This category includes your average hunting rifle.
I’m not even sure that is true. I’m not saying it is not true. However, in my anecdotal experience growing up in a hunting family and surrounded by family and friends that hunt, auto load weapons were the exception. Bolt actions were the rule.
There is no such thing as a semi-automatic assault rifle. Pointing that out is not being hung up on terminology nor is it derailing the conversation. It’s stating the facts. Before any informed discussion on a subject can be had, the topic of conversation should be well understood. The use muddy and mixed terminology does not further the conversation but rather detracts from it.
I strongly disagree. When cannabis was made illegal it was the use of slang and imprecise terminology which allowed the prohibition to pass without the public being fully aware of what was being made illegal. Knowing what is being discussed in public debates is important IMO.
First, no one is insisting on anything and second no one is being shut out of the conversation. You are chastising my clearing up terms as if I used them to dismiss someones point of view here which I did not. What is happening now is that a few people are alienating me from the conversation for knowing that there is a difference. Is that any better?
I suppose the long and short of it is that I don’t think the argument “Ignorance is fine. Don’t mess with my ignorance” is a good one
That was true for a very long time but for whatever reason the majority of hunting rifles sold today are semi.
I’m pretty sure it isn’t, but if so we should be including all semiautos in the discussion. As you point out, a manually operated rifle (bolt, lever, whatever) with a capacity of maybe three rounds is more than adequate for a hunter. If someone needs a semiauto, they should do more target practice.
Yet here we are, still debating the usage of a more-or-less arbitrarily defined label instead of discussing what to do about civilian ownership of devices that allow them to commit mass murder on a whim.
While in this case the comment was clear, at least clear enough that it wasn’t worth bickering over what constitute an assault rifle because it was called out as “semi-automatic”, when people are blatantly making calls for changes with wrong information, it should be corrected. Not just with this but any subject. One of the most common on this subject (but not in this example) is calling for the ban of full autos, which are banned in many states, incredible regulated everywhere else, and are very expensive. Or like the old Assault Weapon Ban was based primarily on cosmetics, making it more or less worthless.
Another example would be people upset about drug use and making claims about pot being overly dangerous, or making statements that pot or LSD or other drugs are too dangers to even consider medical uses.
You’re right politicians need to know MORE about stuff to properly craft laws, but also I think it behooves people asking for changes in said laws to know enough to know what to ask for, as well as what current laws are in place. Like many things, there is a lot of misinformation out there.
I agree there shouldn’t be dismissal, but rather education.
Agreed! If hunters wants to call hunting a sport, it should have fucking rules.
Oh my god, a maniac just shot up a school/church/workplace! How did he get an assault weapon?
Well, assault weapons are legal.
But assault weapons are for mass murder! Why does a civilian need a weapon designed for mass murder?
So you can defend yourself.
Against who?
A maniac armed with an assault weapon who wants commit mass murder.
(one week later)
Oh my god, a maniac just shot up a school/church/workplace! How did he get an assault weapon?
Well, assault weapons are legal…
Like this.
Ok, first off, hunting does have rules. This includes (depending on the animal) season, bag limits, licenses to hunt, extra license or tag for certain game, possible limits on types of ammunition (i.e. steel or bismuth shot for water fowl or certain caliber for deer), and magazine limits (i.e. for bird hunting one can only have 3 rounds in the shot gun).
So, while someone might use an AR-15 to hunting, they would only have a 5 round magazine (same as most bolt actions) and still only take one or two shots at game. (Semi Autos allow for faster follow ups so they will go down quicker.) Just like your car allows you to go 100mph, most likely you aren’t going 100 mph.
Furthermore, for pest removal semi-autos actually do a better job, such as for wild hogs which tear up land and ecosystems some thing horrible in some states. In those cases they might be allowed a larger magazines.
But the caricature of someone like Elmer Fudd wantonly blasting away as fast as possible is just that.
An Ar-15 is NOT an assault weapon. Assault weapons are full automatic. An AR-15 is semi-automatic, the same designation as about 100 million legitimate hunting guns.
Bull. This is important.
The more popular is a self-defense weapon, the more Constitutionally-protected it is. There are MILLIONS of semi-automatic “assault” rifles in the hands of the public, which makes them very protected under the 2nd Amendment.
These are not automatics, they are not actual assault rifles - they just look like them. And they are popular for several reasons, one of them being as a protest vote against perceived overzealous gun control.
Dismissing obfuscation of terms in this debate as irrelevant does a service to no one.
For the reasons set forth by @teknocholer , I don’t have a problem banning all semi-autos.
And I hunted boar with a single-shot bolt action. It was a sport. I lost.
Where would you be without them?
(Canada? Switzerland?)
That’s just eliminated 99% of journalism, I think. And silenced most politicians.
There is a legal phrase, de minimus non curat lex. It means “the law ignores small things.” You are trying to argue that the difference between a gun that can kill lots of people very quickly and one that can kill slightly fewer people very quickly is really important. Others are suggesting that the important differences between guns that can multiple people very quickly, guns that can only kill one person at a time, and no guns at all, are rather more significant and serious distinctions.
I guess you’re one of the people who would defend yourself against a charge of running a red light by arguing that the spectrum of the light had some yellow and green in it as well. We must be clear about these things.
Yes, that was perhaps a bit of a rant. But this pilpul to try to avoid what is staring people in the face is frankly pitiful.
If only 
You say that like it’s a bad thing. (-;
As of this week Columbine High School doesn’t even rank in the top 10 deadliest shootings in modern American history anymore. But sure, anyone trying to restrict access to the kinds of weapons that make these massacres so tragically commonplace is “overzealous.”
I’m concerned that our civilian militia, as described in the Second Amendment, has fallen way behind our military in destructive capability. If there were a fascist military coup I’m deeply concerned that our civilian militia would not be equal to the task, what with all of their convulsing in ecstasy.
Sarcasm: Recognize the signs. It may already be too late.
Well, if that bothers you, you could stay on the rails.
