Gun-control marches spark debate
Would background checks, ban on ‘assault weapons’ make a difference?
For a second time in as many weeks, student activists and gun- control advocates from the Bay Area to the nation’s capital will march and demonstrate Saturday to demand stricter firearmlaws in the wake of last month’s deadly Parkland, Fla., high school shooting.
But which laws do they want to change, and would it make a difference? That debate is far from settled.
Nationally, marchers are urging a ban on militarystyle semiautomatic “assault weapons” like the one allegedly used inParkland, a prohibition on high- capacity ammunition mag- azines, and a requirement for background checks on all gun purchases.
But California already has those rules, yet continues to see mass shootings from San Bernardino to Tehama County involving assault rifles and highcapacity magazines.
“The impression people get is that Californians don’t have this issue,” said San Jose organizer Hiwad Haider, a Prospect High School student. “We don’t feel that to be true. Living here in California, we’re marching, preaching to the choir — it’s so gratifying that most people we go to are ready to support us. But even with our strict gun laws, we’re not immune tomass shoot-
ings.”
Rather than rallying for specific gun measures, local march organizers are focusing more on inspiring political engagement and activism on the issue among the young.
“The students, they’re just really wary of it becoming a push for a specific thing,” said Sevan Apollo, 34, who is working with students in Oakland to organize the March for Our Lives there. “We’re not going to be talking about politicians or specific bills until more research is done on them.”
California lawmakers already have introduced a raft of new gun control bills. They call for everything from expanding the kinds of guns considered assault weapons to raising the age for buying rifles and shotguns to 21, the same as for handguns. And polls show the public is primed to support more restrictions on gun sales.
But when it comes to specific measures, there’s much disagreement over the results.
The idea behind a national assault weapons ban is that such measures in states like California are easy to circumvent if you can skip across the border and buy one in Arizona. Advocates also note that after a man in 1996 slaughtered 35 people in Tasmania, the Australian government banned military- style and other semiautomatic weapons nationwide and hasn’t seen a mass shooting in the 22 years since.
The U. S. government adopted a national ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, authored by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in 1994. But Congress in 2004 allowed it to sunset, citing a federal report that found results inconclusive.
“Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement,” the report stated.
The effectiveness of stricter background checks for gun buyers have been called into question by recent shootings like the one in a Texas church last fall where the killer’s record of mental illness and violence should have blocked his gun purchase, but someone dropped the ball.
Experts who study gun violence say measures that focus on the weapons and their sale may pose a small inconvenience for the law abiding, but also aminimal deterrent to a depressed, suicidal and committed mass killer.
Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law school professor and expert in gun-rights law, likened national efforts to restrict assault weapons, high- capacity magazines and gun sales to alcohol prohibition and the war on drugs.
“Someone who’s willing to commit murder as a defining last act of life is not much stymied by laws such as this,” Volokh said. “He’d be able to buy a gun criminally, as felons usually do. Marijuana was not just regulated, it was categorically banned, and yet people got their hands on it.”
Gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association oppose restrictions on particular weapons and have sued to block Florida’s attempt to raise the age for all guns to 21. They favor measures that would bolster security at schools and keep guns out of the hands of those deemed dangerous — provided they have dueprocess protections.
But gun- control advocates say a variety of restrictions are needed because no one measure works in every case.
“If we can take steps to save lives, we should,” said Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, who sponsored bills to raise the buying age for all guns to 21 and block sales to suicidal people.
Marisa Rendazzo, director of threat assessment at Georgetown University and a former chief researcher for the U.S. Secret Service who studied school shootings after the Columbine High School killings in 1999, said intervention measures are most effective.
“Anything that makes it harder for a student planning violence to get access to that weapon, that can help,” Rendazzo said. “But when we studied school shooters, the majority got the weapons they used from their own home or a relative’s home. This was true even when the guns were secured — the students knew how to get around that. Efforts to reduce easy access to high capacity assault weapons could help, but will not stop it entirely.”
Some measures, including the suggestion to arm teachers, can actually spur violence, Rendazzo argued, because many mass shooters are suicidal and hoping to be killed in the act.
Rendazzo said the most effective measures are used to some extent in California already. One is gun violence restraining orders, which allow family members and police to obtain a court order to disarm someone determined to be a threat. A pending California bill would expand that to allow more people to seek those orders.
Another effective measure, used in Los Angeles schools and in the state of Virginia, is known as school threat assessment, which identifies potential school shooters and intervenes before they act. Most of those shooters, she said, are depressed and signal their murderous fantasies beforehand. She said such programs are not expensive and can be done with existing staff but do require training.
There has been significant discussion about the fact that the Parkland shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz gave numerous indications that he intended to commit violence, and yet no one stopped him.
“Every school should have a threat assessment team,” Rendazzo said. “We know the processs works.”
Haider, the Prospect High School student organizer, said there are plenty of measures that could do some good if they are seriously explored. Those include more comprehensive background checks on gun buyers, banning so- called bump stocks used in last year’s Las Vegas shooting that make semiautomatic rifles fire almost as fast as a machine gun, and “smart guns” that can only be fired by their legal owner.
“There are these options, they simply are not being explored,” Haider said. “We want our marchers to know these options are available.”