some of these incidents are drawn from a list on the Crime Prevention Research Center site, though I have independently read the media reports to which I linked (as well as some other media reports on the incidents, for background).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico UPDATE: I originally called this post, “Do civilians with guns ever stop mass shootings?,” using “civilians” to set aside mass shootings stopped by on- or off-duty police officers. But after learning that Myrick (#10) was a National Guard member, and that Barner (#6) was a Marine, I changed that to “citizens (not police officers).” I think including the military members is still helpful, because they were acting as civilians, and were not on duty, on base, or otherwise different from other citizens (though of course they had weapons training and the experience of military discipline, something that many millions of former military members also have). But I note their military membership above, so people who want to set them aside and focus on the other eight examples can do so.

A Va. politician is giving away an AR-15 rifle as a Second Amendment statement

Corey Stewart has enjoyed many titles during his political career: longtime Republican chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, Virginia state chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign (until he was fired), current Republican candidate for Virginia governor. The latest bullet point in his résumé? Semiautomatic weapon donor. On Saturday, he announced that he’s giving away an AR-15 rifle, the style of weapon used in several of the nation’s mass shootings and most notorious crimes, including the 2002 Washington-area sniper attacks, one of which was a homicide at a gas station in Stewart’s county. In a news release Saturday, Stewart announced the AR-15 giveaway knowing full well that it would probably attract controversy — and news coverage. “If elected to be your next Governor, you can be 100% CERTAIN I will never compromise on your God-given right to keep and bear arms,” Stewart wrote. “In fact, even though I’m sure it’s certain to send the liberal media into a frenzy, to show my dedication to the Second Amendment my campaign is GIVING AWAY an AR-15 to one lucky supporter.” Shifting into third person, Stewart then wrote: “That’s right. Corey Stewart for Governor is giving away an AR-15.” AR-15-style weapons and other assault-style rifles have been the subject of fierce debate because of their use in mass shootings across the United States. They were used in the Orlando club massacre this summer that killed 49 people; the December 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., that left 14 people dead; the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 children and six adults; and the mass shooting in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater in July 2012 that killed a dozen. Dean Harold Meyers, 53, was killed as he pumped gas on Oct. 9, 2002, in Prince William County with a similar weapon — a Bushmaster XM-15 — part of the Washington-area sniper attacks that killed 10 and wounded three. In an interview with The Washington Post on Saturday, Stewart dismissed the debate surrounding the weapons. “Look, this is a rifle that people are permitted to own in the United States. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Stewart said. “It’s a semiautomatic rifle. It is not an assault rifle. This is a great hunting rifle, and it’s also great for recreation use.” Stewart said that winners will have to undergo a background check and that he’s giving away the weapon through a dealer to adhere to state and federal regulations. Even though the contest rules say the drawing for a winner will be Dec. 21, Stewart said he hopes to give the gun away in January to highlight his hopes for overturning a Virginia law that requires gun owners to obtain a permit if they want to carry concealed weapons. Stewart’s news release has a link to the contest’s website, which encourages people to fill out a credit-card form and donate to Stewart’s campaign. Readers also can click on small print to read the contest rules, which say you don’t need to give Stewart money to win. One key rule: You must be a U.S. citizen, age 18 and above.

Curbing gun violence: If not now, when?

