“ASSAULT WEAPON” BANS: UNCONSTITUTIONAL
LAWS FOR A MADE-UP CATEGORY OF FIREARMS
MARK W. SMITH
*
I’m especially excited to talk about whether commonly
owned semiautomatic rifles, which happen to have a handful
of incidental features built in or attached to them, are protected
by the Second Amendment. Spoiler alert: the answer is yes.
Ordinary semiautomatic rifles, just like ordinary semiautomatic
handguns, are protected by the Second Amendment’s right to
keep and bear arms. The U.S. Supreme Court’s legal precedents
confirm the same. These constitutional protections do not dis-
appear merely because the anti-gun lobby chooses to label—or
perhaps, more accurately, mislabel—these ordinary firearms as
“assault weapons.” Indeed, as Justice Thomas astutely recog-
nized, the term “assault weapon” is “a political term, devel-
oped by anti-gun publicists.”
1
To make sure we’re all on the same page about what is a
supposed “assault weapon,” I’d like to start with a key point:
America’s gun grabbers do not define “assault weapons” by
how the firearms actually function. The banned so-called “as-
sault weapons” are not the fully automatic rifles used by the
358 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 43
military to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. So-called “assault
weapons,” when discussed within America’s gun control de-
bate, constitute nothing more than ordinary semiautomatic ri-
fles; a type of firearm, which civilians have used in the United
States for well over a century.
2
Semiautomatic firearms are “semiautomatic” because, when
you pull the trigger once, the gun fires one bullet and automat-
ically reloads, and that’s it.
3
To fire another bullet requires the
user to pull the trigger again.
4
But these ordinary firearms
might look different than other firearms because modern day,
yet very ordinary, semiautomatic rifles are often painted black;
5
they are not made in the brown wood stock you see on classic
American hunting rifles.
6
This is relevant because it makes
modern-style firearms look like or appear to be fully automatic
M16 military rifles, when in reality they are not the same fire-
arm as M16s.
Nevertheless, because of the rifle’s appearance, coupled with
certain features that are arbitrarily included in some “assault
weapon” ban statutes, an ordinary rifle gets converted defini-
tionally into an “assault weapon.”
7
Some of the features that
allegedly convert an ordinary rifle into a prohibited “assault
weapon” include muzzle brakes, pistol grips, and adjustable
shoulder stocks that enhance the utility of the firearm for self-
defense.
8
These features make it easier for law-abiding Americans
to shoot the firearms and shoot them accurately. Certain state
legislatures assert that these features, either when added onto,
No. 2] “Assault Weapon” Bans 359
or made an inherent part of, semiautomatic rifles, make these
ordinary firearms “assault weapons.”
9
These features, when
added to or included with a semiautomatic rifle, somehow
magically transform ordinary guns into an object that the anti-
gunners have successfully banned in six states, plus the District
of Columbia.
10
Yet, semiautomatic rifles have been part of the American
landscape for over 100 years.
11
From the anti-gun lobby’s point
of view, the scariest semiautomatic rifle is the AR-15 platform.
This rifle platform is what the anti-gun movement and their
handmaidens in the urban-based mainstream media like to
display on television and in news articles because the rifle can
appear scary looking to people unfamiliar with firearms, espe-
cially those living in the major media centers of Washington,
D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. In reality, the
AR-15 is not more powerful than any other centerfire semi-
automatic rifle and, in fact, in typical calibers is less powerful
than the rifles used to hunt deer.
360 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 43
The AR-15 platform was designed in the 1950s.
12
By the
1960s, the rifle was being sold in the U.S. civilian marketplace.
13
The AR in the name stands for Armalite, and not “assault ri-
fle.”
14
Armalite is the name of the company that first developed
the AR-15.
15
So, we’ve had the AR-15 platform itself being bought and
sold in the United States for over fifty years. Unfortunately, for
those millions of Americans who reside today in the six anti-gun
states plus the District of Columbia, these ordinary firearms
cannot be possessed, owned, or used by them.
16
An individual
caught possessing an AR-15 in one of these few jurisdictions
will become a felon and go to prison for a nonviolent, victim-
less, malum prohibitum crime.
