Judging from Post editor Sally Buzbee’s introduction to the project, as well as from my own reporting, the paper talked to dozens of survivors and family members and weighed the enormous range of their opinions about this issue to craft the feature. It was so much better than I was expecting that it initially blinded me to the way it was bad. But bad in a kind of routine way: The media, as well as certain kinds of activists, believe we need to be presented with graphic, grisly evidence to grasp what are simply facts. This grisly evidence, they posit, will change hearts and minds.
It will not. Upwards of three-quarters of American voters support almost every commonsense gun law. And we know why political leaders haven’t heeded their call: the gun lobby, and its disgusting political servants. But the Post tried, anyway, with its multimedia “Terror on Repeat” project. I won’t impugn these journalists’ motives. I’ll assume they are good. I’ll just tell you what I saw, and why I would like to spare people seeing the same thing. Especially survivors.
Well, what’s usually being banned isn’t size so much as features. You can have a hunting rifle and an ‘AR-15 style rifle’ side-by-side, and the actual difference ends up minimal. Some ergonomic and ease of use features. But the AR-15 looks more ‘military’ and thus ‘scary’ and dangerous.
The gun-nuts generally want the scary-looking gun because it makes them feel more manly. A sizable minority of gun owners, a few of whom have chimed in here, want the scary-looking gun because they have features that marginally improve comfort and shooting. But in a mass shooting situation, where your targets are all likely within 20 yards? It means nothing. May as well just use a pistol - the only reason shooters now don’t is because of the attention given to ‘assault weapons’.