9781422273494

DAVID WILSON

MASON CREST PH I L ADELPH I A | MI AMI

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Foreword .................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Assault Weapons in America . ............................ 11 Chapter 2: Assault Weapons in Police Hands . .................... 27 Chapter 3: Assault Weapons in Criminal Hands ................. 43 Chapter 4: Assault Weapons and Mass Shootings . ........... 57 Chapter 5: Preventing Assault Weapon Deaths . ................ 73 Series Glossary of Key Terms ................................................. 88 Further Reading & Internet Resources ................................. 92 Index . ........................................................................................ 94 Author’s Biography ................................................................. 96 Credits . ..................................................................................... 96 K E Y I C O N S T O L O O K F O R Words to Understand: These words, with their easy-to-understand definitions, will increase readers’ understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

It was an honor to be asked to write the foreword for the Gun Country series. Since I’m not a celebrity, and it is unlikely you have ever heard of me, I’d like to tell you a bit about my background and experience as it applies to guns. I am a security, emergency management, and business continuity consultant helping public and private sector organizations to be better prepared to withstand disasters. I help them draft plans, provide training, and conduct exercises to improve their organizations’ preparedness posture. In short, I coach organizations on how to ready their people to handle crises. My career began as a Marine infantryman, armorer, and counterintelligence specialist. I then became a police officer, serving as a SWAT officer, firearms instructor, hostage negotiator, and neighborhood team leader. I’ve worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as an intelligence officer and protective security advisor. I’ve been the chief instructor at a private shooting club. Mixed in there were a few years as a volunteer firefighter and EMT. My knowledge of guns is fairly extensive. I know quite a bit about numerous makes and models of guns, including rifles, pistols, and shotguns. I’ve fired many types and styles of guns from .22 caliber pistols (very small) to 155-millimeter howitzers (so big they need to be towed by a truck). I have a great deal of experience in “use of force,” which is the legal term for the appropriate times and conditions when different types of force can be used by civilians, the military, and law enforcement. I’ve seen close-up what guns can do to a human body. But I am getting ahead of myself. I am what some would consider a late bloomer when it comes to shooting and guns. My

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shooting experience started when I was eighteen at U.S. Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. Prior to that, the only guns I knew were toys and BB guns. You may have heard it is important to make a good first impression; well, the rifle ranges of Parris Island certainly made a good first impression on me. Boot camp takes about three months. The first month was filled with screaming drill instructors, summer humidity and heat, and what seemed like endless push-ups. Very disorienting and uncomfortable. As the second month of boot camp began, our company marched out to the rifle ranges and the change in atmosphere was remarkable. We began our march at the industrial Mainside part of the base and ended at the pastoral grounds of the ranges. Where Mainside was mostly paved and sandy, the ranges had huge fields of green grass. Where Mainside had quite a bit of traffic and other mechanical noise from steam plants and the like, the ranges were quiet with the sound of birds and the wind blowing through the trees punctuated by the pleasant sound of the crack of rifle fire as Marines practiced their craft. The difference was amazing. That initial experience set a high standard for the rest of my life. The training I received there was exceptional; few would argue the Marines create excellent shooters. Over the next fifteen years I would experience a wide variety of firearms as I became an expert in their operation and maintenance and learned how to employ them to inflict the least damage while accomplishing a mission or in the line of duty. I would not consider myself a “gun nut” or even an enthusiast. I don’t own very many. I don’t get emotional when I’m around them. I look at them as tools, much like a carpenter looks at a hammer. I’m comfortable around them because I know what they can and cannot do. My position on guns is that of a pragmatic advocate. The appropriate gun in the hands of a well-trained person can result

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in the pursuit of a lifelong and engaging sport. It can also be a potent solution to a desperate problem and a powerful deterrent. I believe guns alone are not dangerous. As with many controversial topics, the disagreements often arise from a lack of knowledge and experience coupled with our natural tendency to generalize and oversimplify complex problems. We are better served when we gather information from varied sources and break down the problems into manageable issues. I’m not asking you to agree with me. Based on what I know and what I’ve done, this is how I feel. I will continue to read thoughtful material and talk to people who make a conscientious effort to understand the issues. That’s one of the reasons I appreciate this series as it does a very good job exploring some of the most contentious issues such as assault weapons, the gun economy, and Second Amendment rights. Clients frequently ask me to help them address the threat of an active assailant, commonly referred to as an “active shooter.” The active shooter scenario encompasses so many of the issues surrounding guns. Mental health, gun ownership, concealed carry, and law enforcement response are all part of the conversation although some of my clients seem unaware of the connections. I wish I’d been able to refer them to the Gun Country series to fill some of their knowledge gaps. By reading this foreword and having the series in front of you, you are already ahead of the game. You are on your way to forming your own thoughtful opinion on the topic of guns and the surrounding issues. I admire the good work author David Wilson has done presenting a complicated topic in a fair and straightforward manner. I encourage you to take the time to carefully consume this series regardless of your current position on the topic. Do the activities, follow the video links, and answer the questions at the end of the chapters. Keep an open mind and turn up your critical

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thinking. Ask yourself difficult questions and then actively pursue the answers. By doing these small additional tasks, you will come away with a very good base of knowledge on a complicated subject. If you still have questions, use the information and knowledge from the Gun Country series to drive further research. If you have not already done so, consider visiting a gun show, take a marksmanship class and shoot a pistol if you never have, and talk with law enforcement to gain their perspective. You should also consider talking with emergency room doctors and nurses, teachers, and school administrators for their perspectives as well. To think is not to know. To experience is to know. Use this series as the basis for your experience.

