“The Mass Murder Lobby”: How The NRA Impeded The Boston Bomber Investigation
The intense hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers illustrates another way that the National Rifle Association helps mass murderers — by delaying how quickly they can be identified.
The inability to quickly track the gunpowders in the Boston bombs is due to government policy designed and promoted by the NRA, which has found a way to transform every massacre associated with weapons into an opportunity for the munitions companies that sustain it to sell more guns, gunpowder and bullets.
The price for such delays was put on terrible display Friday morning when the two brothers, who had been caught on video placing the bombs, killed one police officer, wounded another and carjacked a motorist, creating conditions so unsafe that the 7th largest population center in America spent Friday on lockdown.
But for the NRA-backed policy of not putting identifiers known as taggants in gunpowder, law enforcement could have quickly identified the explosives used to make the bombs, tracking them from manufacture to retail sale. That could well have saved the life of Sean Collier, the 26-year-old MIT police officer who was gunned down Thursday night by the fleeing bomb suspects.
Had the suspects in the Boston bombings killed by slipping poison into bottled water or canned food at a factory, or lacing spinach in a field with a deadly chemical, it would have taken only minutes to a few hours to identify exactly where that food was manufactured and how it moved through the food chain. That would have quickly narrowed the search for suspects.
With many food products you can use a smartphone app to scan the product’s barcode and learn where, when and by what company the product was made. Cans and bottles also come with codes printed or stamped on them to help stop foodborne illness by tracking products to their source.
“With almost any food these days you can quickly track it from the source to the store where it was sold,” according to Bill Marler, a Seattle litigator who specializes in food safety cases and sponsors the website Food Safety News.
Had the Boston bombers used a plastic explosive, it would have included identifiers that would have allowed a quick trace. Those taggants exist because the NRA does not oppose them.
Why is that? Why this breach in the NRA’s Maginot Line of defense against reasonable regulation of guns and ammunition?
The answer appears to lie in who makes plastic explosives like Semtx, which was used to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The world’s main supplier was not a company that finances the NRA, but Libya under Moammar Khadafy.
That this one breach in NRA policy traces directly to the economic interests of the American munitions industry provides powerful evidence of what motivates the NRA – profits.
That the gun makers have managed to turn each massacre into a spike in sales of both expensive rapid-fire weapons and ammunition adds to the evidence that the NRA should be viewed as the mass-murder lobby.
The major source of plastic explosives may also be significant in understanding the NRA’s willingness to go along with taggants for plastic explosives, which are much more powerful than gunpowder.
But gunpowder, like guns, are extremely difficult to trace because for more than three decades the NRA has fought to make sure it’s difficult to almost impossible to do.
That difficulty results not from the technical issues at hand, though the NRA tries to make people think that’s the case by mischaracterizing a 1980 government report.
In the case of guns, the NRA claims anything remotely resembling a gun registry or a national database tracking guns from manufacturer to retail sale would help the government disarm the citizenry. In this the NRA fuels the fantasy that in the event the American government turned on the people, bands of armed patriots could defeat the military with its trained soldiers, aircraft, drones, advanced weaponry and communications.
Iraqi households almost all had guns, too, but that did not protect them from their country’s military or the invading American-led ground forces a decade ago.
Bombs have long been used in America for personal, criminal and political purposes. The frequency of bombings may surprise many people given the intense focus on the Boston bombs.
Roughly 5,000 bombings and attempted bombings are reported in the U.S. each year, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reports.
The ATF data, like that the FBI gathers, takes a broad measure, counting bombs made from matchsticks as well as dynamite.
The level of reported bombings in 2011 and 2012 was triple the number compared to more than four decades ago, when I wrote a three-part series in the afternoon San Jose News on homemade explosive devices. Back then, as a staff writer for the morning San Jose Mercury, I covered California radicals, left and right, and the cops trying to catch them. I even got one bomb-maker in 1972 to invite me home to see a nonworking bomb model fashioned from advice in a book we both owned, anti-war protester William Powell’s The Anarchist Cook Book.
