Not really. They use different kinds of ammunition, and an assault rifle is designed to fire rapid bursts, whereas a hunting rifle is designed for single shots. Moreover, the specific kind of assault rifle used in Orlando can be easily converted to a semiautomatic weapon, which a rifle cannot. Also, assault rifles use high-capacity magazines. Defining an assault rifle is extremely simple and has been done before.
It has been done before but it was largely ineffective. That ban only applied to guns with multiple âmilitary styleâ features most of which had nothing to do with how effective they were.
Assault weapons donât use different kinds of ammunition, they use all kinds of ammunition. And limiting ammunition type would just make manufacturers switch ammo. Restricting magazine capacity wouldnât work, I think, because itâs just too easy to create a high capacity magazine Especially these days with 3D printing.
The most natural line to draw, as I alluded to in my previous post, would be restricting any gas operated long guns. Gas operation is what gives âassault riflesâ the ability to fire so quickly. Requiring a permit for those guns makes sense to me.
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Okay. Just want to make sure we are talking about the same thing here.
What I hear you saying is that itâs okay for the government to (behind closed doors) make a predictive judgment about who might commit a crime in the future, and based on that judgment, permanently restrict someone from doing something that is legal for all other law abiding US citizens.
If you are not saying that, I will gladly stand corrected.
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I am not saying that. Iâm saying that background checks should definitely include people with a criminal record or with literal, actual ties to terrorist organizations (not just saying dumb stuff on Facebook, like Omar did). Iâm also saying that we need very severe restrictions, if not a ban, to prevent assault weapons from getting into the hands of civilians as much as possible. Will it prevent massacres? No. But itâll prevent a pissed-off, drunk, self-loathing closeted homosexual from walking into a gun store and, in five minutes or less, owning a weapon that can kill 49 people very quickly.
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No one on a watch list should be allowed to vote either.
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Hi! Gosh, thanks! But Iâm not âwrong about the First Amendmentâ. Thank you for your concern anyhow!
This is where you went wrong. I think popehat cleared it up for you.
Pattie, if youâre going to link to Popehat because of âFire in a crowded theatre,â link to this one:
Or this one:
Theyâre much better examples.
Edit: correcting typo
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I can also link to Christopher Hitchens yelling âFireâ in a crowded theater. Itâs on YouTube. It was perfectly legal.
Sorry if I upset you.
Thank you! Itâs an old trope, as he states, but my point wasnât specifically about endangering people in a theatre. It was that the courts have refined and defined exactly what the First Amendment protects in the past 200 years or so, just as they can clarify what the Second Amendment protects. Neither is black and white. (And yes, I was a little baffled by the first link to Popehat as well)
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Oh, you didnât upset me, at all. I apologize if I gave you that impression. Iâm just saying that neither of the cases that Ken White describes in the âYouâre wrong about the First Amendmentâ post apply, at all, to the post you were replying to.
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Background checks are checking for people with a criminal record.[quote=ânungesser, post:66, topic:79843â]
No. But itâll prevent a pissed-off, drunk, self-loathing closeted homosexual from walking into a gun store and, in five minutes or less, owning a weapon that can kill 49 people very quickly.
[/quote]
Which has never happened, not once. Might as well say it saves the life of Santa Claus.
As I understand it, the Orlando shooter had legal guns, was a security guard (so might have had more access than regular folk), was in a âgun-free zoneâ and didnât buy weapons in â5 minutesâ. He may have been closeted, he may have been drunk. He could have had a pressure cooker bought at Wal-mart and killed 50 people. Thatâs one more than your drunkard strawman.
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Um.
Yes, he had âlegal gunsâ; thatâs exactly the problem weâre discussing. They should not have been legal. At all.
He had bought an assault rifle about a week before the shooting. Multiple news sources have tried buying exactly the same gun since then, and the gun store told them that the transaction & background check usually takes less than five minutes. He had been visiting gay nightclubs for about three years on a regular basis and chatting up various men with gay dating apps.
Which specific strawman did you think was untrue, again?
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From your Wikipedia cite: The term assault weapon is also commonly used to refer to some military weapons and weapon systems. The similar but technical term assault rifle refers to military rifles capable of selective fire - automatic (full-auto), semi-automatic, and burst fire.
Your using âassault weaponâ and âAssault Rifleâ interchangeably. Thatâs not factually correct. âAssault riflesâ are already banned, as in they must be older than 1986 and you need special licencing, pay special taxes and they can cost 10âs of thousands of dollars.
Then you imply the Orlando weapon was converted to full-auto? You have a citation for that? Or are you just fear mongering?
FYI: You can also convert some pistols to fully automatic. And you would be breaking a lot of laws if you did that.
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But itâll prevent a pissed-off, drunk, self-loathing closeted homosexual from walking into a gun store and, in five minutes or less, owning a weapon that can kill 49 people very quickly.
Isnât it a strawman since none of this happened in real life? Maybe strawman isnât the right term. But itâs not what happened and you even said it wouldnât prevent massacres anyway.
I didnât say that nor imply it. I said that the kind of weapon he used can be, with some know-how, converted to full auto. It was an example contrasting it with a hunting rifle (which can not).
Youâve said that twice now. Which part of that didnât happen in real life? The gunman was known to be angry, he was apparently a closeted gay man who was married to a wife he was known to have beaten repeatedly and had a fundamentalist father, so who knows what was going on inside his head. But we do know that his transaction to purchase his weapon was extremely fast and that he used it to kill 49 people and was, from some reports, inebriated.
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Hunting rifles can be converted to full auto.
Sounds like youâre fear mongering. Sounds scary and itâs technically possible.
Itâs also hella illegal.
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