Why I Need An AR-15; And Why You Do Too.

I hate gun control debates. They bring out the most ignorant and unreasonable arguments on both sides. Guns are an emotional issue because they are designed to kill things. They are not a bunker, or body armor, which are designed to defend things. No, guns are specifically designed to put the operator in an offensive position to injure or kill. Owning or carrying a firearm necessarily means that you have chosen to go on the offense in a defensive situation and proactively kill an attacker. It is a decision with heavy moral, legal, and psychological consequences, but once you've made that decision, you should arm yourself with the best weapons you can.

Democrats are calling for another "assault weapons ban." The last ban, passed during the Bill Clinton Administration lasted from 1994 until September 13, 2004. During that period, gun violence remained unchanged. In fact, in 2004, while Democrats were attempting to renew the ban, both the Justice Department and the National Institute of Justice reported that the impact of the ban was so small that it was likely not measurable. They concluded that renewing the ban would have a negligible statistical impact on violent crime. The ban was lifted. 

During that same period, however, medical records, specifically mental health records, somehow became sacrosanct. Liberal Democrats passed significant legislation to make it nearly impossible to investigate someone's mental health. Not surprisingly, several crazies, who had demonstrated real mental instability, passed background checks and killed multiple people. The last mass shooter passed his background check notwithstanding being investigated, twice, by the FBI. No one believes this guy should have had a gun. 

But let's also be accurate in the way we characterize this last attack. This was not a "crime." It was an act of war committed by someone who received terrorist training overseas to carry out such an attack. He could have and likely would have simply used a bomb and done just as much or more damage than he did with his rifle. Ironically, shootings give the potential victims a better chance to escape or hide once everyone realizes what's happening. Bombs just go off and kill everyone. I'd much rather be involved in an active shooter situation than crammed in a night club while some Jihadi with a  bomb yells at me in Arabic right before pressing a button.

That said, I support a much more intrusive, regimented background check process that, once completed, also expands a gun owner's rights. I also support a two tiered background check system. If you want to own a revolver for example, you pass a less rigorous background check than if you want own an AR-15. Ban the people, not the guns. I'll make a specific proposal in the next few weeks. 

What I will not agree to do is ban assault rifles or high capacity magazines. Unless the government can assure me that it can - and will - protect me and my family from terrorists and other evil men, I will need a powerful, precise weapon of war with which to do it myself. Unfortunately, the government is unwilling to stamp out terrorism, protect our borders, or reign in violent crime and home invasions. Our leadership is making conscious decisions every day that make us less safe. Banning a particular class of semi-automatic firearms will not change that. All it will do is take weapons out of the hands of the good guys at a time when we are more at risk. 

I choose an AR-15 for home defense for several reasons. First, it is reliable and easy to operate. Millions of the fully automatic versions of these guns have been produced and deployed by the military. The design of the weapon has been well tested and largely perfected, and it is highly likely to function when you need it to. Second, it is precise, accurate and tends not to over-penetrate. Shotguns are not a good home defense weapon. They tend to over-penetrate, sending shotgun pellets through walls, potentially injuring the people you are trying to protect. Shotguns are also less accurate. Handguns are a good option for a small home, but the gun owner has to be cognizant of the ammunition used. 9mm ball ammunition, for example, will go through several walls in a house. .45 ACP rounds are better, but some find the recoil more difficult to handle. Pistols are also less accurate and less lethal than rifles. That is why soldiers don't clear a house in Iraq with a pistol.

The 55 grain, .223 caliber, lead core round fired from an AR-15 tends to shatter when it hits a target. Some shrapnel will penetrate past the wall or the person hit, but the bulk of the bullet remains in the target. That notwithstanding, it will pierce soft body armor at close and medium range. Since more and more criminals and terrorists are using body armor in their attacks, it is sensible to deploy a weapon that can defeat that threat. It will not defeat the steel or ceramic plates used by soldiers and S.W.A.T. teams.

