Anti-Gun Activist Says ‘Common Use’ Doesn’t Matter

Andy Parker is one of the better known figures in the gun control movement in Virginia. His daughter Alison, a TV reporter in Roanoke, was shot and killed along with videographer Adam Ward by a former colleague during a live segment on the local news back in 2015. 

Ever since, Parker has devoted much of his time and energy pushing for more restrictive gun laws. I don’t really blame Parker for doing so, though I don’t know what policy would have stopped his daughter’s killer from acquiring a gun given that he had never been arrested or been subject to an involuntary commitment to a mental hospital. The only red flag he’d displayed beforehand was a short temper and an off-putting attitude towards many co-workers, which is hardly reason to strip someone of any of their rights. 

Alison Parker and Adam Ward’s attacker used a handgun to carry out his heinous crime, but Andy Parker focused on the AR-15 in a new column at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he argues that regardless of whether centerfire semi-automatic long guns are in common use, they should still be banned.

Parker highlights several mass shootings that were committed by individuals using AR-15s and other so-called assault weapons, and while he acknowledges that “[n]one of this means every owner of an AR-15-style rifle, or the millions of Americans who lawfully own such rifles, bears any responsibility for what mass shooters have done with the same style rifle.” 

But the “common use” standard was never meant to describe how often a weapon appears in daily American life without incident. It was meant to determine whether the government could restrict a category of weapons at all. The Founders’ generation regulated arms in numerous ways — where they could be stored, how they could be carried, and who could own them. The question a court must answer is not whether a weapon is popular. It’s whether restricting it is consistent with a tradition of public safety regulation that is, in fact, quite old. So, where would Second Amendment absolutists draw the line — machine guns? Bazookas? A 50-round drum magazine? A hundred rounds? The doctrine offers no answer.

A Second Amendment absolutist would probably draw the line at any restriction that infringes on the ability to possess and carry any bearable arm. But that’s not the issue before the courts that are hearing challenges to Virginia’s ban on so-called assault firearms, nor is it the question that the Supreme Court will answer in Viramontes and Grant next term. 

As Parker himself admits, there are millions of Americans who own these firearms who will never commit a violent crime with them. And while Parker believes that AR-15s are the “weapon of choice” for mass shooters, FBI data shows that handguns are actually more commonly used in active shooting attacks, not rifles. Even if they were the most commonly used firearm in those uncommon crimes, that wouldn’t mean that AR-15s are unprotected. The Supreme Court noted in Heller that handguns are the weapon of choice for armed criminals, but they’re also the weapon of choice for lawful citizens who want to protect themselves from harm, which takes a ban off the table. 

AR-15s and other centerfire semi-automatic rifles are in common use for lawful purposes, and that means that they cannot be banned without violating the Second Amendment. Parker might not like the “common use” test, but it’s settled law at this point. 

My prediction is that these “assault weapon bans” are going to be held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court next year, and perhaps bans on “large capacity” magazines as well. Still, I’d be surprised if SCOTUS ruled so broadly that virtually every regulation on an AR-15 that gun controllers can dream up would be deemed unconstitutional as well. 

In his column, Parker points to Colorado’s new “permit-to-purchase” law for AR-15s and other gas-operated semi-automatic firearms as a potential “workaround if the assault weapons ban ultimately fails.” I agree that will be the fallback position of the gun control lobby, but if I were Parker I wouldn’t get my hopes up about Colorado’s law standing up to a legal challenge. Its author has admitted the goal was to effectively come up with a ban without calling it by that name, and it is already proving to inhibit and infringe on the rights of Coloradans. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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