another version The president said last night at the prayer vigil in Newtown: “This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged. And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we’re meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm?” A moment later he said: “Since I’ve been president, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by mass shootings, fourth time we’ve hugged survivors, the fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and in big cities all across America, victims whose — much of the time their only fault was being at the wrong place at the wrong time. We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” This is a gun issue and a mental health issue and a culture-of-violence issue all rolled into one. No one thinks there’s a magic wand to stop the carnage, but such mass shootings are not an inevitable part of our society. I don’t know how this will play out and whether it will become more of a story about mental illness or more of a story about gun laws. We don’t know very much about the shooter. We’ll know more in the days ahead. Support for tighter gun control has waned the last two decades, but I have to think this tragedy will make a lot of people look hard at ways to reduce the lethality of mass shootings, if possible. If not now, when? What would it take? In a matter of minutes the guy killed six adults and 20 first-graders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. The killer used a military-style rifle to fire hundreds of bullets from 30-round magazines. The hospitals mobilized to care for an influx of wounded people, but the influx never materialized, because the attack was so lethal. Bill Bennett said yesterday that maybe one person in each school should be armed. Really? That’s going to help? We need MORE guns in schools? (BTW, there was an amazing story from the school nurse on 60 Minutes: During the attack she hid in a closet and didn’t emerge for nearly 4 hours. By that point it had long since been a national news story, and SWAT team members supposedly had combed every nook and cranny of the school. She finally came out, much to the surprise of the state police.) Here’s a link to my story from Friday. And here’s the story in today’s paper, headlined “Anguished Search for an Explanation.“ Excerpt: Slowly, amid rumor and misinformation, a picture of the killer is emerging, and it is dismayingly familiar. Adam Lanza was yet another young, withdrawn, middle-class male who for some unimaginable reason graduated from his adolescence as a mass murderer. What happened Friday in Newtown, Conn., was a variant on what the country has witnessed repeatedly in recent years. Once again, it was a pseudo-commando attack, as if the killer were playing a video game and racking up points for every victim. Once again, the crime appeared to be staged for maximum shock value. And once again — just as in Aurora, Colo., this past summer — there was the element of overkill, with multiple weapons, a military-style rifle and massive amounts of ammunition. Lanza, 20, shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, at home, and then invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he killed 20 first-graders and six adults, firing 30-round clips from a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle before taking his own life. How many bullets? “Hundreds,” Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance said Sunday. Detectives recovered evidence at the Lanza home that might help explain the killer’s thinking, but authorities have not revealed what they found. For the moment, the Newtown massacre remains as inexplicable as it is horrifying. “We don’t have a specific reason,” Vance said. The location and lethality of the Newtown tragedy, and the preciousness of the victims, have turned the holiday season into a period of national soul-searching and calls for action to curb gun violence. Newtown dominated the Sunday talk shows. President Obama flew to Connecticut to join the mourning, and people nationwide revisited with new urgency the complex issues of gun laws, mental illness and access to mental health care. The Newtown discussion necessarily sweeps in the news media, which give the killers a notoriety they couldn’t have achieved legitimately. The discussion touches on Hollywood, which markets spectacular make-believe violence. Also implicated: The computer gaming industry, which profits from ultra-realistic shooting games that are bloodier than ever. “I point the finger unreservedly at the entertainment industry, which has spawned and cultivated gaming that by design is increasingly real, geared to action as the shooter’s point of view, increasingly dehumanizes victims, and increasingly rewards players by how many they kill,” said Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist and chairman of the Forensic Panel, who works on more than 20 homicide cases a year. Although the profile of the mass shooter is often a familiar one, that is true only after the fact — when it’s too late. And the overwhelming majority of young men who play violent video games and are social misfits do not commit any crimes at all, much less shoot up a grade school. How does society tell the truly dangerous ones from the ones who are just a little weird? “We’re not even good at predicting minor violence. When you’re talking about preventing a mass shooting, that’s a needle in a haystack,” said Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. “You can’t just go out and lock up all the socially awkward young men in the world.” [Click here for take 2 of story]

