Let’s say you’re a moron. Or let’s say you’re a former Clinton cabinet member and current Berkley professor. But I repeat myself.
After the shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Robert V Reich immediately put this up on his Twitter feed:
Researchers have estimated that if we still had a federal assault weapons ban, we would see 70% fewer mass shooting deaths. S-E-V-E-N-T-Y PERCENT. Reinstating it should be a no-brainer.
Now one thing I am very meticulous about in my writings is sources. If you’ve read my stuff, I have links to studies, online publications, etc., where you can judge for yourself my assertions. Granted, Twitter is not a full blown, “sourced,” or “peer reviewed” information source. Fair enough.
But one thing I do have issue with is Mr. Reich seems to expect people to read his stuff and swallow it whole. His intellectual arrogance is what makes people despise higher education faculty.
A simple search will find facts of mass shootings. Mass shootings are defined as those where 4 or more people are shot and killed in one incident. From the National Institute of Justice:
Notably, most individuals who engaged in mass shootings used handguns (77.2%), and 25.1% used assault rifles in the commission of their crimes. Of the known mass shooting cases (32.5% of cases could not be confirmed), 77% of those who engaged in mass shootings purchased at least some of their guns legally, while illegal purchases were made by 13% of those committing mass shootings. In cases involving K-12 school shootings, over 80% of individuals who engaged in shootings stole guns from family members.
Granted, they, like Bobby Reich here, don’t define what an assault weapon is. Again, I started with a Web search and I found a two-decade old reference from the OJP:
The paper defines an "assault weapon" as a "civilian, semiautomatic version of a military weapon." Generally, the characteristics of an assault weapon make firearms more lethal, more accurate, and/or less conspicuous when used.
Well, what does the Encyclopedia Britannica say about assault weapons:
assault rifle, military firearm that is chambered for ammunition of reduced size or propellant charge and that has the capacity to switch between semiautomatic and fully automatic fire. Because they are light and portable yet still able to deliver a high volume of fire with reasonable accuracy at modern combat ranges of 1,000–1,600 feet (300–500 metres), assault rifles have replaced the high-powered bolt-action and semiautomatic rifles of the World War II era as the standard infantry weapon of modern armies…
I’ve said countless times over the years, I’ve carried both a Ruger Mini-14 and a Safariland AR-15 as patrol rifles. Both fire .223 ammunition and both have “high capacity” magazines (I carry 30 round magazines). Furthermore both are semi-automatic, i.e., you must pull the trigger every time you want to fire one round, as opposed to automatic, where once your squeeze and hold the trigger, the rifle will fire rounds until you release the trigger, run out of bullets, or the rifle jams.
So, compare these two rifles to a M-16. All three fire .223, all three have “high capacity magazines,” but only the M-16 A1 has full auto (M-16 A2 has burst fire of 3 rounds). Otherwise the AR-15 and the M-16 similarities are cosmetic, not functional. The Mini-14 looks nothing like the AR-15 or M-16, although it functions like the AR-15
Another lie put out by many politicians and other ignorant sources is the AR-15 is a “weapon of war” or a “military weapon” in civilian hands. I then ask people this one question: Which army in the world uses the AR-15? I get no answer, and in internet searches, I get no answer. I have no doubt some Guerra groups use them, but no nation’s armed forces that I can find uses it.
The facts are Mr. Reich put out a unsubstantiated statement. I’ll be generous and give him the benefit of the doubt he’s just ignorant of the truth. As a Berkley professor, that is very believable. But either way, it’s false, and it shows he’s not to be taken seriously.
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