Hobbling law enforcement, and attacking it, has long been an NRA strategy.
After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, federal agents had a tough time tracing the fertilizer used to make the bomb that killed 168 people and injured 680 more because the NRA had fought using identifiers for explosives.
As my then-colleague Fox Butterfield reported in The New York Times three weeks after the crime:
Technological advances in the last three decades might have made it harder to build such a bomb and easier to trace its origin, the experts say, but gun enthusiasts and makers of fertilizer and explosives have repeatedly blocked efforts to put the research to use.
“It is just amazing that in this dangerous time, fanatical, boneheaded people are opposed to controls on explosives,” said then-Representative Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat from Brooklyn, who introduced bills in 1993 and 1994 that would have forced manufacturers to add an identifying marker to explosives so their users could be tracked.
Mr. Schumer was referring primarily to the National Rifle Association and the explosives industry, which helped defeat the bills, citing among their objections safety hazards and reliability. The use of markers, they said, makes explosives more unstable and, when used in gunpowder, makes the charge less reliable.
Reynold Hoover, a former bomb expert with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said his agency had money in the budget in the 1970s to develop a tagging or identification agent, known as a taggant. The 3M Corporation devised the technology by the late ’70s, said Mr. Hoover, now a consultant in Washington: fluorescent particles that could be detected by ultraviolet light. Manufacturers would use a different taggant in each batch.
Although up to 90 percent of taggants might be destroyed in a detonation, enough would remain to reveal their source.
In 1979, while conducting a $5 million pilot project using taggants in some seven million pounds of explosives, the ATF was able to track down and convict James L. McFillin, who had used an explosive, Tovex 220, to make a bomb that killed one man and injured another in Baltimore.
But shortly afterward, Congress ordered the bureau to stop work on ways to trace explosives. At the time, Representative William J. Hughes, the New Jersey Democrat who headed the House subcommittee on crime, said the National Rifle Association and makers of explosives had pressured Congress to block the program.
The NRA opposed using taggants, saying they would contaminate some explosives used by gun hobbyists, like old-fashioned gunpowder called black powder and the newer smokeless powder. It said people who liked to fire antique rifles or who loaded their own ammunition would have to use less accurate gunpowder.
Let’s not forget what Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s CEO, said shortly after that terrorist act in Oklahoma City. LaPierre went on the attack against law enforcement, comparing federal agents to the Nazis and calling them “jack-booted thugs.”
Former president George H.W. Bush then resigned from the NRA in protest, but LaPierre kept his job, which speaks volumes.
As for taggants, the “study” the NRA cites to show that good science found taggants would make gunpowder less reliable and would not work was in fact only a review of the literature.
Anyone who actually reads the 1980 report, “Taggants in Explosives,” will find this revealing line by the Office of Technology Assessment: “Due to severe time constraints, OTA did little original research.”
Technology has advanced since that report, which is so old that it was prepared on a typewriter.
We can get identifiers put in gunpowders because of technological advances, just as reports get prepared these days on computers. And if “good science” says existing taggants fall short, then Congress can fund research to develop taggants that work without degrading the quality of the explosive charge in bullets.
But as the votes in the Senate killing modest gun regulation and controls on gun trafficking showed this week, what stands firmly in the way of reducing mass murders and bombings is one organization and its backers.
We can change that, once the public understands that the NRA is not so much a defender of Second Amendment rights as a lobby for enabling mass murder.
By: David Cay Johnson, The National Memo, April 20, 2013
“Another Right Wing Freakout”: Sorry Rush, Gun Violence Is A Health Care Issue
How illogical has the right-wing media ‘debate’ about gun control become this week in the wake of President Obama moving forward on a host of violence prevention measures?
So illogical that conservative media voices expressed outrage, while spreading constant misinformation, about the role doctors might play in addressing gun violence in America. The right-wing Noise Machine cranked up the indignation because the Obama administration wants to make sure health care professional are allowed to communicate with their patients about guns and gun safety.
In other words, the right-wing Noise Machine is furious that the White House is treating gun violence, in part, as a health care issue when it so transparently is one.
Fact: The United States’ life expectancy rate is far lower than most other affluent countries, in part because of our rate of gun violence far outpaces those other countries.
Meanwhile, taxpayers here spend billions each year paying health care costs to treat gunshot victims, the strong majority of whom, research indicates, are uninsured. Taxpayers spend even more money covering societal costs, such as long-term psychological problems, disability, and the loss of productivity suffered by approximately 70,000 Americans who suffer non-fatal gun shot wounds annually.
Following the school gun massacre in Newtown, Conn. last month, Bloomberg News reported:
The cost of U.S. gun violence in work lost, medical care, insurance, criminal-justice expenses and pain and suffering amounted to as much as $174 billion in 2010, according to data compiled by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, Maryland.
That averages out to more than $644 in costs for every gun owned in America. As economist Ted Miller, the Institute’s principal research scientist, told Bloomberg, “Gun ownership is like smoking, an expensive and dangerous habit.”
So yes, gun violence is America represents an epic and costly health care problem, which is why it makes sense to include health care providers in any comprehensive attempt to combat the crisis. (On Wednesday, the White House announced the administration would “issue guidance clarifying that the Affordable Care Act does not ban doctors from asking patients “about firearms in their patients’ homes and safe storage of those firearms.”)
As the Firearm & Injury Center at the University of Pennsylvania has concluded, “Healthcare providers have a vital role in preventing intentional and unintentional firearm injuries and their impact on patients, families and communities.” And that’s why the group Doctors for America applauded Obama’s gun violence imitative this week.
Meanwhile, the far-right allegation that Obama now requires physicians to press patients about gun use represents a complete fabrication. So was Rush Limbaugh’s claim that Obama’s trying to turn doctors into “snitches,” and Lou Dobbs’ fearmongering about the president turning doctors into “an agent of the federal government.”
The right-wing freak-out is built around the fake premise of, how dare Obama recruit doctors to fight his war on gun violence. (Drudge Report headline: “War on Crazy: Obama Deputizes Doctors”) That may be a conservative attempt to keep the gun debate focused on the issue of gun rights and the Second Amendment and away from the catastrophic, real-life costs that gun violence registers each year.
However, the right-wing media’s baseless assertion ignores the obvious fact that the health care industry in this country — doctors, hospitals, emergency rooms, mental health centers -remains inundated with gunshot wounds daily and deals with the life-changing crisis all the time. (Nearly 300 people are shot everyday in America.) Doctors don’t have to go snooping around acting as “snitches” in order to find the problem.
And the financial costs of those gunshots wounds is rising; improved trauma care means hospitals now save more gunshot victims, which in turn adds to larger, long-term health care and rehabilitation costs.
A 2005 study of hospital charges for firearm injuries in Pennsylvania found that the average charge for inpatient hospitalization due to firearm injuries was $30,814. That figure was more than double what gunshot injuries cost hospitals between 1996-1998.
An in-depth investigation on gunshot violence by the Milwaukee Journal in 2006 reported that the average bill for a shooting patient treated at the city’s Froedtert Hospital was $38,000. For gunshot victims who suffered spinal damage, the bill regularly reached six figures.
Truth is, any attempt to reduce gun violence in America must include a health care strategy, no matter how much whining Fox News and Rush Limbaugh do about it.
By: Eric Boehlert, The Huffington Post, January 18, 2013
“Taking Aim”: On Virtually Every Measure, The N.R.A.’s Messaging Is Off
This week the president aimed high in the gun debate, and the National Rifle Association aimed low, despicably low.
