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What’s behind the AR-15’s allure, and why we must restrict its sale if we want to limit future mass shootings

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/behind-ar-15-allure-article-1.3823134

The AR-15 is America’s best-selling rifle, helping gun sales more than double over the past 20 years. An estimated 8 million AR-style rifles are in circulation, with more being sold every day.

The weapon is a modification of the M-16 rifle issued to U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War. Firing a small caliber bullet propelled by much gunpowder, its round is designed to maximize damage to tissue and bone.

Like the M-16, AR-style rifle magazines hold up to 30 rounds. But the AR-15 fires semi-automatically, so, instead of “spraying” bullets, it reloads to fire as quickly as one can squeeze the trigger. AR-style rifles rarely jam.

The shooter who killed 17 students at a Parkland, Florida high school and injured 14 others can be heard on a cellphone video firing rounds at will amid screams by students.

The United States is the only country in the world where high-powered, semi-automatic rifles can be so easily purchased. Once marketed as assault weapons to advance sales, they now have different names within the gun community.

The gun industry labels them tactical rifles. AR enthusiasts on forums like AR15.com call them “EBRs” or “Enhanced Battle Rifles.” One “Gen-X” National Rifle Association columnist calls them “modern sporting weapons.”

From 1994 to 2004, the federal assault weapons ban outlawed sales of some new semi-automatic weapons, limited magazine capacity to 10 rounds and banned add-on features like a flash suppressor. Since it expired, the gun industry and the NRA have together incorporated AR-style rifles into High Power Rifle Competitions, making them a new sporting weapon while further expanding their circulation.

Over just the past six years, shooters have used AR-style rifles to injure or kill dozens of people in each incident in Parkland, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown and Aurora. Whether motivated by mental illness, terrorism or revenge, the shooters rarely broke any laws in obtaining their guns.

What’s behind the AR-15’s allure

NRA leaders tend to go dark after each mass shooting, while sympathetic politicians and pundits claim no one should politicize the (latest) tragedy. Yet like a never-ending horror movie, America’s toll of gun violence continues to rise including far more, but less publicized gun violence among urban minority youth.

It was a former Fox News host who recently said out loud what many others think. Mass shootings, wrote Bill O’Reilly, are “the price of freedom.”

Americans have not seriously discussed gun reform in decades. The loss of 20 young children and six educators at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown gave rise to a debate in Congress that faded within four months. After America’s largest shooting, in Las Vegas, Congress debated not restricting guns but only possibly an after-market accessory-bump stocks. Today Republican leaders are offering prayers instead of action. Or talking about anything — from better reporting of military domestic abusers, to improved monitoring of disturbed children along with potential terrorists — but gun reform.

Democratic leaders are again talking about attempting to pass a new assault weapons ban. But like other modest measures passed by Congress in past years, as well as measures adopted in a number of liberal states, the ban focuses more on the features of weapons than on who can access them.

Today in most states, one has to be a convicted felon or have been deemed mentally unfit by a court authority to be ineligible to buy a firearm. Even individuals charged with domestic abuse may still keep their guns in most states.

Real reform would mean asking, Who needs tactical weapons?

This is heresy to the NRA. But without addressing gun access, any attempt to curb gun violence will fail.

Take New Jersey. Before buying any gun, an individual must apply for a firearms ID card requiring a background check and fingerprints. One must apply for a separate handgun permit involving repeated checks to buy a single revolver or pistol.

Fla. school gunman Nikolas Cruz faces premeditated murder charges
That may sound like a lot of bureaucracy, but state and federal courts have so far upheld that such regulations are constitutional.

Individuals buy AR-style rifles for many reasons, including not to be outgunned by any potential (or imaginary) attackers. They include criminals and home burglars, and marauding rioters like after the 1992 acquittal of L.A. police officers for beating Rodney King, and government forces seeking — in the minds of many gun activists — to impose some kind of dictatorial state.

During the Obama administration there was talk of overthrowing the government. Under President Trump the talk is of defending his continuance in power.

America could curb gun violence by legally regulating access to guns including tactical rifles. But doing so would require changing the conversation.

