Swiss Army knife + AR-15 = A tragic false equivalence

ON JUNE 4, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez overturned California’s assault weapons ban, calling one of the country’s most stringent measures against assault-style guns unconstitutional, in a 94-page ruling that upends the delicate discourse on guns and gun violence in the nation’s most populous state. 

“Like the Swiss Army knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment. Good for both home and battle,” Benitez said in his ruling’s introduction, writing what reads like a product description in a gun-shop brochure. 

“This case is not about extraordinary weapons lying at the outer limits of 2nd Amendment protection. The banned ‘assault weapons’ are not bazookas, howitzers, or machine guns. Those arms are dangerous and solely useful for military purposes,” his ruling said.

◊ ◊ ◊

Never mind the casual conflation of an everyday tool used a thousand innocent ways with a weapon whose primary reason for being is the high-volume destruction of human beings in seconds. In the right hands – or the wrong hands – an AR-15 can be as deadly as a bazooka or a machine gun, and deadly more quickly than a howitzer. 

“This is an average case about average guns used in average ways for average purposes,” the judge’s ruling said. “One is to be forgiven if one is persuaded by news media and others that the nation is awash with murderous AR-15 assault rifles. The facts, however, do not support this hyperbole, and facts matter.”

But California’s assault weapons ban, and those of other states as well, were enacted before and after AR-15s became widely available. The point of such laws was to prevent more rampant proliferation – the better to keep an anomaly from becoming a problem, to keep a problem from becoming a catastrophe.

Gun control has already been a challenge in California. A gunman identified as Carlos Lopez killed two people and wounded two others in a rampage in downtown Los Angeles on April 27. Authorities discovered several weapons at his home, including an AR-15 Lopez bought legally, law enforcement sources reported.

◊ ◊ ◊

LOPEZ (fatally shot by police) didn’t use the AR-15 in his attack in downtown L.A., but he could have. The damage done with one handgun was bad enough; what he could have done if he’d exercised the choice to go postal with a fully-loaded AR-15 is too chilling to contemplate. Thanks to Judge Benitez’s ruling, contemplation of any such future horrors in the Golden State may not be enough.  

Benitez’s June 4 ruling argues that it isn’t “about extraordinary weapons lying at the outer limits” of the Second Amendment, but a study of gun-violence history proves that wrong. In incident after incident, AR-15 rifles -- or similar, rapid-fire-capable weaponry operating in similar fashion -- have been implicated in mass shootings in Parkland, Fla. (2018), Las Vegas (2017), Orlando (2016), San Bernardino (2015), Boulder (2013), Aurora and Sandy Hook Elementary (2012), and other shooting locations. The Gun Violence Archive, an online source of information from multiple sources, defines “mass shooting” as four or more people injured or killed in one incident.

There’s nothing “average” about a gun with this much firepower. AR-15 style weapons aren’t at the periphery of America’s ballistic experience; the pandemic of shootings, in California and elsewhere in recent years and decades, only prove just how dangerously popular, and central to the debate, they really are.

◊ ◊ ◊

Benitez is no stranger to the gun-control debate in California. The state appealed his 2017 decision lifting a ban on sale or purchase of magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, and his 2020 ruling that stopped requirement of background checks for people trying to buy ammunition. Both were the hallmark of Proposition 63, a ballot measure overwhelmingly approved by voters in November 2016.

This latest ruling doesn’t go into effect immediately. Benitez stayed its enforcement for 30 days; California Attorney General Rob Bonta is expected to appeal. But California is already reeling from frightening incidents of gun violence in 2021. The May 26 VTA railyard shooting in San Jose -- nine died, including the shooter -– was the 18th in the state so far. There were 39 total mass shootings in California in 2020 and 49 in 2019, according to Gun Violence Archive.

Not all of them involved an AR-15. But it’s safe to say none involved a Swiss Army knife.

Someone should tell it to the judge.

---