Jeff Murray, MA ASIS Certified Protection Professional Certified Firearms Instructor

Foreword

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bloc: A political organization of multiple members, usually referring to nations in a military alliance. civilian: Any person who is neither a soldier nor a law enforcement official. magazine: The container of bullets to be fired, directly linking new bullets to the gun’s action. preemption: The authority of one power, over all others, to invalidate or prohibit laws; the Second Amendment is a federal preemption against the government banning firearms. General Douglas MacArthur, who was commander of the Allied forces in the Pacific during World War II, spent his career dealing with automatic weapons. WORDS TO UNDERSTAND

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Assault Weapons in America

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons. —General Douglas MacArthur What, precisely, is an assault weapon? This simple question has many separate answers. Like other political arguments throughout American history, the words used to describe these controversial guns mean different things to different people. These different definitions of assault weapons, in turn, have created a wide variety of laws, prohibitions, and technicalities that make the political debate vastly more complex. Weapons of War in America Prior to 1989, the term assault weapon did not even exist in contemporary usage, despite the fact that guns classified as assault weapons had existed at that point for the better part of a century. Furthermore, there exists an overlap between an

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assault weapon and an assault rifle . Different cities and states have enacted different definitions of assault weapons, with standards and restrictions that vary considerably. In the state of Hawaii, a pistol that is 12 inches in length and can hold a silencer qualifies as an assault weapon, even if that pistol must be reloaded after each fired shot. By contrast, the state of Texas has no laws restricting assault weapons, and its state preemption laws mean that no individual city can outlaw assault weapons, even if its citizenry choose to do so. What’s more, some states have no restrictions on the purchase of assault weapons other than the standard federal requirement that the purchaser fill out Form 4473, which simply states that the person is not a convicted felon and has no history of mental illness. These states do not even require identification to purchase an assault weapon. In general, an assault weapon is usually defined as any weapon that is semiautomatic, meaning that it does not require manual reloading of each shot. A simple bolt-action rifle requires the shooter to open the action of the gun, expel the spent shot, and insert a new bullet each time. By contrast, an AR-15 rifle, based on the design of the military-grade M-16 and legal for civilians to purchase, earns the title of assault rifle because the shooter does not need to reload manually after each shot. Most civilian-owned assault weapons are based on military models. The difference between a military-style assault weapon and a civilian-legal assault weapon can be significant, however. It is not legal in the United States for any civilian to own a grenade launcher, for example, nor are all telescopic sights legal. In most cases, however, the sole difference between a military-grade and a civilian- legal assault weapon is the difference between the firing mechanisms: no military-grade automatic weapons are legal for civilians to own, but semiautomatic weapons are.

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Most civilian-owned assault weapons are based on military models.

The impact of a bullet from either weapon, however, is typically the same. University of Arizona trauma surgeon Dr. Peter Rhee reports that a round fired from an assault rifle like an AR-15 “will cause a body wound that looks like a grenade went off in there.” University of Texas Health Center trauma surgeon Dr. Donald Jenkins claims that an AR-15 round can “turn a leg bone into dust,” producing “exit wounds the size of an orange.” The Birth of the Assault Weapon Debate While debates over the Second Amendment can be traced back centuries, the debate over assault weapons is a far newer topic in American history. Indeed, prior to 1988, the term had not even

Chapter 1: Assault Weapons in America

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Take Your Best Shot

A fully automatic firearm is what you likely think of when you think of a machine gun: a weapon that only requires you to hold the trigger down to create a continuous rate of fire, since a machine gun automatically reloads and fires the next bullet after it is shot, stopping only when you run out of ammunition. By contrast, a semiautomatic firearm is one where the bullets load automatically as each one is fired, but the shooter must pull the trigger each time to fire them rather than continuously holding the trigger down. entered public use. While legend holds that none other than Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler coined the term assault weapon (allegedly giving a new name to a German machine gun, the Sturmgewehr , meaning “storm” or “assault” gun), we know for certain that gun control advocate Josh Sugarmann introduced the American people to this new idea about firearms in a study titled Assault Weapons and Accessories in America . Sugarmann’s study referenced two types of firearms: fully automatic machine guns and semiautomatic assault rifles, arguing that the similarities between the two (“anything that looks like a machine gun is presumed to be a machine gun”) would lead to public support for restrictions or outright bans on these guns. A year later, the Cleveland Elementary School shooting in Stockton, California, created a public outcry against the types of semiautomatic weapons that the gunman, Patrick Purdy, used to kill five schoolchildren. (This was the deadliest school shooting of the 1980s.)

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