Former GOP Congressman Wants Assault Weapon Ban Renewed

The thing that kind of irks me the most about the Second Amendment debate is that while it should be non-partisan, it largely is. There are almost no elected pro-gun Democrats running around, after all. There are pro-gun Democrats, but it seems most of them are motivated more by issues that don’t involve gun rights when it comes to their voting, so we aren’t likely to see them put people in office.

Then we’ve got Republicans who also seem to think that gun rights aren’t really a thing.

Take former Congressman Greg Ganske. Sure, he’s out of office, but he still claims to be a Republican, even as he’s calling for a renewed assault weapon ban.

It is good to send thoughts and prayers to the families and victims of the Minnesota Annunciation Catholic School shooting, as we should for the all the victims of shootings. Just a week ago the shooter at the Church of the Latter Day Saints mass murder near Flint, Michigan, used an assault rifle to kill four and wound eight more victims.

We need action in addition to prayers to reduce the lethality of these types of attacks. As Annunciation’s principal said in calling for action to try to prevent other school shootings, “When we pray, we should move our feet.”

The mother of 9-year-old Vivian St. Clair, who survived multiple bullet wounds at the Annunciation mass shooting, put it more bluntly: “Who the hell is going to do something? Who is going to take tangible steps to break the cycle?”

It is way past time to renew the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban.

Now, there’s a lot of stupid in that last sentence, but it’s far from the last stupid one is likely to see.

First, let’s get into some of Ganske’s “evidence.”

He starts with defining a mass shooting as an incident where four or more people are shot, either killed or injured, in a public place. That’s the definition used by the Gun Violence Archive, which we’ve criticized because it includes a whole lot of incidents that were never considered mass shootings before, including gang violence.

Then we get this tidbit:

Most mass shootings escape media attention because they occur in parking lots, yards, porches and residential locations. A large proportion of of mass shootings are done with semiautomatic pistols and multiple bullet clips. However, semiautomatic assault rifles, with gun magazines that usually can hold 30 to 100 rounds, are many times as lethal because their muzzle velocities are several times that of a handgun. The higher velocity causes more severe wounds. From 2015 to 2022, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, mass shootings where an assault weapon was used resulted in nearly six times as many people shot and more than twice as many killed as compared with mass shootings that did not involve an assault weapon.

First, citing Everytown’s “research” is already suspect as hell, but let’s remember the definition Ganske is using.

The reason for Everytown’s supposed findings isn’t because there’s somehow something magical about so-called assault weapons, but the differences between the intentions of most shooters.

Semi-auto firearms are used by mass killers and gang-banger types. However, mass killers and gang-bangers have different goals and different plans. Mass murderers want to kill as many people as possible. They usually don’t plan to escape, either, because that would generally entail them having to stop killing people.

Gang-bangers, on the other hand, are trying to settle a score, then get out of there. They don’t want to go to prison if they can help it, so they shoot as much as they feel they need to, then run. That keeps the bloodshed lower than it might otherwise have been.

These two differences work in conflict to keep the average number of people injured or killed lower than it might otherwise have been.

So-called assault weapons have been touted by the media as the preferred firearm for mass killers, though, which means many pick these guns for just that purpose. Because their motivations are different, and they don’t have the other kinds of shootings to “compete” with, the averages are significantly higher.

Let’s remember that, for example, the worst school shooting in American history is still Virginia Tech, which used a couple of handguns.

The averages don’t mean jack, and anyone who claims to be a Republican while pushing gun control, is suspect in my eyes. We saw plenty of Republicans back the last one, and guess what happened? Nothing at all. Violent crime was already dropping before the law passed, and it continued dropping even after it sunset.

Further, in the wake of Bruen, I genuinely believe that all assault weapon bans are going to be overturned by the Supreme Court sooner or later. I wish they’d already done it, but they haven’t just yet. However, they’ve also signaled that it’s just a matter of time, so Ganske should prepare himself for disappointment.

Iowa, where Ganske is from, dodged a bullet when they decided not to elect him to the Senate.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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