Making the Case:

Are Assault Rifles More Dangerous?

Reading Time: 8-10 min 

The big picture is simple - once you de-bullshit the playing field and just look at the facts.

The baseline lethality of assault rifles — and lethality is really what we are talking about when we say "more dangerous” — is evident if we just look at what happens when people use them. Little detail about the weapons is required. What happens is that more people get hurt and die. A lot more.

But first we need to put things in context, and be explicit about it. Context is one thing that is often either missing, misapplied, or consciously distorted during discussions of the dangers posed by assault weapons, so let’s set that straight.

Context is King

Context can greatly increase the potential harm that a gun a can do (e.g being very close to a shotgun), or render its greater potential for lethality entirely moot (e.g being really far away from a shotgun). Playing games with how context is considered, or isn’t, is a key way that the gun lobby gaslights people about the risks and hazards of assault rifles (this is covered much more in the Scalable Lethality section.

Much of the argument in and around gun control jumps around willy-nilly with context. Going from interpersonal violence (like domestic violence) to gang-related shoot-outs, to anywhere in between, all around the same guns or rules, and also mixing specific examples with the broadest generalizations to make the data say whatever they want, or say nothing much at all. The goal is usually to try to find situations, or interpretations of situations, that renders the specific type of gun moot, as much as they can, or shift the focus onto other guns in a shell-game of risk and hazard. This badly confuses the issues, and it is purely a tactic for manipulating facts to downplay our perception of risk. Let's not do that - let’s instead very clearly state the ways in which assault rifles interact with context to be most deadly. There are two important ones to focus on.

The first is a specific context: mass shootings. This is where assault rifles are most dangerous, where their particular capabilities put them in a league of their own. As I discuss in more detail elsewhere, it is the assault rifle's almost unique ability to scale up violence that makes them so deadly in this scenario. This is, quite literally, the entire purpose of their existence: force multiplication on military scales. Soldiers are expected to effectively engage multiple targets -  and let's not forget those fleeing targets too.

The second way is general: There is no other class of firearm that matches assault rifles for being extremely deadly in so many differing situations. In the vast majority of those situations assault rifles are the equal of any other gun for killing people, and in the majority are often more lethal tools. Yet, again - this is precisely what they were designed to be. No other gun has their range of effective applications, and no other gun is as impervious to being "disarmed" by context changes or a difficult shooting scenario (too close, too far, too fast moving, skilled or unskilled shooter, etc. etc). This too makes them exceptionally lethal.

When you combine those two things into one weapon system you have, essentially, the most dangerous type of firearm on the planet. Understanding the mechanics of the guns and shooting to see how and why this works -- especially why they are so broadly deadly -- is more complex, and requires digging into details about these guns, and how they differ from other weapons. But firmly establishing that these guns are far more lethal in the context of mass shootings is easy, and requires no background in the weapons at all.

We don't have to argue about details in the least, but just to put us on the same page — again being explicit — I’ll give you just three important details about assault rifles.

1 Minute Definition Of an Assault Rifle

The AR15 pictured below is a good example of the type:

Another definition we need: mass shootings are incidents having more than 3 or 4 victims, excluding the killer, and which are disconnected from other crimes (e.g an armed robbery "gone wrong" etc). These are the gun “rampages” or "spree-killings" we know from the news - the kind that tend to put assault rifles on the public radar, over and over again.

Rifles that meet the definition above are involved in a significant number of those kinds of mass-shootings. The AR15 in particular is used often, and especially in the most deadly mass shootings

That’s all we need to know about the guns themselves for now.

Over the last 60-or-so years:

Pistols are the most common weapon, by the by.

Don’t be fooled by that number: note how tempting it might feel to say “only” 20% of the mass shootings…. That’s a common ploy actually.

You will usually hear gun people say that assault rifles are “only” used a fraction of mass shootings (but not often with very precise numbers). But how is 1 in 5 not a serious chunk? Anything that contributes to 20 -30% of a problem is worthy of serious attention. That is a meaningful number, but that’s the “good news”. Sort of. If you are fan of these guns.

The bad news is that the discussion isn’t about frequency of use, but of the dangers when they are. Remember - risk and hazard are not the same thing, mixing them up can be a dangerous misconception, and this case it is a very, very deadly one. There is an important difference between used more and more deadly. This is discussed a bit more in the side-trip about Pistols vs Assault Rifles.

Focusing on the frequency, and of course downplaying it, is a gun-lobby red-herring, here is why:

Based on that last 50 years of mass shootings, we know for a fact that, whenever they are used they create nearly 2-3 times the number of deaths and injuries than any other firearm. That’s the real danger to consider.

But that stat, and that chart shows the long view though - spanning a good 50 years. It is actually getting much, much worse than that now.

Use of assault-type weapons is on the rise, and the data shows that not only is the risk going up, but so is the hazard: they are in fact getting even more dangerous.

Between 2009 and 2018:

 but assault rifles accounted for

That is something worth letting sink in for a moment, but those numbers may still be a bit deceiving - it's actually worse than it may look.  To help put that into perspective we can work this out a bit.