On Wednesday, the president outlined a broad range of measures — including universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazine clips, as well as improved data collection and sharing about backgrounds of potential gun buyers. It was all intended to increase public safety over all and make an honest effort to prevent mass shootings and lessen the carnage in the event that there are more
The N.R.A., for its part, released on Tuesday an ad called “Elitist Hypocrite” that invoked the Obama children and their Secret Service security as evidence of a president who values his children above those of average Americans.
It was an outrageous, unnecessary and ultimately stomach-churning ploy to pit the value of some children against others while completely ignoring the longstanding and very real threats that presidents and their families face.
As the Christian Science Monitor reported in November, “Since 2007, the Secret Service has disrupted several assassination conspiracies — including some involving white nationalists — and arrested dozens of people who have made less-than-idle threats against the president.”
Most of us don’t have to worry that our children live under the constant threat of harm. Heads of state do. Feigning ignorance of that distinction for political expediency only suggests that you may not be feigning at all.
Furthermore, the president hasn’t voiced opposition to more school security. He has, however, said that he doesn’t believe that that’s the sole solution. In a recent interview on “Meet the Press,” the president said, “I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools.”
Lastly, as the White House pointed out in an e-mail to me last month, the administration proposed money for “Secure Our Schools” policing grants, which provide funding to improve school safety, “however, Congress zeroed out the program in 2012.”
In fact, the president’s proposal as presented on Wednesday specifically states:
“We need to enhance the physical security of our schools and our ability to respond to emergencies like mass shootings, and also create safer and more nurturing school climates. Each school is different and should have the flexibility to address its most pressing needs. Some schools will want trained and armed police; others may prefer increased counseling services. Either way, each district should be able to choose what is best to protect its own students.”
And one of the president’s executive orders reads: “provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.”
On virtually every measure, the N.R.A.’s messaging is off.
The president’s proposals, on the other hand, are very much in step with public opinion, which has shifted toward more restrictions, according to a number of polls reported Monday.
A poll by Gallup found that dissatisfaction with America’s gun laws has “spiked” to 38 percent after the Newtown shooting and the public discussions that followed. As Gallup points out, “this is up from 25 percent who held this set of views a year ago, and is the highest since 2001.” That’s an increase by more than half in one year — reversing a trend of continuous decline.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll found that “most Americans support tough new measures to counter gun violence, including banning assault weapons and posting armed guards at every school” and that “[m]ore than half of Americans — 52 percent in the poll — say the shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., has made them more supportive of gun control.”
And a Pew Research Center poll found that most Americans now support a federal database to track gun sales, background checks for private sales and sales at gun shows, preventing the mentally ill from purchasing guns, and bans on semiautomatic weapons, assault style weapons, high-capacity ammunition clips and online ammunition sales.
But as Pew pointed out, “there is a wide gap between those who prioritize gun rights and gun control when it comes to political involvement.”
The report continued: “Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of those who say gun rights should be the priority have contributed money to an organization that takes a position on gun policy, compared with just 5 percent of those who prioritize gun control. People who favor gun rights are also about twice as likely as gun control supporters to have contacted a public official about gun policy (15 percent vs. 8 percent).”
This is where gun control advocates — those who believe that a society can be safer and more civil with fewer rather than more high-powered, high-capacity killing machines — must have their mettle tested. This is where they must take a stand, become vocal and active, and demand accountability from elected officials, not just now but also in the future.
One of the most profound lessons to emerge from the Newtown tragedy is the power of voice. Americans refused to cede the discussion to the N.R.A. and other gun interests. They refused to buckle to fear or be swayed by propaganda.
Yet too many politicians still quake at the mere mention of the N.R.A. They are more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting society.
The public must make them quake at the idea of doing nothing on this issue.
We must never forget what happened in Connecticut last month and we must never forget what happens in Washington in the coming months.
The tragedy of Newtown must herald the dawn of a new America.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 16, 2013
“The NRA Is A Public Health Hazard”: Five Reasons Why The NRA Must Be Stopped
When National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre called on Congress to place an armed guard in every school in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, it showed that he has no intention of doing anything to stop deranged people from using military-style weapons to kill people in large numbers. LaPierre made it clear that the NRA isn’t interested in ending gun violence. In his theatrical and defiant Dec. 21 press conference a week after 26 Sandy Hook children and teachers were shot to death, LaPierre called for even more guns in schools.
