Banning AR-15s won't solve crisis

A Nov. 18 letter to the editor by Kathy Repak listed 16 mass shootings in which AR-15 rifles were used.

The names are familiar: Uvalde, Parkland, Sandy Hook, etc. Obviously, the rifles were controlled by people. The list's not-so-subtle message leads to the familiar knee-jerk reaction: If there were no AR-15s, the shootings would not have taken place.

The NRA estimates there are more than 16 million AR-15s in America. That means Repak's list represents 0.000001% of those weapons. Put another way, 15,999,984 AR-15s never hurt anyone.

The truly astounding aspect of this is that anti-gun rights fanatics will insist until the last breath leaves their bodies, "We've got to get rid of AR-15s." This spoken in the sincere, unshakable belief that the rifle was to blame for all 16 shootings, while paying lip service to the role people had in the shootings.

Just suppose AR-15s were banned. Would that apply to just the manufacture of them? The manufacture and sale of them? Or how about just owning one?

And what to do about those 15,999,984 AR-15s already out there? Confiscation? It's a practical - as well as constitutional - dilemma posed by the simplistic panacea, "We've got to get rid of AR-15s."

Don Frost

Lake Summerset