49 dead in Orlando – Another victory for the NRA
Omar Mateen killed the majority of the victims at the Orlando Pulse using a semi-automatic that lets one man spray an entire room with deadly projectiles. It was a weapon that he would not have been able to purchase legally if the assault weapons ban hadn’t expired in 2004. And the ban would not have expired if our legislators hadn’t caved to the powerful gun lobby.
The creed of the National Rifle Association is that any attempt to limit access to weapons – ANY – is a violation of the Second Amendment, no matter how many people have to die, and common sense be damned.
I am not opposed to the right to bear arms. I’ve gone hunting, not with any great success since I’m a lousy shot. I believe in the right to protect myself or my loved ones, even if that means killing the assailant. And though this is a violation of my Unitarian Universalist beliefs, I’m not even going to try to argue for the inherent worth and dignity of Omar Mateen. I’d say he squandered that inheritance.
But was it so necessary that we made it so easy for Mateen to murder so many in so short a time?
Who the hell NEEDS an automatic or semi-automatic assault weapon, except for someone looking to rack up a body count? Did someone say they use these weapons for hunting? Since when? I thought hunting was supposed to be a sport, where the hunted has an even chance of getting out alive.
Getting back to the second amendment, let’s consider the circumstance of that clause, adopted in 1791. At that time, the common firepower of the ordinary citizens were the musket and the rifle, and this would have been dozens of years before the invention of the rifle magazine that allowed multiple shots without having to reload. I doubt very much that even Benjamin Franklin, an inventor and one of the most intelligent men of the revolution, could have envisioned the killing power of one assault rifle.
So what were they dealing with back then? Here is a scene from my book which describes what a “killing spree” would have involved:
Spit on the ball, drop the ball, ram the ball, pour priming powder, cock hammer, raise and … the eyes were gone. Varmint had escaped him once again. He pulled the trigger anyway, aiming at where the eyes had been, and then again and again – powder, spit, ball, ram, powder, cock, aim, shoot, powder, spit, ball, ram, powder, cock, aim, shoot….”
Yeah, Mateen could have taken out maybe one or two with his trusty musket. With such a delay between shots, anyone could have rushed him and brought him down. In fact, there is a scene in my book in which the character Ralph Folsom was drunk and humiliated and would have loved nothing better than to kill everyone in the tavern. He didn’t try. He knew the survivors of the first shot would deliver him to the hangman, if they didn’t kill him outright.
Today, Ralph Folsom would have no such compunction. And our current gun laws would let him.