SIUSLAW NEWS ❚ WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2018
Special Series from 7A
These examples are a sample
of the myriad of different laws
throughout the country and can
create confusion among gun
owners as to where and how
they are able purchase or own
guns. Volumes could — and
have — been written on these
laws, but it shows just how
widely gun control has been
attempted throughout the last
century.
Taken as a whole, most of
these laws mirror Australia’s
laws, in one way or another.
One of the major actions of
Australia’s gun control effort,
the buyback program, has been
put into motion in the U.S. mul-
tiple times by different states —
but none have been considered
wildly successful. Austin,
Texas, has held two buyback
programs, one in 2010 with
$100 VISA gift cards for each
handgun or rifle, and $200 for
what they determined to be
“assault
weapons”
were
offered. All told, 736 firearms
were brought in, but only seven
“assault rifles.”
None of the guns had been
involved with crimes, and it
was found that “most of the
firearms received were unwant-
ed guns that were gifted or
bequeathed by will,” according
to a report by the Hawaiian
Attorney General’s office, who
looked into the efficacy of these
programs.
It is unclear if the Austin
buyback programs, which cost
The Greater Austin Crime
Commission $70,000, led to
any decrease in crime.
The
cornerstone
of
Australia’s law, the banning of
“assault
weapons,”
was
attempted in 1994 with the
Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act, a sweeping
crime law that included a 10-
year, temporary ban on certain
firearms, including some semi-
automatic rifles and pistols and
magazines holding more than
10 rounds of ammunition.
After the law sunsetted, both
sides of the gun debate claimed
victory, with reformers saying it
reduced crimes with assault
weapons — and gun rights
advocates stating that it was a
failure. While both of these
arguments have merit, neither
are completely accurate.
In 2004, the U.S. Department
of Justice looked into the effec-
tiveness of the program and
found fixed messages. When
speaking with Factcheck.org,
the lead investigator for the
study found that while there
were less incidences of the
“assault weapons” being used
after the ban, the benefits were
outweighed by the rise in fre-
quency of crimes using non-
banned
semi-automatic
weapons.
Criminals were just swap-
ping out the types of guns they
used.
Lethality of the injuries were
also not being affected by the
ban.
But that’s not to say the ban
could not have had a greater
effect if it had been put in place
for a longer period of time.
Because the ban allowed exist-
ing “assault weapons” to
remain, it’s possible that over
time these guns could have
become so scarce that they
would eventually be non-exis-
tent, as happened with machine
guns.
The 10-year ban didn’t have
time to make that kind of a sta-
tistical impact.
But still, Factcheck.org also
pointed out that only 2 percent
of all firearm-related crimes
involved the listed “assault
weapons.”
So even if the ban was able to
play out, it wouldn’t have had a
drastic effect on overall crime.
But, proponents would argue,
some progress is better than no
progress at all.
Putting general violent crime
aside, would getting rid of
“assault weapons,” or the acces-
sories involved in the shootings,
work to curb the death toll of
mass shootings?
Much was made about
“bump stocks” after the Las
Vegas gunman used them to
gain more rapid fire with his
semi-automatic rifles. But a
stock is not needed to bump-fire
a rifle. The same effect can be
used just in the way a gunman
holds their rifle.
In fact, bump-firing a gun,
stock or no, decreases accuracy
because the entire firearm needs
to move in order to reset the
trigger during bumpfire.
And what about banning an
“assault rifle,” like an AR-15?
“The AR-15 has become the
weapon of choice, but there are
other weapons that you can use
that will cause as much dam-
age,”
Florence
Police
Commander John Pitcher said.
“If you had two pistols that
carry 15 rounds each, you could
shoot as many rounds out of
that as an AR15.”
Pitcher also brought up
armor-piercing bullets, which
can be equally devastating no
matter what gun fires them.
With 20 years of experience
on the force and an avowed
bipartisan on the issue, he sees
both sides of the gun debate
without bias.
“You’re never going to get
rid of all guns,” he said. “That’s
never going to happen. Even if
they did a ban right now, there’s
millions of guns out there. I
don’t know anybody who’s
going to go to someone’s house
and start taking their guns
away.”
If getting rid of all the guns
isn’t the answer to mass shoot-
ings, what about arming more
people?
Good guy with a gun
After the Sandy Hook
Elementary School shooting in
2012,
National
Rifle
Association
(NRA)
Vice
President Wayne LaPierre stat-
ed, “The only thing that stops a
bad guy with a gun, is a good
guy with a gun.”
The suggestion was to get
more trained personnel, like
resource officers, into schools
to help prevent school shoot-
ings. But the debate has dove-
tailed into an even broader
question: Do “good guys with
guns” make society safer?
“I don’t know the answer to
that,” Pitcher said. “I think, just
like everything in society, most
people are good people. If they
have a gun, they’re not going to
use it illegally. But you also
have that percentage that aren’t
good people, and those are the
people that scare me.
“It’s not like TV, where I can
see, ‘This is the good guy, this
is the bad guy.’ In real life, the
good guys and the bad guys
look the same for the most
part.”
However, there are multiple
examples of good guys with
guns making a difference.
In May 2017, a gunman
entered a sports bar in
Arlington, Texas, with two
loaded guns and two knives and
began yelling at the bar’s man-
ager before killing him. At that
point, a man with a concealed
handgun permit shot the gun-
man, and is credited with saving
lives.
