The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal by a group of gun rights advocates seeking to overturn Maryland’s ban on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines under the Second Amendment.
The decision, a major win for gun safety advocates, leaves in place a ruling by the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals which ruled that the state may constitutionally prohibit sale and possession of the weapons.
The state legislation, enacted in 2013 after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, specifically targets the AR-15 – the most popular rifle in America with 20-30 million in circulation. They are legal in 41 of the 50 states.
Gun advocates like to mock those who want to ban military-style guns, while other hunting rifles with the same capacities are still available, but that misses the point. If both guns were the same, why are nearly all mass shootings done with military-style weapons, and are NEVER done with standard hunting rifles?
Something that is never discussed is the psychological effects of military-style weapons, in both the shooter and the victim. In general, mass shooters are people who feel weak, abused, outcast. A scary black gun makes them feel powerful in a way that a standard hunting rifle doesn’t. In addition, that military-style gun is scarier to their intended victims as well. It forces them to fear the shooter, something the shooter craves.
Military-style weapons may not have any more practical characteristics than a standard hunting rifle, but it’s psychological effects are much stronger.
Most mass shootings are done with pistols though…
This is accurate, and before anyone else downvotes I challenge you to google that shit. Homicides in the USA involving rifles are only 3% at most of the total. About 80% of mass shootings involve the use of handguns, while only 20-30% involve rifles (some crossover due to multiple guns used in events).
The disconnect is because people think mass shooting means a person attempts to murder many people, not 3 people get in a gun fight outside a club at 2 in the morning over a spilled drink.
Maybe it isn’t discussed because ARs are also the most common rifle in the U.S., and for at least 10 years now, the cheapest non-22LR. It’s hard to know how much of a role the psychological factors actually play when “easy to obtain” is a significant one of them.
“Easy to obtain” is also the part that is easy for legislation to address, while vaguely defined and hard to measure “psychological effects” requires significant effort just to understand, let alone implement the required social safety nets and induce cultural change to address the root causes.