In the debate about gun violence, the NRA will rely on time-tested scare tactics. Here are five reasons why the NRA must be defeated:
1. NRA leaders’ immoral interpretation of the Second Amendment presents a serious public health risk.
LaPierre essentially argues that the right to bear any kind of firearm for any reason without any rules – including limits on criminals’ access to the most dangerous weapons ever manufactured – is more important than others’ right to live. This is not what most NRA members or Americans support, and it’s not what the Second Amendment says.
2. The NRA does not represent the views of most NRA members and gun owners.
Recent polling underscores this point. For example, 74 percent of NRA members (and 87 percent of non-NRA gun owners) support requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers. The NRA rank and file also supports barring people on terror watch lists from buying guns (71 percent) and believes the law should require gun owners to alert police to lost and stolen guns (64 percent). NRA policy makers oppose these proposals.
3. The NRA represents gun makers, not gun owners.
LaPierre’s NRA is not the voice of law-abiding gun owners and sportsmen. It is the lobbying arm for gun manufacturers opposed to a ban on the assault rifles they make. These weapons include the Bushmaster used in Newtown, Conn., and many other recent shootings. The manufacturer calls this rifle the “ultimate military combat weapons system,” and the NRA gave the Bushmaster its “Golden Bullseye Award” in 2011.
It’s no surprise that the firearms industry contributes significantly to the NRA. In fact, less than half of the NRA’s budget comes from membership dues, and contributions from weapons makers and ideological donors (including the Koch Brothers) are rising. From 2004 to 2010, the NRA’s corporate and other fundraising revenue grew twice as fast as member dues, according to a Forbes piece on “The NRA Industrial Complex” by Peter Cohan. The Violence Policy Center estimates that between 2005 and 2011 the firearms industry donated as much as $38.9 million to the NRA. Lee Fang explains in The Nation that there are dozens of insidious ways that gun makers influence the NRA beyond direct cash contributions.
4. The NRA lies to the public and its members.
The NRA lies to law-abiding gun owners who want their rights protected by saying that a ban on military-style weapons with massive magazines would mean the government will come for hunting rifles next. The group says that if we close loopholes that allow people to get around criminal background checks, it’s only matter of time before the Second Amendment would be repealed. These are flat-out lies that the NRA uses to buttress its “slippery slope” opposition to sensible gun laws like those overwhelmingly supported by individual NRA members. They use the imaginary slippery slope to justify doing nothing.
5. The NRA uses its power to silence responsible politicians and quash constructive efforts to reduce gun violence.
The NRA is a dangerous force in American politics. Not even the atrocity in Newtown has tempered the organization’s extremism and rigid opposition to any effort to address gun violence. Expect to see the NRA use its considerable resources to ruthlessly attack every legislative proposal to address this crisis. LaPierre will employ negative television ads and direct mail marketing to attack the President, the Vice President and the members of Congress fighting for change.
The NRA is a political bully, and the politics of destruction is its trademark. Politicians have feared the NRA because of its willingness to target them with smear tactics and because of its reputation for defeating opponents at the polls, even though this reputation is undeserved and wildly exaggerated.
If public officials can talk with their constituents about the need for sensible gun laws, they’ll persuade most folks. But when the NRA gives an “F” grade to politicians who want to stop gun violence in America, and when it even lobbies to limit public and private data-gathering on guns and gun violence, this organization is having a chilling effect on public policy and debate. It intimidates good people from trying to do the right thing. It protects the status quo.
That’s why we have to aggressively take on the NRA and support the Biden Commission and members of Congress working on a comprehensive solution to gun violence. Washington must address the epidemic of mass killings, the daily shootings in our cities, the culture of violence and the need to expand access to mental health services.
