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The AR-15: 5 facts about this popular semi-automatic rifle
What you need to know about what the NRA calls the most popular rifle in America.
C. A. Bridges, Fort Myers News-Press
Not long after the Sept. 4 mass shooting at a Georgia high school, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Curtis Bashaw called for “commonsense reforms we can all agree on” to curtail gun violence.
Those included closing gun show loopholes, mandatory background checks and bipartisan legislation to reinstate the ban on bump stocks, devices that effectively convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machine gun.
“While I always support the Second Amendment rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens, we need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill,’’ Bashaw said.
Absent from his original statement, however, was a call to ban or curtail the sale of assault-style weapons, like the AR-15 that the alleged teenage assailant, Colt Gray, used in the slaying of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School. The shooting has sparked another round of public outcry and calls to reinstitute the ban on these weapons that expired in 2004 after being on the books for only a decade.
When prompted last week about the absence of any reference to these weapons in his statement, Bashaw amended it, saying, “I would consider reasonable bipartisan legislation to restrict the sale of assault weapons.”
Jeanette Hoffman, a spokesman for Bashaw, said the original statement was posted shortly after the shooting was reported, when details about the weapon and incident had yet to be disclosed.
Bashaw’s call for commonsense gun laws puts him close to the moderate middle in New Jersey, home to some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation. New Jersey also led the nation back in the 1990s when it passed its own ban on semiautomatic, assault-style weapons. New Jersey is one of only nine states that outlaw these weapons, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a prominent gun control group.
The 63-year-old hotelier and developer from Cape May has cast himself as a moderate alternative to U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, the Democratic nominee, who enters the race as the favorite to win in blue New Jersey this November.
But Bashaw is following the playbook that successful New Jersey Republicans have used in the past, which is boiled down to this: Sound sensible, distance yourself from the party’s harsh right wing as much as possible, but do so without alienating the smaller but crucial GOP base of voters, who are outnumbered by Democrats by nearly 2-to-1. It’s a difficult balancing act, but it can be done: Govs. Thomas H. Kean, Christine Todd Whitman and Christopher J. Christie followed that script.
But Bashaw is trying to walk this balance beam amid ex-President Donald Trump’s attempt at a comeback. Bashaw is posted on the ballot just below the president in most counties. And because of Trump’s popularity with the Republican base, the social libertarian Bashaw, who is pro-choice and gay, endorsed Trump’s candidacy during the primary — and continues to do so, with qualifications.
Bashaw’s willingness to “consider reasonable” restrictions on the sale of assault-style weapons strikes that moderate chord, and it is a sharp departure from Trump, who told the members of the National Rifle Association in May that, if elected, he would roll back “every [President Joe] Biden attack on the Second Amendment” and vowed to fire the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on his first day in office.
It’s safe to say that reviving the federal assault weapons ban is not high on the Trump to-do list.
But Bashaw’s consideration of a ban is not a commitment. And the reality is, in this polarized environment, a “bipartisan” prohibition is highly unlikely.
Gun control advocates notched a landmark victory in 2022 with the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act ― the first major gun control legislation in 28 years, which included expanded background checks for buyers under 21 years old ― but banning assault-style weapons would be a much steeper hill to climb. Since the federal ban expired 20 years ago, AR-15’s and similar models have become the most popular rifle among buyers. Any attempt to stop their sale would face a massive pushback, and Republicans would feel the bulk of that pressure to resist.
So Bashaw’s consideration puts him on politically safe ground. He is expressing a willingness to embrace a reform that is unlikely to happen.
The same polarized environment also shadows the fate of Democrats seeking to ban assault weapons, as Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed in a speech in Milwaukee on the day of the Georgia shooting. And it also clouds the fate of Kim’s position. Kim has been a consistent supporter of gun restrictions since joining Congress, including when he joined most House Democrats in co-sponsoring the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022. It passed along party lines in the House but went nowhere in the Senate.
Kim has sought to warn voters that Bashaw would fall into the undertow of a Trump presidency and a Trump-controlled GOP if elected, and cannot be counted on to carry the torch of independence and moderation. He will become a rubber stamp, the Kim team argues.
But the chorus of outrage over the assault-style weapons is starting to reach a fever pitch, making it harder for Republicans to hide behind the usual pro-Second Amendment platitudes that have cut off debate in the past.
The AR-15 may be a bestseller at gun stores, but the weapon and its variations are also weapons of choice for deranged shooters. The weapons were used in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, and other nightmares: the supermarket massacre in Buffalo, also in 2022; the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018; the Parkland School shooting in Florida, also in 2018; and the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.
“Why in the world, in America, are you eligible to walk into a gun store and buy an AR-15 rifle?’’ legendary football coach Steve Spurrier said last week. “They should have a sign [that says], ‘If you need a gun for a mass school shooting, here’s your AR-15. We’ll give you a discount.’ Why don’t they just put that sign up there? That’s the only thing they’re used for! You don’t need them for self-defense; and yet, we sit here and say, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’”
“In America today, our babies are more likely to be shot than to die in a car accident,” wrote New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week. “They’re more likely to be murdered with a gun than to die from disease. They’re more likely to be massacred by a weapon of war than to die from starvation.”
That kind of anger also comes amid a startling statistical picture. Researchers estimate that there would have been 30 fewer mass shooting ― and more than 1,400 fewer deaths ― if the federal ban had remained in effect, according to Everytown.
The struggle to enact meaningful gun restrictions has become a principal example of a broken Congress and its failure to meet the demands of a majority of its citizens. The public will want more than “reasonable” consideration of restrictions in the next Congress, regardless of who wins in New Jersey.
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Publish date : 2024-09-15 21:29:00
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