Calls for Gun Control in Wake of Las Vegas: Two Proposals and a Rhetorical Example

       Andrew Rosenthal and Ross Douthat play team tag on the gun control debate. First, Rosentha has an op-ed in the New York Times calling for vast new restrictions on firearms as a consequence of the Las Vegas shooting. Entitled "The Debate That Goes Nowhere," he begins:

It’s time to talk about taking away guns — not everyone’s guns and not all of them, but a whole lot. I know I am inviting enormous vitriol with that sentence, but it has to be said.

Then he goes into his spiel about the 2nd Amendment shouldn't be allowed as a shield against gun control, and chastises those in favor of the 2nd Amendment for their criticism of the anti-gunner's lack of understanding of firearms. Amusingly, Rosenthal then immediately goes on to demonstrate why the lack of knowledge is relevant. He writes:

         The Second Amendment gives individuals a right to own firearms, the Supreme Court has decided, but not carte blanche to own any number or kind of firearm, regardless of its purpose, design or lethality. 

         There is no good reason for a civilian to own rifles like the ones used by the Las Vegas killer and even less to own many of them. We need to steadily remove from private hands those kinds of guns, and ammunition designed to kill and maim more effectively or to pierce armor. Then we need to find more ways to reduce the number of weapons we own.

Frankly, I'm not sure what "rifles like the ones used by the Las Vegas killer" is intended to encompass. I assume AR style rifles, but I'm sure that Rosenthal would want to extend this to all semi-automatic rifles using detachable magazines.

         He also wants to ban "ammunition designed to kill and maim for effectively"--presumably any ammunition with a soft point, hollow-point, or other design allowing for expansion of the bullet. In other words, he wants to ban hunting and self-defense ammunition. I guess that leaves us only with cast lead or full metal jacket. But he also wants to ban any ammunition "designed ... to pierce armor." Since we know that velocity and cross-sectional density are the most critical factors for piercing armor, this pretty much means that any high velocity ammunition would be banned.

        So, what are we left with? Bolt, lever, or pump style rifles using fixed magazines and shooting a relatively low velocity round of cast lead or employing a full metal jacket. Obviously, this is unrealistic and would never get through Congress.

         Ross Douthat, also writing at the New York Times, then enters the ring to provide the "reasonable" course of action. He begins his op-ed by discussing why gun control has become unpopular:

         Why is gun control losing? One answer is structural. Gun ownership is a form of expressive individualism no less than the liberties beloved in blue America, and it makes sense that a culture that rejects erotic limits would reject limits on self-defense as well. Especially since the appeal of gun ownership is also linked to individualism’s dark side — to distrust of your neighbor and your government, to the decay of communities and families, to a sense of being unprotected and on your own. 

         But the gun control cause also has a more specific political problem. Anti-gun activists seize on the most horrifying acts of killing, understandably, and use them as calls to legislative action. But then the regulatory measures they propose, even when they poll well, often lack any direct connection to the massacres themselves. 

          If you go back through the list of recent mass atrocities, for instance, you don’t see many killers buying guns through the supposed “gun show loophole” or without a background check. Instead you see examples of why, in a well-armed country, legal barriers to gun ownership don’t necessarily prevent lunatics and fanatics from getting them: Some of the killers passed background checks with flying colors, some passed them because of human and bureaucratic errors, and others simply used someone else to acquire their weaponry, circumventing legal and regulatory obstacles entirely. 

          The diversity of weapons used in the massacres, too, has made it hard to claim that reviving the Clinton-era assault weapons ban (whose likely effect on murder rates was nil) would make deadly sprees much rarer. James Holmes and Adam Lanza used high-powered rifles, but Nidal Hasan, Jiverly Wong and Dylann Roof were all extremely deadly just with handguns. Aaron Alexis was prevented from buying an assault rifle; he killed a dozen people at D.C.’s Navy Yard with a shotgun. In a free society, madmen and monsters find a way to kill — as the killer in Vegas, a man of means and no significant criminal history, almost certainly would have even with tighter gun regulations and stiffer background checks. 

But he has a solution:

         But there is one way in which the latest massacre could be different. If, as it seems right now, there was a link between the sheer scale of the Las Vegas killer’s spree and his apparent use of a “bump stock” that lets a semiautomatic weapon fire at the rate of a machine gun, then gun-control advocates could make a more-direct-than-usual case for making such stocks illegal in response. 

        Right now tight regulations on fully automatic weapons are a settled part of our gun laws, and as restrictions go they seem relatively effective; no recent mass killer has acquired or used a machine gun. A new law banning “bump stocks” could still be flouted, of course, but it seems like a plausible extension of the principle that our machine-gun laws already enshrine. If you can’t manufacture automatic weaponry and you can buy only an old automatic under strict conditions, you shouldn’t be able to make a nonautomatic weapon fire like a machine gun by simply adding on a legal part.

Douthat then goes on to vindicate such a ban because, in his estimation, it would prevent a copy-cat attack using a weapon with a bump-fire stock. And, on cue, Dianne Feinstein has introduced her “Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act,” which, if passed, would prohibit manufacture, sale or possession of bumpfire stocks or other mechanical devices or parts intended to "accelerate the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle but not convert the semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun."

        Of course, Douthat's "compromise" and Feinstein's bill are ridiculous on their face because it is so easy to make a bump fire capable weapon. What are they going to do? Make rubber bands illegal? Besides, it is arguable that Paddock's use of "bump fire" lowered the victim count by making it more difficult for him aim and strike specific targets.

"www.PoormansMachinegun.com Episode 1" (2 min.)

But this bill will seem the "reasonable" and "safe" decision for Congressmen who want to be seen doing something.  This is the type of law that would assuage the need of Republican Congressmen to virtue signal to the left, without fully alienating most gun owners.

        And how is this a rhetorical example? On this team match, Rosenthal was meant to present the unrealistic demand (the thesis), and Douthat to then discuss why it is unworkable (the antithesis) and present the "reasonable" solution (synthesis).