By Sébastien Blanc, AFP WASHINGTON – The mass shootings that regularly stun America often share an important feature: the gunmen used military-style assault rifles designed to kill many people in a very short time. Such was the case last Sunday in the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people died and 53 were wounded. Such high-power weapons — light, easy to handle and with high-capacity magazines — were the deadly common denominator in a string of spasms of gun violence: — a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in July 2012 (82 people shot, 12 of them fatalities) — Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012 (26 dead, 20 of them small children) — the Islamist-linked shooting in December 2015 in San Bernardino, California (36 people shot, 14 of them fatalities). In the Orlando slaughter by gunman Omar Mateen, many of those who [...]
