T.D. started a petition to the White House on the day of the Orlando attack, which petition has been signed allegedly by 187,025.
Guns in America is a complicated issue for many reasons. However, the AR-15 is the weapon of choice for Domestic Terrorists and others who wish to kill and harm people quickly and efficiently. It serves no other purpose other than to accomplish this. Banning this gun will show that we can act on this issue. It will have symbolic weight while also making one small step forward on dealing with this epidemic.
Of course the AR-15 isn’t the ‘weapon of choice’ for domestic terrorists and is the most popular rifle in the country for various reasons including sport shooting and hunting, as well as self-defense. It has one bullet per trigger pull and as it turned out, wasn’t even the weapon used in Orlando.
While the White House seems to blow most of White House petitions off, this one they chose to answer.
Folks, enough has been enough for a long time.
To the creator and signers of this petition, I want to say this as plainly and clearly as possible: The President and I agree with you. Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines should be banned from civilian ownership.
These weapons have been used to commit horrific acts. They’ve been called “the perfect killing machines.” They fire bullets at incredible speed that rip through bodies and cause devastating carnage, and can accommodate high-capacity magazines that allow them to effectively shoot up to 45 rounds per minute. We’ve seen their tragic results play out in our death tolls and in the thousands left wounded, struggling to recover.
They of course neglect to note that the vast majority of mass shooters, as well as shooters in general, use handguns includes Seung-Hui Cho, who used two handguns, including a Glock 19, in 2007 to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech University, the previous worst mass shooting in American history.
But give them time, and because after the ‘assault weapons’, they’ll be coming for the handguns.