The Post’s investigative series on the AR-15’s dominant place in the United States’ marketplace and psyche sat atop the Post website on Monday, the day of its release — until, hours later, breaking news replaced it. Three adults and three children had been killed in a Nashville school shooting by a 28-year-old assailant with three guns, including at least one AR-15-style rifle.
These attacks are always heart-wrenching. But they’re not surprising anymore — neither the massacres themselves nor the weapons used to carry them out. Ten of the 17 deadliest mass killings in the United States since 2012 involved AR-15s. The names of the towns and cities where these tragedies took place have become familiar: Newtown, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Parkland, Uvalde and beyond. The Post chronicles the journey this now-iconic rifle took from military-issued firearm to off-the-shelf bestseller, and underscores the danger in the public’s embrace of a weapon the Defense Department once lauded for its “phenomenal lethality.”
Ten of the seventeen deadliest mass killings in the U.S. since 2012 involved AR-15s
Place
Las Vegas, Nev.
Orlando (Pulse), Fla.
Newtown, Conn.
Sutherland Springs, Tex.
El Paso, Tex.
Uvalde, Tex.
Parkland, Fla.
San Bernardino, Calif.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Virginia Beach, Va.
Aurora, Colo.
Washington Navy Yard, D.C.
Monterey Park, Calif.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sante Fe, Tex.
Boulder, Colo.
Buffalo, N.Y.
Year
‘17
’16
‘12
’17
‘19
’22
‘18
’15
‘18
’19
‘12
’13
‘23
’18
‘18
’21
‘22
Weapon
AR-15*
MCX rifle
AR-15*
AR-15*
AK-47
AR-15
AR-15
AR-15*
Handgun
Handgun
AR-15*
Shotgun, handgun
Handgun
AR-15*
Shotgun, handgun
AR-15
AR-15
Dead
60
49
27
25**
22
21
17
14
12
12
12
12
11
11
10
10
10
This shooting involved more weapons
than just an AR-15.
Including a pregnant woman
**
Sources: The Associated Press, USA TODAY, Northeastern
University Mass Killings Database
The Washington Post
Ten of the seventeen deadliest mass killings in the U.S. since 2012 involved AR-15s
Place
Las Vegas, Nev.
Orlando (Pulse), Fla.
Newtown, Conn.
Sutherland Springs, Tex.
El Paso, Tex.
Uvalde, Tex.
Parkland, Fla.
San Bernardino, Calif.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Virginia Beach, Va.
Aurora, Colo.
Washington Navy Yard, D.C.
Monterey Park, Calif.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sante Fe, Tex.
Boulder, Colo.
Buffalo, N.Y.
Year
2017
2016
2012
2017
2019
2022
2018
2015
2018
2019
2012
2013
2023
2018
2018
2021
2022
Weapon
AR-15*
MCX rifle
AR-15*
AR-15*
AK-47
AR-15
AR-15
AR-15*
Handgun
Handgun
AR-15*
Shotgun, handgun
Handgun
AR-15*
Shotgun, handgun
AR-15
AR-15
Dead
60
49
27
25**
22
21
17
14
12
12
12
12
11
11
10
10
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
This shooting involved more weapons than just an AR-15.
Including a pregnant woman
**
Sources: The Associated Press, USA TODAY, Northeastern University
Mass Killings Database
The Washington Post
Ten of the seventeen deadliest mass killings in the U.S. since 2012 involved AR-15s
Place
Las Vegas, Nev.
Orlando (Pulse), Fla.
Newtown, Conn. (Sandy Hook)
Sutherland Springs, Tex.
El Paso, Tex.
Uvalde, Tex.
Parkland, Fla.
San Bernardino, Calif.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Virginia Beach, Va.
Aurora, Colo.
Washington Navy Yard, D.C.
Monterey Park, Calif.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sante Fe, Tex.
Boulder, Colo.
Buffalo, N.Y.
Year
2017
2016
2012
2017
2019
2022
2018
2015
2018
2019
2012
2013
2023
2018
2018
2021
2022
Weapon
AR-15*
MCX rifle
AR-15*
AR-15*
AK-47
AR-15
AR-15
AR-15*
Handgun
Handgun
AR-15*
Shotgun, handgun
Handgun
AR-15*
Shotgun, handgun
AR-15
AR-15
Dead
60
49
27
25**
22
21
17
14
12
12
12
12
11
11
10
10
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
This shooting involved more weapons than just an AR-15.
