‘Less than 6 minutes, or 360 seconds’

Less than 6 minutes, or 360 seconds. That’s how long some have estimated it took a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to kill 20 children and 6 educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School Dec. 14.

In arguing that the Bushmaster AR-15 should be banned, Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe told the Connecticut Post last week that many more could have died that day.

From Principal Dawn Hochsprung’s attempt to confront the gunman, to locked classroom doors, to teacher Victoria Soto hiding her students and telling him they were on the other side of the school, to a quick police response, things that led to brief interruptions in the shooting saved children from dying.

“Our response saved lives. The teacher’s response saved lives. All that took precious seconds. Every precious second meant a precious life was saved,” Kehoe told the Post.

State Medical Examiner Wayne Carver has said that each Newtown victim was shot between 3 and 11 times.

Kehoe calls the Bushmaster AR-15 a “killing machine.”

And it worked as it was designed to work, taking as many lives as quickly as possible.

It would be prohibited under Connecticut’s existing assault rifle ban, police chiefs suggested last week, if manufacturers had not tweaked its design slightly to get around it. Those tweaks include removal of “bayonet holders.”

The NRA and the gun industry will tell you that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and “the best way to stop bad guys with guns is good guys with guns.”

Don’t restrict the speed and power of mass murder weapons such as the Bushmaster AR-15, the gun industry argues. Instead

“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” — Justice Antonin Scalia, on U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent interpretation

encourage more “good” people - say, an armed guard stationed at the local elementary school, or the principal and teachers - to arm themselves.

Shamefully, this plan accomplishes only thing - to sell more guns and line the pockets of the gun companies who bankroll the NRA and similar groups.

The notion that guns are the best way to protect against guns is based on a fantasy that things work like the movies. The “good guys” win, and your average elementary school principal or security guard and bystanders would come out just fine in a wild west-style shootout.

The reality is that allowing faster and more powerful guns to be manufactured and sold in this country means that more children die when something like Sandy Hook or the Aurora movie theater shooting happens.

And research shows that more guns equals more death, period. If you have a gun in your home, you and/or a family member is far more likely to die from a gunshot than if you did not have a gun in your home.

Despite the potential danger to yourself and your family, choosing whether to have some kind of gun in your home is your right under the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

Restricting what types of guns can be manufactured based on public safety concerns, and what requirements should be in place to obtain them, be that a background check, registration or insurance, is the right and responsibility of the Connecticut General Assembly and the U.S. Congress.

“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Those aren’t the words of a gun control activist. That’s from Justice Antonin Scalia’s explanation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent interpretation of gun rights under the Constitution in 2008.

To quote Neil Heslin, who lost his 6-year-old son Jesse at Sandy Hook Elementary School Dec. 14, and Chief Kehoe, who had to face 26 mourning families, what purpose does the Bushmaster 15 serve other than to kill as many people as quickly as possible, and why should anyone have the right to keep and carry one?