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Republicans’ cult of the assault weapon won’t withstand Gen Z

by Karen Treverton and Gregory F. Treverton, opinion contributors - 04/17/23 2:30 PM ET

(AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)
FILE – Firearms training unit Det. Barbara J. Mattson, of the Connecticut State Police, holds up a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, the same make and model of gun used by Adam Lanza in the December 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting, during a hearing of a legislative subcommittee in Hartford, Conn., on Jan. 28, 2013. Citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year, gun rights groups and firearms owners filed a new lawsuit Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, in federal court in another attempt to overturn Connecticut’s ban on certain semiautomatic rifles that was enacted in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The scene of victims after a mass shooting mimics that of a battlefield, except that battlefields don’t usually include children — and shootings often do. Suffice it to say the impact of an AR-15 on a human body is too gruesomely graphic to describe in detail in this piece. Bones explode and soft tissue simply disappears.

Yet while most of us live in fear of school and other mass shootings, some members of Congress have chosen to pose for their holiday cards bearing the same weapons used in those shootings, their children holding such guns while dressed in their Sunday best.

For a party so fired up about liberals supposedly “grooming” children, this has got to take the cake. Imagine if a Black family proudly flaunted assault weapons in their holiday cards — some busybody would have Child Protective Services summoned in no time. Imagine if the card depicted Ilhan Omar’s family — some Republican members of Congress would be agitating to have her ousted the next day!

The GOP has its share of actual groomers. They also have their own “influencers” in the form of the AR-15 lapel pins many Republican members of Congress have chosen to wear in the Capitol. Perhaps, next, training in the use of these weapons will turn up in those school board meetings the GOP is so eager to politicize.

There is absolutely no reason for these weapons to exist outside of the military.

We will not stop mass shootings until we ban assault weapons.

Mass shootings have become almost normal, and the gun lobby response is now predictable: After a few public expressions of “thoughts and prayers” for the victims, the GOP immediately redirects the outrage from cries for gun control to mental health or any other handy bogeyman. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who can be counted on to find a new low when one seems unimaginable, actually suggested that marijuana might have been the cause of 2022 shooting in Highland Park, Ill.

We need to better deal with the pervasive mental health crisis that exists in this country — but the out-of-control gun crisis needs to be dealt with as well. And it is being ignored by the far right. It is not, however, being ignored by the younger generation that has grown up practicing shelter-in-place drills.

After the recent shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tenn., hundreds of students and faculty from many schools in the area showed up at the state capitol to rally against guns. One young woman claimed that they were there to ensure they live to graduate. Meanwhile, the governor of responded with another favorite of the AR-15 right: The solution to guns is, you guessed it, more guns! He proposed stationing armed guards at every school.

The point that these kids are making is that this isn’t a Tennessee issue alone, and the solution isn’t armed guards at every school.

The protest in Tennessee was spearheaded by “March for Our Lives,” a youth movement advocating stricter gun laws after the 2018 massacre of students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. We need to ban assault weapons everywhere in this country. And the youth of America are leading the way!

Karen Treverton is former special assistant to the president of RAND, and manager of the RAND Terrorism Database. Gregory F. Treverton was chair of the U.S. National Intelligence Council until January 2017. He is now professor of the practice at Dornsife College, University of Southern California and chair, Global TechnoPolitics Forum.