Smyth (www.franksmyth.com) is a freelance journalist who has covered the NRA for Mother Jones, The Progressive and MSNBC.

Why Trump’s Second Amendment Comments are More Dangerous than You Think

Read the original article here: http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/08/188903/why-trump{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af}E2{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af}80{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af}99s-second-amendment-comments-are-more-dangerous-you-think

It makes sense to worry that Donald Trump’s most recent comments about the Second Amendment could encourage an assassination attempt against Hillary Clinton. But as a long-time follower of the gun rights movement, I think Trump’s words mean something else. Hiscontroversial statement in a speech that “Second Amendment people” could stop Hillary Clinton from appointing liberal judges and cracking down on gun rights fits in with a familiar NRA message to members–that gun owners should prepare for an armed insurrection against the state. Trump is stoking the coals of an extremist movement that in the long-run may prove even more dangerous than any aspiring assassin inspired by Trump.

“He pointed out that an armed populace is a check on lawless politicians,” wrote the “FuriousYachtsman” this week about Trump’s Second Amendment remarks on the pro-gunar15.com forum, adding: “I wonder if anybody else ever thought of that? Or codified it in a document of some type?”

While Trump and his supporters like to claim he is upholding the Constitution, his latest comments are an escalation of his ongoing attack against the credibility of our constitutional democratic process. Since he started losing ground in the polls, Trump began claiming without evidence that “the system” and the elections are rigged. Now he seems to be suggesting that some kind of collective act of resistance may be necessary to stop an overreaching government should Clinton win the November election.

This is a message that resonates with the hardline base of the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association, which last month had a representative speak from the stage of a Republican National Convention for the first time. It also speaks to people like the small group of armed men who occupied of an Oregon National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year, calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom. And it’s a message that strikes a chord with white supremacists and neo-Nazis who have never felt so comfortable with a major party Presidential candidate as they do now.

Americans should not forget that Timothy McVeigh was a gun rights absolutist who was following the plot of a novel, The Turner Diaries, written by a neo-Nazi leader, when in 1995 he blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City. Nor should we forget that he did so on the second anniversary of the federal siege at Waco, Texas, which for most people was a tragic standoff between the government and the Branch Davidians, a messianic cult. For gun rights absolutists, Waco remains a galvanizing example of federal abuse of power. Most important to gun advocates, the original reason for the raid was the presence of illegal, fully-automatic weapons.

Seen in that context, Trump’s recent remarks are more potentially treasonous than encouraging Russian agents to hack into Democratic National Committee emails. They are a more serious threat than Trump’s remarks that riots might break out if he did not receive the Republican party nomination. His appeal to “Second Amendment people” is the kind of claim you might hear from a failing candidate in an underdeveloped nation prone to coups. For the first time in modern history, a major U.S. presidential candidate seems to be promoting a possible armed insurrection against the U.S. government.

Trump’s words, as usual, were sketchy and ambiguous. Clinton wants to essentially revoke the Second Amendment, Trump said, and then added:

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

A Trump spokesman claimed he meant that “Second Amendment people” would act before the election by “voting in record numbers” to defeat Clinton. A Trump spokeswoman later said he meant “Second Amendment people” would act afterward if she wins through the clout of the National Rifle Association to stop senators from approving her pick for a justice.

Neither explanation is what countless gun rights absolutists heard. For them, the Second Amendment is about their right to keep arms in order to fight an insurgent war against our own government, should one ever become necessary to keep tyranny at bay. This may sound ludicrous. But go to Twitter and search terms like #2A, #NRA and #MolonLobe, an ancient Greek term for “Come and Take Them” away. Or spend any time on websites like InfoWars.com. Or read NRA statements.

“Our Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment so Americans would never have to live in tyranny,” said NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre in 2012 before a U.N. arms control panel in New York.

“When you ignore the right of good people to own firearms to protect their freedom, you become the enablers of future tyrants whose regimes will destroy millions and millions of defenseless lives.”

