PERRY: An assault rifle by any other name is still an assault rifle. Ban them.

You know the drill by heart.

“Breaking” stands out from the tweets and posts you’re scrolling through, followed by the first details of another mass shooting.

That’s the vernacular we use now post-Columbine and post-Aurora theater massacres. “Another mass shooting.”

First, we find out that whether this time it was a church, a street party, a school, a club, a grocery store, or just about anywhere there are more than just a few people.

We count the dead and wounded. We scroll through the pictures of horrified victims and miles of crime tape and teams of cops after the shooting has stopped.

And the chances are better than not, especially if the death toll is high, that the weapon of choice was a favorite of mass murderers in the United States, the so-called assault rifle.

Far more surprising than another mass shooting these days, Colorado state House members actually agreed on Sunday to ban these semi-automatic guns, call them what you will, like me.

Extremists don’t like the word “assault rifle.” They say it shows a crass ignorance about firearms and is nothing more than an inflammatory tag to describe what we all understand about assault rifles.

Suddenly, at the Associated Press and bevy of local news outlets, including The Sentinel, the nom du jour of these weapons in news stories is anything but “assault weapons.”

These are semi-automatic guns that either come with or look ‘sickest’ with big gun clips or magazines.

The guns were by no means created for people who need firearms for work, which very, very few people actually do. Those would be people who use guns to kill errant raccoons after your chickens or put down a milk cow with a broken leg.

That, despite the weird claim by Colorado Congressman Ken Buck and others, that ranchers and farmers “need” semi-automatic rifles dressed up to look like military weapons to shoot the occasional varmint or tin can.

They don’t, and any non-extremist who grew up or lived on a ranch or farm before these weapons were invented by the gun industry during the 1980s to address a slump in hand-gun sales will tell you that.

Congressperson Jason Crow will.

“They’re assault rifles,” he said in a recent interview with the Sentinel. A former Army Ranger who actually used assault rifles in Afghanistan, he said they’re set apart from other firearms not just by their firearm-fashion, but by their design and function.

The size of the round they fire, the speed they fire and refire, are designed for one purpose: warfare.

Since getting to Congress in 2019, the three-term Democrat has pressed the House to restart a ban on assault weapons.

He said the current push by gun-control critics to impune those who call assault rifles “assault rifles” is nothing more than distractive propaganda.

Crow grew up hunting small and large game and firing a variety of firearms before he carried an assault rifle professionally in the military.

“They’re not just another gun,” he said. And protecting a “right” to wield military weaponry and suffer the ensuing violence easy access to these guns creates, “is not the price of freedom” Americans must pay.

And for those who essentially stipulate that but say they need assault rifles to protect themselves “from the government — ‘you’re an insurrectionist,’” Crow said.

All this doesn’t mean that anyone who thinks these military-styl-ish rifles are cool is a potential or anxious mass murderer. Weirdly, there are more than 20 million of these things in circulation.

But you can’t deny the truth about how the most vicious and vile among mass murderers in the United States choose these guns when they want to go slaughter people in public places.

Besides Aurora theater shooting mass murderer James Holmes, who fired his assault rifle into a crowded theater in 2012, killing 12 and injuring 72, that weapon was also the gun of choice for the murderers behind Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Sutherland Springs, Sandy Hook Elementary School, El Paso, Orlando, Las Vegas, Dayton, Robb Elementary School, as well as “lesser” shootings, such as Columbine High School, Uvlade, Boulder and Club Q in Colorado Springs.

It’s all about semi-automatic weapons and lots of bullets.

I agree with Crow, if you need one of these for “sport” to bring down a goose or a deer, you need to get your dinner wrapped in plastic at the grocery store, not out in the wild. 

The folks who have created a gun-industry mythology from the Second Amendment, and swear that millions of Americans have a credible need and use for military-style, semi-automatic rifles and rifle-kinda guns, say that not only is “assault rifle” off the mark, so is a ban.

Endless Republicans, and Democrats afraid of being kicked out of office by Republicans, insist gun laws don’t do much good, and just banning one style of gun will just force future mass murderers to choose another kind of firearm.

These guns, anti-gun-law proponents and cowardly politicians will tell you, are no more inherently dangerous than a tanning booth or a deep-fat fryer. In well-meaning, responsible hands, you get well-roasted people and tater tots. But in malevolent, evil hands, they, too, can easily become weapons of terror and destruction. Outlaw deep-fat fryers and only outlaws will have fried chicken. It all proves that we need gun control like we need a hole in the head, gun proponents say.

But you can’t hide from the fact that most of the people who wielded these military-ish rifles and guns bought them legally, including the murderers behind the Boulder, Aurora and Uvalde massacres.

You can’t deny that the United States has more guns than people, and far more guns per person than any other modern nation.

You can’t deny that the United States also boasts the greatest number of shooting injuries and deaths, endlessly, more per capita than any other nation.

And you can’t deny that when Australia banned and actually bought back and destroyed their so-called assault weapons, the number of shootings plummeted.

But clearly, gun violence in the United States, Colorado and Aurora, and working seriously to remove assault weapons from public access, is all about denial.

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