The .223 is a small caliber. Its relative weight makes for very light recoil when combined with a rifle. Many people learn to shoot rifles using an AR-15 variant for this reason. It is light, has low recoil, is easy to shoot, and accurate. Learning to shoot for the first time on a powerful hunting rifle is a bad idea. 

For me, the AR-15 also doubles as a woods gun. While not ideal for shooting a large animal, it is ideal for killing medium size animals, like a coyote or wolf. It also gives me piece of mind to have my AR-15 and high capacity magazine sitting by the bed or on my deck because I know the police are about 20 minutes away from my 260 acre farm. There is a serious meth problem in the area and there have been home invasions. Finally, when my children are playing in the 11 acre field, I know I cannot possibly grab my handgun and run 80 or 100 yards fast enough to defend them from a predator creeping into the field. 

I choose the AR-15 because it is light, reasonably powerful, easily fired, easily cleaned, accurate, reliable, and modular. All firearms are weapons of war. Once you've chosen to use a weapon to defend yourself or your family, you should choose the best one. It is the AR-15's ability to fill many different roles that makes it the one rifle you need to own.

Gun Ban Advocates Should Be Careful What They Wish For

I am a 6'2" 270 pound weightlifter who used to work as a bouncer in a bar. If violently confronted by another man, I stand a reasonable chance of defending myself and my family. If I am facing more than one attacker, my chances fall dramatically. If facing a gang of attackers, they will do whatever they want to me and my family. 

Gun-ban advocates seem to have one of two fantasies about the scenarios I've outlined above. In the first fantasy, they believe that such situations are exceedingly rare or never really happen in real life. This, of course, is demonstrably false. The second fantasy is a little more difficult to debunk. When home alone at night, 5'2" 135 pound women and overweight dads with desk jobs secretly think that they would be able to fend off such attacks. The fantasies range from "getting a baseball bat" to "becoming a mama bear protecting her cubs." These are dangerous fantasies that will get you killed in real life. Anyone who has any real experience with being attacked will tell you, your baseball bat probably will not save you from a single drugged up attacker, much less a gang of them. The "mama bear" fantasy is just plain childish. There is no way, and I mean no way, that a 5'2" woman, who is not an expert fighter, will defeat multiple male attackers my size. No way. You will be a victim, absolutely, every time.

Firearms are the great equalizer. Statistics are all over the place on defensive gun use (from 100,000 per year to over 4.7 million). The most comprehensive studies however have concluded that firearms are deployed somewhere between 1.7 and 2.5 million times per year in self defense. I'm not going to argue statistics, do your own research. But one statistic that is consistent across almost all serious studies is that of those defensive deployments, 30% of those guns are deployed by women. Now, whether you believe defensive gun use is lower or higher, let me ask you this: which woman should have been raped and/or killed by her attacker last year because YOU took away her ability to adequately defend herself? Which single mom sitting at home during a home invasion should have surrendered her family to her attackers? Name her. Let's ask her what she thinks.

The Constitution was not founded on government rights, or civil rights, or social rights. The founding principles of our nation are that we are all endowed by our "Creator" with certain inalienable rights. In other words, our rights are God given, natural and cannot be stripped from us. Among those rights is the right to reasonably defend yourself. "Reasonably" is a term that cuts both ways. No, you do not have the right to defend yourself with rocket launchers. On the other hand, however, you need to be able to utilize weapons that are at least equal in power to those weapons being brought to bear against you. A baseball bat or even a sword is probably inadequate to stop multiple attackers during a home invasion. You need a reliable modern firearm with a large capacity magazine to do that. Five shots from your grandfather's .38 caliber revolver will not be enough to stop three or four determined men. 

