Phil Weigel, Minot

Another mass shooting, another call for “Assault Weapons” to be banned.

Never mind that the term has no meaning. Never mind that all fully automatic weapons in the U.S. are illegal to own, other than under special circumstances and all fully automatic weapons in the U.S. were made before the ban and are owned by a small group of people and their location is known at all times by authorities.

Did you know, in 2017, the FBI released stats that state that the number of deaths from blunt objects (Hammers, clubs, etc) in the U.S. was 467 while the number of deaths by rifles was 403.

Rifles includes shotguns, bolt action, pump action, single shot, semi-automatic and the scary AR-15.

Did you know that the Ruger Mini 14 is a semi-automatic rifle, just like the AR-15? Did you know it fires .223 shell bullets? Did you know that it can use bullet clips that hold up to 30 rounds?

Do you know what the biggest difference between the two is?

One looks like a hunting rifle (Ruger) while the AR-15 has scary plastic parts.

I know some people say “look at Australia, they took away the guns!”

Except that after taking the guns away, there was a spike in gun violence in Australia. Oh, and gun violence had been dropping at a rate before the ban that was equal to the drop of gun violence after the spike ended.

But if you think taking away the guns will help, you’re wrong. London has a higher crime rate than New York City, including murder. And in the U.S., the only reason gun violence is even remotely high as it is is because of Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans and Los Angeles, without those cities the stats of gun violence in the U.S. would drop from in the top 5 most violent countries in the world to among the safest in the world.