Ban Military-Style Assault Weapons!

Last weekend saw two mass shootings, one in El Paso, Texas, and one in Dayton, Ohio. The one in El Paso was done with an AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle:

AK-47 assault rifle

The AK-47 is a military-style weapon. Many of us have erroneously assumed that private ownership of AK-47s and similar semi-automatic, military-style weapons is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — but it's not! According to Barry Mendelsohn's letter in today's Washington Post (scroll down to find it):

In the written 5-to-4 District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court decision, which dramatically expanded the Second Amendment rights of individuals to possess guns outside of militias, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explicitly excluded military-style weapons from that right.

According to this article about the Heller decision:

The Supreme Court stated, however, that the Second Amendment should not be understood as conferring a “right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” The Court provided examples of laws it considered “presumptively lawful,” including those which:

• Prohibit firearm possession by felons and the mentally ill;
• Forbid firearm possession in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings; and
• Impose conditions on the commercial sale of firearms.

The Court noted that this list is not exhaustive, and concluded that the Second Amendment is also consistent with laws banning “dangerous and unusual weapons” not in common use at the time, such as M-16 rifles and other firearms that are most useful in military service.

The AK-47 qualifies as a type of weapon that is "most useful in military service." So does the similar AR-15 assault rifle:

AR-15 assault rifle

Therefore, banning the AK-47 and the AR-15 would not violate Heller. Banning weapons like these would prevent untold numbers of mass shootings in America. So let's ban all privately owned military-style assault weapons now!