Did California's restrictive gun laws actually save lives in the recent attack on a San Diego mosque? According to one talking head from the Brady Campaign, the answer is yes, though he doesn't have any real evidence to back up his claims.
Steve Lindley, a former police officer who's now a senior policy advisor for the anti-gun group, told KPBS that one of the attackers appears to have used a California-compliant Ruger Mini-14; a semi-automatic rifle that lacks the cosmetic features that would otherwise make it an "assault weapon" under California law.
Lindley said features such as pistol grips make rifles more lethal.
"Over time it makes it easier for the shooter to have the firearm to their shoulder and in their hands," he said. "Less fatigue, and it lines up a little bit better with your eyesight. The capacity of the magazines and other features on the firearm make it more accurate and easier to use in close quarters."
The video shows the body cam operator firing the Mini-14 until it appears to jam. He struggles to clear the chamber and appears to remove and reinsert the magazine. He works the bolt, apparently unable to chamber a new round.
As the video continues, he continues to struggle with the bolt of the rifle before giving up, drawing a handgun and stepping outside.
The entire attack at the mosque lasted less than four minutes, so fatigue wasn't a factor. As KPBS notes, what slowed down the attacker was the fact that his rifle jammed. I've not seen any law enforcement officer or investigator suggest that the lack of a pistol grip had any kind of impact whatsoever on the attack.
Although the Mini-14 used in the attack is capable of accepting 30 or 40-round magazines, said Lindley, the shooters appeared to only have a California-compliant 10-round magazine.
"If you have ten round magazines, you have ten rounds to shoot before you need to change magazines," he said. "If you have a 30- or 40-round magazine, you can shoot 30 or 40 rounds before you need to reload."
That's important, Lindley said, because when shooters stop to reload, it gives victims time to either escape or attempt to subdue the attacker.
Again, though, it appears to have made no difference here. The gun jammed before ten rounds were fired, so even if the magazines were California compliant that had no bearing on how the attack played out.
Michael Schwartz, executive director of the San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, also spoke to KPBS about the shooting. As you might expect, he has a very different point of view than Lindley.
"Looking at the reality of this, a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun from killing a lot of kids. Full stop,” said Michael Schwartz, the executive director of the San Diego County Gun Owners PAC.
"The assault weapons ban that California has implemented clearly failed — it didn't stop these two people," he said.
Schwartz described the features banned by California as "cosmetic" and that the semi-automatic rifles function the same regardless of their stock, grips or magazine size.
"The idea that ... the (high-capacity) magazine ban stopped them from getting a high-capacity magazine ... there just isn't any evidence or proof," he said.
While high-capacity magazines can't be bought or sold in California, Schwartz said anyone can travel to the next state over and buy as many as they want.
Security guard Amin Abdullah, who was armed, engaged the shooters outside the mosque and wounded one of them, according to authorities. Abdullah was also able to use his radio to alert staff inside the mosque, who then put the building into lockdown. After killing Abdullah, the perpetrators entered the mosque but were unable to enter any of the classrooms where more than 100 students and teachers were located. The pair then spotted teacher Nadir Awad and caretake Mansour Kaziha, who were outside the mosque, and headed outside the building to attack them.
By that point the perpetrators could hear the sirens of police, and they fled the scene of their crime. After attempting to shoot a landscaper a few blocks away, the two attackers then took their own lives in the car one of them had stolen from his parents.
Lindley's assertions about the impact of California's gun control laws are based entirely on theoretical "what ifs", not what actually happened. If Abdullah had been unarmed and unable to engage the attacker, as well as alert staffers to the danger, the perpetrators may very well have been able to kill more victims. His actions, to me, are the single biggest factor in preventing the loss of lives that day.
If Lindley had any words of praise for the armed citizen, they weren't relayed by KPBS. Instead, the station's report closes with this quote from the gun control activist.
He said with so many guns in the United States, authorities can't stop shootings — all they can do is try to limit the damage.
"We can prevent a lot of victimology by lowering the capacity of the magazines," he said.
Magazine capacity had almost nothing to do with the outcome of this crime. I say almost because we don't know how many shots Abdullah fired at the two suspects. It's entirely possible that if the security guard had a larger capacity magazine, he might have been able to kill one or both of the suspects. But California's magazine ban didn't limit the perpetrators' ability to carry out their attack, since the rifle used by one of the attackers jammed before that California-compliant magazine had been emptied.
It's truly shameful that Lindley is unable or unwilling to acknowledge the role that an armed citizen played in saving lives because he's so invested in spinning this as some kind of victory for gun control. I wish KPBS had pushed back on some of his claims, but at least they gave equal time to Schwartz, who did a great job in rebutting Lindley's version of events.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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