FAIRFAX, VA—Noting that the weapons used in recent mass shootings were designed to wreak far more havoc, officials with the National Rifle Association held a press conference Monday, insisting that the fatalities racked up in the recent string of mass shootings do not accurately reflect the potential deadliness of the firearms involved. “What we’ve seen is a rash of unhinged, radicalized individuals whose mental health issues most likely caused them to misuse high-powered weapons, resulting in the taking of a mere dozen or so innocent lives at a time. A responsible and well-trained gun owner should be able to kill twice that many people with just one high-capacity magazine,” said NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, who advised Americans not to take the incidents in Virginia Beach or Poway as an indicator of the lethality of semi-automatic AR-15 style rifles, which are designed to generate far bloodier outcomes. “Gun deaths are a mental health issue; we can’t ignore that the shooters were suffering, therefore they were far less efficient marksmen. Had they been mentally well, they could have exercised better trigger control and framed their targets more clearly in the sights, turning misses into hits and wounded victims into fatalities. The NRA firmly believes the death toll of these past few months does not nearly reflect how deadly these guns should be.” LaPierre noted that the 2016 Orlando shooting and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting far more accurately represented what firearms can really do.

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