Hope for consensus on gun control diminishes

In the days following the shooting deaths of 20 children in Newtown, Conn., some of the most ardent gun rights advocates called for a new conversation on how to address gun-related violence in the United States. But National Rifle Association officials and some leading Republicans signaled over the weekend that they would continue to resist any comprehensive change in gun laws, while calling for armed personnel to be placed in all schools and a discussion about violence in popular culture. “I do believe better security in schools is a good place to start,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who rejected the notion of government action to ban sales of the kind of assault-style weapons used in the Newtown shootings. “I don’t suggest you take my right to buy an AR-15 away from me, because I don’t think it will work,” he said. White House officials said they were not encouraged by the NRA approach and reiterated the administration’s commitment to regulating assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. “I don’t think it’s what will work,” said Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He characterized legislation to ban assault weapons authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) as “a phony piece of legislation . . . built on lies.” Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) , interviewed Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” show, said the NRA statements were “really disheartening.” “I had hoped they would come to the table and say ‘everything on is on the table.’ What this does mean is that the kind of new regulation of guns that President Obama and Vice President Biden and a lot of people would like to see enacted early next year is not going to happen easily. It’s going to be a battle.” Meantime, around the country state legislators and school board members began their own debate over the NRA schools initiative, with officials from Maine to Minnesota and South Dakota and Texas discussing whether it would be good policy to have guns in the hands of teachers or others in the schools as a way to curb violence. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre said Sunday, repeating a theme from a Friday news conference in which he announced the new NRA campaign to place a police officer or an armed guard in every school. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on “Meet the Press” that LaPierre was “so tone deaf he actually helps the cause of us passing sensible gun legislation . . .” Citing polling data, Democrats have said that they think there is an opportunity to exploit a gulf between the membership of the NRA — particularly powerful in rural areas — and the group’s outspoken leadership in Washington. Hunters and NRA members are asking for a ban on military assault-style weapons, said Rep. Mike Thompson, the Vietnam veteran and avid hunter from California who has been named point man for House Democrats on the issue. Longtime NRA backers, such as Rep. Gene Green (D-Tex.) questioned last week whether the NRA had become too closely associated with the Republican Party and was losing some of its political clout with Democrats. Sen. Robert P. Casey (D-Pa.) , a Second Amendment booster, told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week that he was so “haunted” by the Newtown shootings that he would vote for an assault weapons ban and legislation barring magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. “I just believe that in light of what’s happened, in light of measures we can take to lessen the chances that will happen [again], that these are two steps we can take,” said Casey, who was just reelected. NRA leaders disputed the idea of a gulf between them and their members. Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist and NRA board member, said in an interview that the left consistently underestimates how committed NRA members are to the Second Amendment. The organization includes not only hunters, he said, but shooting enthusiasts and an increasing number of people acquiring firearms for self-protection. He said Friday’s announcement of a school safety initiative was just what the nation needs. “This is exactly the right position,” Norquist said. “It is positive, it is real and it will trump the proposals for new gun laws by the liberals. This proposal will help make things better. The message from the left has been: ‘We don’t care about your kids; we care about furthering the liberal agenda.’ ” Norquist said that board members were briefed by LaPierre and others in a Friday afternoon conference call that reported strong support from NRA members nationwide, especially from women. LaPierre generally dismissed the idea of participating in a panel being convened by the White House, unless it concentrated on gun safety. “If it is a panel that’s just going to be made up of a bunch of people that, for the last 20 years, have been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I’m not interested,” he said on “Meet the Press.” He did call for increased government regulation in one area: improving a national database with information about the mentally ill. “We have a mental-health system that has completely and totally collapsed,” he said. “We have no national database of these lunatics. Twenty-three states are still putting only a small number of records in the system and a lot of states are putting none,” making it impossible to adequately screen gun buyers. His proposal to place armed personnel in every school provoked discussion throughout the weekend. In South Dakota, state Rep. Betty Olson (R) said that she would co-sponsor legislation authorizing teachers and other school employees to carry concealed weapons in schools, which could provide better protection than having a police officer assigned. “If you’ve got a uniformed officer in a school who’s the only one with access to a gun, he is going to be the first one” shot by an intruder, she said. Concealed weapons for staff members might be a better approach, she said. Olson said in an interview Sunday that she had spoken with other state legislators with children in public schools who favor the approach, because it is cost-effective and more likely to protect students against an armed intruder. “We have a hard time coming up with money just to fund the school operations even without hiring a full-time police officer,” she said. The legislation she will co-sponsor would allow “any teacher or school employee that passes a background check and has a concealed weapon” to voluntarily bring the weapon to school “to protect themselves and the students.” She said schools now are unprotected. She noted — as did officials from the NRA — that mass shootings have taken place in schools with signs that declare them to be “gun free.” “I have a real problem with this gun-free-zone approach,” she said. “These latest school massacres all took place in gun-free zones.” Former Arkansas congressman Asa Hutchinson, who leads the NRA “National School Shield” program, estimated it would cost more than $2 billion “if you put a federally funded program for an armed person at every school.” But, he told CNN’s Candy Crowley on Sunday that the NRA could help with training programs for volunteers that would allow the school project to proceed quickly. He called for individual schools to make the decision whether to have armed personnel on site. “I think it is terrific that the NRA is willing to fund experts and solutions that will be provided free of cost to the schools,” he said.