17
That’s right. Mere possession of
an object that is commonplace and perfectly legal under federal
law and in forty-four states will land you in prison, result in
the loss of your rights including likely the right to vote, and
probably cause you irreparable monetary and reputational
damages, as well as your personal liberty. All of this despite
the absence of even a single victim. And unfortunately, the fed-
eral courts are largely failing to do anything about this travesty.
To date, each court of appeals that has heard a so-called “as-
sault weapon” case has ultimately decided against the citizen
and in favor of the government. These legal challenges to “as-
sault weapon” bans have been considered and rejected by the
Second Circuit in New York,
18
by the D.C. Circuit,
19
by the
Seventh Circuit in Chicago,
20
and by the Fourth Circuit in
Maryland.
21
No. 2] “Assault Weapon” Bans 361
So, given this dismal track record in court for an enumerated,
fundamental constitutional right, why are we talking today
about the U.S. Supreme Court and the rights of individuals to
own ordinary firearms with certain features that some political
partisans wrongly label “assault weapons”? Well, it’s because
of Judge Kavanaugh’s elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court.
You see, Justice Kavanaugh was the author of an approximately
fifty-five-page opinion that applied the “text, history, and
tradition” constitutional test to the technology of these semi-
automatic firearms,
22
which were declared by legislative fiat to be
“assault weapons” by the Council of the District of Columbia.
23
The name of this case was Heller II.
In Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent in Heller II, he concluded that
the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep
and bear (that is, own, use, possess) these so-called “assault
weapons.”
24
This dissent is particularly significant because the
Heller II majority opinion, which upheld the banning of these
weapons, has become a super-legal precedent followed by other
lower, or inferior,
25
courts when they uphold other gun bans.
26
Heller II is the foundational case that subsequent lower courts
presiding over legal challenges to anti-gun measures rely on to
say: “Sure. The state can ban them.” And yet, the dissent to that
view was written by now-Justice Kavanaugh.
So, will the Supreme Court address the question of “assault
weapon” bans soon? I suspect that they will, and they should.
After all, the individual right to self-defense is not only a fun-
damental constitutional right that all of us have—Democrats,
Republicans, Independents, Libertarians. It’s a human right.
And it is also the central component of the Second Amendment,
a right that is not given to us by any government. It is not given
to us by any politician. It is bestowed upon us by our very ex-
istence as humans or, if you will, by God. And the Second
362 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 43
Amendment doesn’t give us that right; it simply recognizes this
preexisting human right.
And the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with me. They agreed
with me in District of Columbia v. Heller,
27
which by the way,
was reaffirmed by the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago
28
and
then reaffirmed in Caetano v. Massachusetts.
29
In Caetano, which I
think applies to the question of so-called “assault weapon”
bans, the Supreme Court held that any firearm that is beara-
ble—bearable arms—is protected by the Second Amendment.
30
There, the Court dealt with a stun gun,
31
and I can assure you
that the number of people in the United States that own semi-
automatic rifles labeled “assault weapons” far outnumber the
number of Americans that own stun guns. The U.S. Supreme
Court found the Massachusetts Supreme Court applied the
wrong test and remanded the case back to Massachusetts re-
quiring a decision on whether stun guns were, in fact, protected
weapons, or protected arms under the Second Amendment.
32
The Massachusetts Supreme Court got the message and struck
down the commonwealth’s stun gun ban using the common
use test,
33
and a year later, the Illinois Supreme Court followed
suit and struck down Illinois’s stun gun ban.
34
Since AR-15s far
outnumber stun guns, it follows then that AR-15s should be
equally protected by the Second Amendment.
Now, in fairness, the Heller Court said there are certain types
of weapons that can be banned if they are unusual, and if they
are not typically owned by Americans for lawful purposes.
35
If
they’re not in common use by Americans for lawful purposes,
the Supreme Court said, certain weapons are presumptively
capable of being banned.
36
One of the examples they gave is a
machine gun—which unlike the semiautomatic gun, which is
one pull of the trigger, one bullet fired—will fire bullets for as
No. 2] “Assault Weapon” Bans 363
long as the operator is depressing the trigger, until the gun be-
comes empty of bullets or the operator releases the trigger.
37
This is much different than a semiautomatic firearm, and the
law recognizes this difference.
