The political battle over so-called “assault weapons” is one of the most polarizing issues in American politics. According to a CNN/ORC Poll conducted in November 2013, Americans are split down the middle on the issue of gun control: 49% supporting it, and 50% opposed. A ban on things called “assault weapons” seems to be common sense, so why is it so controversial?

Before we have a debate about an “assault weapons” ban, we must first analyze what kind of guns we are talking about. The reason that gun owners are so vehemently opposed to and, quite frankly, confused about “assault weapons” bans is because those bans are already in place. An actual “assault weapon” is something that is fully automatic (e.g. a machine gun), the possession of which has been illegal for almost 100 years. The term “assault weapon” in the context of semi-automatics is a term manufactured by politicians who know nothing about guns and who target certain categories of them because they look scary. The truth is that these so-called “assault weapons” are semi-automatic (by one pull of the trigger, one bullet is fired), with no technical differences from any other semi-automatic rifles that would still remain legal under such a ban. The proposed “assault weapons” ban last year instead targeted cosmetic features of weapons and attempted to put in place tremendous obstacles for people who want to sufficiently defend themselves.

One quick example of how “assault weapons” bans attack cosmetic features is a pistol grip, a piece of plastic that you can insert under certain hunting rifles. Pistol grips do absolutely nothing to change the lethality of a weapon. Rather, their purpose is to offer another way of gripping the rifle. Without a pistol grip, a shooter would simply grip the stock of the weapon rather than the pistol grip. Under the proposed “assault weapons” ban last year, a Remington 750 rifle would be perfectly legal—until a plastic pistol grip was placed on it.

Many politicians use anti-gun propaganda terms to describe so-called “assault weapons” as “military-style,” having the ability to “spray fire,” and being “automatic machine guns.” These terms are dangerously inaccurate, and are only used to scare the general public. “Military-style” and “spraying-fire” weapons are fully automatic (by one pull of the trigger, a constant stream of bullets are fired), which are already illegal. Calling these controversial weapons “automatic machine guns” is false, yet I would argue that a significant portion of the population is unaware that the argument is not about “machine guns.” All of these names, while they may sound scary, are thoroughly inaccurate depictions of the weapons being discussed.

Another core component of this debate refers to the number of bullets that should be permitted in a magazine. The proposed “assault weapons” ban last year would have made it illegal for any gun to have more than ten bullets in its magazine. Ten, though, is very arbitrary. Many guns come with 12, 15, 20, or 30-round magazines. People who owned such magazines would be required to place a piece of metal in all but ten of the bullet places in the magazine.

Suggesting that criminals (or even legal gun owners, for that matter) would be willing to spend their time buying a piece of metal so that they can restrict their firing abilities is preposterous. Even if we were to accept the ridiculous premise that people would follow these regulations, it still would not be practical. All you have to do to replace a magazine is eject it by pressing a button and inserting a new one by sliding it into the empty slot. The process takes, quite literally, less than a second to execute. Shooters would (and already do) bring numerous magazines with them when trying to perpetrate mass shootings.

For the sake of argument, let us accept the fallacious premise that restricting bullet capacity to ten rounds would actually work in restricting the amount of bullets used. The Department of Justice released a study on home invaders, and found that 50% of home invasions involved several intruders, and 15% of home invasions involved a horrifying four or more intruders. No one could possibly fend off four armed intruders with just ten bullets. People deserve a fighting chance in a home invasion and should never be forced to retreat into victimhood.

The AR-15, a gun commonly scapegoated by anti-gun advocates and is at the center of the so-called “assault weapons” debate, has been used in several mass shootings. It is easy to forget, however, the incredibly positive aspects of the AR-15, in the midst of these shootings. The AR-15 is lightweight and easy to aim, making them ideal self-defense weapons for women and elderly people. In contrast to shotguns, the AR-15 has very little recoil, making shooting steadier (and less painful). Despite what the media would have you believe, AR-15’s are used in self-defense hundreds of times per year. Just recently in Abington, Pennsylvania, a man successfully defended himself and his wife with an AR-15 after their house was broken into by a man on a drug-induced rampage.

The studies on this are clear, and they are not on the side of anti-gun advocates. The United States tried banning “assault weapons” in the 1990’s, and it was an utter failure. After the ban expired in 2004, the Department of Justice, the National Research Council, John Lott, and the National Institute of Justice all launched studies on the impacts of the “assault weapons” ban on crimes. Each and every one of them came up with the same resounding conclusion: that the “assault weapons” ban was an ineffective piece of legislation that could not conclusively be seen to have prevented any crimes. To quote the Department of Justice in 2004, since the implementation of the “assault weapons” ban, “there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality or injuriousness of gun violence.”

There are a few reasons as to why the “assault weapons” ban was such a failure. To begin with, all rifles (not just “assault rifles”) made up just 2.5% of homicides in 2011, according to the FBI. In 2011, a person was five times more likely to have been stabbed to death than to have been fatally shot by a rifle of any kind. The ban on “assault weapons,” even if it were to have been effective in thwarting crimes involving those weapons, would have only impacted a minute percentage of overall homicides.

Another reason it was ineffective is because, when it comes to guns, criminals do not care about the law. According to a release by the Department of Justice in 2002, over 80% of criminals obtained their weapons illegally, either from underground markets or from friends giving them illegal guns. As you can see, these gun laws do not affect criminals—they affect law-abiding citizens.

It is unfair to criticize laws without offering alternative solutions. Mass shootings are a problem, and must be addressed. The solutions that in my opinion would be the most important would be to expand concealed-carry laws (laws that allow people to carry guns in public, as long as they are concealed by the owner), ensure that mental illnesses are included in background checks, and to scale back gun-free zones.

According to a study by Quinnipiac University, states with concealed-carry laws had consistently lower crime rates than states without them. The reason is simple. Criminals are not going to commit crimes if there is a chance that they could be shot for it. There is likely a reason that James Eagan Holmes chose the Century 16 Theater in Aurora to commit his atrocities. It was likely because it was the only gun-free movie theater within a 20-mile radius, and he knew that the moviegoers could not stop him at that theater. There is a reason that we never hear about the pre-Christmas shooting at a crowded Oregon mall in which a man opened fire on the crowd. The reason is because only two people were killed before a man with a concealed-carry permit pulled out his concealed weapon, and after seeing that the perpetrator ran behind a wall and killed himself.

I understand that it is a natural human tendency to point fingers after horrible atrocities. The blaming of guns, however, is thoroughly unfair. Trying to take certain guns out of the hands of millions of people who own them responsibly is a deep injustice for those who rely on them for self-defense. We did not blame the Boston bombings on pressure cookers; let’s stop blaming guns for mass shootings.