What Caldara gets wrong about assault weapons

Re: “The assault weapon attack on math,” Nov. 12 Jon Caldara column.

I was not surprised by Jon Caldara’s column. After all, his Independence Institute has received well in excess of $1 million from the National Rifle Association. Caldara and his NRA funders are clearly concerned that Americans are figuring out that military-style assault weapons are a continuing menace to us all.

What was surprising was the ridiculous way Caldara tried to defend them. He complained that attention is focused on mass shootings but not on individual car accidents or lightning strikes. That’s largely true because we accept that some lives will be lost to natural disasters and accidents, but are shocked to see how many lives can so quickly be taken with an assault weapon, with little opportunity to escape.

We didn’t see mass marketing of military rifles after World War II, so why now? It’s simple: gun makers saw declining sales of hunting rifles and of military sales of the M-16 after Vietnam, so they decided to market militarystyle assault weapons to civilians. Caldara tells Americans they wrongfully blame these weapons, insisting that because they aren’t automatic they’re not really assault weapons. Nonsense. Most Americans are already aware that automatic weapons are outlawed, and they know it’s civilian assault weapons being used in massacres, not automatics.

Caldara argues that assault weapons are responsible for a small portion of gun homicides. That’s true, but not a surprise, since handguns are by far the most common gun found in America. Caldara asks why there is so little concern with deaths by knives and blunt instruments. The answer is simple: Americans perceive they have a fighting chance against them and recognize we don’t have mass stabbings of 59 people.

Caldara can try to muddy the issue in his most Orwellian fashion by insisting that assault weapons are simply “modern sporting weapons,” but most Americans understand that making battlefield weapons so easily accessible to deranged individuals is madness.