So, the question is, “What do these Supreme Court cases
mean for so-called ‘assault weapon’ bans today?” Well, before I
answer that question, I want to talk for a couple minutes about
what exactly is an “assault weapon.” If you take away only one
thing from today, please remember this: when you see the
words “assault weapon,” this is not a factual, denotative defini-
tion or term. This is a political propaganda label used by peo-
ple who want to ban or severely restrict civilian ownership of
firearms.
You see, thirty years ago—and this is well known; this is not
new information—there was a gentleman by the name of Josh
Sugarmann, who worked for a group called the Violence Policy
Center.
38
He recognized that large numbers of the general pub-
lic did not know much about various types of firearms. Give
him great credit, because he saw an opportunity and seized it.
39
He encouraged the gun control movement to take advantage of
the fact that most people could not tell the difference between
an ordinary, semiautomatic rifle, which happens to look like an
M16 military firearm, and an actual M16 military firearm. He
suggested that all of these rifles should be labeled “assault
weapons,” thereby blending ordinary rifles together with
M16s, and ultimately accomplishing more gun control.
40
The
term “assault weapons” was based not on how the guns oper-
ated, but on how the guns looked. After all, semiautomatic
guns operate much differently than fully automatic machine
guns, which is why in 1994 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in
Staples v. United States
41
that semiautomatic rifles are different
from military weapons.
42
And yet, because they look alike,
364 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 43
many people conclude that they all essentially fall under the
rubric of “assault weapons.”
Just because something looks like something else doesn’t
make it that thing, right? It’s common sense. Think about it.
Just because something may look like a Rembrandt painting,
doesn’t make it an authentic Rembrandt. Go spend some time
in Times Square in New York City. There are a lot of people in
Times Square who dress in superhero costumes. If we apply
the logic of those who want to ban guns, then the fact that these
actors look like superheroes, would necessarily mean that they
have superhero powers like super strength and x-ray vision.
But that’s absurd. In no other context would we say that be-
cause something looks like something, it is that thing. Other-
wise, you could be arrested for possessing a weed that looks
like marijuana but is not. That is precisely the type of warped
reasoning that the gun grabbers employ in the political debate
over “assault weapon” bans.
I previously mentioned some of the features that convert an
ordinary gun into an “assault weapon.” Before I discuss some
of those features further, it is important to understand how the
statutes that ban “assault weapons” actually work.
43
To consti-
tute an “assault weapon,” a semiautomatic rifle must be able to
accept or use a detachable magazine.
44
A detachable magazine
is simply that piece of metal or plastic that you put your bullets
in, and which you then put into the gun.
45
Plus, the statutes
provide, on top of that, in order to qualify as an “assault weapon,”
the semiautomatic rifle with a detachable magazine must have
one or more features.
46
What are the features that elevate an ordinary gun into an
“assault weapon”? One such feature is a pistol grip. The addi-
tion of a pistol grip to a rifle supposedly converts an ordinary
No. 2] “Assault Weapon” Bans 365
semiautomatic rifle into an “assault weapon.”
47
This is both
practically and constitutionally absurd. Keep this in mind. A
pistol grip comes from a pistol; that’s why it is called a pistol
grip. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court said
that pistols and handguns are protected “arms” under the Second
Amendment.
48
So if a manufacturer designs a rifle with a pistol
grip, then how does that convert a constitutionally protected
rifle into something that is constitutionally unprotected, that is,
an ordinary rifle with a pistol grip? It shouldn’t, and I don’t
think it does.
A second feature that will make an ordinary rifle an “assault
weapon” is a shoulder stock, an adjustable shoulder stock, or a
telescoping shoulder stock.
49
What do these words mean if
you’re not already familiar with firearms? Have you ever gone
shoe shopping? You may see twelve pairs of the same style and
color of shoes, except they are different sizes! Sizes. Well, all a
shoulder stock does is it shortens or lengthens the rifle so that if
you’re a tall, big guy, you can have it one length, and if you’re
a short person, you can shorten it.
50
Every reference to these
adjustable stocks is talking about adjusting a rifle to the opera-
tor’s size,
51
no different than buying the correct shoe size. How
does the addition of such a convenient feature turn an ordinary
rifle into an “assault weapon”?
And there are other so-called “scary” features. I love this one.
Most of the statutes that ban semiautomatic rifles focus on
whether your rifle can accept a bayonet with what’s called a
bayonet lug.
