I was finishing a workout at the gym in South Orange County the morning I heard about the Austin bar shooting — earbuds in, last set done, the usual Saturday ritual of burning off the week before the rest of the world wakes up. The country’s at war with Iran. A naturalized citizen from Senegal just murdered two Americans wearing an Iranian flag on his chest. And within the same news cycle, the political left pivoted to gun control.
That is the single stupidest, most intellectually dishonest, most politically cowardly response possible to a wartime domestic terrorist attack. Let me tell you why, starting with three numbers the political class is hoping you never put together.
Politicians demanding assault weapons bans in the wake of every high-profile shooting are either innumerate or dishonest, or maybe both. The FBI’s own Uniform Crime Reporting data tell the story they won’t. In 2023, handguns were used in approximately 7,159 homicides — by far the dominant murder weapon in America. Rifles of all types, including so-called “assault weapons,” were used in roughly 323 homicides. That is fewer than 3 percent of gun murders. Knives and cutting instruments killed more people than rifles. Hands, fists, and feet killed more people than rifles.
An NIH study found that assault-type rifles account for between 2 and 12 percent of guns used in crime generally, with most estimates under 7 percent. The Crime Prevention Research Center’s analysis of FBI data found that rifles’ share of firearm murders was 4.8 percent before the 1994 assault weapons ban, 4.9 percent during it, and 3.6 percent after it expired. The ban made no measurable difference, which is what you’d expect when you’re legislating against a fraction of a fraction.
Meanwhile, a 2016 DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of prison inmates found that fewer than 2 percent of criminals who used a gun had obtained it from a retail source. Seventy-nine percent of crime firearms were obtained illegally. Every background check bill, every assault weapons definition debate, every magazine capacity argument is aimed at the 2 percent, while the 79 percent watches from the corner.
Fifty-eight mass shootings in 63 days sounds like a national emergency. It is, in fact, a definitional shell game. The Gun Violence Archive defines a “mass shooting” as any incident where four or more people are shot, regardless of circumstance. A gang turf war at a Chicago liquor store at 2 A.M. counts identically to a jihadist terrorist opening fire on civilians in a bar. The GVA’s own methodology page states explicitly that it includes drive-bys, gang incidents, and narcotics-related violence — by design.