Gun research is allowed again. So what will we find out?

One of President Obama's less-noticed actions on guns yesterday could actually prove to be one of the most significant in the long run. Among other things, the president signed an executive order directing the Centers on Disease Control to start studying "the causes of gun violence" once again. Why does this matter? Because one of the major reasons that gun-policy disputes are often so contentious and interminable is that there's remarkably little hard evidence to go on. And that ignorance is partly by design. Back in 1996, Congress worked with the National Rifle Association to enact a law banning CDC funding for any research to "advocate or promote gun control." Technically speaking, that wasn't a ban on _all_ gun research, but the law was vague enough that the centers shied away from the topic altogether. Funding for gun-violence research by the Centers for Disease Control dropped from $2.5 million per year in the early 1990s to a mere $100,000 per year today. Since federal funding was the primary source of support for gun-violence research, the entire field withered as a result. Gun studies as a percentage of peer-reviewed research dropped 60 percent since 1996. Right now, there are only about a dozen researchers in the country whose primary focus is on preventing gun violence — despite the fact that more than 30,000 Americans were killed by guns in 2011. The list of simple things that existing gun-violence research can't answer is quite striking. Over at Atlantic Cities, Emily Badger tallies up some very basic questions that we still don't know the answers to (below is just a partial list, and I've added a few from here and here, but you should read her full post): That helps explain why, when it comes to things like universal background checks or assault-weapons bans, policy experts are largely flying blind. Slate's Joel Shurkin recently attended a major conference on gun violence at Johns Hopkins and noticed a trend: "Most of the results are ambiguous, and the studies are retrospective — going back after the fact to look at possible predictors of gun violence and the best ways to prevent it — which is not the preferred way to prove anything in science." Could this soon change? That's the idea, at least. In his executive order, Obama clarified that the Centers on Disease Control should go forward with research on "causes and prevention of gun violence." In other words, stop being so timid. Conduct research on anything that's not expressly forbidden by Congress. Yet even so, some experts are skeptical that the order will massive a huge impact. "Now scientists will have one interpretation of the law from the executive branch and another from Congress." says Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Until Congress gives its explicit blessing to the CDC, federal gun research is likely to proceed only haltingly. What's more, the freeze on CDC research is only part of the issue. Earlier this week, a report from Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns* detailed all the different roadblocks to research on gun violence. The U.S. Justice Department, for instance, has stopped funding studies on firearms trafficking patterns. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) used to be a "world leader" in research on gun ownership and trafficking. No longer:  And it's not just academic studies. Data is also sparse. The CDC's National Violent Death Reporting System has never been fully funded by Congress. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is barred from keeping electronic records. Lawmakers have placed restrictions on how cities can share information about crime guns. That all directly impinges on research. Back in the 1990s, the National Rifle Association charged that federal research centers were "putting out papers that were really political opinion masquerading as medical science." You can judge that for yourself by reading this story—the study that originally set the NRA's teeth on edge, by Art Kellerman, had found that a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household than be used in self-defense. (For more criticism of public-health research on guns, see here.) But by this point the pendulum has swung back the other way, to the point where very little research is being conducted at all. Now that the CDC is being prodded to move forward, that may begin to shift. But unless Congress goes along and makes some legislative changes as well, there's still a lot we won't know. * _Correction_ : The name of this group is Mayors Against Illegal Guns, not Mayors Against Gun Violence as originally written. Apologies for the error. **Further reading:** \--NPR has a good narrative look at why gun research was barred in the 1990s. \--Emily Badger has a rundown of some basic gun-violence questions we still don't know the answers to. \--Meanwhile, over at Reason, Jacob Sullum is skeptical that more public- health research on guns will be useful. \--The full list of Obama's gun-control actions yesterday--and experts grade the proposals