52
A bayonet lug allows you to attach a bayonet on
the end of a rifle. The mere presence of the lug itself supposedly
converts an ordinary semiautomatic rifle into a menacing “as-
366 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 43
sault weapon.” Now, I read a lot of news stories every day, and
I’m sure you do, too. I don’t know about you, but it’s been a
long time since I have read any stories about people getting
killed with a bayonet attached to the end of a gun. But that’s
just me. Maybe I’m not reading the right papers.
The point is that the features that transform an ordinary fire-
arm into an “assault weapon” are entirely arbitrary. These fea-
tures, at most, make ordinary rifles more reliable and better for
users to shoot accurately and more safely.
53
These features im-
prove the safety of the firearm. They don’t reduce the safety of
the gun. They make them safer to use for the gun owner and
for bystanders. But because of definitional games, the legisla-
tors in six states and the District of Columbia have been able to
ban these types of firearms.
54
What is the argument in favor of these gun ban laws? Well,
it’s really quite simple. The gun grabbers argue that, “criminals
will use these guns to do bad things, so therefore we want to
deprive all Americans of their right to have them.”
Let’s think about that logic. Or, as I like to say, let’s think
about that illogic for a moment. Our right to keep and bear
arms is a natural right recognized by the Second Amendment—
this is not a made-up right based on “penumbras” and “emana-
tions,” is it?
55
It’s actually in the text of the Bill of Rights.
56
The
people’s right to keep and bear arms is found in the Second
Amendment of the Bill of Rights, our first freedom.
57
Yet, there
are people out there who say that, because someone, some-
where, may use one of these firearms at some time to engage in
criminality, you and I must lose our Second Amendment rights
to own, use or even possess them.
There’s something perverse about having our fundamental
rights shrunk and sacrificed by virtue of the conduct—or pos-
No. 2] “Assault Weapon” Bans 367
sible conduct—of criminals and psychopaths. We should not
lose our fundamental constitutional rights because of the acts of
criminals and people who should be in mental institutions. The
Supreme Court agrees with me.
In Heller, the Court acknowledged the social dangers associ-
ated with firearms, and declared in the concluding paragraph
that it understood the arguments about gun control, but there
are certain policies that—and I’m quoting the Supreme Court
here—are “off the table,” that is, removed from the democratic
process because these rights are recognized in the Constitution.
58
And the banning of firearms protected by the Second
Amendment is, and should be, off the table. For people who
want more gun restrictions, I have a suggestion for them. Fol-
low the advice of the late Justice Stevens, and try to amend the
Constitution using Article V procedures.
59
Don’t try to subvert
the Second Amendment or read it out of the Constitution in
other ways.
So, how should courts apply the Heller test of common use to
“assault weapon” bans? It’s very simple. Today, there are
somewhere between five and eight million AR-15s owned by
civilians in the United States.
60
There’s a debate about it, but
there is no debate that there are millions of AR-15s owned by
millions of Americans.
61
And the number is growing.
62
When
you compare that number to the number of people who engage
in other lawful activities like swimming and jogging, you find
that the number of AR-15s in civilian hands far exceeds many
368 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 43
of those other common activities in terms of participants. The
AR-15 is widely used by millions of Americans for hunting,
target competitions, and self-defense.
63
Under Heller’s standard
of common use for lawful purposes, the right to possess these
firearms is protected under the Constitution.
But then how do we explain why four court of appeals cases
have upheld “assault weapon” bans,
64
essentially ignoring Heller?
First, we should consider the states from where these gun ban
cases arose: New York, Maryland, California, Connecticut,
New Jersey, and Illinois.
65
Politically, these states are all deep
blue states; and when you appeal a case to appellate judges in
these blue states, it is likely being decided by judges who were
blessed for the federal bench by blue-state Senators (even
where those local judges may have been appointed by Republican
Presidents). Bear in mind that, you don’t see “assault weapon”
bans being enacted in the red states of Texas, Georgia, or South
Carolina. So, courts in those jurisdictions never get the oppor-
tunity to weigh in on the constitutionality of “assault weapon”
bans. I think that’s part of the reason why most of the gun ban
cases ultimately uphold “assault weapon” bans as constitu-
tional, that is, there is a jurisdictional bias. Gun bans do not get
enacted in jurisdictions where these bans would likely be over-
turned. Although there are cases that have ruled in favor of the
Second Amendment, usually these cases have ultimately been
overturned en banc by a particular circuit. This happened in the
Fourth Circuit and in the Ninth Circuit, for example.
