Guns are killing us

Iwas in the military for 10 years — as a paralegal, then a ballistic meteorologist and finally as an artillery forward-observer. I deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, where I spent every day with an M4 slung across my chest.

The Colt M4 is a military-spec version of the AR-15 platform — an air-cooled, magazine fed, direct-impingement gas-operated rifle (the AK family of rifles has some mechanical differences but is functionally identical). They’re the same weapons that have been used in every conflict since Vietnam. They’re the same weapons that were used to massacre children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. They were used to massacre civilians in Las Vegas, Nev.; Aurora, Colo.; Gilroy, Calif.; El Paso; and a list of others that’s as long as it is gutting.

It fires a 5.56 mm NATO round — the military equivalent of the Remington .223 — with a muzzle velocity of 2,900 feet per second and enough energy to

cause hydrostatic shock, which is wounding caused by a pressure wave moving through blood and soft tissue, damaging organs far from the point of impact.

The bullet is light, so it can tumble end over end, shredding flesh and bone. The rifle is mechanically capable of firing over 700 rounds per minute, which is how the shooter in Dayton, Ohio, was able to murder nine and wound 27 despite being engaged by law enforcement in the time that it took you to read this paragraph.

Background checks and redflag laws won’t be enough. The problem isn’t mental illness or video games. The United States has less than 5 percent of the planet’s population but half of its privately owned firearms, and too many of those are modeled on instruments of war. These are weapons designed to put down rapid, accurate fire. The problem is the guns, and they’re killing us.