Last night, the president made some remarks during a DCCC fundraiser at a private residence in San Francisco, California. One thing he said is curious because it appears to be wrong, and deliberately so.
Now, over the next couple of months, we’ve got a couple of issues: gun control. (Applause.) I just came from Denver, where the issue of gun violence is something that has haunted families for way too long, and it is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make sure that we don’t have another 20 children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon — by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly.
Adam Lanza did not have a fully automatic weapon, so it is unclear why the president said that he did. The error not only failed to advance his case for controlling semiautomatic weapons, it undermined his case. It also made him sound unknowledgeable about guns, a liability that was quickly exploited by the right.
I don’t know why he made that statement, but it got me thinking. Would the outcome in Newtown have been all that different if Lanza had used a fully automatic weapon? I suspect that he may have killed a few more kids who actually managed to escape while he was reloading, but I don’t know that for certain. Isn’t the problem with semiautomatic weapons that they are enough like fully automatic weapons that the distinction doesn’t really matter outside of the battlefield?
Probably the hardest thing to explain is why a semiautomatic pistol or hunting rifle is okay, but not a semiautomatic “assault weapon.” The best argument I can make is that the only legitimate use of a semiautomatic military-style rifle is to kill a lot of people. The handguns are suitable for self-defense in the home. The hunting rifles are excellent for bringing down game, and aren’t typically used like an assault weapon. A hunter might pull the trigger two or three times, but there’s no reason to empty your clip into a deer or elk or whatever you’re hunting. The AR-15 type guns, however, are not ideal for hunting even if they can be used that way.
Now, if we ban these military style semiautomatic rifles, someone like Adam Lanza could do the same amount of damage with a semiautomatic hunting rifle, so what have we accomplished? I have two answers to that. The first is that the ammunition magazine part of this is important, too. We don’t want guns to be adapted to take these huge magazines, and we don’t want the magazines to be readily available. But the second part is that it is a cultural thing. It’s hard to quantify since it’s basically an aesthetic argument. But I believe that the mere existence of these military style weapons is corrosive and encourages their use on people in a way that hunting rifles simply don’t. Just as it is odd to take your AR-15 Bushmaster deer hunting, it is strange to take your hunting rifle to your local mall for a shooting spree. Banning the assault weapon is basically nothing more than a cultural statement that these killing machines are obscene.
A lot of people disagree with that judgment. A lot of people really love playing G.I. Joe. Their opinions are important. But, ultimately, as Colorado, Connecticut, and New York have already concluded, their opinions are not decisive. The truth is that when it comes to our citizenry, there is no real difference between a semiautomatic and fully automatic rifle in terms of their lethality. No rifle designed to kill people should be semiautomatic. If you want to protect your home, get a handgun or a shotgun, or both. Or just use your hunting rifle.