There is a common denominator to most of America’s domestic massacres, including Sunday’s extermination of 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., the deadliest of all: The killers used AR-15s or AR-15-style rifles, weapons designed not for sport or hunting but for shooting people.
An AR-15 was the weapon the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter used to kill 26 children and two teachers; the primary weapon that killed 14 and wounded 22 in San Bernardino, Calif.; and the weapon used to kill 10 and wound 9 at an Oregon college.
President Obama, when he speaks about the Orlando shootings and others, sounds frustrated and disgusted. Schoolchildren can be murdered in large numbers and still nothing is done. As a nation, we watch the bullet coming in slow motion but are too paralyzed to duck.
We understand the reluctance. Guns, in the eyes of millions of Americans, are things of beauty and great power. Many is the boy who hoped to graduate from his BB gun to an iconic Winchester Model 94, an exquisite Parker shotgun or a Weatherby rifle that, like most fine guns, is a work of art.
AR-15s are different. Until a few years ago, they could be banned without taking any hunter out of the woods. Wars, style and Rambo movies changed that, but still something must be done.
AR-15s, known as the Swiss Army knife of rifles for their adaptability, are cheap and deadly. Because of that, they were banned for a decade by Congress, which then let the ban expire. This week has brought calls to renew the ban, but it might be too late for that.
There are 5 million to 7 million AR-15-style assault weapons in circulation and more made every day. They are semi-automatics, which means that they fire each time the shooter pulls the trigger.
They come in many calibers, but the most common is the one Omar Mateen used, a .223. The shell and bullet of the ubiquitous .22 long rifle is just 0.6 inches long. Even so, it is capable of killing a human. The average shell and bullet length of a .223 is two and a quarter inches, or four times as long.
Two major New Hampshire companies, Sturm Ruger in Newport and Sig Sauer on the Seacoast, make AR-15s and similar guns. In fact, it would be no surprise to find that the rifle used in Orlando was made in New Hampshire. So we can hear the arguments now: Banning assault rifles would cost jobs, harm the economy, disenfranchise sportsmen, violate the Second Amendment.
But this time, the nation needs to do something.
The first step, one that would meet Second Amendment muster and not disadvantage sportsmen, would be to ban the possession, sale or use of the high-capacity magazines that make assault rifles, and some of their pistol cousins, so inordinately deadly.
Mateen’s weapon was fitted with 30-round magazines or clips, and some can take clips that hold 50 shells or more. And clips can be taped together to deploy even more firepower without the need to reload – time that might allow some victims to escape.
Past attempts to limit the size of magazines were well below what most guns were designed to use. A reasonable number, though still below the capacity of some small caliber guns, is 10. Using more than that, in a magazine or weapon, should carry a very stiff fine.
We urge every congressional candidate to speak out about gun violence and support legislation to limit firepower. It won’t stop mass shootings, but it would save lives. The alternative is to sit on our hands, close our eyes and hope that next time, it’s not us or ours.