In June 2016, a man opened
fire in a South Carolina bar,
shooting and wounding four
before a man with a concealed
weapons permit fired back,
wounding and stopping the
gunman.
But there are tragic inci-
dences where good guys with
guns don’t make a difference.
In July 2016, a man in Dallas
targeted a massive crowd
protesting the killings of Alton
Sterling and Philando Castile
by police.
There were nearly 100 armed
police officers at the protest, yet
the shooter killed five officers
in total and was only stopped by
a remotely detonated bomb
after a lengthy standoff. Adding
to the chaos of the scene were
about 20 protesters with ammo
gear, protective equipment and
rifles slung over their shoulders.
The police didn’t know if any
of them were the shooter, so
they began rounding up all of
them.
“When the shooting started,
at different angles, they started
running and we started catch-
ing,” said Dallas Mayor Mike
Rawlings, as quoted by the
Dallas News.
The mayor questioned if the
shooting could have been
stopped sooner if there were not
so many armed citizens in the
middle of the fray.
It was also noted that those
civilians who attempted to fire
back at the shooter created
more chaos for police, attempt-
ing to figure out who the shoot-
er actually was.
In 2005, a civilian and
firearms instructor fired upon a
rampage shooter outside a
courthouse in Tyler, Texas, but
was instantly killed by the
heavily armored shooter.
And then there are examples
of armed civilians choosing not
to engage gunmen.
During the 2015 Umpqua
Community College (UCC)
shooting in Roseburg, Ore., an
armed veteran who was on
campus during the shooting
said he avoided getting
involved because he didn’t
want to open himself up to
being a potential target by the
police when they arrived.
The UCC shooting became a
point of controversy over the
“good guy” debate when
Florida State Rep. Greg Steube
sponsored a bill in his state
allowing open carry because
UCC was a “gun-free zone.”
In fact, the college wasn’t.
Oregon allows students to
bring guns on campuses, as
long as the college permits it as
well.
Gun rights advocates often
point to “gun-free” zones as a
cause for mass shootings, argu-
ing that shooters specifically
target these areas because of
their supposed lack of guns. But
that assumption shows an inher-
ent misunderstanding of mass
shooters.
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fact, of those mass shooters
who leave behind records, few
had escape plans; they knew
they would either be killed by
someone else or take their own
life.
In regard to a good guy with
a gun, Pitcher stresses the point
that, “If you’re going to put
yourself in the position to help
people and prevent these things,
you need to have that training.
There’s different types of train-
ing you can do, video training,
firearm experts. It’s a lot for
your average citizen to put
themselves through that train-
ing, but if you decide to do it,
you need to train, on an ongoing
basis.”
But the data shows that not
all gun owners are as responsi-
ble in their training, even the
good guys.
While research on whether or
not owners train in firearms is
scant, in August 2017, Reuters
reported that a University of
Washington School of Public
Health in Seattle found only 61
percent of firearm owners in the
U.S. received formal training.
Individuals who owned both
handguns and long-guns for
multiple purposes, like hunting
and protection, were more like-
ly to have training.
But many of those who only
used firearms for protection did
not get training.
So are more guns really an
answer? Even for those who are
comfortable and familiar with
guns, the very presence of one
can create hesitation.
“In any situation where
someone else has a gun, they’re
going to be nervous,” Pitcher
said.
Just because Americans have
the right to bear arms doesn’t
necessarily mean more guns is
the solution to gun violence.
The answer to that lies in the
cross section of politics, taxes,
the media and culture — all of
which will be explored in the
final part of this series in the
April 25 edition of Siuslaw
News.
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Crochet Workshop with Eleanor
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A 2013 FBI study on active
shooters found that the majority
location for a shooting was a
business, with 45.6 percent of
incidents occurring at them.
That was followed by schools at
24.4 percent. Only 9.4 percent
of shootings occurred in open
spaces.
A quick look at the most
deadly workplace shootings
shows that the shooters had a
direct connection to their target
locations. The deadliest shoot-
ing was in 1986 at the Edmond,
Okla., U.S. Post Office, where a
disgruntled employee killed 15
and injured 6 after being verbal-
ly disciplined.
The Atlanta day trading spree
killings of 1999 took place at
the shooter’s home as well as
two trading firms the shooter
had worked for.
As for schools, the Virginia
Tech, Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High School, Sandy
Hook
Elementary
and
Columbine High School shoot-
ings were all carried out by cur-
rent or former students. Even
shooters with no personal con-
nection don’t appear to base
plans on “gun-free zones.”
An often-stated claim is that
the Aurora, Colo., movie theater
shooter chose his location
because it was specifically a
gun free zone — the other
movie theaters in the area did
not post gun restrictions, there-
fore the shooter must have cho-
sen that particular theater
because it was “gun free.”
But gun advocate publication
The Truth About Guns disputes
this claim in a 2015 article. The
shooter had narrowed his loca-
tions down to two places, an
airport or a movie theater. He
originally wanted to attack an
airport, but along with concerns
about federal security, he was
worried about his actions being
mistaken for terrorism.
So he opted for the theater.
The shooter never mentioned
gun free zones and was wearing
heavy armor, suggesting he was
expecting crossfire. But more
importantly, he had no intention
of leaving the scene alive. In
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