66
Beyond that, courts that uphold these bans engage in an im-
proper balancing of social interests. They essentially embrace
the dissent by Justice Breyer in Heller that suggests that courts
should weigh the good against the bad of guns, shake it all up,
No. 2] “Assault Weapon” Bans 369
and then rule for the government.
67
That’s really what they do.
The courts keep repeating the phrase “assault weapons” over
and over in their opinions as if this is some sort of talisman for
good constitutional reasoning.
68
In reality, it’s not good legal
reasoning. And it is not consistent with the Supreme Court’s
decision in Heller.
I should also mention that Justice Kavanaugh is not alone in
his views on the Second Amendment. Other judges agree with
Justice Kavanaugh’s rationale in Heller II that “assault weapon”
bans are unconstitutional. That includes a President Clinton
appointee, Judge Traxler of the Fourth Circuit, as well as Judge
Manion, a well-respected judge in the Seventh Circuit.
69
So Justice
Kavanaugh is not out there by himself, by any means, in terms
of where this jurisprudence stands.
I want to address two more points. The first is, many people
like to argue that, given the alleged social consequences of
widespread gun ownership in the United States, AR-15s and
other “assault weapons” should not be protected by the courts
because to do so would hurt law enforcement’s efforts to
thwart criminals and would lead to more murders and crime.
70
Of course, this is false—there is little, if any, evidence that “as-
sault weapon” bans advance public safety in any way. At any
rate, we know there are countless examples of other rights in
the Bill of Rights that have, arguably, potentially negative so-
cial consequences. For example, the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment says you are free from unreasonable
searches and seizures, warrantless searches, and the like.
71
There are many times when the police arrest a known violent
murderer and rapist—they arrest the bad guy—and yet, be-
370 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 43
cause the cops screwed up the arrest process, that is, how they
procured evidence or put their information together, well,
guess what happens? The known violent criminal walks free
under the exclusionary rule.
72
That is a social cost because he’s
not punished, and he’s walking the streets where he can com-
mit more rapes and murders. We do not ignore the Bill of
Rights and throw the Fourth Amendment out just because
some criminal may walk free. That’s not how constitutional
law works.
And my final point is this: many of the federal courts that
uphold “assault weapon” bans and other firearms restrictions
say, look, you don’t need firearms, Americans. Don’t be silly.
We, the government, have you covered. We’ve got the guns.
We’ll take care of you. You don’t need the gun of your choice.
You don’t need guns at all, for that matter. We’ve got your
back. My response: queue the laugh track. As a matter of political
theory, maybe the government has some legal or moral duty to
protect us. But as a matter of American law—and you lawyers
know this—as a matter of American law, there is no duty on
the part of the federal, state, or local governments to protect
any of us in any respect
73
unless, narrowly, you’re in their cus-
tody as a prisoner.
74
Regardless of the law, the reality is that police are not usually
around when we encounter a criminal. I make this point in my
2018 book #Duped; police are not first responders.
75
That is a
myth. The real first responders in American life are you and
me. We are the people who first encounter the criminal. We
first encounter the fire. We first encounter the sick person. We
first encounter the problem. And we either dial 911, or we ad-
dress the threat right there. If you don’t believe me, consider
that 1.2 million Americans every year are murdered, raped, or
violently assaulted because the police do not arrive in time.
76
No. 2] “Assault Weapon” Bans 371
This is not because the police are bad. They simply cannot be
everywhere at all times.
So, in the end, folks, whether one likes it or not, the reality is
that we are our own first responders. I would say that we, thus,
have the right to access and own the same protections and fire-
power as any law enforcement officer, including the right to
the firearms of our choice.
The U.S. Supreme Court should use its authority—
remember the Supreme Court is the one Supreme Court under
the Constitution
77
—to monitor and police the lower courts, that
is, the inferior federal courts,
78
that fail to recognize and protect
the constitutional right of all Americans to keep and bear arms.
