There’s one thing we can do to prevent massacres

Gun violence has become a serious health issue in the United States. The proportion of Americans killed by guns – either intentionally or accidentally – is higher than nearly any other industrialized nation in the world.

A majority of the public is sick of it. Yet we seem incapable of doing anything – anything – about it.

Those who want to limit access to guns are stymied by the NRA and recalcitrant lawmakers who insist that the answer to the problem is more guns. So state legislatures make it easier to carry concealed weapons just about everywhere, including bars and school campuses.

But gun control advocates have had little success in coming up with ideas that would be acceptable to most Americans and still be effective in reducing gun violence. Any effort to round up the guns people already own – and there are millions of them out there – is certain to fail.

The fallback option is more thorough background checks. But we have seen too many times how even the most careful screening would have failed to prevent those intent on mass murder from carrying out their evil plans.

So, the gun control advocates are stumped. What can they do that will actually help stem the violence?

Well, there is this: Restore the ban on the sale of military-style assault rifles. It wouldn’t prevent massacres altogether, but it might lower the body count.

Many so-called assault weapons are patterned after the AR-15, developed for the military in the late 1950s. The AR-15 is a lightweight rifle that can be switched from fully automatic, like a machine gun, to semi-automatic, where the operator must pull the trigger each time he wants to fire the gun.

Civilian versions of the AR-15 and other similar military-style weapons aren’t fully automatic, although they can be illegally converted to the fully automatic mode. Generally, though, they are semi-automatic – like many hunting rifles and shotguns.

One big difference between civilian assault weapons and hunting weapons is ammo capacity. Assault weapons, such as the one used by the shooter in Orlando, can be equipped with magazines that hold up to 100 rounds.

This allows shooters bent on mass murder to kill more people before having to reload. The AR-15 and similar assault-style rifles have been the guns of choice for domestic mass shootings, including the Aurora Theater massacre in Colorado, the killing of 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and last year’s ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks at a San Bernardino, Calif., government building.

These assault-style rifles were patterned on military weapons designed to effectively kill the enemy during combat, and that remains their basic function. There are better weapons for home defense, namely shotguns and handguns.

Real hunters look down on those who use an assault rifle with a multi-round magazine to take down a deer.

In other words, we don’t need assault rifles. They have no useful purpose beyond mowing down people quickly and efficiently.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t popular with gun enthusiasts. The sales of AR-15s and other assault rifles are far higher than those for traditional deer rifles and other long guns.

Nonetheless, a recent poll indicated that 58 percent of Americans favor restoring the nationwide ban on assault rifles that expired in 2004. And that number could grow in the wake of the Orlando massacre, the worst act of gun violence in the nation’s history.

A ban would not prevent such mass shootings, but it might make it harder for the shooters to kill so many people.

Can’t we at least do that?

This story was originally published June 16, 2016 at 7:39 PM with the headline "There’s one thing we can do to prevent massacres."