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Category: All About Guns
Firearms advocates fight state restrictions on the most popular rifle in the U.S.
A showdown over America’s bestselling rifle is heading to the Supreme Court this fall: Gun-rights groups are asking the court to consider whether the AR-15 and other rifles described as assault weapons are deserving of constitutional protection.
Should the conservative Supreme Court take up the case in its new term, it could put some of the gun-control movement’s biggest victories in jeopardy.
Nine Democratic states and Washington, D.C., have restrictions on the purchase or possession of AR-15 rifles and other firearms labeled assault weapons, with many enacted after a 20-year-old gunman used an AR-15-style rifle to kill more than two dozen first-graders and faculty at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.
The high court in a landmark 2008 opinion said law-abiding Americans have a right under the Second Amendment to protect themselves with handguns.
But justices have never said if that right extends to the AR-15.
A makeshift memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP
“The court has yet to weigh in squarely on what kinds of guns can be prohibited,” said Joseph Blocher, a law professor at Duke University and co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. “These cases are a lot harder than either side makes them out to be,” he said.
The court in its 2008 opinion said an individual’s right to bear arms is limited to weapons used for self-defense and other lawful purposes, and suggested that dangerous and unusual weapons designed for military use—such as the fully automatic military M16 rifle—fall outside Second Amendment protections.
The ‘perfect vehicle’
An August federal appeals court ruling upholding Maryland’s AR-15 ban offers the Supreme Court a prime chance to enter the fray.
The 10-5 decision by the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the most substantial pronouncement from lower courts on the right to own an AR-15 since the Supreme Court expanded Second Amendment protections two years ago in a decision that said gun regulations are valid only if they are consistent with historical precedent.
The Fourth Circuit’s entire roster of active judges heard the case. Two-thirds of the bench agreed that the AR-15 was a combat weapon too destructive and ill-suited for self-defense to be treated like handguns.
The majority opinion by Judge Harvie Wilkinson, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, said the AR-15’s fearsome firepower makes it “ill-suited for the vast majority of self-defense situations in which civilians find themselves.”
He described it as a military-style weapon best suited for “wreaking death and destruction,” quoting a trauma surgeon who likened getting struck in the liver with an AR-15 to a watermelon exploding onto concrete.
“Compared to a handgun, the AR-15 is heavier, longer, harder to maneuver in tight quarters, less readily accessible in an emergency, and more difficult to operate with one hand,” he wrote.
A person wears an NRA hat in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Photo: stefani reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Students fire AR-15s during a shooting course at Boondocks Firearms Academy in Jackson, Miss. Photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
Five judges signed onto a lengthy dissent that accused the majority of disparaging the weapon and its millions of law-abiding owners.
Judge Julius Richardson, a President Donald Trump appointee who wrote the dissent, wrote that AR-15 rounds are more likely to fragment and wobble passing through walls compared with handguns, diminishing the risk to bystanders. He said the rifle’s accuracy only enhances its suitability for self-defense.
“For these reasons, law enforcement has long found the AR-15 to be an effective weapon for urban building raids and hostage situations,” he wrote. He also cited a 2021 survey of AR-15-style rifle owners about their reasons for purchasing the weapon. More than 60% said home defense was a reason.
The gun-rights groups that brought suit against Maryland have asked the Supreme Court to review the Fourth Circuit decision. They submitted a petition to the court last week that said the case was the “perfect vehicle” to resolve questions over the right to own AR-15s.
In July, the Supreme Court declined to review a similar case on Illinois’s AR-15 ban. Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, urged the court to clarify what makes a weapon dangerous and unusual.
But legal observers say the Supreme Court is more likely to take up the case out of Maryland. The lower-court litigation, unlike in the Illinois case, is completed with a final judgment against the plaintiffs and amassed a more extensive evidentiary record. The Fourth Circuit ruling also carries more weight coming from the full bench instead of a typical three-judge panel.
Other appeals courts are currently weighing AR-15 restrictions enacted in New Jersey, California and Connecticut.
A notorious gun
No other firearm has so divided Americans. Gun owners swear by them. The weapons fire rounds with smooth ease at ferocious speeds. They are lightweight, highly customizable, reliable and built to last—costing about as much as a laptop computer. U.S. civilians own approximately 20 million AR-15s, according to industry estimates.