Keep telling the stories of gun violence victims

On June 15, The Post profiled the Orlando nightclub shooting victims [“The lives lost in Orlando,” news]. I hope The Post will continue doing so. There is nothing as moving and indicative of the magnitude of the loss as the photographs and stories of the victims. More, more, more. Tell their stories. Show their faces. Wake in us emotions deadened by so many mass shootings. After every shooting, I feel helpless and bewildered by my now-controlled emotional reaction to the carnage of our regular massacres. And then I see the victims’ faces and read their stories. And I experience grief, love, compassion — and anger. Anger that assault weapons are legal. Anger that the Manchin-Toomey gun bill did not pass in 2013. Anger at the legislative representatives who voted against common-sense gun-reform legislation. They are not leaders. They are cowards. I suggest profiles of our members of both houses of Congress and their votes on the assault-weapons ban and other gun-reform legislation. Include the key measures in the bills and the names and photos of the so-called representatives and their votes. However twisted the killer’s psyche and however confused his motives, he, like all those before him, should not have had easy access to assault-style weapons and large magazines. There is absolutely no law-abiding use for those weapons in society. ****Bridget Gazzo** , Alexandria **

Newtown didn’t change the politics of guns

The decision this week by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to drop the assault weapons ban and a ban on high-capacity clips from the broader Congressional effort to curb gun violence sent an unmistakable message: The murders of 20 children in Newtown, Conn., in late 2012 has not changed politics as much as many people thought it might.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University That's a hard political truth to hear for many Americans who viewed what happened in Connecticut as a moment when the conversation about guns in America changed. President Obama pledged action. Vice President Biden chaired a White House task force to recommend legislative and executive solutions to curb gun violence. Longtime gun control advocates like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) insisted that this time -- past mass murders involving guns had not moved the needle on a desire for stricter gun laws -- was different. And public polling suggested -- and continues to suggest -- that large majorities favor many of the provisions put forward by Biden's task force. Nearly six in 10 Americans support banning assault weapons in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, and large majorities back expanding background checks to cover all purchases. A smaller majority -- though still a majority -- favor a ban on high-capacity clips.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And yet, as Newtown disappeared further in the political rearview mirror, the same politics that had turned guns into a dormant issue on the national political stage for much of the 1990s and 2000s began to take hold. Senate Democrats up for reelection in Republican-leaning states in 2014 -- think Montana, North Carolina, Alaska, Arkansas and Louisiana -- were loathe to vote on things like the assault weapons ban out of the fear that their eventual Republican opponent would use such a vote to cast them as out of touch with the average person in their state. According to Reid, less than 40 Senate Democrats were ready or willing to vote for the assault weapons ban. And the White House, perhaps sensing that it would need to spend its political capital on other priorities -- debt ceiling/budget fight, immigration and perhaps even climate change -- seemed to decide that passing something (even something that didn't include major provisions like an assault weapons ban or a ban on high capacity clips) was better than passing nothing at all. (President Obama did make clear that he supports the assault weapons ban. But there is a big difference between supporting a piece of legislation and putting the full force of your administration behind convincing wavering members of your party to vote for it.) The simple fact is that despite all of the assertions that Newtown had changed or would change the political dialogue around guns in this country, it wound up reinforcing much of what we already knew about the difficulties of limiting gun rights. Yes, measures to curb gun control are popular with the public at large. But Congress isn't elected by a national vote, and the issue of guns, which, for many people, is a stand-in for a broader sort of cultural identity, splits along geographic lines -- making what a national sample of the public thinks far less relevant. And opponents of stricter gun laws were and are far better organized (and funded) than those trying to impose more stringent regulations. The National Rifle Association remains a devastatingly effective operation for which the gun control lobby has no ready answer. (Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group started by former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, have begun to level that political playing field but it's not close to level just yet.) When the Senate returns from its two-week recess in early April, then, the goal of passing meaningful -- and deeply effective -- gun legislation will ride entirely on broadening background checks. And, even on background checks there remains murkiness about whether a deal can be made -- although the Plum Line's Greg Sargent reports the two sides are talking again.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Many Democrats have insisted, and will continue to insist, that broadening background checks was the ultimate goal of the White House from the start and that if that passes, it represents a major victory for their side. Perhaps. But, while broadening background checks -- as well as banning straw purchases and expanding funding for school safety programs -- will have real world impacts, the fact that two of the most high-profile proposals have been jettisoned from the final bill due to the fact that they would submarine its chances at passage remains telling. For everyone who predicted that the political world had changed post-Newtown, the gun legislation the Senate will debate early next month proves one thing: It hasn't.

