To the editor:
Fewer people would be dead if assailants in mass shootings did not have access to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The assailants in mass shootings buy assault weapons and high-capacity magazines because having them increases the number of people they can kill.
We can reduce the number of people dying in mass shootings. We can ban the production and import of military-style assault weapons, close gun sale loopholes and require universal background checks on all commercial gun sales, ban bump stocks, limit the size of ammunition clips and pass an Extreme Risk Protection Order Act to allow relatives and law enforcement to temporarily remove firearms from an individual in crisis.
Firearms safety laws work. The 1934 National Firearms Act is why mass murderers do not use fully automatic weapons to kill even more people. When the assault weapons ban was implemented in 1994, there were about 400,000 AR-15 rifles in the U.S. But we allowed the allowed the ban to expire in 2004 and now there are about 20 million. If the assault weapons ban had remained in place, there would be 50 times fewer assault weapons and high-capacity magazines available for the assailants in mass shootings.
On Jan. 8, 2011, a man carried a semi-automatic pistol and four magazines, two of which were capable of holding 33 rounds, to a rally in Tucson, shot and wounded Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, killed one child and five adults and wounded 12 others. He was tackled while reloading his gun, having spent 33 rounds. Giffords’ husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, who has reviewed the criminal records, said a 9-year-old girl was shot sometime after bullet No. 12 and added, “If (the assailant) didn’t have access to a high-capacity magazine, there would be less people dead.”
On Dec. 14, 2012, a man carried an assault rifle and 10 30-round magazines into Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 20 children and six adults. Investigators found 10 spent or partially spent 30-round capacity magazines and 154 spent .223 casings. They estimated these rounds were fired in less than five minutes. Several children escaped when the shooter stopped to reload.
On Oct. 1, 2017, a man killed 60 people and wounded 411 in Las Vegas by combining bump stocks with 14 assault weapons, 12 of which had 100-round magazines to fire over 1,000 bullets from his 32nd floor hotel room into a concert crowd below.
On May 24, 2022, a man carrying an assault rifle and seven 30-round magazines entered Robb Elementary School and killed 19 children and two adults and wounded 17 others.
Essentially everything these mass murderers did up until the moment they first fired was legal and protected by law.
We maintain these laws through loyalty to the political propaganda platforms that promote guns before all else. As an example, U.S. Representative Tracy Mann called the Second Amendment the load bearing wall of the U.S. Constitution. For Mann, it is not free speech, protection from search and seizure, jury trials, or separation of powers that makes our Constitution. It is that he owns a gun. Mann does not and cannot explain who he is going to shoot to death to maintain our Constitution because his guns-before-all-else loyalty makes no sense.
We can reduce the number of people dying in mass shootings by changing who we elect. But as long as we continue to elect Moran, Marshall and Mann and their kind, we are voting to ensure the deranged and mentally ill can continue to buy all the assault weapons they want to gun down our children.
John Sturn
Ellinwood
