The definition of "Assault Rifle"...

Let me begin this by saying I do not belong to the National Rifle Association, nor do I intend to join.  I don't own a gun at present, although I have in the past and I might again someday.  I'm totally opposed to the idea of civilians owning machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers and the like.

All that having been said, what James Holmes used in the shooting in Aurora was not an "assault rifle" by definition.  That's because a true assault rifle fires on either full-automatic or semi-automatic fire mode.  For those who don't know the difference, semi-automatic means you pull the trigger once, and one round is fired.  Because it is an "automatic" weapon", the minute you fire one round you can fire another on semi-automatic mode. 

Full-automatic mode means you pull the trigger down and hold it and the gun will fire one round after another, as fast as the weapon is designed to fire.  If it has a cyclic rate of fire of 600 rounds per minute, and there is a 30 round magazine loaded into the weapon, it will take only 3 seconds with the trigger pulled and held to fire off all 30 rounds.

Now we can debate the issue of the lack of any real need for any civilian to own 100 round drum magazines later.  That's a real issue and California already bans those type of magazines from being owned.  All states should.  But let's focus on the fact that the weapon used by Holmes was not an assault weapon, by definition.

In fact, it is almost a certainty that the rifle being used by Holmes that night didn't even fall under the definition of an assault weapon as outlined in the 1994 Federal ban on such weapons.  If it was so critical to ban assault weapons, why weren't the definitions of the weapons that were banned by this law widened?  Why was this law allowed to expire in 2004?  Ah, someone will say that Bush Jr. was President and Congress was in the hands of the Republicans.  Fair enough.  So why, when Obama became President and had a majority in the House, and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, wasn't this ban re-enacted?  Apparently this wasn't a high priority.

Polling data by Gallup shows that 40% of Americans own a gun.  Simple math tells us that means there are at least 126 million guns in the U.S., and that's assuming the 40% only own one gun each, which is not the case.  Let's make a conservative estimate and say that there are roughly 150 million guns in the hands of Americans who aren't military personnel or police officers.

That means you could close every gun store, every sporting-goods store's gun department, all of the WalMart and other sellers of guns today and we would never completely get rid of the guns in the U.S.

There are steps we can take, that are reasonable and achievable.  One would be to require anyone who wants to buy a gun to undergo not just the criminal background check that is done now, but that the potential gun buyer is not under treatment for any mental illness or other condition that would preclude gun ownership.  We can ban the sale of large magazines (say more than 20 or 30 rounds) on a nationwide basis.  We can require all new firearms owners undergo safety training.

The suggestion that increasing the availablity of CCW (Carrying a Concealed Weapon) permits would just trigger (no pun intended) more violence is ridiculous.  31 states have these laws already and there isn't a single such state that's ever rescinded its CCW law.  There are far more incidents where someone who had a gun available to them using it to save lives than there are of spur of the moment decisions involving a CCW permit where lives were lost.  "Oh, we'll end up right back in the Wild, Wild West."

If only that would happen.  What people don't grasp is that the rates of murder and homicide were much lower in those days on a per capita basis than they are now.  Many more people are murdered in 2012 than were in 1862 when people carried their guns on their hips in the Wild West and it was the rare exception to see a man who wasn't "strapped" on a Western street.

What happened in Aurora is tragic.  But let's get the facts straight.  One last rant.  If I hear one more gun-nut say that if he'd been there with his gun, he'd have shot Holmes down with ease, putting one right between his eyes.  The theater was dark, there was smoke from the gas grenade, people were running in all directions and some Rambo-wannabe is going to make a headshot from across the room with his little automatic pistol?  Even if he had, odds are good it would have just bounced off the ballistic helmet Holmes was wearing.