Guns don’t scare people. Scary guns scare people.
“Congress should restore a ban on military-style assault
weapons,” the president said Wednesday afternoon, “and a 10-round
limit for magazines.” People fear exotic firearms, so it’s easier
for a politician to frighten the public into supporting
prohibitions upon the ominous appearing.
But the guns Americans assault other Americans with aren’t
“military-style assault weapons.” It turns out that the most
frightening firearms — the ones with giant butt stocks, menacing
muzzles, and elongated clips — also prove the most difficult ones
with which to commit undetectable crimes.
So, as shocking as it may seem to people who’ve replaced
thinking with emoting, criminals rarely roam the streets with
weapons the length of four-year-old children. Bad people generally
prefer something more discreet. Real-life villains don’t come
straight from central casting. And the weapons they use almost
never come from Die Hard’s prop department.
An annual report released by California attorney general Kamala
Harris called “Firearms Used in the Commission of Crimes” shows
that the guns that scare us and the guns that kill us aren’t one in
the same. The most recent report details that handguns constitute
90 percent of firearms used in California crimes. What
California calls “fully-automatic weapons” comprise less than one
percent of firearms used in California crimes, with all guns
classified as “assault weapons” under California law constituting
just five percent of firearms used in crime.
The most popular firearm among Golden State criminals isn’t an
M16 or an elephant gun but a 9mm pistol. Of the murder cases
examined by the attorney general’s office, zero involved fully
automatic weapons. Almost all of them involved handguns. Somebody
tell the state’s senior senator.
In Obama’s Illinois, FBI statistics show 377 gun murders for
2011. Of the 370 gun murders for which a type of weapon has been
identified, 364 were handguns, 5 were shotguns, and just one was a
rifle. Even assuming that the single rifle used in that Illinois
murder were one of those military-style weapons the president seeks
to ban, then assault rifles would constitute less than a quarter of
a percent of all Illinois murders. By way of comparison, Illinois
murderers used fists and other body parts to kill seventeen people
in 2011.
Banning so-called assault weapons once again won’t make us
safer. But this debate is about feelings, not reality.
Why else would the president of the United States surround
himself with children, and quote from their letters, in launching a
major policy initiative? It’s surely not for the expertise they
lend. The pictures conveyed, like the misleading language used,
would be better suited for a dystopian-novel demagogue than the
leader of a living republic.
This closely follows the 1994 assault weapons ban that fixated
on cosmetic features, prohibiting magazine-loaded rifles that
exhibited, among other items, bayonet mounts, flash suppressors,
and pistol grips. It’s all about the scary.
Since the debate itself isn’t merely superficial but has the
added quality of being about superficial concerns off on the
periphery, might a sensible compromise be reached sure to bring
happiness to gun owners and gun grabbers?
Gun manufacturers should agree to ditch the metallic grays and
blacks for day-glow, pastel, and full-spectrum Crayola. An AR-15
that more closely resembles a Skittles package just might win
Dianne Feinstein’s imprimatur. Those angular, phallic designs must
go, too. Try something more curvy, huggable, and nonthreatening.
The cold steel is certainly a turnoff. Why not incorporate soft,
warm fabric?
If you think these suggestions silly, you’re not paying
attention. The entire conversation is cartoonish and farcical.
Gun control has little to do with crime control, as the fixation
on “assault” weapons rarely used in actual assaults attests. It’s
about making people who can’t tell a Kalashnikov from Mikhail
Baryshnikov feel better.
So, gun nuts, just get it over with and wrap the stock in shag
carpet and paint the barrel turquoise. A sparkly, polka-dotted gun
is better than no gun at all.
