Rod Watson
They’re going to take my AR-15.
Not today. Not next week. Probably not even next year.
But eventually it’s going to happen. Or, at the very least, they will stop me and others from buying another one.
And when that happens, I won’t blame just my gun-controlling political enemies.
Instead, I also will blame allies in the gun-rights community who will make it possible by laying the groundwork for the George Floyd-like tipping point that inevitably will come. Just as Floyd’s death inexplicably catalyzed a movement in a way no prior videotaped police murders had done, a large-scale killing with a semi-automatic rifle will do the same for the gun-ban movement.
Granted, if the mass murders of those we claim to cherish most -- senior citizens in a Buffalo supermarket, or babies in Newtown, Uvalde and now Nashville – didn’t spur significant action, it might be hard to imagine what will.
But two possibilities come to mind.
Emergency room doctors have long described the greater damage the typical AR-15 round, with its velocity and tumbling or yawing trajectory, does inside the body. But the gelatin-block demonstrations that have become a recent staple of TV news coverage are much more dramatic -- and visually powerful.
How long will it be before that gelatin cube is turned into a child-sized gelatin mannequin with blue eyes and blond hair -- our preferred standard of innocence -- and ripped apart on national television?
Even more impactful, how long will it be before some distraught parent, irate and seeing no other option after years of inaction, does what Emmett Till’s mother did when she reached a similar breaking point in the fight for racial justice? An open casket with the obliterated head or body of a child struck by a round from an AR-style rifle -- or even just the photographs -- will unalterably shift the political debate.
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Already, Gallup polling over the years has consistently shown large majorities favoring background checks for all gun sales. And Gallup last year found wide support for laws to keep guns away from those who are a danger to themselves or others, and even for a 30-day waiting period to buy a gun, which is extreme. A slimmer majority favored banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
On the other hand, when asked in 2013 and again in 2018 specifically about preventing school shootings, solid majorities favored focusing more on school security and mental health solutions than on changing laws dealing with guns and ammunition. But that gap shrank significantly in the latter poll, indicating public movement toward more stringent regulation.
The only thing saving gun-rights proponents now is that the issue does not generate the intensity that other issues do when going to the polls.
Let the public get a more visceral and visual picture of what some guns can do, especially to children like those killed in Nashville, and that will change as suddenly as Floyd’s murder changed the debate over policing.
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And part of the reason it will change is because national gun-rights advocates’ penchant for saying “no” to almost everything will have laid the groundwork for undermining the movement’s credibility.
Most Americans -- and all responsible gun owners -- know it is asinine to allow someone to carry a gun with no permit and no training, as more than two dozen states now do.
Americans already realize letting most private gun sales go through without a background check to keep weapons away from those who shouldn’t have them makes no sense.
Most Americans know that limiting magazine size, so that mass shooters have to stop and reload will save lives.
The only reason such laws haven’t been universally enacted is that guns are not at the top of most voters’ priority lists. That will not last if the gun debate gets redefined by Emmitt Till-like images.
Even this Supreme Court, whose gun rulings have been among its few saving graces, cannot be counted on forever to turn its back on what gun-banners like to call “common sense” and which, in some cases, it actually is.
For instance, last year’s Bruen decision, which rightly struck down New York’s onerous concealed-carry restrictions, established a “historical precedent” framework for judging the constitutionality of such laws. But in the process, it also opened the door to some outlandish rulings.
When lower courts use that framework to strike down laws barring domestic abusers from having guns -- on the grounds that there were no such laws back when 18th century women were essentially the property of their husbands -- a 21st century high court will have to step back in.
Nor will the current court majority, despite its members’ relative youth, be around forever. And with its abortion ruling making it easier to disregard precedent in the future, its gun rulings won’t last forever.
All of which means a smart gun-rights lobby will do what it can now to allow measures that can act as a safety valve, relieving the pressure for more outlandish proposals that could come later. A smart gun lobby will take advantage of liberal extremism -- think former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s ridiculous move to mandate no more than seven rounds in a magazine, or current Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Orwellian effort to ban virtually all concealed carry -- to position itself as the sensible side in the debate.
Instead, it keeps putting itself on the wrong side of public opinion that will someday explode in its face.
When that happens, and they come for my AR-style rifle, I won’t blame just my gun-banning political enemies.
I’ll also blame my gun-rights friends for not being smart enough to head it off.
