Or at least that is one of the latest arguments that those who seek to ban them are floating. In fact, it sounds like that is one of the primary arguments that the State of California is planning on using in their fight to prevent their unconstitutional assault weapons ban from being overturned. They claim that the “assault weapons” they have banned are not suitable for defensive uses, are only for offensive uses, and thus they serve no valid use in society and are not protected by the Second Amendment. That is but one of the arguments they are offering in defense of the California ban, which I am going to pick apart in a series of articles, this being the first in the series.
There are many problems with that argument though, not the least of which is the Heller decision, but for sake of argument, I am just going to look at the viability of an “assault weapon” in a defensive use, and for that I am going to focus on the AR-15 family as that weapon platform seems to be one of the major targets of those who seek to ban firearms. It is also probably the most commonly owned firearm that falls under the “assault weapon” category, with millions of them owned by millions of law abiding Americans.
Stories of AR’s being used in a defense scenario are not remotely unheard of, unless of course you are not paying attention, or your only source of information is the biased, agenda driven American mainstream media. There are in fact ample stories readily accessible via a quick internet search. Those stories include instances where homeowners have defended themselves against home invasion robberies, where a 15 year old boy defended himself and his sister in their home, and very recently a situation in which a pregnant woman used an AR to defend her husband’s life.
Getting beyond the ample cases of private citizens using AR’s in self-defense, I cannot help but consider at my own personal experience. During my career as a cop, I fired my AR one time in the line of duty, and that one time was a self-defense shooting. In a nutshell, I arrived at the location of an incomplete 9-1-1 call, and I immediately came under fire. I used my AR to save my life that night. Coming under fire, without any provocation, and returning fire is pretty much a textbook example of self-defense. That the state in which I served as a cop is trying to suggest AR’s are not used for self-defense is ridiculous to me.
In fact, it is so ridiculous that the State of California itself does not believe its own legal argument. Please allow me to explain. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) is responsible for protection of the California State Capital building, and is also responsible for the protection detail for Governor Gavin Newsom. The CHP officers assigned to those details have at their disposal, AR-15’s. Being that both of those assignments are a defensive assignment, where the officer’s primary duty is the protection of elected officials from potential offensive attacks, it would seem to defeat the state’s argument that the AR is not a defensive weapon.
Taking that one step further, the United States Secret Service is the agency primarily responsible for the protection of the President, his family, the White House, and several other persons and facilities. They are not by any means an offensive force. For the personnel assigned to those details, their primary role is defending against attacks on those persons or facilities. Want to take a wild guess as to what rifle the Secret Service is replacing their MP5’s with? Yeah, you guessed it, a select fire, short barreled rifle from the AR-15 family of rifles.
While we are at it, let us take it further still. United States embassies around the globe are defended by the US Marine Corps Embassy Security Group. I think we can all safely agree that US embassies are not offensive facilities, and the personnel assigned there are there solely to defend the facility and the persons located within it. The Marine Corps’ primary rifles are members of the AR-15 family.
Aside from self-defense, they also are quite commonly used in defense of farmland, livestock and even some rural towns. It is common knowledge that Texas and other states have a huge problem with feral hogs running loose and wreaking all sorts of havoc. In fact, just the other day, a woman was killed by feral hogs in Texas. One of the primary weapons being used to combat those feral hogs are rifles from the AR-15 family. There are plenty of videos on YouTube of people using AR-15’s to shoot feral hogs from helicopters. In fact, some news agencies have done stories documenting that, just like the Vice News video below.
Despite what city dwelling California residents may believe, most of California is actually rural land, or mountains and forest land. In fact, cities only make up a tiny percentage of the actual land in this state. The map below shows just how little land is urban cities, which are the blue areas on the map. Everything else on that map is rural or “frontier” (mountains/forest). As one of those residents in a rural part of the state, who has livestock to protect, my go-to weapon when something is pestering my animals is the same gun that is my go-to weapon for home defense, and it happens to be the very same rifle I used to save my life just over eight years ago.
Getting beyond the abundance of evidence that AR-15’s are in fact used in defensive scenarios all the time, even by the very state government that is seeking to take them away from their citizens, there are host of reasons that the AR platform is the ideal defensive weapon, which is exactly why they are the weapon of choice by that state.
Most SWAT teams in the US have ditched their 9mm submachine guns, like the venerable MP5. It is not because the MP5 is unreliable or a bad weapon. It is because of the caliber they are chambered in. Submachine guns, by definition, are chambered in handgun calibers, and the most common caliber for a law enforcement submachine gun for decades was 9mm.
Extensive testing was done by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s Special Enforcement Bureau (SWAT) many years ago. That testing compared the rounds fired by their MP5 to rounds fired by a compact AR-15 rifle. The results of that testing lead them to switch over to AR’s because they proved less likely to overpenetrate, which in turn means you are less likely to accidentally strike a person on the other side of walls if you miss your intended target. Additionally, intentional hits on the intended target are more effective with the AR as compared to the sub-gun.
An extensive comparison was done by Paramount Tactical Solutions looking at all aspects of the three most common platforms used as home defense guns: handguns, shotguns and an AR-15. While they discuss the handgun in the opening part, they did not compare it in the ballistics portion.
Aside from the ballistics aspect, there are a number of other reasons most SWAT teams in the United States have switched from submachine guns to compact rifles from the AR family, and those reasons are the exact same reasons that make the AR platform an excellent home defense weapon.
By it’s very design, the modern AR is designed to make attaching optics, lights and lasers simple, and all of those devices increase the ease with which the weapon can be employed in a defensive encounter. In it’s un-neutered form (not CA legal), it can have a telescoping stock which means the length of pull can be easily adjusted to accommodate users of various sizes and builds, meaning both the largest and smallest persons in the same home can easily operate the same weapon should they need to defend themselves, their homes, or their livestock.
So ask yourself this, who is a better judge of what makes a good defense weapon, a bunch of politically motivated politicians and lawyers, OR cops, military and self-defense experts? Despite what the State of California claims in their legal arguments, the AR platform is in fact an ideal defensive weapon. I am not remotely alone in selecting it as my home defense weapon of choice.
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