Give ’em an Inch…
Conservatives fear assault weapons reform will do to gun ownership what they’ve done to abortion rights.
We all know the “slippery slope” argument. It goes along the lines of if we take this one small step, even if it’s a good one, it will start a chain reaction inexorably leading to disaster. Slippery slope reasoning is often used in legal and political discourse to draw a line in the sand, beyond which one cannot venture without disastrous unintended consequences. These arguments are psychologically effective, if often logically fallacious. And they form the backbone for gun advocates’ opposition to assault weapons legislation. As these conservatives and gun lobbyists¹ know from their campaign to erode abortion rights, carving out enough exceptions to absolute gun ownership may eventually swallow the rule. We’ll never have their cooperation, even for modest reforms. So it’s time for Congress to push through a common-sense assault weapons ban without them.
Let me begin by extending my heartfelt prayers and well wishes to the victims of the Orlando massacre and their families. This was a horrific, and all too familiar, crime against a group of people for whom persecution, hatred, and violence are commonplace. I was brought to tears the other day listening to NPR interview a man who helped translate for victims and their families (many of whom do not speak English) in the wake of the tragedy. The man, Eddie Meltzer, had been at the Pulse nightclub just minutes before the shooting, but luckily left before it started. In spite of losing five friends in the shooting, Mr. Meltzer described his motivation for volunteering to help victims the very next day:
I’m just not going to subscribe to fear. We’re a strong community. You know, we’re gay men. We don’t — we live in a world where we get a lot of hate. We take a lot of hate. And we know how the world feels about us. And we’re strong people because we live in a world that wasn’t made for us. And if tomorrow somebody took over this country and said, we’re going to kill all the gays, I will be the first one in that square saying, shoot me with my big flag all over the place because I would rather die for what I stand for. You can kill me. I’m an idea, I’m timeless.
That any American has cause to feel that our country was “not made for [them]” is a disgrace, plain and simple. Our melting pot shouldn’t exclude any of us. And the LGBT community, as the recipient of frequent threats and violence, certainly has every right to feel alienated from our society. I suspect that the Orlando shooter will turn out to have been a closeted gay man who decided to rampage through a gay nightclub (that he apparently frequented) in order to kill the gay within himself. Perhaps if we as a society weren’t so fixated on legislating where LGBT people can go to the bathroom, this lunatic wouldn’t have hated himself enough to go on a killing spree in the first place.
The issue of America’s pervasive homophobia is complex, with many possible answers. I will certainly concede that reasonable people can disagree about how best to tackle that problem. The solution will likely be complex, multifaceted, and take quite a bit of time to implement. (Although personally I feel that the Millennial generation, when it eventually takes its place in society, will have no compunction about embracing its LGBT members.) There is clearly no magic wand that can be waved to solve homophobia.
But one thing we can do right now, and which would have an immediate and substantial effect on curbing these types of shootings, is an assault weapons ban. The Orlando shooter used an AR-15 to butcher his victims. The AR-15, originally designed by Eugene Stoner in the 1950s, is also known by its military designation: the M-16. You’ve likely seen it in dozens of movies and newsreels. It is a semi-automatic assault rifle whose variants have served as our army’s front-line weapon for five decades. As a mass-produced killing tool, the success of Stoner’s AR-15 is matched perhaps only by Mikhail Kalashnikov’s infamous AK-47 — also a weapon designed for war.
Since the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 2004, the AR-15 has been legal in the United States when not configured for automatic fire. It shoots NATO 5.56x45mm ammunition (as in, the standard bullets used by the armed forces of NATO member states) at 3,200 feet per second. Its rate of fire is limited only by how fast a shooter can pull the trigger. There are videos on YouTube of users firing multiple AR-15 shots per second, allowing them to empty a full magazine (20–30 rounds) in the blink of an eye. So the fact that the AR-15 is not “automatic” doesn’t mean a whole lot from a practical perspective. In fact, I would venture to say that because semi-automatic operation reduces recoil and permits better target acquisition, most shooters would be deadlier in semi-automatic mode anyway.