We should start immediately by enacting commonsense gun laws such as those advocated by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy and supported by those members of Congress who opposed gun legislation prior to the massacre in Newtown. Won’t the nation be safer if we reduce the number of military-style assault rifles on the streets? Won’t fewer people be shot and killed in an America without large-capacity magazines? Won’t we be safer without the gun-show loophole that allows firearms buyers to evade background checks? The NRA doesn’t think so, and the gun manufacturers who set the NRA agenda simply don’t care. After Sandy Hook, the NRA issued a proposal that would make schools more dangerous, not safer.
The NRA doesn’t offer solutions. It works to keep things the way they are, not to reduce gun violence in America. We have to put the NRA on notice that its days of steamrolling Congress are over. The NRA is a public health hazard that must be stopped.
By: Ethan Rome, Executive Director, Health Care for America (originally published on the Huffington Post), January 7, 2013
“Guns, A Primer”: A Brief Compendium On The Instruments That Are Killing Our Children
With gun safety at the center of public debate, it’s understandable that gun-related terminology is flying fast from all directions. So here’s a brief compendium of some basics about guns, ammo, and potential areas of regulation.
One quick item: A bullet is the slug that actually moves down the barrel, comes out the end, and delivers a godawful mess of kinetic force to whatever it hits. The shiny brass thing that contains the bullet, the explosives that drive the bullet, and the mechanism that sets it off is a cartridge, or “shell.” For convenience sake, I’m sometimes going to say “bullet” when talking about the whole cartridge. Purists beware.
Automatic, Semi-Automatic and Other
The bit of information most likely to be mangled in any reporting on a mass shooting involves the action of a gun. That is, once the gun has been fired, what action does it take to make it fire again?
Many older guns require manual intervention to eject the spent cartridge, load a fresh cartridge, and make the gun ready for firing. Rifles, including military rifles made before the 1950s, are often bolt-action. They work by pulling back on small handle that’s attached to a long “bolt.” The gun fires, the shooter raises and pulls back the handle, causing the old cartridge to eject, he then shoves the handle forward to bring a new cartridge into place and brings the handle down for firing. A skilled operator can do all this very quickly. Likewise, many shotguns use a pump action. You’ve probably seen this in movies where Our Hero is going up against a vampire, terminator, or similarly tough beast. Pulling back the handgrip sends a spent shell flying, while pulling it forward again readies the gun for a new shot. It also makes a very cinematic series of clicks.
Automatic and semi-automatic weapons don’t require help in tossing out the old shell and loading up the new. They get their energy from the firing of the cartridge, capturing the energy or gases of the spent shell to bring the next cartridge into position. The difference between a fully automatic weapon and one that’s semi-automatic is simple: A fully automatic weapon begins firing when the trigger is pulled and keeps firing until you let off the trigger (or run out of bullets), a semi-automatic weapon fires once for each pull of the trigger.
How quickly you can fire a semi-automatic weapon depends partly on the design of the gun, partly on the speed of your reactions. Most of the time, the answer is Very Damn Fast. As in multiple shots in a second. That’s unlikely in a real-world situation, but with a semi-automatic the next shot is there when you’re ready. How fast you can move your finger is generally the biggest limiting factor.
Fully automatic weapons (which most people tend to think of as “machine guns”, though the Army reserves that term for larger weapons) are not legal for private citizens in most cases. You may see fully automatic weapons available to test at a gun range, or in use at special events. But you will rarely see one at all. None of the mass shootings in the United States within recent decades has involved a fully automatic weapon. They are regulated, and that regulation appears to be working.
Semi-automatic weapons are extremely common. Yes, these weapons have been used in many mass shootings, but they are also an increasingly popular type of rifle for hunting. Semi-automatics have also become a very popular form of shotgun. And of handgun (revolvers are not semi-automatic because the mechanical motion of the trigger positions the next shot).
