We Need to Defend America's Rifle

Originally posted on SAI website, March 29, 2021

The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates there are roughly 8-12 million legally owned AR-15s owned by law-abiding Americans.

In 2008, Justice Scalia wrote the magnificent decision of DC v. Heller which finally settled the debate: Yes, Americans have the individual right to own firearms and the government can not flat out ban firearms. In 2010, the United States Supreme Court strengthened the Heller ruling in Chicago v. McDonald, which applied the Heller ruling to the states through the 14th Amendment.

A major key takeaway from the Heller decision is that firearms in “common use” are protected by the Second Amendment. 8 to 12 million legally owned firearms of a particular make and model certainly qualify for “common use.”

Despite these facts and Constitutional protections, gun-grab politicians, media elites, and billionaire bullies want to take away America’s favorite rifle.

Gun grabbers of the Left have always been champions at manipulating the emotions of the masses and producing irrational fear and misguided ideologies about firearms and the Second Amendment.

In particular with their tyrannical tirade to flat-out ban the AR-15, they perpetuate the false narrative that it’s the “favorite” gun of mass shooters and that it should be banned because it looks scary.

However, if we take a look into the numbers and facts, their lies don’t add up.

First and foremost, the term “Assault-Weapon” is a made-up term by the gun control lobby to strike fear into the hearts and minds of Americans. Gun control activists rely very heavily on fear-based language to persuade Americans that guns are inherently evil and that the only solution is to pass stricter gun control laws.

Assault is an action; it’s a verb, not a noun. Firearms have no soul, they’re not living objects, and they are not inherently evil. You could put a loaded firearm on a table, leave it there, and unless somebody picked it up, aimed it, and pulled the trigger; the firearm would remain harmless. That settles the debate of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

The origin of this term “Assault-Weapon” is not one hundred percent clear. According to the Nexis News database, the first mention of “assault weapons” appeared in a 1980 New York Times story. Over the past several decades, gun-control proponents have heavily relied on this terminology and have blanket-applied it to any firearm that looked scary.

Secondly, gun-control proponents now slap the term “assault” onto any firearm they don’t like or want to be restricted from public use. The public mistakes the “AR” in AR-15 to mean “assault rifle,” while fake news headquarters CNN, frequently refers to AR-15’s as “assault rifles.” The “AR” in “AR-15” stands for “ArmaLite Rifle,” the company that first manufactured the AR-15 in December 1959.

If we look at past mass shootings in which criminals utilized the AR-15 to carry out their heinous and unforgivable crimes, there are currently federal laws in place, which if enforced, would have prevented them from acquiring firearms:

1. Nikolas Cruz: The FBI admitted to not following established follow up protocols which would have barred Cruz from purchasing firearms
2. Devin Patrick Kelley: Kelley was dishonorably discharged from the military, which automatically bars someone from ever purchasing firearms again.
3. Omar Mateen: Mateen had been on the FBI’s suspected terrorist list, investigated twice by the FBI for terrorism, and convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes.
4. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik: Farook and Malik did not purchase their firearms. The firearms used in the massacre were a “straw purchase” bought by Enrique Marquez Jr., who pleaded guilty in February 2017.

FBI stats show knives kill far more people than rifles in America, it’s not even close.

According to the FBI crime statistics, in 2019, homicides overall — 10,258 — the number of homicides committed using a rifle (364) is much smaller. Handguns were listed as the primary weapon in 6,368 cases, and shotguns accounted for another 200. In addition, 600 people were killed in 2019 with what the FBI refers to as “personal weapons,” meaning hands, fists or feet. Knives or other “cutting tools” accounted for another 1,476 homicides — about three times the number killed by rifles.

While the AR-15 does appear to be the weapon of choice for the more highly-publicized mass shootings, the fact that any instance in which at least four people are shot and killed is qualified as a “mass shooting” means that the numbers can be dramatically skewed by gang-related and drug-related activity.

- Daily Caller

If we allow tyrannical gun-grab politicians to ban America’s rifle, what’s next? Senator Dianne Feinstein’s legislation proposes banning over 200 different types of rifles.

This is madness.

The reasoning behind their constant need to assault our Second Amendment rights? Control.

The radical left has never cared about the security of our nation; they only care about controlling the masses. By tapping into the emotions of Americans and pretending to care, they keep getting re-elected and maintain their power over the people.

The case above lays out clear reasoning as to why we can not give up on the fight to protect America’s rifle.

The next time you get into a debate or discussion about why it’s so important we protect the AR-15, you can use these helpful facts to dismantle any gun-grabbers irrational, misguided argument, and stop them in their tracks:

1. The AR in AR-15 stands for ArmaLite Rifle, the company that first developed them.
2. There is no such thing as an “assault rifle”. The term was coined in the 1990s by the New York Times and radical Democrats to pass their assault weapons ban.
3. The AR-15 is not the “weapon of choice” for mass shooters. Only mass shootings that involve an AR-15 receive national attention because the radical left wants to ban them.
4. Roughly 3.5% percent of homicides in 2019 involved an AR-15 or similar rifle. In fact, knives are used 50% more than firearms in homicides.
5. There are more than 20,000 gun control laws on the books. If gun control actually stopped crime, it would work by now.