Let's even use the conservative numbers, and let's assume the numbers will stay flat and use of assault rifles will not continue to climb - so 17% of future shootings will involve assault rifles, and they are 2X more deadly when they are.

Now, let's say there are 100 mass shootings, and those mass shootings kill 300 people - which again is extremely conservative. The numbers based on actual shootings tell us is that we can expect assault rifles to be used in 16 of the spree-killings, and pistols and other weapons in the other 84, and mostly pistols.

We can expect that 16 shootings with rifles would account for 200 deaths, and the 84 other shootings would create the other 100. 16 people killed on average, versus 2 or 3.  The numbers for injuries would be similarly disproportionate, and much, much higher.

Even if we allow for the fact that assault rifles are used less frequently in mass shootings than some people think they are, this is reason we care so much. They still account for a lot more deaths, and the vast majority of injuries.

So, here is the not-so-obvious truth: it is true that if you are involved in a mass shooting it is more likely you will be shot at with a pistol,  but if the incident involves an assault rifle you are much more likely to actually be shot, and much more likely to die as a result of it.

The bottom line, just to make it really clear :

That’s a big, big difference. Some gun people will likely want to point out that that big spike in injuries and death is due to just a couple of incidents (Las Vegas being a big one), but that does not actually help their case - it just shows even more starkly how dangerous the guns are.

That is an illusion created because mass shootings as a whole are on the rise, but are just rising faster than the use of assault-type rifles. This chart makes it more clear:

You will note that chart ends in 2016, there have been several major shootings since that time, so it is in fact even worse still .  Here is one from Pew Research that covers 2017 and 2018 for "active shooter events":

The jump in 2017 is almost entirely caused by the Las Vegas Shooting, but the Sutherland Church shooting had an impact as well. AR15 rifles were used in both, by the way. That, and guns like it, are clearly, and have been proven to be, an incredibly effective tool for mass murder.

While these rifles exist they will always have this ability to scale up the carnage. It will also be far more likely when they are readily available to civilians - which is also why the laws about them matter so much. This concept of scaling lethality is something explored in depth beginning in the Scalable Lethality section, but a shallow dive into a few real-world examples should help solidify the point.

Less than 13 hours later and 2500km away the Dayton shooting occurred, which also involved one man, also with no military or police training, and also with a semi-automatic assault rifle. That massacre left 9 dead and 27 injured in just over 30 seconds of shooting.

But there is probably no example that can make the lethal potential of assault rifles more apparent than the Las Vegas shooting on Oct 1, 2017.

Most people have heard of it, but most will find some of the details about that massacre surprising. Those details make the case as clearly as anything ever will:

But here is what makes it inarguably clear that assault rifle is the crucial ingredient:  

There are no other firearms that can produce that kind of carnage in this kind of scenario, and one that could do it in as many disparate situations. Period. That is precisely what assault rifles were created to do.

All the statistics we have on shootings also probably grossly underestimate how often assault-type weapons feature in homicide and injury because mass shooting stats typically do not account for cases where only injuries occur, or where only 1 or 2 people are killed - but the case is clear enough without having to even go there.

Wrap Up

You can’t stop murder – and you can’t entirely stop mass murder either, but that does not mean that you can’t put a dent in them, and in mass murders in particular. That we can do, and that tells us something important as well.

Even the weak-sauce US Federal Assault Weapons Ban that ran from 1994-2004 created a decade where people were 70% less likely to die in a mass shooting. That ain’t nothing.

In 1996, after a horrific massacre, Australia put in an even stronger ban and they went 16 years without a mass shooting. There was just one in 2014 and one in 2018, both familicides – murder-suicides involving the entire family in both situations. Both, while horrible, would not likely have been affected by the availability of an assault rifle. Australia has had one “active shooter” mass shooting since 1996, in 2019, which saw 4 people killed and 1 injured. The killer used a shotgun.

One incident, or at most three, if one wants to be as broad as possible about it, in 22 years. Based on the frequency of mass shootings in the 18 years prior to the weapons ban, it is believed there were at least 16 mass shootings that never happened in Australia. Nobody can know how many lives were saved by that. By way of contrast, since 1999 the US has had 12 mass shootings – just at schools.

Of course, if you include all mass shootings of 4 or more (excluding the gunman) and include things like robberies and gang shootouts there are more mass shootings than days of the year in the US. 419 mass shootings in 2019 alone.

But I’m drifting into a bit of a different line here. All this ban-related data stuff provides context to frame the impact of assault rifles, but I am not here to argue in support of the ban directly. This is just to point out that the facts are very, very clear:  semi-automatic, high calibre, high capacity rifles are absolutely and unquestionably worthy of some special consideration, and hazard and risk assessment. There is positive evidence of their harm, and the ban info is evidence of reduced harm when they are removed from the equation. Taken together the factual picture is even more solid.

Assault rifles are demonstrably, dramatically more effective for killing and wounding a lot of people. That is what they were expressly designed for – to make it easier for soldiers to inflict massive damage on enemies in combat, and all design works against us when in the hands of a mass murderer. This is what both the data and common sense tell us this is exactly what they are doing.

 But the Gaslighting Goes on Anyway

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