A mass shooting at a bank in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, left six people dead, including the gunman. Once again, the shooter used an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Anyone who is used to the news about shootings in the United States will be familiar with the AR-15, for it has featured in countless previous shootings in U.S. communities, supermarkets, entertainment venues and even elementary schools.
According to the latest statistics from The Washington Post, 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings in the U.S. since the Sandy Hook School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 have involved AR-15s. What is wrong with the United States that it allows the manufacture and free circulation of a mass killing instrument that can kill more people in less time?
From Vietnam War Standard Issue to America’s Rifle
As the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world, the total number of guns in circulation in the United States is estimated to be as many as 390 million, which equates to 120.5 guns per 100 people. Of these, the proportion of AR-15s is gradually increasing. Used many times in mass shootings, it has become the preferred murder weapon of many lone wolf shooters.
We should remember that the AR-15 was originally designed as a military rifle in the late 1950s. During the Vietnam War in the 1960s, the AR-15 became standard issue for the U.S. military, which called it the M-16, and was a widely known weapon. The U.S. Department of Defense once praised it in an internal report as “an outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality.” Yet thanks to constant promotion by gun manufacturers and interest groups, the AR-15, born of the military M-16, has now become the best-selling rifle in the United States.
Industry data show that at least 20 million AR-15s are stored or stashed across the United States, with about 1 in 20 American adults owning at least one AR-15. Gun control advocates have consistently warned that AR-15s, like their military equivalent, are designed to kill large numbers of people quickly and that civilians should not be allowed to own them. Meanwhile, the gun industry, gun owners and pro-gun groups argue that AR-15s are good for hunting, target shooting and competition shooting and should remain legal. In 2016, the National Rifle Association, the largest pro-gun lobby in the United States, even championed the AR-15 as “America’s rifle.”
In the face of such fervor, the U.S. has failed to introduce a ban on assault weapons for nearly 30 years. The last time the U.S. Congress passed an assault weapons ban was in 1994, but it was only in effect for 10 years. During the lifetime of the ban, mass shootings in the U.S. declined significantly. However, when the ban expired in 2004, production and sales of rifles like the AR-15 began to rise sharply.
According to The Washington Post, since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, U.S. gun manufacturers have produced more than 13.7 million AR-15s, generating $11 billion in sales. In other words, at least two-thirds of the AR-15s in private U.S. hands were manufactured in the last decade. In the words of Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, “The protection of the AR-15 has become the number one priority for the gun lobby” and “it makes it harder to push this issue [banning assault weapons] on the table.”
Just as it is impossible to regulate guns in the U.S., it is equally difficult to win a lawsuit against a gun manufacturer. This is because the two parties in Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act back in 2005, which granted gun manufacturers and dealers broad immunity from most lawsuits. Thanks to the protection of this law, the number of federally licensed firearms dealers nationwide has increased by another 2,000 in the past five years, reaching a total of 71,600.
Playing with Guns — “Start Them Young”
The “right to bear arms,” that gun owners cite, stems from the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791.* For more than 200 years, a so-called gun culture based on the Second Amendment, individual rights, interest groups, partisan politics and other oddities has combined to make gun control in the United States an almost impossible task.
Today, the AR-15 is almost ubiquitous in the United States and has increasingly become a cultural symbol. At both protests and political rallies, it is increasingly more common to see many gun advocates, including white supremacists, openly carrying AR-15s. Nowadays, talk of gun control in the United States is merely empty words. Instead, massive pro-gun interest groups and gun manufacturers have taken advantage of the situation not only to let guns proliferate but to use every means to force them into the hands of children.
At the beginning of last year, an Illinois company called WEE1 Tactical launched the JR-15, a “kid’s version” of the AR-15 rifle. The company claimed that the JR-15 is the first gun developed for minors that looks, feels and operates “just like mom and dad’s gun” but is “smaller, safer, lighter” to “safely help adults introduce children to the shooting sports.”
In response, gun safety and reform experts called it “the most brazen example of marketing guns to kids they’ve ever seen.” Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a gun control policy group, says that the gun industry and the organizations that represent its interests have made promoting guns to U.S. children and adolescents a top marketing priority, noting, “Most tragically, the effects of this campaign are all too often measured in unnecessary death and crippling injury.”
The harsh realities of gun proliferation, frequent shootings and in particular the growing numbers of minors who are either participants in, or victims of, gun violence has caused many people to lose confidence in the U.S. government. According to a special report by the American Psychological Association, one-third of Americans worry about being a victim of a mass shooting wherever they go, while nearly a quarter admit to making lifestyle changes out of fear of mass shootings.
Some U.S. media outlets have gloomily asserted that as long as the government continues to do nothing, as long as the Supreme Court continues to uphold gun ownership and as long as Congress continues to be mired in partisan strife and paralysis, gun violence will remain “America’s never-ending plague.”
After the recent spate of mass shootings in the U.S., The Washington Post published an editorial titled “No one needs an AR-15 – or any gun tailor-made for mass shootings” and lamented that mass shootings are always heart wrenching, but neither the massacres themselves nor the weapons used to carry them out are surprising any more. The article also stressed that “Respect for the Second Amendment doesn’t require standing by while 6-year-olds are torn to shreds.” The United States needs to act on guns; banning the AR-15 and weapons like it would be a good start.
*Editor’s note: The Second Amendment provides “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right to bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Great translation, and great article.