My BFF’s kid was annoyed because their engineering teacher apparently went on a rant this week about how teen girls should be covered up and that’s what is wrong with America… They just put on their ear buds and ignored it.
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Watching from across the ocean (Australia). Because of this please feel free to ignore this. The gun culture in USA is toxic it is the problem. Other countries have guns, mental illness, gangs and toxic masculinity. We have your media, movies, literature and books. We gave you Rupert Murdoch after all. What we don’t have is your gun culture. We have your bathroom debate your lack of separation of church and state. We even have media who travel to your country to learn from your worst. Hell the Queen Of England still technically rules us but somehow I am free enough to type this.
We don’t have your gun culture. In Australia, Americas gun culture harms law abiding gun owners. Guns are at times a necessary tool. They can be controlled and managed and can be useful.
What surprises me is how disingenuous and bad faith the arguments of some of America’s gun owners are. You can bait feral pigs, you can do organised culls. Your not the only country with feral pigs. You are the only country where this keeps happening. So gun owners what are you doing?
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Nice to see them adopting the phraseology though. Sympathetic magic? Homeopathy?
The quest to put fully automatic guns in every soldier’s hand was largely driven by the research of S.L.A. Marshall during WWII. He found that the best predictor of whether a soldier actually fired at the enemy was whether they had a fully automatic weapon. The thinking now is that the reason for that is many of those weapons are crew served, and that having somebody right next to you made you more likely to fire.
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When I want to see somebodys mind blown, I point out that it was the Obama administration that decided that the NFA* did not apply to bump stocks, but Trump that banned them. And I wish that they had managed to re-write the NFA to clearly apply to bump stocks rather than issue an executive order. Really, if you read the law, it seems likely that the ban would be reversed if it went to court. It should be no surprise that bump-stocks get around the NFA because that is what they were EXPRESSLY DESIGNED TO DO.
*National Firearms Act- the law that regulates the ownership of fully automatic guns, sawed off shotguns, and silencers.
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Sorry, RandomDude, not true. It’s a military grade weapon. Please don’t keep spreading this dumb untruth.
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SLA Marshall’s research is widely regarded now as full of shit and was made up out of thin air
https://www.historynet.com/long-dead-hand-s-l-marshall-misleads-historians.htm
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Or at least a very Trumpian practice of proceeding from a few anecdotes to made up statistics.
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“If the sight of my thigh makes you kill people, the problem is not my thigh.”
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Which reminds me,
(Relevant portion 16:00 - 18:58)
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They have the same capabilities, true. He’s probably talking about the Ruger Mini-14 which at the time of the AWB was way more common in rural areas than any ARs or anything else. It wasn’t affected by the AWB because it lacked certain features.
This also means every bolt action hunting rifle is also as lethal as any bolt action military sniper rifle and has most if not all of the same capabilities.
Separating “good” into “bad” is semantics at best, a fools errand at worse.
If there’s no difference in capabilities, it’s imperative that they all be kept out the hands of civilians.
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That’s a fair enough line in the sand. In fact many people who only hunt or are in rural areas who only use bolt actions and shot guns would agree with you that ARs are too dangerous for civilian use. But they would balk at the suggestion their Remington 700 in .308 they use for deer was too dangerous because it is essentially the exact same gun as the Army’s M24 (The only difference being a thicker barrel and a synthetic stock vs wood stock, although many bolt actions now come with synthetics because it’s cheaper.)
Sooooooo… are you agreeing that a ban on assault weapons should at the very least be part of our larger conversation about gun control and not immediately dismissed out of hand?
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Sorry, no, not really. I am just letting people know what new laws will actually have to entail. The scope of the law will directly effect both how much it affects, and how much push back one will get.
For example - the AWB - didn’t actually BAN assault rifles. It banned certain rifles with certain feature. The first person I knew who bought an AR did so during the AWB. It was a Bushmaster AR-15. As far as capabilities goes, it was more or less identical to what you could get today, but lacked a telescoping stock, bayonet mounts (for s’more making), flash hider, grenade launcher mount (not that you can buy grenade launchers). It did limit the sale of magazines to 10 rounds, but there were tons of standard 20 and 30 rounders out there. With today’s technology, you can 3D print them. But as far as the ability to shoot rounds quickly and accurately, they weren’t any different than post AWB rifles.
So you would actually have to limit any removable magazines fed, semi-automatic rifle. Which would include rifles not typically considered assault rifles. CA has basically done this, but they has these odd rifles that adhere to the law, and it does affect their capabilities - mainly with making reloading difficult.
If the standard one wants to propose is "anything military grade", then any .30 caliber (and some smaller caliber) bolt action rifle is going to be about as good or even better than sniper rifles the military has been using since the 1900s. Note that the average .30 caliber hunting round has a much higher muzzle energy than anything from an AR15.
Any pump action or semi-auto 12 gauge shot gun is going to be similar to what they military still uses today.
Any magazines fed, semi-automatic hand gun would be as good or better than what they use in the military today. The 1911 .45 (first used 1911) is still wildly popular today, especially in places like CA and NY with magazine restrictions. The M9, soon to be replaced by the M17 are identical to civilian version - and there are literally dozens of other models on the market with more or less identical capabilities.
So using that concept “anything military grade” as a yard stick, one is left with break action rifles and shot guns, lever actions, and revolvers. Maybe .22lr and some other smaller caliber rounds would get a pass, because their caliber isn’t military grade. Maybe “antique” bolt actions would get a pass.
The point of this is to illustrate my first point:
Separating “good” into “bad” is semantics at best, a fools errand at worse.
The 1994 AWB was based on semantics. I suppose one could make an argument that limiting magazines to 10 rounds limits their capabilities some, but nothing else in the ban did. Nor did it stop anyone from getting one. Another example would be Canadians laws, where one type of rifle is banned (AR-15s) but other rifles like the Tavor are not, even though they have the same capabilities.
So then you’re left with the problem of - ok - that ban was ineffective, what would be more effective? Well you have to broaden it to include everything with the same capabilities, which is going to affect a lot people. If it isn’t broad enough, then you end up with people making things that adhere to the rule of the law, but not the spirit.
I’m just trying to let you all know some of the details of what you’re asking for and that it isn’t a clear cut issue on what is “good” vs “bad” or “too dangerous” vs “acceptable danger”.
Okay. Understanding weapons of war isn’t going to actually stop people from getting them and killing a couple of dozen people in a Walmart, which is what I’m interested in here.
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The AR-15 is desirable not because of its high power, but because of its medium power, yes? Making range moderate and the ammunition light so you can carry more, and have lower recoil and fire more rounds per minute.
It is more deadly because it is less powerful.
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I absolutely agree. The unfortunate thing is that after hundreds and hundreds of mass-shooting incidents with these guns, it’s been conclusively proven that civilians simply cannot be trusted with weapons with these capabilities. Any legitimate, non-mass-murder usage (i.e., feral hogs) needs to be reconsidered. Whether it’s the AR-15 or any gun that can do this kind of damage, they should not be available. Any new legislation should remove them from the American populace.
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