Some semi-automatic weapons are based directly off fully automatic military models. These guns may have cosmetic differences with their military relatives, but in the same way that a Cadillac and a Chevy may be the same under the sheet metal, they share the same bones as the military guns. They are not fully automatic, and (for the last couple of decades, at least) it has been extremely difficult to convert them to become fully automatic. However, these weapons share many other characteristics with their military cousins. In the United States, there are many variations on a rifle called the AR-15, which is a semi-automatic version of the military M16. Many variations as in dozens, from several different manufacturers. And the AR-15 is just one category. There are semi-automatics that descend from the ever popular AK-47, the Chinese QBZ-95 and several more. These weapons are often able to accept accessories that were originally designed for the military version, or to accept modified versions of those accessories. This includes tripods, extended magazines, laser sights, night vision scopes, and all manner of ridiculous extras that those fearing the looming economic / racial / zombie apocalypse can bolt on to make their guns look meaner and kill more readily. It’s these military-derived semi-automatic rifles that are most commonly called “Assault Rifles.”
What can we do here? Eliminating or restricting all semi-automatic weapons may seem like the most obvious choice, but it would also be extremely unpopular with hunters, with target shooters, and with gun owners in general. These days, semi-automatic isn’t just the first thought of anyone going in to buy a rifle or shotgun, it’s almost the only thought. Legislation aimed at all semi-automatic weapons would be difficult to pass, no matter how strong the political tailwind. What can be passed is severe restrictions on semi-automatic weapons based off military models. Nearly half the killers involved in mass shootings over the last 30 years have carried assault rifles. They should be the clear target of any legislation.
The weapon carried in most mass shootings? Semi-automatic handguns. Often more than one. Banning those would be a much tougher fight.
Ammunition
Any story involving guns is sure to bring with it a set of strange numbers: .223, 9mm, 12 gauge, etc. These numbers represent the caliber of the weapon. In simplest terms, it’s the diameter of the bullet the weapon fires.
There are three common systems for measuring caliber. When you see someone talking about a .223 or a .44, the caliber is in inches. A .22 rifle fires a bullet that’s 0.22 inches in diameter. 9mm or 10mm is just what it sounds like—a gun chambered to fire a bullet 9mm or 10mm in diameter. If you remember your metric conversions, you can do the metal gymnastics to swap them around. A .44 caliber bullet is a bit larger than a 10mm. A .357 and a 9mm are close enough that some guns will fire either size.
If you see the term “gauge,” you know the weapon in question is a shotgun. Shotguns can fire a single bullet (usually called a “rifled slug”) but most of the time a shotgun fires a number of small metal pellets. Shotgun gauge is … complicated and the numbers we commonly use mix up two different ways of calculating the size. Just remember that in general, the smaller the number, the larger the shotgun diameter. So a 12 gauge is bigger than a 20 gauge, and a 20 is bigger than a .410. Those three are the only shotgun sizes you’re likely to encounter, so it’s not too hard to keep straight.
As you might expect, if all things are equal, a larger bullet carries much more impact. However, all things are almost never equal. Speed, bullet design, cartridge design, the type of gun used, they all make a big difference.
Take a look at the picture again.
The first three cartridges on the left contain bullets sized at 9 mm, .40 and .45. All are designed for handguns, and all of them deliver devastating impact. Next to them is a 5.7mm. Compared to the big lugs on the left, the 5.7 (the skinny, pointy one) might seem like a pipsqueak, but that long cartridge below the small bullet helps to give it a very high velocity. It’s a bullet that was specifically designed as a military anti-personnel round, designed to offer more “terminal performance” than the 9mm round it replaced. That’s military speak for “more likely to kill whoever it hits.” The 5.72 round is also designed to penetrate body armor. It’s used in militaries around the world, and by the U. S. Secret Service. It’s also available at your local store.