Including a pregnant woman
**
Sources: The Associated Press, USA TODAY, Northeastern University Mass Killings Database
The Washington Post
“I don’t know why anyone needs an AR-15,” President Donald Trump reportedly told aides in August 2019 after back-to-back mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso. There’s no good answer. The AR-15 was designed for soldiers, yet its associations with warfare eventually became a selling point for everyday buyers. “Use what they use,” exhorted one ad displaying professionals wielding tactical rifles. Now, about 1 in 20 U.S. adults own at least one AR-15. That’s roughly 16 million people, storing roughly 20 million guns designed to mow down enemies on the battlefield with brutal efficiency. Two-thirds of these were crafted in the past decade — and when more people die, popularity doesn’t fall. Instead, it rises.
The AR-15, The Post explains, is materially different from traditional handguns. The rifle fires very small bullets at very fast speeds. The projectiles don’t move straight and smooth through human targets like those from a traditional handgun. Their velocity turns them unstable upon penetration, so that they tumble through flesh and vital organs. This so-called blast effect literally tears people apart. A trauma surgeon notes, “you don’t see the muscle … just bone and skin and missing parts.” Another mentions tissue that “crumbled into your hands.”
A Texas Ranger speaks of bullets that “disintegrated” a toddler’s skull.
This explains the lead poisoning that plagues survivors of the shooting in Sutherland Springs, Tex.; David Colbath, 61, can scarcely stand or use his hands without pain, and 25-year-old Morgan Workman probably can’t have a baby. It explains the evisceration of small bodies such as that of Noah Pozner, 6, murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary, and Peter Wang, 15, killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. The Post examined the way bullets broke inside of them — obliterating Noah’s jaw and Peter’s skull, filling their chests with blood and leaving behind gaping exit wounds.
Even thinking about these injuries is horrifying, so much so that crime scene photos are often kept confidential. But the gruesome reality of what an AR-15 can wreak poses an argument in itself: There is no excuse for the widespread availability of these weapons of war.
No single action will stop mass shootings, much less gun violence more generally. The Post’s reporting is only more evidence of the need for a ban on assault rifles. It’s evidence, too, of the need for a ban on high-capacity magazines. Rules restricting how many rounds a gun can fire before a shooter has to reload are more difficult to skirt than flat-out assault rifle bans, which sometimes prompt manufacturers to make cosmetic changes that will reclassify their products. A number is a number. These prohibitions might face legal challenges, but lawmakers in four states have recently added caps. More should follow.
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End of carousel- D.C. Council reverses itself on school resource officers. Good.
- Virginia makes a mistake by pulling out of an election fraud detection group.
- Vietnam sentences another democracy activist.
- Biden has a new border plan.
The D.C. Council voted on Tuesday to stop pulling police officers out of schools, a big win for student safety. Parents and principals overwhelmingly support keeping school resource officers around because they help de-escalate violent situations. D.C. joins a growing number of jurisdictions, from Montgomery County, Md., to Denver, in reversing course after withdrawing officers from school grounds following George Floyd’s murder. Read our recent editorial on why D.C. needs SROs.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) just withdrew Virginia from a data-sharing consortium, ERIC, that made the commonwealth’s elections more secure, following Republicans in seven other states in falling prey to disinformation peddled by election deniers. Former GOP governor Robert F. McDonnell made Virginia a founding member of ERIC in 2012, and until recently conservatives touted the group as a tool to combat voter fraud. D.C. and Maryland plan to remain. Read our recent editorial on ERIC.
In Vietnam, a one-party state, democracy activist Tran Van Bang was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison and three years probation for writing 39 Facebook posts. The court claimed he had defamed the state in his writings, according to Radio Free Asia. In the past six years, at least 60 bloggers and activists have been sentenced to between 4 and 15 years in prison under the law, Human Rights Watch found. Read more of the Editorial Board’s coverage on autocracy and Vietnam.
The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.
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Think of Sutherland Springs, where the shooter, armed with a Ruger AR-556, got off 450 military-grade bullets within minutes, killing 25 people including a pregnant woman. Think of Dayton, where the gunman needed only 32 seconds to hit more than two dozen people with 41 bullets. That’s because he was equipped with a 100-round drum magazine. Even a 30-round magazine — the industry standard these days — would have forced him to reload at least once. A 15-round magazine would have forced him to reload twice. The Post’s analysis of the time this would have taken reveals the lives it could have saved: potentially six of the nine who were killed, in the case of a 15-round magazine.
Think, in contrast, of Poway, Calif., where a gunman killed one person at a synagogue and injured three others with a 10-round magazine before running out of bullets. Members of the congregation moved to confront him as he fumbled with another magazine, and he fled. Children who survived Sandy Hook told their parents they ran away while the assailant was “playing with his gun.” What they’d seen was plain enough. The shooter had stopped to reload.
The AR-15 has become a cultural symbol. But what kind of culture tolerates death after death after 10 murders — or after 27, or 49, or 60? Respect for the Second Amendment doesn’t require standing by while 6-year-olds are torn to shreds. The nation needs to act on guns. The AR-15 and weapons like it are a good place to start.