If you weren't convinced before that assault rifles should be banned, you should be now after the latest mass shooting.
The shooter, Omar Mateen, killed at least 49 inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and injured 53 others Sunday morning. One survivor described how Mateen swung a bullet-spewing AR-15 semi-automatic rifle side to side, mowing down patrons in a thickly packed room.
While Mateen could have killed a lot of people by other means — with a semi-automatic pistol, for example — the AR-15's capacity to fire as many as 45 rounds a minute makes it a military-grade killing machine.
Is there really any justifiable reason for anyone to own one of these in our country? Did you know that, according to the Gun Owners Action League, Americans own more than five million AR-15 semi-automatic rifles?
Some say, yes, there is good reason for assault rifles to be legal — citizens need them to guard against gun-wielding maniacs. Proponents of keeping assault rifles legal also point out that a ban would take such weapons out of the hands of law-abiding citizens while criminals would still manage to get them.
Well, if you believe that, then you are essentially making the case for a lawless country, and you are missing the point of a ban entirely.
Banning assault weapons would make them more difficult for criminals to procure and would enable law enforcement officers to seize the weapons, positioning the criminal justice system to prosecute offenders.
The United States used to have a ban on assault weapons. It was in place from 1994 to 2004, at which point the federal government, pressured by intense lobbying from the National Rifle Association and other guns-rights activists, allowed the ban to lapse.
In a New York Daily News article Monday, Richard Aborn of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, who helped draft the legislation for the 1994 ban, said: "During the decade of the ban, there were half as many casualties in mass shootings as the decade before, and a third as many casualties in mass shootings as the decade after."
Since the ban lapsed, AR-15 semi-automatic rifles have repeatedly been the weapon used by shooters in mass killings in this country, including the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., where 20 first-graders and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.
Banning assault rifles wouldn't stop the madness, but it would place a considerable obstacle in the path of madmen bent on mass murder.