My brother was critically injured in a mass shooting atop the Empire State Building almost 25 years ago. Every time another such shooting makes headlines it breaks my heart to know that other families are experiencing the same shock, horror and grief that ours has.
It also breaks my heart to see gun control supporters, part of a movement I once helped to lead, repeat the mistakes that doom us all to the unacceptable status quo: tens of thousands of shooting deaths a year.
The pattern is as familiar as it is tragic: In the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting, the main demand of political leaders and gun control groups is a federal assault weapons ban. The news media, which seems to pay attention to gun laws only in the wake of mass shootings, amplifies that call, mostly taking at face value the idea that an assault weapons ban is the best way to prevent "gun violence." Then, as headlines about the latest calamity fade, so do the hopes of federal policy change.
If this pattern plays out again after the shootings in Georgia and Colorado, no one should be surprised. One of the most common questions I have gotten from journalists has been, "If things didn't change as a result of (insert previously unthinkable tragedy here), how can we ever expect them to change?"
I believe that is the wrong question, and illustrates the problem with the gun control debate in the United States. Though it does not grab national headlines, the daily toll of gun deaths and injuries is just as horrifying as our mass shootings, and more preventable as a matter of policy. The gun control movement should focus on the deaths and injuries that are most common, rather than be galvanized by mass shootings like the one that put my brother in a coma.
Of the nearly 40,000 deaths involving guns in 2019, well under 1% were caused by what the FBI defines as "active shooter" incidents. In an average year, around 60% of deaths involving guns are suicides and upward of 30% are homicides that don't meet the "active shooter" definition, like episodes of domestic and gang violence. Even unintentional shootings (about 1% of the total) outnumber mass shootings.
There are far more effective means to prevent these sadly routine tragedies than by focusing on assault weapons. And that means that it is both wrong and counterproductive for advocacy organizations and elected leaders to use the moments when the public is focused on gun control to push an assault weapons ban.
Don't get me wrong. I don't disagree with the intent of an assault weapons ban. I led the organization that before my tenure as president helped to pass the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004, and I believe there is no place in civilized society for guns that are made for the express purpose of killing people.