O'Rourke is wrong. He may have a good heart but he's wrong.

I didn't watch the Democratic Party debate last night. It was, as all such events are, full of talking points and blather, and I have no appetite for either. But I did watch the Post-Debate coverage, including the big applause line from Beto O'Rourke (if he is going to call himself Beto, I'm going to oblige him and call him Beto. ) : "Hell yes, I'm going to take away your AR 15s!"
The problem is, Beto is proposing "Feel-Good" law that will not in fact lessen the amount of crimes in the United States. Not only that, but he is doing so based on faulty, and deceptive information.
Allow me if you will to elucidate:


     First, let us define terms here : A rifle is a weapon designed to throw a hunk of metal away from the user at a very high rate of speed. All rifles do this. ALL OF THEM. If you think the wound delivered from an AR-15 is special, you haven't seen one from an M1 Garand, M-14 or Dragunov.
For a comparison, I've gone out and found a picture. The sizes are self-explanatory.

The biggest one is the round used by the 50 caliber machine gun. The smallest is used by grandad's .22. Either will kill you if it hits your vital organs, but I want to concentrate on the ones under discussion, the 5.56 NATO round (.223 Remington) and the 7.62mm Russian. They're the most common caliber bullets fired by the most common semi-automatic rifles. First off, there was no design committee who sat down and said "How can we make this rifle bullet so that it is extra special destructive?" There was no committee to make sure it disabled rather than killed -- that's a myth.
The 5.56mm NATO round we know today grew up from the .222 Remington round that was designed to be used against such varmints as ground hogs, prairie dogs, rabbits and field rats. Yes, that's right, the bullet you're afraid of was designed to exterminate pests in farm/ranch country. It's closest relations in the bullet world are the .22 magnum and .220 swift. This latter round is used by bench rest shooters for it's relatively flat trajectory out to 600 yards, because those guys enjoy punching holes in paper at that kind of range. They use only iron sights -- or sights without any special optics in them. The 7.62mm Russian was basically copied from the German 8mm Kurz (or short) round, which was born out of wartime expedience. The Germans wanted a full size rifle cartridge but shortened down for easier portability, and so after some work, they found that a cut-down 8mm  round worked quite well for what they needed -- a short to moderate range bullet that soldiers could carry more of. Eventually, their STG-44 would be copied by Kalashnikov to develop the Automat Kalashnikov rifle. The rifle of the peasant revolutionary.  The so-called "Banana rifle". The AK will take a truck running over it and still be able to be fired. Meanwhile, across the world, the United States was taking a very different course. In the United States, people looked at scientific progress and the rise of technocrats and decided they wanted a rifle designed by modern designers. The end product of this thinking was the AR (Armalite Rifle) 15, designed by Eugene Stoner. Although the AR-15 had many problems, most of them were solved by modifications to the original design, and now it is considered among the best, most accurate rifles in the world.
         Now that we know more about the origins of each cartridge, and the rifle it's made for, let's stop a moment and talk about How these rifles are used in crimes.
The United States is beyond doubt one of the most violent nations on Earth. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, one of the premier law enforcement agencies on Earth, keeps statistics on violent crime in the United States. They do so by relying on local police agencies within the 50 states, but generally their information is considered valid. The FBI also records, in general, what weapons are used in which crimes, whether they were rifles, handguns or shotguns. Data on what kind of rifle is not offered. So, going by the numbers provided, about 4% of homicides in 2017 were committed by people armed with rifles*.  So, let's summarize :

         Beto O'Rourke was wrong when he said these rifle bullets were specifically designed to cause horrific injuries. O'Rourke also tried to stoke fears by claiming that these weapons are used generally for "mass shootings" that we can't even go out of doors for fear of. He's stoking the fear that there are lunatics armed with machine guns waiting and ready to shoot up your school or local store at the drop of a hat. The vast majority of shootings in the United States are limited homicides wherein one person wants another person dead. As for "Mass Shootings" this has been defined by alarmists as being any shooting offense wherein a total of three or more people were involved, including the shooter. None of them need to die first, or even be injured. Isn't this just a bit silly ? You have a larger chance of being hit by lightning than you have of being shot by someone wielding a semi-automatic rifle, but you never hear that. All you hear is either: "Be Afraid, they're coming to take your guns!"  Or "Armed Madmen are coming with Guns to shoot you!"
and Neither side is right.

By the way, in case you think I'm advocating for no regulation of the ownership of firearms. You'd be wrong there too. I have said more than once, in these pages, that I'm in favor of certain restrictions on arms, and I invite you, gentle reader, to read those posts now. I'll provide links at the end of the page. 

Some thoughts on Gun Control.  

 Some more thoughts on gun control