The ubiquity of the rifles and owner survey data are helpful evidence for gun-rights plaintiffs, said Dave Kopel, a Second Amendment scholar who has argued that AR-15s should be protected. But enough justices have to be convinced that the rifles aren’t super-dangerous compared with smaller firearms, said Kopel.
While handguns have been used more often in mass shootings, AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles were used in four of the five deadliest mass shootings in American history, according to data from Hamline University’s Violence Prevention Project.
A body is covered with a sheet after a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017. Photo: Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun/AP
In the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, a single man perched in a hotel suite rained more than 1,000 rounds onto a country music festival, killing 60 and wounding hundreds. It was also the weapon of choice for the gunman who attempted to assassinate Trump.
Proponents of AR-15 bans question how often the rifles have saved lives.
“I’ve never seen a single case where it was at all clear that having an AR-15 as opposed to a handgun led to a better defensive outcome,” said Stanford law professor John Donohue, a gun-policy researcher.
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You mean ancient right?
(But I will be honest and do remember those wonderful days! Grumpy)
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Luger 9mm Double Dated
While a broad and diverse variety of small arms were used in the Second World War, we typically only think of a list of “usual suspects” when imagining the struggle for Europe. The M1 Garand, the MP40, the Lee-Enfield, the MG42, and the M1911A1 are the guns that come to mind first and foremost.
Rarer firearms show up from time to time in photographs and motion picture film footage, but the uncommon guns remain obscure because we see less of them. This is why archived photos and footage are important documents that show us what was being used and where. Photos and video footage recording the wartime use of obscure examples of World War II firepower are worth paying special attention to.
An incident occurred in occupied Rome on March 23, 1944, during which a fascinating assortment of obscure World War II weapons were captured on film. Because of the presence of a German Army Kriegsberichter (War Correspondent) named Lutz Koch who shot about a dozen photographs, the guns that were a part of the incident can be easily observed and identified.
The Ambush
It all happened on the Via Rasella, a narrow, 850-foot-long cobblestone street leading uphill from the Via Del Traforo to the Palazzo Barberini in Rome’s Municipio I district. Shortly before 4:00 pm, 156 men from the 11th Kompanie of the 3rd Battalion of Polizeiregiment “Bozen” began to climb the Via Rasella. Although they did not know it at the time, they were walking into an ambush set by partisans in the Italian resistance.
Proceeding through the intersection with the Via del Boccaccio, the column began passing an unexceptional rubbish cart along the road. The cart did not arouse suspicion before an improvised explosive device concealed in it exploded violently, ripping into the column of troops.
As the smoke cleared from the explosion of the bomb, eleven members of a Roman resistance group known as the Gruppi di Azione Patriottica (Patriotic Action Group or GAP) launched a sharp but brief rear guard attack. Italian fighters ran out into the middle of the Via Rasella from concealed positions along the Via del Boccaccio and opened fire on the survivors of the 11th Kompanie with pistols. Three more GAP members contributed gunfire from the top of the hill at the Via Rasella’s intersection with the Via delle Quattro Fontane. Then, after only a few seconds, the partisans disappeared into the cityscape.
Just like that, the whole thing was over. The bodies of 28 dead and over 100 wounded military policemen littered the Via Rasella. Five more members of the Polizeiregiment would ultimately die due to wounds received during the attack. None of the partisans were injured during the Via Rasella attack.
Immediate Response
Reaction to the Via Rasella attack was swift and brutal as the survivors of the 11th Kompanie began shooting indiscriminately in the direction of the Via del Boccaccio. Assuming that some of the shots had come from one of the windows on the upper floors of the building on the corner, they directed rifle and submachine gun fire at all of them.
As those shots were still being fired, Koch began taking photographs at the scene. He documented the damage caused by the bomb, the debris it tossed into the street, and a mixture of troops from 11th Kompanie and policemen from the Polizia dell’Africa Italiana (PAI) and the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), and the Regio Corpo di Pubblica Sicurezza (PS).
In these initial photos taken on the Via Rasella itself, three firearms can be seen: the 9mm MAB 38 submachine gun, the 9mm P-38 pistol, and the 6.5×52mm Model 1941 Carcano rifle.