There are certainly measures we need to take to prevent mass casualty attacks. There are laws that can be and should be passed. There are no circumstances under which a radical Islamic terrorist on a government watch list should be allowed to purchase a gun. This is obviously another example of the government failing to protect the citizenry, but the FBI needs to be empowered to make more subjective determinations about individuals who are prone to making violent or radical statements. Those measures do not, however, include gun bans. Gun bans don't work. They've never worked, and it will take both sides to reach a reasonable compromise. For men and women who think like me, compromise is poisoned by ill informed people who know nothing about guns or self defense or fighting, who want to ban guns they've never fired. If you don't know the difference between automatic and semi-automatic, or if you think that the AR-15 is the same weapon used by our military, you need to educate yourself. Then we can have a discussion about gun control and probably reach a compromise that would protect both gun rights and limit mass casualty attacks. 

A Time To Mourn; A Time to Kill

As Americans, we are, appropriately, slow to anger. We do not fight in a rage, and we do not rush to judgment. After last night's Jihadist attack on an LGBT night club, it is time to be angry, it is time to rage, and it is time to pronounce judgment on our enemies.

I have very little to add to the dozen or so posts I've written on this exact issue over the past several years after similar attacks on Western civilization. We are at war, whether we are willing to admit it or not. Our enemy targets unarmed citizens, women, and children. We have done almost nothing to harden soft targets, and we continue to live in denial when it comes to the overall goal of radical Islam. We are paralyzed, not in fear of the enemy, but in fear of global condemnation should we, finally, decide to wage a total war against these savages. We have, most likely, forgotten how to even wage total war. We continue to deconstruct, we continue to play games with the words and, not surprisingly, we are still losing.

There is absolutely no way we can defeat radical Islam by killing one Jihadi at a time. Focusing on stopping lone wolf or wolf-pack attacks is like trying to stop a river with a fishing net. If it is not part of a broader strategy, it will result in more American deaths. The only way to stop Jihadi attacks is to completely eradicate their radical ideology from the planet. We must inflict such carnage on the populations supporting these attacks that, after the war, to whisper a Jihadist thought results in instant exile or death in the community. 

We must make the ideology illegal and ban its practice. While it is illegal for an individual to make a terrorist threat, it is not illegal to practice an ideology whose foundational tenet is the destruction of America and the West through acts of terrorism. For whatever reason, our leaders prefer to curtail the civil liberties of all Americans to targeting, disrupting, and prosecuting those who are most likely to commit acts of Jihad. That simply cannot be the case if we want to be serious about defeating Jihad. 

We also must harden ourselves individually, and harden all soft targets. As I've said before, we protect our money better than we protect our schools. It is no coincidence that Jihadis attack unarmed people and poorly guarded locations. Terrorist tactics by definition require the attacker to inflict the maximum amount of emotional and physical damage on the population before being killed. A lone wolf or a pack of wolves would be immediately killed if they targeted a police station. The attack would fail. If you want to deter an attack, you make sure that the attacker is killed in the swiftest most efficient way possible. That means using firearms. There are only several ways to deploy firearms in the public in such a way as to quickly respond to attacks: have police squads on every corner, deploy the military, or mobilize the citizenry. Deploying the military is unconstitutional and it would be literally impossible to employ and train enough police officers to stop every attack. 

So we must harden ourselves individually. We must accept as Americans, first that we are at war; second that the war is being waged on our soil; third that we cannot bargain with our enemy; and fourth that we can either fight back or die. Jihadism can be defeated if our leaders will come to terms with their own fears. In the interim, we as individuals can accept responsibility for our own safety and the safety of our families and communities. Jihadis and other evil men will always have guns no matter what laws we pass. If you do not believe that, look at the Paris attacks. Fortunately, we have the right as Americans to defend ourselves from Jihadis with similar guns. We have the right to learn how to safely store, retrieve and use those guns. We have the right in most states to carry those guns. If enough Americans are willing to make themselves hard targets, terrorism will be rendered a far less effective tactic. 

We will not always be at war. We will not always be as vulnerable as we are today. We can mourn the victims of this atrocity today, but tomorrow we must resolve ourselves to exterminate the enemy.