When it comes to bullets, there is no “safe” caliber, and smaller does not always mean less deadly. There are bullets designed to tumble so that they rip paths through flesh, bullets designed to shatter on impact, bullets that can cut not just through body armor, but through walls. High penetrating rounds, made from hardened metals, don’t only pass through walls or windshields, they also pass through people, so that one bullet can strike more than one victim. In addition to terminal performance, you’ll also see terms like ballistic trauma and hydrostatic shock. They’re all measures of a bullet’s ability to royally f*ck you up in different ways.
Cartridges designed for a rifle have the same range of variability. The smaller of the two rifle cartridges above is a 5.56mm while the larger is .30 caliber. In fact, it’s not just a .30 caliber, but a .30 caliber magnum meaning that the cartridge is proportionally larger than a standard .30 caliber and delivers more oomph. Cartridges of this size were used by many World War II era military weapons, and variants on the .30 are popular today with hunters. A modern .30-06 cartridge used in big game hunting actually delivers around 3,000 ft-lbs of energy, allowing hunters to take down a large animal at 300 yards or more.
Back to that little 5.56mm. It looks kind of puny next to the .30. Did I mention that it’s also called a .223? That’s the cartridge that’s fired by the M16, AR-15 and the Bushmaster rifle used to such horrible effect at Sandy Hook Elementary. Where the .30 is a WWII era military round, this is a modern cartridge. The 5.56 is NATO’s combat round. It’s designed to penetrate deep into soft tissue. It delivers high hydrostatic shock causing damage even in parts of the body not struck by the bullet. The .223 Remington cartridge (which is likely what was used on the victims at Sandy Hook) actually delivers almost exactly the same amount of energy to target as a big .30 magnum and can be used in hunting, but a lot of hunters don’t like it. It’s unreliable an inaccurate at long range, and at short range it tends to tear things up. (Note: in comments, several people have defended the .223 as being a better round for hunting in brush).
What can we do here? Regulating ammunition by type would by no means be a cut and dried approach. Just cutting out bullets above or below a certain size wouldn’t really work, and targeting specific cartridges would lead to a kind of whack-a-mole effort as new variants appeared. But it should be possible to restrict cartridges that are designed to penetrate body armor, those using hardened materials (like the so-called “cop-killer” bullets) and those pistol bullets designed to fragment on impact.
Magazines & Clips
While bolt and pump action guns generally store their ammunition directly in a chamber inside the gun, automatic and semi-automatic weapons use magazines or clips. These can be small and completely contained within the body of the gun (the clips of many semi-automatic pistols hide within the gun’s grip) or they may curve down, up, or sideways to allow for higher capacity. The basic purpose of magazines is to allow for extended capacity and rapid reloading. On many guns, the magazine can be released quickly, and a new magazine put into place. A skilled user can switch magazines in a matter of seconds.
Many pistols have standard clips that contain between 10 and 15 cartridges. Semiautomatic rifles are more typically sold with larger magazines. The AR-15, one of the most common platforms, most often comes with a box magazine holding either 20 or 30 cartridges arrayed in column that curves down and slightly forward. Optional box magazines hold 40-50 cartridges.
However, this is just the start. Both drum and STANAG (a NATO design) magazines are available with capacities of 90-100 cartridges. These large magazines often make the weapon un-wieldy, but the STANAG variety are more compact than the older drums.
This is a Bushmaster Adaptive Combat Rifle equipped with an extended capacity STANAG magazine. Though it differs from what’s been in the news, I suspect this arrangement is similar to what students and teachers saw last week.
What can we do here? This is simple: Make the sale of extended magazines illegal. In fact, we should reduce the size of standard magazines. Magazines are already available that limit the capacity of AR-15 and other military-derived rifles to 5-10 cartridges. Make those mandatory at time of sale.
Net result if we can pass legislation that will restrict the sale of semi-automatic rifles based off fully-automatic military designs, limit the availability of bullets that are designed for high mortality, and strictly reduce the size of magazines that can be used with semi-automatic weapons we’ll have taken a good step. And this sensible step will not affect anyone’s ability to hunt or defend themselves.
By: Mark Sumner, Daily Kos, December 19, 2012
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