When first adopted more than five decades earlier, the Carcano had been one of the most advanced rifles in the world because it provided the Kingdom of Italy with a six-shot smokeless-powder repeater. The original 50.6-inch-long Carcano Model 1891 rifle served through the Boxer Rebellion, the Italo-Turkish War, and World War I, but then during the Mussolini era the modified Model 1941 improved the design.
It retained the same action and magazine as the old Model 1891 rifle but was equipped with a four-inch shorter barrel and a carbine-style adjustable rear sight assembly. Model 1941 Carcano rifles are conspicuously present in most of Koch’s photographs taken on the Via Rasella immediately after the attack.
As the survivors of the 11th Kompanie continued shooting toward windows at the corner of the Via Rasella and the Via del Boccaccio, the curtain rose on another drama at the top of the hill on the Via delle Quattro Fontane.
Kriegsberichter Koch soon was working his way up the street when he encountered a stop-and-search operation just outside the gates of the Barberini Palace. There, Polizia dell’Africa Italiana, Guardia di Finanza, Questure di Roma, and Carabinieri officers working alongside troops of the 11th Kompanie had lined up a group of about 75 Roman men. The troops were holding the Italian citizens at gunpoint.
The images that Koch captured on film during the minutes that followed showed more uncommon firearms. Included in the photos were additional MAB 38 submachine guns and Model 1941 Carcano rifles.
Several other noteworthy Axis firearms can also be seen. A single Carcano Moschetto Modello 1891 with its distinctive 18″ pencil barrel and folding bayonet, shows up in one photograph. This provides a reminder that this variant of the Carcano saw widespread use during the Second World War. First adopted in 1893, the Moschetto Modello 1891 gave the Italians a lightweight, compact, and more practical Carcano with a modest 36″ overall length that was more appropriate for cavalry and mechanized troops not needing a full-length rifle.
The other bolt action service rifle physically present during the dragnet operation near the palace was none other than the incomparable German Kar98k Mauser. In addition, two versions of the long-serving Pistola Rotazione Sistema Bodeo in 10.35×22mm Rimmed (10.35mm Ordinanza Italiana) show up in Koch’s photos.
A six-shot, single-action/double-action revolver, the Bodeo had been around for more than 50 years. The old workhorse was known for being reliable and simple. The first Bodeo seen at the site of the round-up was a Tipo Ufficiali (“Officer’s Model”) with a 4.53″ barrel and a trigger guard. The other was a Tipo Truppa (“Enlisted Model”) with the same length barrel, no trigger guard, and a distinctive folding trigger/safety.
These guns played a central role in presenting the intimidating police presence that characterized how the city of Rome was being controlled under German occupation. Despite all that firepower, the Roman resistance represented a real danger because it could strike anywhere and anytime.
Lasting Impact
The Via Rasella ambush on March 23, 1944, was the largest partisan attack carried out in occupied Italy. It came at a complicated time in the war. Allied forces were closing in on Rome from Monte Cassino to the southeast and from the Anzio/Nettuno beachhead to the south.
Even with Allied troops taking ground from the Nazis in Italy, the German occupation of the Eternal City was still strong. Consequently, the liberation of Rome was still more than a month away.
Koch’s photos of the aftermath of the Via Rasella attack documented the insistent grip of Germany on Rome while also showing the vulnerability of the occupiers to an insurgency. For firearms historians, the photos also document the assortment of guns that were used on the streets of the city in early 1944.
Reprisals
Luftwaffe Generalmajor Kurt Mälzer was the German Armed Forced Commandant in Rome. With the direct authorization of Adolph Hitler, Mälzer ordered the execution of ten Italians for each of the soldiers who had been killed.
The day after the Via Rasella ambush, a total of 335 Romans in German custody for other crimes — from spying to being Jewish — were taken to an abandoned quarry on the outskirts of Rome. As young as 15 and as old as 70, they were led into the abandoned tunnels and caves to be executed with a shot to the back of the head. The majority of those murdered were civilians and had no part of the resistance movement.
When the atrocity was complete, German engineers collapsed the entrances to hide the murders. Known as the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, the site is now a memorial with 336 tombs: 335 for those that were murdered there and an additional empty tomb to commemorate all who died at the hands of Nazi and Fascist forces in Italy.