Why we need the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019

The passionate and heartfelt activism of thousands of Americans as they spoke out against gun violence in the aftermath of the horrific mass shootings (all committed using assault weapons) in Gilroy, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, heartened those of us who favor evidence-based regulation of guns. In the last few days, two more mass shootings occurred, one in Alabama and a second in Midland and Odessa, Texas, and multiple others were deterred by preemptive police action and seizure of arsenals including assault weapons. Washington’s brief lip service about instituting meaningful gun regulation has again faded and been subsumed by the chase of the chaotic Trump agenda.

I was in Christchurch, New Zealand, for several weeks, waiting for a flight to Antarctica. To every Kiwi I have proudly touted their government’s immediate ban of assault weapons following the devastating shootings at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre. Yet our Senate leaders appear too intimidated to act similarly and dissent from the National Rifle Association line. I should know. The day after the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting, I had my Senate confirmation hearing for the position for assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. At that hearing, when pressed about how a disgraced airman convicted of domestic violence could have gotten access to an automatic weapon, I said it was “insane” for civilians to have access to military-style assault weapons like the AR-15. That bland but obvious comment drew gasps in the room, and the NRA-cowed senators could not let my appointment pass; I withdrew my name from consideration.

I like to shoot guns and am proud to have qualified as expert in the military with multiple firearms. I’ve had the pleasure of firing many types of assault weapons from the AK47 to the M-16 and M-4. Seeing their power is electrifying. But the thrill is dwarfed by the grief and despair I have experienced seeing the shattering destruction they inflict on the human body. As commander of an Air Force combat hospital in Baghdad during the surge in 2008, I witnessed too many times the horrific injuries these weapons create. Despite the unsurpassed skills of our team, an injury from an assault weapon too often left little hope for life and limb. Many hit by these powerful engines of death never made it to the operating room. Rather, I wept over the body bags I unzipped to pronounce death in the brave soldiers and Marines whose bodies were shattered in an instant by an AK-47.

Some argue that reinstituting a ban on assault weapons would barely make a dent in the roughly 40,000 gun deaths each year in the United States. That is undoubtedly true. Mass shootings are relatively rare events compared to other causes of gun death. But the lethality of assault weapons has made them the instrument of choice in gun massacres.

Compared to the 10-year period before the 1994 assault weapons ban, the number of gun massacres between 1994 and 2004 fell by 37%, and the number of people dying from gun massacres fell by 43%. But after the ban lapsed in 2004, we witnessed a 183% increase in massacres and a 239% increase in massacre deaths. Between the years 2000 and 2017, we had more civilian deaths in the United States from mass shootings with assault weapons (259) than military deaths by small arms fire in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001 (estimated less than 250). Is this the nation we want to be? Do we want to be weeping over the eviscerated, decapitated bodies of children, commuters, concertgoers and church attendees, saying “nothing can be done”? These firearms are solely instruments of war and have no place in private homes in a civil society.

We cannot afford to wait any longer to significantly restrict private individuals’ access to these military weapons. The Assault Weapons Ban of 2019 proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein will make Americans safer in the schools and in public places. Our organization, SAFE (Scrubs Addressing the Firearm Epidemic), composed of doctors, nurses and other health professionals, strongly supports this legislation, not because of statistics but because it is common sense.

I believe that Americans, including many members of the NRA, will ultimately put the well-being of our citizens ahead of an extreme interpretation of the Second Amendment. Our forefathers did not foresee AR15s any more than they anticipated a trip to the moon. They did, however, have the great foresight to create a government that can adapt — albeit much too ploddingly in this case — to changing circumstances. Given our founders’ manifest goal — to promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — I am certain they would have advocated for legislation to protect the murder of innocents. Dr. Dean L. Winslow is a retired United States Air Force colonel and flight surgeon, served six deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, and is a professor of medicine at Stanford University.