Former Dem Rep: 'Automatic Rifles' with 'High-Capacity Ammunition' Kill 'Thousands' in US Every Year
The left is constantly up in arms when it comes to guns, and that hysteria isn’t exactly conducive to well-informed discussion.
Instead, it just leads to screaming nonsense and peddling misinformation.
Former Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland appeared on MSNBC and made not one or two but three obviously false statements about mass shootings in less than a minute.
When asked about the sincerity of Republican efforts to pass gun reform legislation, Edwards went to work.
“The onus is squarely in the hands of Mitch McConnell. He’s the majority leader, he can decide what to put on the floor of the Senate,” she said.
“Next week, when Democrats get back, I fully expect that they are going to pas a number of other gun safety, sensible gun safety bills that they put on the floor, including making sure that we begin to deal with assault weapons,” Edwards said.
That, other than her use of the loaded word “sensible” and the nonsense term “assault weapons,” is more or less true but opinionated.
Then came the misinformation.
“It’s ridiculous putting the death penalty on the table,” Edwards said. “People who are committing mass shootings aren’t saying, ‘Well I might get the death penalty and so I won’t do it.’ No, they’re getting these automatic rifles, they’re using high-capacity ammunition and they’re killing, they’re mowing down hundreds, thousands of people every single year.”
Oh my. Where do we begin?
Let’s start with the claim that mass shooters are “getting these automatic rifles.” This is either a flat-out lie or evidence that Edwards doesn’t know anything about guns. Take your pick.
Fully automatic rifles are highly regulated and require endless hoop-jumping to obtain. It’s only legal to own machine guns built before 1986, and purchases must be approved by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
ATF approval is expensive and incredibly time-consuming, not to mention the fact that the guns themselves can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
That helps to explain why a fully automatic weapon hasn’t been used in a mass shooting since at least 1982, according to Slate.
Second, Edwards used the term “high-capacity ammunition,” which makes exactly zero sense. It’s likely she meant to say “magazines” before stumbling over her words, but even defining “high-capacity” is a real problem for gun control advocates.
Many localities that have bans on such magazines set the limit at 10 rounds, while others allow up to 15. Ultimately, these numbers are just arbitrary, and their effectiveness in preventing deaths is dubious.
Third, and most egregious, is her claim that mass shooters are killing “thousands of people every single year.” This is woefully untrue, and promulgating this lie does nothing but gin up dishonest support and scare people unnecessarily.
So how many people die in mass shootings per year?
While there is no consensus definition of “mass shooting,” the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive defines it as an incident in which four or more people are shot (not necessarily killed), which is a fairly expansive definition.
For instance, there are many incidents on its list that are domestic or gang violence, as opposed to the standard picture of a disturbed individual going on an indiscriminate rampage.
Nevertheless, the organization found 337 instances that fit its description in 2018, resulting in 370 deaths — well short of the “thousands” cited by Edwards.
The majority of said crimes were committed with a handgun, due in large part to their ease of obtainment and concealment.
Rifles simply aren’t commonly used in crime at all, yet Edwards and her gun-grabby friends will continue to peddle falsehoods because they’re not honest or disciplined enough to learn the truth.
Trust me, these are not the people to whom you want to surrender your guns.
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