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‘Good Guys’ with Guns Are Fucking Useless in Stopping an Armed ‘Bad Guy’
A new DOJ report on the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is laced with vivid and horrifying detail on the failings of law enforcement, themselves fearing the AR-15 weaponry in the hands of the 18-year-old shooter.
Jan 22, 2024
Remember those twisted words by Wayne LaPierre, then leader of the National Rifle Association, just days after the
mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012? Standing there proudly up on the stage, he said: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
This January LaPierre resigned from his NRA leadership position ahead of the trial on charges of corruption by the State of New York. But his words after Sandy Hook sadly live on despite repeatedly being shown to be total bullshit. Glaringly so in the review of the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, by the Department of Justice (DOJ), released on January 18.
DOJ’s 575-page report, available in English and in Spanish, is laced with vivid and horrifying detail on the failings of law enforcement, themselves fearing the AR-15 weaponry in the hands of the 18-year-old shooter. Failings causing preventable death. Failings in providing adequate emergency medical care to wounded victims after law enforcement finally entered the classrooms. Failings as dozens of trained officers stood idly by without a leader armed to the teeth with their own AR-15-style firearms.
Here are the opening words by Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta at the news briefing where the DOJ report was officially released, remarks following those by Attorney General Merrick Garland:
The Attorney General just gave a sense of the detailed timeline we have laid out, and the cascading failures that occurred over the course of the 77 minutes between when law enforcement arrived on the scene and when they finally entered the classroom. But we also know the pain—and the failures and missteps—did not end when law enforcement finally entered the classrooms and rescued the survivors.
It continued at minute 78, when it became clear that because there was no leader, there was no plan to triage the 35 victims in classrooms 111 and 112, many of whom had been shot. Victims were moved without appropriate precautions, victims who had already passed away were taken to the hospital in ambulances, while children with bullet wounds were put on school buses without any medical attention. In the commotion, one adult victim was placed on a walkway—on the ground outside—to be attended to. She died there.
As difficult as the vivid words in the report are to ignore, I am not naive. If history is any guide, some in Congress will mightily try to discount the DOJ report, continuing to block any subsequent movement on meaningful gun-control measures. Republican lawmakers in solidly Republican states, as a detailed article in The New York Times describes, are fraid their voter base would vote them out of office if they show any hint of supporting gun-control measures. Those Republicans are waiting for the report to fade away in the news cycle to collect dust.
But then, the victims of the gun carnage in Uvalde, and those before, deserve more than letting the report die buried in dust. They deserve someone taking the debate to the naysayers in Congress and state legislatures armed with hard facts about the effectiveness of gun-control measures, framed by the realities of having none in a gun-friendly state like Texas where the brutal carnage within Robb Elementary School happened. Yes, there is an association between lack of gun regulations in a state and the occurrence of mass shootings, as I describe below.
Here are some of the arguments I would make today replying to some of the naysaying comments (bolded below) common among members of Congress downplaying any need for gun control:
Gun control does not work and won’t reduce gun violence.
Wrong. Take requiring gun licenses, as required in a minority of states today. In his review of studies, Garen Wintemute, who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, writes in Health Affairs that license requirements for gun purchases “have repeatedly been associated with reduced rates of [gun] violence.” This body of research is clear.
Furthermore, Michael Siegel at Boston University and his research team found, as reported in Law and Human Behavior, that requiring one to get a permit to purchase firearms was associated with a 60% lower odds of a public mass shooting occurring in a state, controlling for state characteristics like population. Other researchers found the same thing.
Why? Because licenses to purchase firearms typically entail in-person applications and background checks involving multiple databases and, among other things, taking a gun safety course. Basically a more comprehensive examination than standalone background checks singularly taken at the point of a firearm sale.
Congress already passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) in 2022. Nothing more is needed.
Okay, but the BSCA basically only includes more funding for mental health initiatives.
Well, mental illness is the cause of most gun violence, especially mass shootings.
I agree mental troubles underlie many suicides, by firearms and otherwise. And extreme-risk or “red-flag” laws encouraged via funding in the BSCA have been shown to reduce suicides.
