Eugene Robinson | July 14, 2024

The gun used in the attempt to kill former president Donald Trump was an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. Not long ago, we tried to keep such weapons of war out of civilian hands. We must try again.

The shooter, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed at the scene. We cannot know with certainty why he committed this obscene act, but we already know how: He did it with a rifle designed to fire high-velocity rounds that rip human bodies to pieces.

One of those rounds struck Trump's right ear, coming within an inch of killing him. Another bullet fatally wounded Corey Comperatore, 50, a former volunteer fire chief who was excited to attend the Trump rally, according to his wife. Comperatore died trying to shield his family from the gunfire. Two other attendees, both men, were wounded and remain in critical condition at a Pittsburgh hospital.

Last year, The Post published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles and graphic illustrations showing why AR-15-style rifles are so much more lethal than most other firearms. Bullets from these assault weapons create a blast effect inside the body, pulverizing organs and bones. Most of the deadliest and most tragic mass shootings over the past two decades, such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, were committed with AR-15-style rifles.

The original AR-15 is a variant of the M16 rifle used in the Vietnam War. That is where such weapons belong - on the battlefield. As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the 2008 Heller decision expanding gun rights, the Second Amendment is "not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."

In 1994, when Bill Clinton was president, Congress banned assault weapons nationwide - but with a "sunset" provision that the ban would expire in 10 years if not reauthorized. In 2004, during the George W. Bush administration, Congress failed to extend the prohibition, and subsequent attempts to revive the ban have gone nowhere.

Meanwhile, AR-15-style rifles have become so popular that The Post's series was titled, "American Icon." So many are now in civilian hands that banning them anew would be dauntingly difficult.

But we should try. We cannot give up on the hope of having a serious, open-minded, bipartisan discussion about whether we really want military arms to be so accessible to would-be killers such as Crooks. We almost lost Trump, a former president who is about to be given his party's nomination to run for the White House again. We did lose Comperatore, a devoted father whose only crime was attending a campaign rally.

We are losing far too many. We are suffering far too much. And while we cannot outlaw the motivation that inspires mass shooters, we can take away their implement of choice. We can take away the gun.