I’m not trying to ‘fear monger’. I wasn’t aware that a hunting rifle could be converted to a semiautomatic weapon. Thank you for the clarification. I only mentioned it as I was talking about the differences between different sorts of guns, which I am apparently ignorant about. Carry on. I won’t argue my case.
You know his transaction was extremely fast? You know all the deaths were from his weapon? “Apparently” means more to you than me. Was he also “apparently” a muslim terrorist?
You made a narrative of a drunk 5 min purchaser who was gay. That’s not factual, it’s a made up little story. Maybe it’s close to what happened, maybe we’ll find out more. I think it’s not conducive to a real gun debate but you can make that case if you want. We just differ in opinion.
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I did not say he was a “Muslim terrorist”. I’m stating what has been stated in the news: that his transaction to purchase a gun was very simple and quick, that all of the deaths were from his weapon (some injuries, so far, look to be from police rounds). That he was inebriated, and that he’s spent three years as a regular in gay clubs and flirting with guys on gay chat services. I’m not inventing facts, nor jumping to conclusions.
The only thing I’m uncertain about is why you’ve decided that the Florida massacre is just a little story I came up with.
@nungesser @Pattie_Bordeaux @Robert_Fargo
Stop. You’re not listening to each other. You’re not helping anything. You’re arguing in circles. Just stop, think, and try to get somewhere positive.
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That’s what you said. And that’s not what happened.
May I respectfully suggest that you try and remedy that ignorance before climbing up on the soapbox about what [quote=“nungesser, post:76, topic:79843”]
should not have been legal. At all.
[/quote]
As @Robert_Fargo correctly pointed out, “assault rifles” are so heavily regulated and taxed that they are banned for all practical purposes. And the Orlando shooter was not carrying one.
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You’re right. My apologies.
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Sometimes one thinks they are knowledgable about something they are not. I apologize and have admitted my ignorance. Two years working as a hunting rifle salesman fifteen years ago didn’t help me in this area, apparently. What sort of weapon was the Orlando shooter carrying, which is being referred to as an assault weapon by every news source (and an assault rifle by many)?
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Maybe if your right wing friends felt their penis substitutes were threatened by the existence of a gross and massive violation of 4th Amendment liberties, they might be more inclined to oppose it. Using the bull elephant of the gun lobby to break the doors of the surveillance state down for you.
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You will find that most people making the complaint about the terror watch list now only do so out of self-interest.
If gun enthusiasts felt their rights more directly threatened then maybe they would be useful in curbing obvious attacks on civil liberties. The common boast of the gun lobby is that the 2nd Amendment protects the rest of them. Well its time they put their money where their mouth is.
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Oh goodie. Suspicion is now going to trump the constitution. I’m glad to know they’re on our side.
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Setting aside the gratuitous insults, I agree with you.
He was carrying a Sig Sauer MCX, which has plenty of WOOOOOOOO SCARY QUASI MILITARY BLINGBLING on its frame, but is not capable of selective (semi auto/burst fire/full auto) fire and so is not an assault rifle.
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There seems to be a lot of confusion right now, as that specific firearm is being described in the news as a “semiautomatic weapon” and capable of exactly those things. That said, it’s still the sort of gun that’s specifically for quasi-military use in killing a whole bunch of people really quickly, yes? I mean, nobody’s taking this out to hunt ducks. So why should civilians own it?
A US senator bemoaned Thursday morning that the constitutional right to due process “is what’s killing us right now.”
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the right to due process, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, had made it difficult to pass gun-control legislation denying those on the FBI’s terror watch list the ability to purchase a firearm.“The firewall we have right now is due process,” the West Virginia senator said. “It’s all due process".
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That’s equivalent to saying “described in the news as a ‘desktop computer’ and being capable of being used while it sits on your lap”.
(Edit) I’ve taken down coyotes on my property a number of times using a semi-automatic rifle, not very different from the Sig except that it has a wooden stock, a ten round magazine and looks like a civvy street gun. A bolt action would not have been fast enough. As a civilian I find this quite useful, thank you very much.
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I hate this semantic argument. Gun aficionados tend to point to the strict definition of an assault rifle as requiring that it be capable of fully automatic fire. The media tends to refer to “military style” or “assault style” weapons as assault weapons, which yes, is technically incorrect. But in reality, even semi automatic weapons are capable of high rates of fire - easily 5 rounds a second, which is faster than someone could aim, so whether it’s fully automatic or semiautomatic hardly makes a difference.
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Just to be totally clear: I’m not trying to argue semantics, I’m genuinely curious about the realistic capabilities of what the shooter used. Every news story I’ve seen has been throwing around terms like “semiautomatic” and “military grade”, but it sounds like the lines are a bit grayer than that. I appreciate the help.
That makes a lot of sense.
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Sorry, I should have been more directed; I think @lolipop_jones is the one arguing semantics.
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Should be informative:
The M-16 was an assault rifle developed for the military. The AR-15 is the civilian version of that, with the only significant change required in US law to “civilianise” it being to restrict it to semi-auto operation (i.e. one shot per trigger pull).
The original M-16 could be fired in three modes: semiauto (one shot per pull), burst (three shots per pull) and full auto (continuous fire so long as the trigger is held). Later versions of the M-16 removed the full-auto option, because outside of Hollywood a full-auto rifle is useless unless you’re firing from a tripod or similar.
So, the only real difference between a current military assault rifle and a “civilian” AR-15 is that the military version has the option of three-shot bursts.
Apart from the select-fire options, military rifles tend to differ from hunting rifles in some ease of use features. Lighter weight, ergonomics, lower recoil, etc. Recoil matters a lot in combat, where you need to fire rapidly without much pause to aim between shots. It doesn’t matter so much when hunting, where a competent shooter should only require single shots.
Military rifle designers also tend to bias their ammunition choices towards logistic and penetration concerns that don’t apply to hunters. Compared to a typical hunting rifle cartridge, the ammunition used by M-16 derivatives tends to be a bit lower caliber but a bit higher velocity, and is notable for its deliberately unstable terminal ballistics. The story here is roughly that smaller, faster bullets are easier to carry and punch through obstructions a bit better. But they do a bit less damage to the target. So, they designed a bullet that tumbles after impact, ripping a wider and messier hole in the target. The effect is similar to what you get from using dum-dum (expanding) bullets, but with the benefit of not being specifically outlawed in the Geneva Convention.
The gun used in Orlando (Sig-Sauer MCX) was based upon an AR-15, but has some minor differences aimed largely at reducing weight, bulk and recoil even further. Its design is focussed on making it possible for a minimally skilled shooter to pump out as much aimed fire in a given period of time as possible.
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