But research repeatedly finds that psychiatric disorders, as a comprehensive review by Rand Corporation concluded, are not the principal driver alone across the spectrum of firearm violence. And that includes not being a predictable factor in mass shootings. Sure, after a mass shooting, politicians and media search hard to find a motive and signs of mental troubles; retrospective interpretation to justify mental illness alone as cause. Retrospective interpretation, I submit, many of us not owning a gun would fail.
But an assaults weapon ban is going too far. Based only on the threatening appearance of guns, nothing more.
Maybe the 1994 ban automatically expiring in 2004 was based too much on physical appearance instead of functionality. But today, as criminologist Thomas Gabor and former ATF agent Julius Wachtel have each argued, a ban can be based on objective ballistic lethality, scoring firearms on components including caliber, muzzle velocity, firing rate, ammunition capacity, loading mechanism, and ability to add accessories that increase lethality.
Wachtel in his 2015 article in The Washington Post describes one extreme lethal ballistic feature about AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles. With “their most common calibers—7.62 and .223—these weapons discharge bullets whose extreme energy and velocity readily pierce protective garments commonly worn by police, opening cavities in flesh many times the diameter of the projectile and causing devastating wounds.” Hence, a herd of law enforcement personnel at Uvalde afraid of the weapon in the shooter’s hands milled around aimlessly for over an hour before doing anything.
And such carnage Wachtel describes was visited upon the children and teachers in Robb Elementary School on that fateful day in Uvalde, Texas.
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Disarming Domestic Abusers Can Protect Us All
A federal law banning those convicted of domestic violence from purchasing a gun is an approach supported by 81 percent of those self-identifying as Republicans and 91 percent of self-identified Democrats polled.
Nov 06, 2023
Before the Lewiston, Maine spree shooting suspect began voicing plans to “shoot up” his community, there was already a red flag that he might someday commit a mass shooting. The same red flag was also present well before a Florida Republican donor shot his wife and then killed himself in a restaurant parking lot three weeks ago in Palm Beach, Florida. The same red flag had been flapping wildly for years before a shooter took the life of a Judge in Maryland four weeks ago. Each of the shooters, now all dead by suicide, had the same red flag waving from their past: domestic violence. Indeed, one of the strongest indicators that someone will commit gun violence, particularly a mass shooting, is if that person has previously committed violence against an intimate partner or family member.
As City Attorney of San Diego, I have used our state’s red flag laws, also known as gun violence restraining orders (GVROs), to disarm over a thousand truly dangerous people, a third of them domestic abusers. Having this common sense intervention available to law enforcement and the public is one of the reasons why California also has 43% fewer gun deaths than the rest of the country. Since California’s red flag law went into effect seven years ago, GVROs have been credited with disarming 58 potential mass shooters who had threatened to commit large-scale gun violence. Of the individuals who had firearms temporarily removed with a GVRO, nearly a third had an assault-type weapon such as an AR or AK-style rifle.
The eponymous case of Zackey Rahimi demonstrates precisely why Red Flag laws are so critical to the safety of communities and illustrates how the gun lobby’s efforts make our country less safe.
Focusing on the use of GVROs to reduce the impacts of domestic violence is key to protecting those experiencing abuse, but it can also protect entire communities. In the U.S., domestic violence has been identified as a common factor in nearly 70 percent of fatal mass shootings, meaning the perpetrator first killed a partner or family member or had a history of domestic abuse. It was the case in Sandy Hook, it was the case in Majorie Stillman Douglas High School, it was the case in Robb Elementary, it was the case in Pulse NIghtclub, and it was the case in the most recent spree shooting in Lewiston. The use of GVROs and Domestic Violence Restraining Orders (DVROs) in cases of domestic violence is constitutionally consistent with the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, next month, the Supreme Court will hear United States v. Rahimi, which examines whether federal law can prohibit someone subject to a qualifying domestic violence restraining order from having a gun.
The eponymous case of Zackey Rahimi demonstrates precisely why Red Flag laws are so critical to the safety of communities and illustrates how the gun lobby’s efforts make our country less safe. In United States v. Rahimi, Rahimi pled guilty in 2021 to possessing guns in violation of a federal law, 18 USC § 922(g)(8), that makes it a crime to possess guns when you are the subject of a qualifying domestic violence restraining order.
