A couple of years back, I wrote an column headlined "Sensible gun control."
Yes, I did pick up a record number of emails and comments. I estimate they were 80% in favor and 20% against my key proposition.
Of course, if you read the article, you know I wanted to ban the AR-15 in order to reduce the deaths in school shootings.
I have since changed my mind. I don't want to ban the AR-15 or any gun, but I do want to reduce school shootings deaths, and I believe I know a way to drastically lower the deaths in school shootings without banning any gun.
My quest for a way to reduce deaths started with an email that made it very clear that the caliber (size) of an AR-15 cartridge was not much different from a .22.
As I was pondering that little fact, I read a New York Times article. They sent a reporter to 5 trauma-emergency rooms that had treated gunshot wounds made by an AR-15 as well as other guns and pistols. The doctors all commented on the severity of the AR-15 wounds.
One doctor said, "If someone shot you with a .22 and the bullet passed through your heart and you could make it to the emergency room in less than 30 minutes, we might could save your life, but if you were hit with a bullet from an AR-15 anywhere in your torso, you would be dead in seconds. And if you were hit in the arm or leg you would almost surely lose it and die in a few minutes from a loss of blood."
Why? When the AR-15 enters a body the velocity impact explodes the organs much like a shock wave, and when the bullet exits the body, it leaves a hole you could stick your fist in. That's why there are so many deaths when an AR-15 is used.
Let's start with this: Forget gun control. It ain't gonna happen. The gun owners in this country -- and I include myself -- are not going to give up their guns. That is just a hard fact, and if we're honest, we'll agree and move on. Okay?
However, I think we can do some things that will reduce deaths without taking away anyone's guns.
Of course, that doesn't include the mentally ill. I think everyone agrees the mentally ill lose their Second Amendments rights when they become incapable of sensibly using a gun. So let's give our police and courts the right to take their guns from them before they slaughter another bunch of innocent school children.
That's the first and easiest way to reduce deaths, but we can do more, and we can do it without confiscating a single gun.
Naturally, this requires a monitoring of some of the most popular social networks, and loss of privacy. However, I believe the circumstances require it. This is how to dramatically reduce the number of deaths.
The gunman in Las Vegas used an AR-15 and killed 54 people, and the man who shot the school kids in Uvalde also used an AR-15 type weapon. However, the gun wasn't the problem, and I'll explain why.
Let's examine a popular handgun, the 9mm, and compare it with an AR-15. The caliber (size of the bullets) are very similar, and the entry hole into a person's body is also not much different than a 9mm bullet from a handgun. But, upon entering a person's body, things began to change.
Routine handgun injuries leave entry and exit wounds and linear tracks through the victim's body that are roughly the size of the bullet. If the bullet does not directly hit something crucial like the heart or the aorta, and the victim does not bleed to death before being transported to care at a trauma center, chances are that he or she can be saved.
The bullets fired by an AR-15 are different. They travel at a higher velocity and are far more lethal than the bullets fired from a handgun.
The damage they cause is a function of the energy they impart as they pass through the body. A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than -- and imparting more than three times the energy of -- a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun. The high-velocity bullet causes a huge swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding.
Of course, the most obvious way to reduce deaths in school shooting would be to ban AR-15s, but that's not going to happen.
There is a way, though, to reduce the deaths from high velocity weapons, which is the cause of the high number of deaths in a multi-shooting incident.
Since high velocity ammunition is the cause of the extremely high numbers of deaths vs just wounds, we need a national limit on the availability of high velocity ammunition.
Of course, ammunition manufactures could easily switch the propulsion load of AR-15 ammunition to a lower charge and reduce the bullet's velocity down to where it was equivalent to a 9mm handgun. The result would be to switch the casualties of a great majority from fatal to wounded.
In other words, a hypothetical 15 killed and five wounded to five killed and 15 wounded.
No, this is not a solution to school shootings, but it is a step in the right direction.
Our goal should be zero school shooting casualties, but we must not settle for just another futile attempt at gun control.
Why not focus on something that can actually reduce the deaths due to high velocity ammunition without removing any guns from public use? It is an unbelievably easy approach just to pass legislation that would mandate the velocity of any round of ammunition available to the public be no greater than the velocity generated by a 9mm handgun.
Now, before you say that would make all the current AR-15 unusable, give it a little thought. I don't know if an AR-15 would handle a lower propulsion round, but I do know that if we can send a man to the moon, weapons manufactures could come up with a modification that would allow you to convert your AR-15 into a gun that would handle lower propulsion rounds.
Consider this: what was the velocity of Davy Crockett's muzzleloader, "Old Betsy?" Of course, you can make a guess, but unless you knew exactly how much powder Davy put in a load, you wouldn't have a clue about the velocity.
Surely we can take this tiny step to drastically lower the deaths in these mass shootings.
No, it's not a total solution, but it would lower the number of people killed. A half of a loaf is better than no loaf at all.
Richard Mason is an author and speaker. He can be reached at [email protected].