The NRA and its slippery slope

[Mister44]

@alahmnat

Wait, if lack of training is never a reason idiots do shitty, irresponsible, and deadly things with guns, then why did you say this?

Aha, you got me!

Ok, yes, there are cases of people who are poorly trained or irresponsible or prone to rash decisions killing people with guns. But I don’t see the evidence this is a significant number. Digging into crime stats of large cities, it appears the two main reason for murder are criminals killing each other, usually over arguments, and domestic violence.

Certainly you can find other examples of road rage or heat of passion murders. Training may or may not have stopped those, as even those who “know” what they are doing is wrong, they may not stop in the moment.

To be honest, I don’t know if more training would have helped that lady or not. I don’t know what she was going through or the situation that lead up to it. To be honest I had an ulterior motive to continue to spread the word about the Pink Pistols, because I know of LGBQT people who have benefited from having them as a support group and for their resources.

@alahmnat

Good to see you’re still on team Suicides Don’t Matter, though.

Woah, that is like one of those Dagwood sandwiches full of words you are putting in my mouth. I never said that. However, preventing CRIME and preventing SUICIDE are two different things with two wildly different approaches. What law can you craft to keep a lawful gun owner from killing themselves (I guess removing all guns would reduce this, but I was told that isn’t what people want.)

As a sufferer of depression I have some insight on how it works. One can be fine for years and one day decide they can’t take it anymore. I had an acquaintance do just that last year. He owned that gun for over a decade. His wife and sister in law are both medical doctors, and he tried to OD on a medicine the week before. If anyone had a chance at having warning signs spotted and getting help it was this guy. And yet it still happened.

So while I am all for suicide awareness and prevention, I don’t see how you are going to craft laws that are going to prevent it. I’d be interested in hearing an idea that would.

@alahmnat

And you’re right, that is a really shitty meme, because not all of those guns behave the same way. The top three appear to be single-fire bolt-action rifles, which need to be manually reloaded after every shot.

OK, a teaching moment. And this right here highlights the frustration I and others have with people wanting to craft laws and they don’t have the knowledge to even know what they are dealing with.

Ok - all of them are bolt actions. You have to work the bolt handle to fire a round each time. All of them have “magazines” and depending on the size of the bullet, will hold 3-6 rounds allowing you to work the bolt and shoot 3-6 times before needing to reload. The bottom two have removable magazines and can be loaded quicker by swapping the magazine. They also can hold more, depending on the caliber, up to 10. The top two you shove the rounds into the magazine from the top (which is slower, but you can get quick at it.)

@alahmnat

Scopes mean they can be fired much more accurately at long range, which is the literal definition of a sniper rifle, yes.

If scopes make it a “sniper rifle” then that includes the top item with a scope attached, which makes the majority of deer rifles “snipe rifles”. And hey, they actually do have similar functionality to an Army M24, and looks actually similar to the 2nd one, and they don’t actually have removable magazines. But I was told people aren’t after hunting rifles, so no worries.

@alahmnat

And is that a prohibition-on-automatic-fire-bypassing bump stock on the last one, or just a non-bump-stock-y shock absorber?

Nope. Bottom two have adjustable stocks, that’s it. The top part adjust the cheek weld, allowing your eye to better align with the scope, and the back part can move forward or back to adjust the length of pull, depending on your body size and arm length. They don’t affect rate of fire.

@alahmnat

I don’t give a shit if they all fire the same ammunition and are technically the same “model”. They have different behaviors and use cases, and should be regulated accordingly.

I hope to have highlighted that other than the magazines being easier to swap, they actually have identical behaviors. A scope is an accessory that can be swapped to any rifle. They also can be in a variety of calibers from small varmint rounds, to medium deer rounds, to larger elk rounds. Thus their use can vary greatly.

@alahmnat

OR they can act like fucking grown-ups and contribute their expertise to crafting policy that isn’t dominated by the hysterical know-nothings they’re so deathly afraid of.

So wait, we should listen to hysterical know-nothings when crafting policy?

@anon61221983

I really don’t see people having a need for an assault weapon. Handguns, okay. Hunting weapons, sure. But assault rifles? They have no other purpose other than killing large numbers of people.

1. The VAST majority of gun homicides are hand guns. If you magically removed all the “assault rifles” tomorrow, the next mass shooter will pick a modern hand gun, like the VT shooter. We are focusing on the sensational and most horrific cases which are statistically incredibly rare.

2. If you read my post above, and this was just about a BOLT ACTION rifle commonly used for hunting, you can see just how difficult classification can be. How does one classify what an “assault rifle” is? There are CA compliant ARs being sold in California who work more or less identically to the one I have, but it requires a tool to swap out a magazine, and they have a limit on the number of rounds.

3. Clearly with things like PCC and three gun and long distance shooting as well as hunting and plinking, people have found lots of uses for AR-15s and the like that don’t involve killing people. (And to head off any comments, no you don’t hunt with 30 rounds in a magazine - except maybe feral hogs.)

@emo_pinata

Half of all guns in the United States are owned by people making incomes in the six figures, and much of the working class that does own guns are current or former military and police. There have been multiple studies on this through the few places that can self-sustain collecting this data (like the Harvard Injury Control Research Center).

OK, there are 80 million ish gun owners in the US. What percentage of them are in the six figure bracket? I agree that the rich own more guns. Just like they own more money. So a middle class guy has 3 or 4, and a rich guy has 20. I am fairly confident there are a lot more lower to middle class people with a few fire arms, vs rich people with a bunch. Just like rich people have more cars or house or boats too.

Please link to your data, I have interest in knowing. Thanks.