NRA recommends arming school staff as Senate bill stalls

Earlier Tuesday, a group sponsored by the National Rifle Association issued a report calling for at least one armed security guard to be present in every school in the country. Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) directed the report, according to the Associated Press: _“The presence of an armed security personnel in a school adds a layer of security and diminishes the response time that is beneficial to the overall security,” said Hutchinson._ _Asked if every school would be better off with an armed security officer, Hutchinson replied, “Yes,” but acknowledged the decision would be made locally._ Meanwhile, despite the pressure for reform that has accumulated since the massacre of 26 students and teachers at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. led to a public outcry, advocates for gun-control legislation in Congress are encountering opposition. _Despite months of negotiations, key senators have been unable to find a workable plan for near-universal background checks on gun purchases — an idea that polls show nine in 10 Americans support._ _Another provision that garnered bipartisan support — making gun trafficking a federal crime — could be gutted if Republican lawmakers accept new language being circulated by the National Rifle Association.. . . _ _There has been virtually no progress since senators left Washington on March 23 for a two-week spring recess. And now, back home, senators are assessing the raw politics of their constituencies to determine which could cost them more in the next election: voting for expanding background checks or doing nothing. (Read the full storyhere.)_ President Obama has argued forcefully for the proposed measures, to the point, Glenn Kessler complains, of distorting statistics. For a list of gun-control initiatives in various states, visit The Fix. Meanwhile, the United Nations passed an unprecedented global treaty today with the goal of preventing criminals, terrorists and repressive governments from acquiring weapons: _The treaty covers a wide range of conventional weapons, including battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, missiles and small arms. These items could not be transferred to countries under U.N. arms embargoes or to states that promote genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes._

