During day two of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) claimed there have been “hundreds” of school shootings with “assault weapons.”
She made this claim after Kavanaugh explained the AR-15s and similar rifles fall under the District of Columbia v. Heller’s (2008) protective phraseology of “common use” because they are “widely possessed.” He told her that there are “millions and millions and millions of semiautomatic rifles that are possessed” in the U.S., and possession “seemed to fit the definition of common use.”
He also explained the guns that lack constitutional protections are “dangerous and unusual,” and while noting that all guns could be dangerous, he stressed that a gun owned by millions and millions of Americans is not “unusual.”
Feinstein responded with a bit of misdirection, saying, “How do you reconcile what you just said with the hundreds of school shootings using ‘assault weapons’ that have taken place in recent history?”
Ironically, her claim is a vast departure from academic research that shows there were only been 90 mass shootings of any kid—schools included—between 1966-2012. The research was done by University of Alabama associate professor Adam Lankford.
Additionally, her claim also runs counter to the demonstrable weapon of choice for mass shooters of recent memory—that weapon is a handgun. On May 30, 2018, Breitbart News reported Rockefeller Institute of Government figures showing mass shooters chose handguns over “assault weapons” by a margin of three to one during the time frame of 1966-2016.
In 2015 the left claimed 355 mass shootings of all kinds—school, workplace, church, etc. But Mother Jones Editor Mark Follman took all the claims and ran them by the standard definition for a mass shooting to show there were actually only four.
Nevertheless, Feinstein followed her time with Kavanaugh by tweeting about his “extreme” views on guns:
Brett Kavanaugh is one the nation’s most extreme judges on guns. Five circuit courts, including his own, have upheld assault-weapons bans, but he would have struck down D.C.’s ban. #WhatsAtStake https://t.co/BFqZ4i4Co1
— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) September 5, 2018
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.