...The Wichita Eagle
Busting gun-culture myths that always surface after mass shootings; let’s get real
Dion Lefler
Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:13 AM
Every time there’s a mass shooting, a lot of people go on social media and demand action to stop the carnage.
And they are met there with a well-rehearsed chorus of enduring myths and misinformation about guns that shouldn’t go unchallenged, but usually does.
The people who post these myths don’t like me a lot, because I’ve been a gun enthusiast for more than 40 years, have fired thousands of rounds from guns of all types, I know what I’m talking about and I’m willing to call out lies when I see them.
I was a member of the National Rifle Association back when it was mostly run by WWII and Korean War vets. They hunted a lot, organized shooting matches — which I enjoyed participating in — and preached gun safety with practically every waking breath.
I quit the NRA the same week President Bush (the first one) did and for the same reason.
Two days after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, I got a mailer from NRA executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre embracing the nascent militia movement and characterizing federal agents as “jack booted government thugs” in “Nazi bucket helmets” preying on innocent civilians.
It’s been 27 years. Gun laws have loosened, mass shootings have gotten way worse and the pro-gun rhetoric’s gotten more refined.
So here’s my take on some of the common myths that people post to deflect responsibility for mass shootings away from guns and our gun laws.
‘It’s not the guns, it’s mental health’
This one’s insidious because there is some truth to it.
We have failed to provide adequate mental health services in this country, which undoubtedly contributes to some people losing it and shooting up a theater, or concert, or school. And it’s easy to assume that anyone who would gun down 19 little kids, like in Texas last week, has mental problems.
But it does a disservice to millions of peaceful, functioning Americans who struggle with mental illnesses, prompting some not to seek treatment for fear of stigma and stereotyping. And it ignores the fact that people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
If somebody asks me to choose between adequate mental health funding and reasonable regulation of guns, my answer is the same as the little girl in the Old El Paso ad when asked to choose between soft or hard-shell tacos: “Why can’t we have both?”
‘Arm the teachers’
OK, arm them with what? Pistols?
I hate to tell you this, but all firearms are not created equal.
Mass shooters usually come body-armored and armed to the teeth with assault rifles that can kill in case lots and are quick to reload. The Uvalde, Texas shooter last week fired 142 bullets and it took an elite SWAT team to bring him down.
Against that kind of firepower, a teacher with a pistol doesn’t stand much of a chance. The most likely scenario is the teacher gets killed and the gunman gets another firearm to use in his rampage.
‘AR-15s aren’t assault rifles’
One of the most common tactics used by gun culturists is to try to belittle their opponents’ knowledge of firearms.
By their lights, anyone who calls an AR-15 or one of its many variants an “assault rifle” is uninformed and not worth listening to.
They’ll tell you the only “real” assault rifles are “selective fire,” which gives the user the choice of shooting multiple bullets with one trigger pull, while the AR-15 fires only one bullet per pull.
And they almost always point out that AR doesn’t stand for assault rifle, but for Armalite rifle, after the company that originated it.
The AR does stand for Armalite, but that’s about as true as this myth gets. The gun was developed under a Pentagon bid specification — I’ve read it — specifically seeking a “semi-automatic assault rifle” for troops.
Armalite sold the design to Colt, which cranked out two versions — the military M-16 in selective fire and the civilian AR-15 in semi-automatic.
AR-15s and their copycats — along with cheaper Chinese knockoffs of the Soviet AK-47 — were called assault rifles in gun catalogs, gun magazines and by owners until well into the 2000s.
But the term got a bad reputation after assault rifles became the weapon of choice for random mass shootings, because they’re the most capable and formidable weapons a civilian can buy.
In 2009, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade association, coined a new and softer term — “modern sporting rifle” — and demanded everybody use it.
Gun magazines and lots of mainstream news sources, including the Associated Press which I ordinarily respect, have changed their style to refer to assault rifles by more warm-and-fuzzy euphemisms.
I won’t.
‘You’re infringing on my constitutional rights’
Yes, you have a constitutional right. But it’s not unlimited.
You can’t have a machine gun or a sawed-off shotgun without an expensive and very hard-to-get permit.
Assault weapons were heavily regulated by federal law from 1994 to 2004.
Constitutionality challenges were filed; none succeeded in court.
We weren’t any less free, just safer.
‘When I was in school, we had shotgun racks in our trucks and nothing bad happened’
Well, good for you. I can only speak to my own experience. I spent three years at one of those agrarian country high schools that people like to idealize these days, in Casa Grande, Ariz.
Three of my schoolmates got shot while I went there. One healed, one died and one survived with brain damage.
I got threatened once with a gun while playing tennis at night at the high school courts. I called police and they caught the kid a few blocks away with the gun in his possession. They called his dad and told him not to let him use the guns anymore, and that was the end of that.
Fighting was an everyday occurrence and once, we had a schoolwide race riot.
I didn’t even know you were supposed to feel safe at school until I moved to the big city, the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, in my senior year. I only saw one fight the whole time I was there and it was a nothing burger, just some name-calling and shoving in the hallway.
‘Kids used to be allowed to bring guns to school’
Yep, this happened.
In my generation, they were getting an early start on sending us to Vietnam and schools had gun clubs to encourage and teach marksmanship.
But the guns were kept under lock and key when not in use and only taken out under close adult supervision.
Also, they were .22-caliber bolt-action rifles, highly accurate, but practically useless for mass shootings.
‘An armed society is a polite society’
This oft-repeated quote comes from an old Robert Heinlein novel called “Beyond this Horizon.”
I’ve read the book.
It’s mostly about genetic engineering and eugenics, but the setting is in a dystopian future where trivial social conflicts are settled by gunfights.
The first significant thing that happens in the book is a guy getting killed over some spilled food. Those who don’t want to fight have to wear the “brassard of peace” signifying lower social status and their automatic surrender to the will and whim of any armed individual they encounter.
I wouldn’t want to live like that, and neither should you.
So there you have it: some answers you can give when confronted by some of the most common and pernicious myths about guns and mass shootings.
Read them, share them, cut and paste them.
The sooner we answer the myths with facts, the sooner the nightmare ends.