I doubt ArmaLite and its successors are too happy that their product has become the de facto standard for lunatic mass-murderers. In addition to the Orlando shooting, the AR-15 was used in the San Bernadino massacre (14 deaths), the Sandy Hook school shooting (26 deaths, of which 20 were children), and the Aurora movie theater killings (12 deaths), among countless others. Clearly the fact that it is no longer sold as an automatic does not impede these killers from using it to great effect against scores of innocent victims.
For as long as I can remember, I have strongly opposed private ownership of most types of guns, chief among them these types of assault weapons. I have argued this issue with many, many smart people on the other side of the fence. And I have heard some pretty convincing reasons that private citizens ought to be able to own certain types of guns for things like hunting and home defense. While I personally believe that the costs of permitting private ownership of, say, handguns, are too high in light of their wide use in crime, there are indisputable lawful benefits attached to them.
Assault weapons are different. No private citizen needs an assault weapon, and there simply isn’t room for debate on this. Not one person with whom I have ever spoken about this issue, nor any of the multitudes of articles I have read on it, has ever expressed a single cogent reason why a private citizen would need an assault weapon. AR-15s and their ilk are designed for war, and as such have no possible lawful private use. At most, they are a neat toy for gun enthusiasts to enjoy. And I’m sorry, but if we’re weighing constant mass shootings against, in essence, “it’s cool,” I think we know what the right answer is.
Indeed, in 1989, following a mass shooting, Ronald Reagan (having left the Oval Office only months before) spoke on the issue of assault weapons and took that same view of the situation. The 1989 shooter had used a legally-purchased version of the AK-47 assault rifle, and his rampage claimed the lives of five schoolchildren and wounded 30 others. Former president Reagan said on the issue:
I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen [to own guns] for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.
On May 3, 1994, Reagan also joined former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in writing a letter to Congress urging support “for a ban on the domestic manufacture of military-style assault weapons.” In the letter, the presidents noted overwhelming public support (77%) for a ban on assault weapons, plus statistical proof that a ban on the import of such weapons resulted in a 40% drop in assault weapons being tied to violent crimes.
Love him or hate him, Ronald Reagan inaugurated the modern era of American conservatism. His words are, for conservatives, as close to gospel truth as one can get outside of the actual Gospel. Every single GOP presidential candidate invoked Reagan more than once during this campaign cycle. And while we vehemently disagree with his politics, even progressives like me deeply respect Mr. Reagan. He did a commendable job ending the Cold War, and his impact on American politics will continue to be felt for decades. Most importantly, he was a reasonable man, and he and Rep. Tip O’Neill were able to compromise and get the business of the nation accomplished. Because he was fundamentally rational in a way that many conservatives no longer are, Mr. Reagan was able to see that assault weapons serve none of the goals advanced by the gun rights movement. They are useful only for mass murder — something which both sides of the aisle ought to be able to agree is bad for our country.
Why, then, in the face of overwhelming public support and even the voice of one of its greatest leaders, do Republican leaders continue to oppose an assault weapons ban? I posit that the answer is a simple one: experience. Ever since the Supreme Court made its landmark abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), it has been under constant attack from conservative pro-lifers. Given that a majority of Americans are pro-choice (under at least some circumstances), pro-lifers know that they can’t attack abortion rights directly. So they’ve taken a craftier approach, slowly chipping away at women’s right to choose with ridiculous bills like the Texas abortion law now under review by the Supreme Court.
The Texas law requires abortion clinics to meet a set of ludicrous and patently unnecessary standards. Since most clinics could not comply with the arbitrary rules set forth in the law, they closed down instead, leaving only six in operation in the entire state. This has resulted in women facing longer wait times and higher costs in seeking abortions — which was, let’s face it, exactly the intended outcome. While proponents of the law claim that it is meant to protect women’s health, experts agree that the regulations are unnecessary for medical reasons. By limiting access to reproductive services, these experts opine that the law actually hurts women instead of helping them. It is, I believe, fairly obvious that the real reason the law was passed was to overrule Roe by other means.