This protection should extend to those Americans who have
been deprived of their fundamental rights in certain states, and
the District of Columbia, where the ownership of an ordinary
firearm in the form of a semiautomatic rifle, with a few user-
friendly features, is outlawed. It is wrong that only those law-
abiding Americans residing in forty-four states have the right
to these firearms. It is also morally wrong and constitutionally
flawed to turn law-abiding Americans into felons because they
choose to possess an ordinary semiautomatic rifle while living
in or crossing into the wrong state. The U.S. Supreme Court
ought to step in and fix it.
[Rebuttal to Jonathan Lowy]: I’ll just make a few quick
points. First, Jonathan Lowy eloquently points out that there is
a right to life, a right not to be shot, and a right to safety.
79
That
is all generally true. Except the question today is not “do you
have that right,” but “how do you effectuate and make that
right real in the real world”? I ask this: Do you want to depend
upon the government to protect your lives, and the lives of the
people you love? Consider Parkland, Florida, where, the guard
on duty refused to go into the school building and confront the
shooter.
80
Should we stake our lives on the other security
372 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 43
guards at Parkland who, when the shooting broke out, hid in a
closet or jumped on a golf cart and drove away? Do we want
our lives to be protected by the eight police officers of the
Broward County Sherriff’s Department—who set up a perimeter
outside the school, never tried to confront the shooter, and
didn’t go in essentially until the shooter left the school, walked
down the street and ordered a sandwich at a local store?
81
Really?
I agree we have a right to life. However, the way to effectuate
that right is by letting private citizens own firearms.
Second, the majority in Heller held that there are certain policy
choices that the Bill of Rights takes off the table because they
are fundamental, constitutional rights.
82
One such fundamental,
constitutional right is the right to bear arms. One can debate
the merits of gun control, but the truth is that the debate that
should take place is in the context of amending the Constitution,
using Article V procedures to repeal the Second Amendment,
like the late Justice Stevens recommended.
83
But the gun grab-
bers do not want to do that. It is too hard, and they do not have
the support for it. Instead, they try to subvert the process by
enacting gun-grabbing legislation and creating bad precedent
in the courts that denies law-abiding Americans their Second
Amendment rights.
Third, it is not about mass shooters; it’s about mass killers.
Did you know that the greatest number of school children
killed in a murderous attack was done with a bomb in Bath,
Michigan, close to the turn of the century?
84
Not a gun, but a
bomb. That is consistent with the people who used a truck
bomb at the Oklahoma City federal building.
85
Not to mention
Peterson Did Not Do During the Parkland School Shooting, N.Y. TIMES (June 4, 2019),
nyti.ms/2JX6a3m [https://perma.cc/RS3Y-YQ8X] (explaining Officer Scot
Peterson’s failure to act during the Parkland shooting).
81. See Patricia Mazzei, Slow Police Response and Chaos Contributed to Parkland
Massacre, Report Finds, N.Y.
TIMES (Dec. 12, 2018), nyti.ms/2zXPBh2 [https://
perma.cc/B47D-63UJ].
82. See District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 636 (2008).
83. See Stevens, supra note 59.
84. Lorraine Boissoneault, The 1927 Bombing That Remains America’s Deadliest School
Massacre, S
MITHSONIAN MAG. (May 18, 2017), www.smithsonianmag.com/
history/1927-bombing-remains-americas-deadliest-school-massacre-180963355/
[https://perma.cc/SV5B-GPBE].
85. See Oklahoma City Bombing, FBI, www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/
oklahoma-city-bombing [https://perma.cc/S2EH-W5UR] (last visited Nov. 18, 2019).
No. 2] “Assault Weapon” Bans 373
the German pilot who killed 150 people by crashing his plane,
86
the arsonist who killed thirty-two people when he set afire the
Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans in 1973,
87
or the person who
killed 87 people at the Happy Land Social Club in 1990 by
starting a gasoline fire at the only exit.
88
There are lots of ways
to engage in mass killing without guns. In 2018, the RAND
Corporation, which is based in Santa Monica, California,
89
did a
major study on the impact and effect of “assault weapon” bans
on public safety. They concluded there was no reliable evi-
dence that these bans positively impacted (reduced) crime
rates.
90
That’s the RAND Corporation in 2018. I think that says
enough.