Why Semi-Automatic Rifles Should Be Banned

Semi-Automatic rifles are a favored weapon by mass shooters and terrorists. Let us look at the case for banning them.

I am a pragmatist. Whether semi-automatic rifles should be banned in your country or not depends, I think, on how frequent mass shootings and terrorist attacks happen and how important a role semi-automatic rifles play.

However, if you look at the US, they have been involved in pretty much every mass shooting in the US in the last years. One of the most favored semi-automatic rifles is the AR-15.

AR-15 style rifle. These come in many different configurations and styles.

To get a sense of how dangerous these guns are, consider this: In 2011 the right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik blew up the government building in downtown Oslo, Norway where I live. There were blown out windows and glass all over downtown wherever I walked for days afterwards. Yet this massive car bomb only killed about 8 people. It was a whole van filled with explosives.

In contrast, with his automatic-rifle, he managed to kill 70 people on the island of Utøya. We have seen the same with other terrorist attacks over the last years. Guns tend to kill a lot more people than bombs.

Breivik did not need a fully-automatic gun to kill 70 people. A semi-automatic rifle lets you fire…