The success of anti-abortion laws like the ones in Texas must be encouraging to their conservative backers. And those same conservatives, when faced with even the smallest challenges to gun ownership, react quite predictably: total, irrational, fanatical opposition. They have seen first-hand how effective one can be in eroding a constitutional right through piecemeal legislation.² We can therefore infer that the disproportionately hostile and illogical opposition conservatives show to assault weapons legislation isn’t born from any real attachment to assault weapons. Many of them are actually quite half-hearted in trying to justify private ownership of these overpowered killing machines. They know in their hearts that no one outside the military needs a machine gun. So they’re left taking nonsensical positions and throwing out absurd comparisons.³
No, the real reason for this opposition is simply that conservatives don’t want their own weapons used against them (excuse the terrible pun). They fear that us evil liberals will “come for their guns” — which, for the love of God, we’re far past trying to do at this point — in the guise of common-sense assault weapons legislation. They know — KNOW — that we want to take away all their guns. We’re just lying when we say we want to keep mentally ill jihadists from obtaining machine guns. No, what we want is to take away all the guns, and this is just the first step. And since they’ve done the exact same thing vis-à-vis abortion, they know just how effective that tactic can be.
I once heard it said that when you cheat on your partner, you become paranoid that they must be cheating on you too. Turnabout is fair play and all that, I suppose. Now, I hear that same irrational fear in the words of gun enthusiasts trying desperately to warp all logic and reason and justify keeping assault weapons in private hands. You can almost see the comic book thought bubbles popping up as they speak: we screwed them on abortion, and they’re trying to screw us on guns. Reason and logic be damned, they know their truth and they won’t give an inch, lest we take a mile.
It’s long past time for sensible people to stop debating gun nuts on their terms. Even the most ardent champion of gun rights cannot rationally argue the need for private ownership of assault weapons. Hero and founder of the modern conservative GOP, Ronald Reagan, put this issue to bed almost thirty years ago by explicitly supporting a ban on these “military-style” weapons. So rest assured that anyone who still wants to argue the merits of assault weapons has an agenda that goes far beyond their desire to own a nifty machine gun. They’re terrified we’ll take a page from their own playbook on abortion, so they won’t agree to give up weapons of war that even they know they don’t need. That isn’t the sign of a true believer, it’s the mark of a coward.
The time for discussion is over. Assault weapons have got to go. Congress, stop the endless, repetitive, and meaningless debate, and just pass an assault weapons ban already. Until you do, every drop of innocent blood that is spilt is on your hands.
¹ As an aside, the National Rifle Association (NRA) is a blight on our country. If you own and enjoy guns and assume the NRA speaks for you, you are mistaken. It represents only the interests of gun manufacturers, and by refusing to engage with reasonable gun control discussions, the NRA is actively working against normal people’s best interests. It’s probably a bit melodramatic to call it a domestic terror organization. But its products, and its lobbying, have been responsible for staggeringly more deaths than terrorism in America. So while it may not directly support ISIS, the NRA is certainly doing their work.
² The difference, of course, is that gun control laws would save lives, while anti-abortion laws will inevitably cost them. But they’re only women’s lives, so who cares, right?
³ My favorite of these has always been the “fact” that more people die in car accidents than from guns each year, so what are we going to do, outlaw cars? It’s a great argument as long as you don’t think about it for more than two seconds. Let’s start by noting that in contrast to machine guns, cars aren’t expressly designed for murder. And, regardless, most adults understand that life is a game of balancing risk and reward. Cars certainly involve risk, but unlike assault weapons, serve an extraordinarily useful purpose. Assault weapons are pure risk, and what’s the reward for that risk? Hell if I know. Shooting them is cool? It makes you feel like a real man? They help you compensate for certain shortcomings? The fact is that there is no reward, and we all know it.
