Everytown Responds to SCOTUS ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Cert With Baseless Fearmongering, Hysterics

Our friends at Everytown and one of the two anti-gun agitprop generation outlets that are also part of the Bloomberg anti-gun ecosystem have greeted the news of the Supreme Court taking up the question of whether “assault weapons” bans are constitutional exactly the way you’d expect…with fear and hysteria over the prospect of gun bans being overturned.

As evidence that “mass shootings involving at least one assault weapon or high-capacity magazine lead to 400 percent more victims,” The Smoking Gun cites…an Everytown study claiming that “the use of deadly assault weapons and high-capacity magazines has surged on the United States’ streets.” This as homicides and violent crime rates have actually reached new, historic lows in the United States while the number of guns and people carrying them has soared.

Yes, more capable guns like semi-automatic rifles can do more harm when they’re in the hands of evil people. That’s hardly groundbreaking. Obviously, an AR-15 is more capable than a revolver or a bolt-action rifle. But it’s also constitutionally protected precisely because of that capability.

The Second Amendment isn’t about granting Americans use of firearms with only the minimum-possible lethality that’s still effective for self-defense. It recognizes a natural right to keep and bear arms for both personal and the common defense against everything from rabid animals and criminals to tyrannical armies and foreign invaders.

Moreover, of the tens of millions of AR-15s and similar rifles out there, an astonishingly small percentage of them are every used in any crime. Still, I agree that we should address rare mass shootings, and there are a number of ways to do that . . .

1. Stop releasing violent criminals early, as Everytown’s political allies frequently do. People like Smiley Martin, who committed the Sacramento mass shooting that launched Everytown’s successfully push for a GLOCK ban in California. He was out of prison six years early thanks to Everytown-endorsed Governor Gavin Newsom’s soft-on-crime initiatives after serving less than half of a 10-year sentence for felony domestic violence.

Actually, I see why the gun control industry doesn’t want to stop releasing violent criminals early. It’s those same criminals reoffending that give them the pretext they need to pass more gun control and justify their existence.

2. Stop making designating virtually everywhere a “sensitive place.” At this point we know from numerous mass shooter manifestos that they specifically target places where armed resistance is unlikely. Stopping law-abiding people from carrying guns just creates ideal setting for killers.

If a series of these scumbags met humiliating ends at the hands of a quick armed response, many of them would stop trying. As data shows, people with carry permits almost never commit crimes. There’s no reason to ban them from carrying in so many places, as they present no public safety threat.

Unless, that is, Everytown wants mass shooters to be more successful to give them the justification they’re looking for to ban more guns. In that scenario, of course, the last thing they want is pesky armed citizens doing anything to stop their next gun ban push.

3. Stop giving mass shooters the media attention a portion of them crave. While not true of all mass shooters, many in that profile desire the kind of media coverage prior mass killers have gotten. That should be denied to them as much as possible.

 

Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation.