Dec 17th 2012

Assault Weapons Are Weapons of Mass Destruction and Should Be Banned

by Robert Creamer

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book: "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win," available on amazon.com.
The tragedy in Connecticut forces America to confront a simple question: why should we allow easy access to a weapon of mass destruction just because it could conceivably be referred to as a “gun”?
 
I count myself among the many Americans who at various points in their lives have owned and used long guns -- hunting rifles and shotguns – for hunting and target shooting.   No one I know in politics seriously proposes that ordinary Americans be denied the right to own those kinds of weapons.
 
But guns used for hunting have nothing in common with assault weapons like the ones that were used last week in the mass murder of 20 first-graders – except the fact that they are referred to “guns.” 
 
Rapid-fire assault weapons with large clips of ammunition have only one purpose: the mass slaughter of large numbers of human beings.  They were designed for use by the military to achieve that mission in combat – and that mission alone.
 
No one argues that other combat weapons like rocket-propelled grenades (RPG’s) or Stinger Missiles should be widely available to anyone at a local gun shop. Why in the world should we allow pretty much anyone to have easy access to assault weapons?
 
Every politician in America will tell you they will move heaven and earth to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists.  Yet we have allowed the ban on this particular weapon of mass destruction to expire.  As a result, a terrorist named Adam Lanza was able to have easy access to the assault weapons he used to kill scores of children in minutes.
 
Let’s be clear, Adam Lanza was a terrorist just as surely as he would have been if we were motivated by an extreme jihadist ideology.   It makes no difference to those children or to their grieving families whether their loved ones were killed by someone who was mentally deranged or by someone who believed that by killing children he was helping to destroying the great Satan.
 
When an individual is willing – or perhaps eager – to die making a big “statement” by killing many of his fellow human beings, it doesn’t matter what their motivation is.  It does matter whether they have easy access to the weapons that make mass murder possible.
 
And after last week, can anyone seriously question whether assault weapons are in fact weapons of mass destruction?  And after last week, can anyone seriously question whether assault weapons are in fact weapons of mass destruction?  If Lanza had conventional guns -- or like a man in China who recently went berserk, he only had knives --  he would not have been physically capable of killing so many people in a few short minutes.
 
Of course you hear people say – oh, a car or an airliner can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction – many things can become weapons of mass destruction..  And there is no question after 9/11 that we know that this is true.  But cars and airliners have to be converted from their primary use in order to become instruments of mass death.  It takes an elaborate plot and many actors to take over an airliner and it isn’t easy to methodically kill 27 people with a car.
 
More important, assault weapons have no redeeming social value or alternative use whatsoever.  The only reason to purchase an assault weapon, instead of a long gun used for target practice or hunting, is to kill and maim large numbers of human beings.
 
And it is not the case that if assault weapons were banned ordinary people would get them anyway.  We certainly don’t take that attitude with nuclear weapons or dirty bombs.  We make it very hard for a terrorist to get nuclear weapons or dirty bomb.  It used to be hard to get assault weapons.
 
When the former President of Mexico visited the United States some time ago to discuss the drug-fueled violence on the Mexican border, he pointed out that the end of the assault weapons ban in the U.S. had resulted in an explosion of smuggling of assault weapons from the United States to Mexico.  Weapons that were previously unavailable in large numbers, became plentiful.   He begged the United States to re-impose the assault weapons ban.
 
Allowing easy access to assault weapons guarantees that terrorists, criminals and mentally unstable people will use them to commit future acts of mass murder – it’s that simple. There are 7 billion people on the planet.  Try as we may, we are not going to prevent some of those 7 billion people from becoming terrorists, criminals or mentally unstable.   Why make it easy for them to do harm to their fellow human beings by giving them easy access to a weapon of mass destruction?
 
Since this tragedy, there have been calls for greater restrictions and background checks on those who can buy guns – and there should be.  But from all accounts, the weapons used in the Connecticut murders were purchased legally by the shooter’s mother – who herself appeared to be perfectly sane right up to the moment that Lanza used those same weapons to end her life.
 
The NRA will no doubt repeat its mantra about the “slippery slope.”  “If we ban assault weapons, shotguns will be next”, they say.  Really? By banning anyone from buying Stinger Missiles that are used to shoot down airplanes do we make it more likely that the Government will one day prevent people from hunting ducks?
 
The simple fact is that no right is absolute because rights come into conflict with each other.  Your free speech does not give you the right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater.
 
Is the NRA’s concern that banning assault weapons will put us on a “slippery slope” more important than the lives of those 20 first graders?  Should it really take precedence over the fact that today in Newtown, Connecticut there are 20 families with holiday presents on a closet shelf, that were purchased for an excited 6-year-old who will never open them? 
 
Are the NRA’s fears more important than the terror faced by children in the Sandy Hook Elementary school last week?
 
Does the right to own an assault weapon take precedence over the right of those parents to see their children grow up, and graduate from college, and stand at the alter to be married, and have children of their own?
 
The bottom line is that there is no reason why weapons of mass destruction of any sort – chemical weapons, biological weapons, RPG’s, improvised explosive devices (IED’s), missiles, dirty bombs, nuclear devices, or assault weapons -- should be easily accessible.  For ten years there was a ban on the production, ownership and use of assault weapons in the United States until Congress and the Bush Administration allowed it to lapse when it sunset and came up for reauthorization in 2004. 
 
A serious response to the tragedy in Connecticut requires that Congress act to reinstate the assault weapons ban before the children of other families fall victim to the fantasies of some other mentally unbalanced individual – or the ideology of a terrorist who has been empowered by our failure to act.
 

Browse articles by author

More Current Affairs

Jul 19th 2023
EXTRACTS: "Little wonder then that Crimea has been heavily militarised since Russia’s illegal annexation of the peninsula in March 2014 – or that Russian troops there have increasingly been threatened by different anti-Putin partisan groups. These include both Russian volunteers and indigenous Crimean Tatars who have become more active since the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive."
Jul 19th 2023
EXTRACT: "Prigozhin’s fighters would not have been able to travel almost a thousand kilometers (621 miles) within Russian territory in less than a day without help from members of Putin’s inner circle or the military. Rumors are swirling that the billionaire brothers Yuri and Mikhail Kovalchuk may have played a role. The Kovalchuks, close associates of Putin, reportedly share Prigozhin’s belief that Russia has not been forceful enough in the war or in its broader confrontation with the West. Another possible collaborator is General Sergei Surovikin. Like Prigozhin, Surovikin has reportedly advocated a far more brutal war effort than Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu seems willing to conduct. Since the mutiny, he has not been seen in public, and is said to be “resting.” "
Jul 19th 2023
EXTRACTS:" While Western experts continue to view Russia as a modern state, they overlook the fact that Putin’s cronies, who represent the mingling of the security services – particularly the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB – and organized crime, control most state functions as their private domains." .... "The existence of multiple private armies will make these power games more destabilizing. As a commentator on RIA Novosti, Russia’s official news agency, put it after documenting the private armies of several oil companies: “[W]e are on the verge of a major increase in corporate and other paramilitary structures, as well as major changes in the very approach to the use of military force.” Against this backdrop, the Russian army has become another gang vying for power and property. But as the Kremlin’s grip on power slips, Russia’s generals will likely organize a putsch against Putin and his KGB/FSB cronies – the army’s historical rival."
Jul 16th 2023
EXTRACTS: "The fuel inside nuclear reactors needs continuous, active cooling for many months after a reactor shutdown" ..... "The world saw in dramatic fashion in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011 what can happen when continuous, active cooling of nuclear reactors is disrupted. More than 70% of the total radioactivity at the Fukushima power plant was in the spent fuel ponds" .... "In his classic 1981 book Nuclear Radiation in Warfare, Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist Joseph Rotblat documented how 'in a pressurised water reactor, the meltdown of the core could occur within less than one minute after the loss of coolant'. The radioactivity released from damaged spent fuel ponds could be even greater than from a meltdown at the reactor itself, he wrote. His study makes clear that a military attack on a reactor or spent fuel pond could release more radioactivity – and longer-lasting radioactivity – than even a large (megaton range) nuclear weapon."
Jul 6th 2023
EXTRACT: "The closer we get to the endgame, the greater the risk that the Kremlin will resort to some irrational act like ordering the use of a nuclear weapon. Prigozhin’s revolt offers a preview of the chaos that awaits. Almost anything is conceivable now, from the disintegration of the Russian Federation to the rise of another ultra-nationalist regime with neo-czarist dreams of imperial restoration. Like Putin’s Russia, this one would remain locked in the past, far removed from any prospect of social, political, or economic modernization. It would pose a permanent threat to Europe’s eastern flank, and to global stability more broadly. We will have to arm ourselves against it, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will most likely have to do the same."
Jun 27th 2023
EXTRACT: "So, who might seize the throne? Two obvious possibilities are Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, and his son Dmitry, the minister of agriculture. Another is Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who deliberately appeared on television hard at work during the crisis, while Putin reportedly flew to safety in Valdai, far from the Kremlin. Then there is Dyumin, as well as Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who controls his own powerful armed force."
Jun 25th 2023
EXTRACT: "......because Prigozhin and his men enjoy the supportof many Russians. For them, Prigozhin is a hero, not a traitor, because he is one of the only public figures who dares to speak the truth about the Kremlin’s incompetent management of the war. And they also see in him a fatherly commander standing up for the soldiers whose lives are being thrown away needlessly by Putin’s clumsy, corrupt generals. People who think this way may well make up a very large part of Russian society. Whether Prigozhin ultimately is imprisoned, executed, or victorious, he will remain an icon for them."
Jun 25th 2023
EXTRACT: "While it might be tempting to conclude that the gut microbes identified as being associated with signs of preclinical Alzheimer’s are also contributing to developing the disease, the study does not provide any evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship. However, if a connection can be established, it opens up an exciting possibility that future treatments for Alzheimer’s might target the microbes in our gut."
Jun 18th 2023
EXTRACT: "When it comes to sustainability, however, US fiscal policy receives a low score. Amid the short-term fluctuations, it is often easy to lose sight of the long-term trajectory. Public debt, as a share of GDP, peaked at the end of World War II and then gradually declined until the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s, which led to record deficits. Since then, the debt-to-GDP ratio has steadily risen, almost reaching its 1946 record in 2020. Only during the period 1996-2000, under President Bill Clinton, did this trend temporarily reverse."
Jun 14th 2023
EXTRACT: "It is by no means clear that the latest banking crisis has run its course. There are concerns about the so-called shadow banking system, largely unregulated financial institutions that now make up half of all global financial assets. For example, in the US many people invest in money market funds, which pay higher interest than banks, but provide no deposit insurance."
Jun 9th 2023
EXTRACT: "Given the scale of the ECB’s bond holdings, however, its approach to quantitative tightening (QT) seems downright homeopathic. At the current rate, bringing the asset-purchase program to zero will take roughly 15 years (and this does not even account for the fact that the ECB continues to reinvest all maturing assets purchased under the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program). "
Jun 9th 2023
EXTRACT: "Hardly a week goes by without various pioneers in artificial intelligence issuing dire warnings about the technology that they introduced to the world." ---- " I have my doubts. Since the start of my professional life in the 1980s (and of course for much longer), technological progress has repeatedly been held up as a major threat to jobs in key industries such as automobile manufacturing. Yet...."
May 31st 2023
EXTRACT: "In discussions about the implications of artificial intelligence (AI), someone almost always evokes the ancient Greek myth of Pandora’s box. In the modern fairytale version of the story, Pandora is depicted as a tragically curious young woman who opens a sealed urn and inadvertently releases eternal misery on humankind. Like the genie that has escaped the bottle, the horse that has fled the barn, and the train that has left the station, the myth has become a cliché. And yet the actual story of Pandora is far more apropos to debates about AI and machine learning than many realize. What it shows is that it is better to listen to “Prometheans” who are concerned about humanity’s future than “Epimetheans” who are easily dazzled by the prospect of short-term gains. One of the oldest Greek myths, the story of Pandora was first recorded more than 2,500 years ago, in the time of Homer. In the original telling, Pandora was not some innocent girl who succumbed to the temptation to open a forbidden jar. Rather, as the poet Hesiod tells us, Pandora was “made, not born.” Having been commissioned by all-powerful Zeus and designed to his cruel specifications by Hephaestus, the god of invention, Pandora was a lifelike android created to look like a bewitching maiden. Her purpose was to entrap mortals as a manifestation of kalos kakon: “evil hidden in beauty.”
May 31st 2023
EXTRACT: "Specifically, many believe that the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) – an AI that can teach itself to perform any cognitive task that humans can do – will pose an existential threat to humanity. A carelessly designed AGI (or one governed by unknown “black box” processes) could carry out its tasks in ways that compromise fundamental elements of our humanity. After that, what it means to be human could come to be mediated by AGI."
May 29th 2023
EXTRACT: "In his 2018 book Destined For War, political scientist Graham Allison observes that the US and China are headed toward what he called the “Thucydides’ Trap,” a reference to the ancient Greek historian’s account of Sparta’s efforts to suppress the rise of Athens, which ultimately culminated in the Peloponnesian War. A better analogy, however, is the message sent by the Athenians to the inhabitants of the besieged island of Melos before executing the men and enslaving the women and children: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." ---- Allowing China and other authoritarian countries to shape the rules would result in a world order based solely on this “realist” principle. It is a nightmare scenario that the G7 countries and other liberal democracies must strive to prevent. ---- China’s assertions about the decline of the West reveal an underlying anxiety. After all, if liberal democracy is failing, why do Chinese officials consistently express their fear of it? The fact that leaders of the Communist Party of China have instructed rank-and-file members to engage in an “intense struggle” against liberal-democratic values indicates that they view open societies as an existential threat."
May 28th 2023
EXTRACTS: "Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) decreed that generative AI content must “embody core socialist values and must not contain any content that subverts state power, advocates the overthrow of the socialist system, incites splitting the country or undermines national unity.' ” .... "This implies that the harder the CAC tries to control ChatGPT content, the smaller the resulting output of chatbot-generated Chinese intelligence will be – yet another constraint on the AI intellectual revolution in China. Unsurprisingly, the early returns on China’s generative-AI efforts have been disappointing."
May 20th 2023
EXTRACTS: "Cognitive dissonance occurs when one’s beliefs and actions conflict with each other." .... "This conflict might constrain people from acquiring new information that will increase the existing dissonance" .... "if someone commits wholeheartedly to Trump, they may well experience dissonance as they watch the news from that Manhattan courthouse. But they don’t necessarily stop supporting him. Instead, they might seek yet more information about the “deep state” and how it is persecuting Trump, or preach more about his positive attributes and the witch hunt against him." .... " If so, we can expect to see more conspiracy theories and more proselytising from the hardcore supporters going into 2024 and beyond. Donald Trump may not be finished just yet."
May 11th 2023
EXTRACT: "....the US possesses advantages in developing large language models (LLMs). It benefits from close business-university collaboration, lubricated by a deep-pocketed venture-capital industry. It is no coincidence that ChatGPT came out of the US, and out of Greater Silicon Valley in particular." .... "Developing countries would seem to be at a significant disadvantage in this AI arms race and are at risk of losing their competitive advantage: abundant low-cost labor. Yet AI also holds out the promise of benefits for these countries." .... " however, economic development depends on human development – that is, on the accumulation of human capital. Where developing countries lack the resources, financial and otherwise, to increase significantly their spending on traditional modes of education, AI holds out hope for providing what is missing."
May 2nd 2023
EXTRACT: "The past decade has not been kind to neoliberalism. With 40 years of deregulation, financialization, and globalization having failed to deliver prosperity for anyone but the rich, the United States and other Western liberal democracies have seemingly moved on from the neoliberal experiment and re-embraced industrial policy. But the economic paradigm that underpinned Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the Washington Consensus is alive and well in at least one place: the pages of the Economist."
Apr 25th 2023
EXTRACT: "Yet there is an important twist for the US: a chronic shortfall of domestic saving casts the economic consequences of conflict with China in a very different light. In 2022, net US saving – the depreciation-adjusted saving of households, businesses, and the government sector – fell to just 1.6% of national income, far below the longer-term 5.8% average from 1960 to 2020. Lacking in saving and wanting to invest and grow, the US takes full advantage of the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” as the world’s dominant reserve currency and freely imports surplus saving from abroad, running a massive current-account and multilateral trade deficit to attract foreign capital."