Serious Questions for Gun Control Advocates

Jordon Tate: I told you, I don't like guns.
Casey Ryback: I know. Neither do I.
--Under Siege

After mass shooting events, anti-gun zealots come out of the woodwork claiming that it's time for a serious conversation about more gun control. Of course, the fact that the appropriate time for such a conversation is proposed to be immediately following a tragedy offers some insight into its emotional content.

Inevitably, the foremost topic that anti-gunners want to converse about is the 'assault rifle'--whether the shooting that motivates the conversation employed such a weapon or not (which also speaks to their agenda).

Unfortunately, the 'serious conversation' that gun grabbers claim to desire never gets started. Instead, they bring demands for gun restrictions or outright confiscation.

If anti-gun zealots ever seek to sponsor an authentically 'serious conversation' about gun control, then one would think they would first do some 'serious' research on the guns that they seek to converse about.

Here are some basic questions that many gun control advocates, as revealed by their rhetoric, clearly do not know (or want) answers to:

What does the 'AR' in AR-15 stand for? How long has the design been around? What is its history?

What is the definition of a military assault rifle? What are the common types or models? Can citizens legally own an assault rifle?

What is the difference between an automatic and a semi-automatic weapon? Can citizens legally own automatic weapons?

What is a selective fire rifle? Can citizens legally own selective fire rifles?

Consider these three types of 'long guns': shotgun, bolt-action rifle, AR-15. How do they compare on the following characteristics:

• how ammunition is loaded into the firing chamber
• number of rounds (bullets) that the weapon can carry (carrying capacity)
• time to reload new batch of rounds
• speed of round when fired (muzzle velocity)
• diameter of bullet that can be fired from the weapon (caliber)
• how far bullet can travel when fired (range)
• mobility in close quarters
• noise level when fired
• recoil when fired
• weapon accuracy at various distances

If gun control advocates knew the answers to the above questions then they would demonstrate at least a rudimentary understanding about the guns that they want to have a 'serious' conversation about. This is because individuals who own guns answer similar questions when selecting weapons for self-defense purposes. Armed (!) with this knowledge, a gun owner makes better decisions about which weapons match well with various self-defense situations that could be encountered.

This motivates an additional tranche of questions that guns control advocates should research if they really want to sponsor 'serious' conversations about gun control. We'll consider these questions in a future post.