Rahimi had such a protective order against him because of his actions against his ex-girlfriend, with whom he has a young child, and after he was involved in six separate shooting incidents around Arlington, Texas, a search of his bedroom turned up a pistol with an extended magazine and a semi-automatic rifle. A federal grand jury indicted him for possessing the guns, but his lawyers challenged the constitutionality of prosecuting him. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately sided with Rahimi, ruling that the Second Amendment prevents the government from barring individuals subject to qualifying domestic violence protective orders from possessing a gun. The U.S. Solicitor General’s Office appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.
Americans overwhelmingly want restrictions on gun ownership in domestic violence scenarios. Indeed, a federal law banning those convicted of domestic violence from purchasing a gun is an approach supported by 81 percent of those self-identifying as Republicans and 91 percent of self-identified Democrats polled. The issue the public has with red flag laws isn’t a lack of support for them but rather a lack of awareness of them. Most Americans in the 21 states with red flag laws are unaware this powerful, relatively new crisis intervention tool is available to disarm a dangerous situation. Though gun violence restraining orders had been available in California for five years, two-thirds of the Californians surveyed had no knowledge of them. As we desperately search for solutions, spreading awareness on how the public can use these laws right now may be the fastest and most effective way to address one of the most chronic patterns in our nation’s gun violence epidemic.
This op-ed was distributed by American Forum.
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'Noah's Wounds Were Not Survivable': Parents Allow Detailed View of AR-15 Carnage
The Washington Post exposé has been described as "the most powerful article you will read this week" and "one of the most important pieces of journalism ever produced."
Mar 28, 2023
On Monday morning, The Washington Postpublished a series of 3D animations to show "how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart."
A few hours later, a 28-year-old shooter armed with two assault rifles and a handgun killed six people at a private Christian school in Nashville.
In the wake of that massacre—the 129th mass shooting in the United States in 2023—the Post's exposé has received sustained attention, with one person calling it "the most powerful article you will read this week" and another characterizing it as "one of the most important pieces of journalism ever produced."
Noting that the lethal wounds caused by AR-15s "are rarely seen" by the public, the newspaper demonstrated "the trajectory of two different hypothetical gunshots to the chest—one from an AR-15 and another from a typical handgun—to explain the greater severity of the damage caused by the AR-15."
Then, after obtaining permission from the parents of two school shooting victims, a team of visual reporters created 3D models to depict how bullets fired from "many mass killers' weapon of choice" obliterated their children's bodies.
Noah Ponzer was one of the 26 people who were killed by an AR-15-wielding gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. The 6-year-old was shot three times.
"Noah's wounds were not survivable," the Post reported, citing 2019 court testimony from Wayne Carver, who was the state's chief medical examiner at the time.
Peter Wang was one of 17 people murdered when an attacker armed with an AR-15 opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018. The 15-year-old was shot 13 times.
As the Post reported: "The combined energy of those bullets created exit wounds so 'gaping' that the autopsy described his head as 'deformed.' Blood and brain splatter were found on his upper body and the walls. That degree of destruction, according to medical experts, is possible only with a high-velocity weapon."
"This is the trauma witnessed by first responders—but rarely, if ever, seen by the public or the policymakers who write gun laws," the newspaper noted.
Instead, many GOP lawmakers glorify assault rifles, including U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), whose congressional district is home to the Nashville school where Monday's deadly shooting took place.
Another right-wing member of Tennessee's congressional delegation—Republican Rep. Tim Burchett—baldly stated that "we're not gonna fix it" just hours after the shooting.
There are more guns than people in the United States. Due to National Rifle Association-bankrolled Republicans' opposition to meaningful gun safety laws—bolstered by a 2022 ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court's reactionary majority—it is relatively easy for people to purchase firearms in many states.
Two years ago, Tennessee became one of several states that allow most adults to carry handguns without a permit.
There have been thousands of mass shootings since Noah and more than two dozen other individuals suffered gruesome deaths at Sandy Hook, including last year's slaughter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, among hundreds of others. Research shows that U.S. states with weaker gun control laws and higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings.
Research also shows that gun regulations with high levels of public support, including bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, help reduce the number and severity of fatal mass shootings.
Guns recently became the leading cause of death among children and teens in the United States. A study published last year found that roughly 26,000 kids could still be alive today if the U.S. had the same gun mortality rate as Canada.
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