OH look, Al Franken is being a melodramatic tool about guns in a sad attempt at dunking on Ted Cruz. Gosh, did you guys miss this as much as we did?
So kidding.
Wonder how hard ol’ Al clutched his pearls while writing this tweet about WEAPONS OF WAR.
Ted, the guy who killed 5 yesterday at a BANK did it with an AR-15. Why on earth don’t we get rid of these weapons of war? https://t.co/gqcNwePJOe
— Al Franken (@alfranken) April 11, 2023
Once a gun-grabber, always a gun-grabber, eh Al?
Luckily for us (but not so luckily for him), Amy Swearer was more than happy to step in and educate/reality-check Al on guns that go pew pew pew.
This is pretty damn good.
Because they're not "weapons of war." They're incredibly useful for defending innocent life from criminal threats in noncombat zones like…say…downtown Louisville. Which is exactly why the peace officers responding to that civilian-context threat used them, too. https://t.co/euOkayejGh
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
What do you know?
Keep going.
But while I have everyone's attention, let's have a history lesson and reality check at the same time.
Gather round, children, and let me tell you the tale of how mass public shooters have ALWAYS been able to kill a lot of people with far more…rustic…guns.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Rustic.
You guys know where this is going, right?
In 1903, in Winfield, KS, a man opened fire on a weekly outdoor music concert attended by thousands of people. He killed 8 and wounded 25 more before either taking his own life or being killed by the night watchman. He used a double-barrel shotgun.https://t.co/D10Dt8QuIS
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
But the AR-15!!!
He was very clearly mentally unwell. His handwritten manifesto evidenced the very sort of "grievance complex" still seen in the writings and explanations left behind by many modern mass shooters. https://t.co/s01kj8rLPK
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Where oh where is the manifesto from Audrey Hale?
In 1915, in Brunswick, GA, another "aggrieved" man loaded another double-barrel shotgun and took it with him to a law office in the crowded downtown area. He fatally shot a judge. And then he just kept shooting random people. https://t.co/SpWWJZszbU
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Didn’t Biden once say all you needed was a shotgun? And if someone comes on your property you just need to fire it off?
Hrm.
He killed 7 and wounded 30 in just 10 minutes. While a uniformed police officer quickly responded, he was killed by the gunman, who was apparently very efficient with his reloading capabilities and had considered how to most effectively utilize the gun.https://t.co/lzfYyljIHA
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
So not an AR-15.
No kidding.
So who ended it? Armed civilians. Two of them, to be precise. The first one had a 5-shot revolver and ran out of ammo whilst only managing to strike the gunman once. He likely would've died had another civilian not, just seconds later, killed the gunman.https://t.co/nncIeBu6ly
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Turns out "magazine capacity" would have been far more important for that defensive gun user than for the mass shooter – a true that still holds today.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Gosh, we feel shocked.
I always bring up "you can give a mass shooter a lever-action rifle and lots of people still die" and historically it's more true than you realize. In 1928, a drugged-out Chinese cook killed 11 Chinese immigrants in California using a Winchester rifle.https://t.co/6KsMkUs5ly
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Nearly 100 years later, also in California, a Chinese immigrant would again try to kill as many people of Chinese descent as possible.
Instead of a lever-action rifle, he'd use a literal "assault pistol" to fire into a dance hall on the Lunar New Year.
He'd also kill 11.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
So she’s saying it’s not the gun.
Shocking.
And then there's the man who, in 1949, killed 13 and wounded 3 more during a mass public shooting in Camden, NJ. He used a single 9 mm Luger handgun which, at the time, would've had a factory standard 8-round box magazine. https://t.co/ThYs5rGgEo
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
But we’ve been told by our gun-grabbing pals that larger magazines are the issue.
It wasn't his magazine capacity that stopped the killing. He apparently reloaded several times. No, he literally just ran out of ammunition. That's it. He only bought 33 bullets, ran out, retreated to his apartment, and surrendered.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
For as gruesome as it is to consider, he killed more people did a gunman in Buffalo, NY, nearly three-quarters of a century later, who used an illegally modified "assault-style" rifle because the gunman said "sucks to your gun laws."
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Anyway, why does any of this matter? Well, in one sense, it doesn't matter. And that's the whole point.
When you have a mentally unhinged person bent on killing a lot of people, the type of gun he has doesn't matter. It matters that he has ANY type of lethal device.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
It doesn’t matter.
Read that again.
And I do mean "lethal device" and not "gun." The worst school killing in U.S. history wasn't Virginia Tech in 2009, but the Bath School Disaster in 1927. Same general story line, but the plot twist is the use of explosives to kill 42 and injure 58. https://t.co/iHE39y8xO8
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
If you think this is a problem with a would-be mass killer having a pistol gripped AR-15 v. a featureless AR-15, or even have a semi-automatic rifle v. literally any other type of gun commonly manufactured in the last century…you don't understand the problem at all.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Many gun-grabbers do not understand the problem.
And that’s a huge part of the overall problem.
It's not a new problem, especially not in the U.S. Sure, there's the new wrinkle of mass media and the almost certain "contagion" effect that comes with such ready and constant exposure of "how to kill lots of people" to those with grievance complexes.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
But at its core, this is an old problem, with the same solutions – take arms away from specific people who are clearly dangers to the public, without disarming the general public so that victims can't fight back.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
This. ^
Anyway, thanks for joining today's History Lesson With Amy.
Always here to provide you with reality checks.
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) April 14, 2023
Huzzah.
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