Bullet overkill

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-Conn.) offered a trenchant comment the other day about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December, which was carried out by Adam Lanza with a semiautomatic assault weapon that reloaded bullets in rapid succession from a single ammunition magazine. Twenty children and six adults were killed in a deadly few minutes of fire. “We do know that historically in these instances, amateurs have trouble switching magazines,” the senator said, according to the New York Times. “I believe, and many of the parents there believe, that if Lanza had to switch cartridges nine times versus two times there would likely still be little boys and girls alive in Newtown today.” The same might also be said for other mass shootings such as the one that wounded former U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson and the one at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. These semiautomatic assault weapons are primarily versions of guns created for soldiers in war zones and have no place in civilian hands. The high-capacity ammunition magazine is functionally the most important feature of semiautomatic assault weapons, including some assault pistols, allowing a shooter to rapidly fire up to 30 times without reloading. If Congress decides to legislate a limit on such magazines, say, 10 bullets, it could save lives. The 10-round limit was included in the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. Taking stock of that law, a report for the National Institute of Justice noted that studies have shown that attacks with semiautomatic weapons “result in more shots fired, more persons hit, and more wounds inflicted per victim than do attacks with other firearms.” There is already a huge stock of these weapons and ammunition clips in civilian hands, but Congress could at least staunch the manufacture and purchase of new ones. A limit on high-capacity magazines draws more support in recent public opinion polls than does a ban on assault weapons. Senators who have resisted gun control legislation out of concern for political fallout have been hinting that they may support limits on ammunition clips. One of them, Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), has stated that, despite his “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, he is ready to depart from the status quo in response to Sandy Hook. The senator could do so by speaking up for a limit on large-capacity ammunition clips. No one who owns guns for hunting, target practice or personal self-defense needs to have a 30-bullet magazine, as Vice President Biden rather inartfully stated in an online chat last week. Mr. Biden said that civilians don’t need a semiautomatic assault rifle of the AR-15 type — like that used by Lanza — to protect themselves. “It’s harder to aim, it’s harder to use and in fact you don’t need 30 rounds to protect yourself,” the vice president declared. “Buy a shotgun. Buy a shotgun.” We’re not offering any such shopping tips, but we do think that Congress should act for the whole nation and put these high-capacity clips beyond reach. **More on this topic:** Joseph Scafetta Jr. (letter): The possibilities and limitations of gun control legislation The Post’s View: Getting real on guns Eugene Robinson: The NRA’s tone-deaf rhetoric

Hillary Clinton says she supports the Second Amendment. So let’s look at her record.

"I see no conflict between saving people's lives and protecting the Second Amendment," she said.  And in fact, since her days as first lady, Clinton has a fairly strong record of supporting gun-control legislation. But during her 2008 campaign for president, she backed off a bit. Here's a recap:  In 2007, during a Democratic primary debate in South Carolina, Clinton recalled her and her husband's visit to Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., after that massacre, saying "we had to do more to try to keep guns out of the hands of the criminal and of the mentally unstable. And during the Clinton administration, that was a goal -- not to, in any way, violate people's 2nd Amendment rights, but to try to limit access to people who should not have guns."   In 2004, in the Senate  she voted against banning lawsuits against gun manufacturers for gun violence. She voted to extend for 10 years an assault weapons ban and supported federal criminal background checks for major gun shows. She later said at a 2008 Democratic primary debate that she'd fight for reinstating the assault weapons ban.       In 2014 at a CNN town hall, she told an audience member she thinks reinstating the assault weapons ban and a ban high-capacity magazines would help limit gun violence.    If you're a gun-control supporter, you'll want to keep a close eye on her rhetoric.

The law shouldn’t allow a 9-year-old to fire a machine gun

A 9-year-old apparently lost control of an Uzi she was firing and killed her instructor [“Girl accidentally kills shooting instructor,” Politics & the Nation Digest, Aug. 27]. No citations or charges will be filed, we’re told, because the Arizona firing range was licensed and the 9-year-old was above the designated age of 8 for firing such weapons. This self-described military-style shooting range allows 8-year-olds to fire military-style weapons. Our military does not accept 8-year-olds as soldiers, and societies who cultivate “child soldiers” are generally viewed as barbaric. Now a 9-year-old will live out her life knowing she took the life of another person. Those who possess firearms and/or provide access to them to others must be held accountable for the actions committed using those weapons. Our laws and regulations, which do not prevent such tragedies, are not sufficient for a civilized society. ****Janet Lee** , Takoma Park**