This view has nothing to do with hunting or sports shooting, which is where the NRA —until hardliners took over the organization in the late 1970s— has its roots. In fact, NRA hardline advocates today deride hunters who don’t share their Second Amendment views as “Fudds,” short for the bumbling cartoon character Elmer Fudd who never managed to shoot Buggs Bunny. The late President Ronald Reagan was the NRA’s most famous Fudd for supporting gun control both during his tenure and after.

Gun rights absolutists don’t entirely trust Trump, either. “Never trust a fudd,” wrote “waltdewalt” on a gun politics page on Reddit last month, suggesting Trump is not as committed to the Second Amendment as he claims. The gun lobby will outlast Trump. But his campaign has helped bring far right gun enthusiasts and white supremacist groups into the mainstream.

“We have a wonderful OPPORTUNITY here folks, that may never come again, at the RIGHT time,” wrote Rocky Suhayda, the chairman of the American Nazi Party last fall, as was recentlyreported by Buzzfeed.

“Donald Trump’s campaign statements, if nothing else, have SHOWN that ‘our views’ are NOT so ‘unpopular’ as the Political Correctness crowd have told everyone they are!”

Mainstream pundits and the Clinton campaign are right: Trump’s talk is inciting violence, and America has a tragic history of political assassinations. We have a history of homegrown terrorism, too.

Frank Smyth is a freelance journalist and gun owner who won the Society of Professional Journalists National Magazine Investigative Reporting Award for his Mother Jonesexposé,“Unmasking the NRA’s Inner Circle,” after the Sandy Hook shooting. He has also written about the gun lobby in The Village Voice and The Washington Post, and writes often about the NRA in The Progressive.

Glenn Beck returns to the NRA as group strengthens ties with gun manufacturers

Any remaining doubt about where the gun lobby may be headed after the Newtown Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting seems over now. NRA leaders have endorsed America’s most profitable gunmaking CEO, whose best-selling product is the same AR-15 rifle used by Adam Lanza inside the Sandy Hook school, to join the NRA’s governing board.

At the same time, NRA leaders are reaching beyond even Republicans to embrace Glenn Beck, who is now a self-described anti-GOP-establishment conservative.

This year, George Kollitides II, the chief executive officer of Freedom Group, America’s largest and most profitable consortium of gun manufacturing companies, has been selected as a candidate for the NRA board.

“He was put on by the Nominating Committee,” said Richard Pearson, one of the members of the NRA’s 2013 Nominating Committee who is not an NRA director, in a brief telephone interview with MSNBC from his office at the Illinois State Rifle Association. “We looked at the qualifications, and he was there.”

To finish reading the story, please click here.

Introducing the NRA kingmakers

The rites of spring rarely change. Every year, even before the season opens for wild turkey shooting, hunters begin sighting-in their shotguns in the field. And just like the beginning of the hunting season, every spring, members of the National Rifle Association will learn whom their leaders have quietly picked for reelection to the NRA’s governing board. Eligible NRA members will also receive their paper ballots in the mail.

The NRA board appoints a shadowy committee to handpick almost every candidate appearing on the ballot annually. The Nominating Committee members for this year’s NRA board elections include highly-connected Republican leaders, along with figures connected to the nation’s largest conservative lobbying group, gun manufacturers, and even the New York State Police, reporting and internal documents obtained by MSNBC show.

Read full article on MSNBC.com:

The gun at the heart of the assault weapons debate

National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre is set to appear Wednesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee. His testimony, released Tuesday, repeats the same tired ideas that he has already articulated and that much of the nation has already rejected, including putting armed guards or police in schools. And he makes a pragmatic-sounding case for avoiding action, saying we all need “to be honest about what works–and what doesn’t work.”

LaPierre also defends military-style semi-automatic weapons, which gun-control backers in Congress recently introduced legislation to ban. “Semi-automatic firearms have been around for over 100 years,” he tells lawmakers. “They are among the most popular guns made for hunting, target shooting and self-defense.”

Please go to the MSNBC.com link below to read the full piece.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/30/the-gun-at-the-heart-of-the-assault-weapons-debate/