Assault Rifle Ban ends soon

Great Debates
281

Not my claim. Remember, I think some of those non-banned weapons should in fact be banned.

Beats me. I’ve never examined, much less fired, a Ruger 14.

Nor should I, considering I am wholly unfamiliar with the Ruger 14.

I believe I described it as “a step in the right direction,” though it obviously leaves much to be desired.

I have not defended the details of the act, apart from calling the gun fans on the “cosmetic” crap. What I have defended is the concept of banning assault weapons. I’d be happy to do so with reference to the features you described above. But I assure you, we’d still be having this argument even if the statute were as conceptually clean as a whistle on a drawing board.

That’s what kills me about this. You guys don’t want any meaningful restrictions at all on these guns, yet you obsess over the details of the ban. “Oh my,” the gun fans cry, “this definition seems silly and leaves closely similar weapons untouched! What horrible legislation!” As if you’d be happy if the ban was improved to eliminate all the loopholes and barely-missed weapons. Very amusing.

282

-Typical lawyerism. Perhaps you didn’t personally say it was simple, though by quoting Johnny LA in response to my asking if you knew how hard it was, you distinctly implied it.

You have, however, directly said that such guns’ “ease of conversion” is one of the several attributes that make them somehow more dangerous than other guns.

You can’t have it both ways Mints, it’s either easy or it’s hard. Now you’ve said it’s both. Which is it?

And provide cites. Assuming from Johnny’s tone that he implied he’s done it, is a pretty weak cite, don’t you think?

-Really. I’m sure you have some evidence of that, or is this yet another factoid pulled from a strawman’s ass?

I mean, if it’s “indisputable”, there must be some data correlating that, right, to prove your side? 'Cause boyo, I’m disputing that.

-I see, Johnny LA is a professional gunsmith, is he? You’re aware of his “indisputable” credentials? As I said- no offense to Johnny- that’s a pretty weak cite even for you Mints.

As I noted earlier, I’m quite familiar with machine tools and metalworking- I make my living as a machinist, after all. I’m also more than passing familiar with the mechanisms of several of the firearms in this discussion (the semiauto ones anyway) having either owned them at one time or having repaired them.

You state it’s “easy” and one of the reasons the guns are so much more dangerous than others. I reiterate- please show us how indisputably easy it is to convert these arms to full-auto, and don’t be afraid to give detailed citations. I have no difficulty with complex mechanical concepts.

283

-And we have, in turn, explained some of the minutiae of the law that leaves it quite obvious that said law covers only cosmetic features.

You simply refuse to see that, and resort to calling us “gun nuts” rather than giving factual explanations otherwise.

You continue to state that it was “supposed to cover” this or was “intended” to cover that, yet the law itself and it’s realworld effect puts the lie to those statements.

The law banned ugly, military-appearing but otherwise useless cosmetic features. Period.

-Yes, because you simply don’t like them. We understand now. The common term is hopolophobia, an irrational fear of firearms.

You can’t seem to explain why you hate and fear them, but you’ll do anything to justify it as rational.

284

No, we wouldn’t. We’d be having a very different argument. We’d be having a substantive argument over the propriety of banning powerful firearms in a free society – an argument about the tradeoff between liberty and security.

This is a bad law – shoddy workmanship on the part of Congress. Its nonsensical distinctions can only serve to increase cynicism about the institutions of government. It should be allowed to lapse.

285

Here’s what I think minty green is arguing are the “real” features that make a rifle into a weapon that “ought” to be banned due to its “heightened lethality”:[ol][li]A high rate of fire, i.e. semiautomatic;[/li][li]The ability to accept a high-capacity magazine;[/li][li]Ease of conversion to full auto; and[/li][li]“Something or other” about the power of the cartridge.[/ol]Feature number 3 is a bone of contention. Since the existing Federal Assault Weapons Ban was “meant” to cover semiautomatic versions of full-auto military rifles, perhaps there is some magical way to turn these guns into machine guns that you can’t do with other semiautomatic rifles (e.g. maybe the manufacturers removed the full-auto capability by simply leaving out some factory-made parts, so if you could get your hands on those missing parts you could convert the gun to full-auto).[/li]
With regard to feature number 4, the “something or other” about the bullets the guns fire that makes them particularly lethal when combined with the other 3 features, I understand that minty is not a gun expert and may not be able to put this “something or other” into words. So, I will take the liberty of articulating it for him:

The cartridges fired from a modern military rifle like the M-16 have two distinct characteristics that make them particularly useful in combat:[LIST=A][li]They have a high enough muzzle energy (proportional to mass of bullet times muzzle velocity squared) to drop a human being, but[/li][li]They also have a low enough momentum (mass of bullet times muzzle velocity to the first power) that they don’t kick very much and therefore allow the shooter to keep the rifle trained on the target even when firing very rapidly.[/LIST][/li]Personally, I feel that if our legislators really wanted to ban these kinds of rifles, they should have made the muzzle energy and bullet momentum part of the law, along with the availability of commonly manufactured parts for the full-auto variants of the guns. But they didn’t. They made a list of scary-looking features part of the law, features that a lot of military-style semiautomatic rifles do in fact have, but features which are also possessed by other non-military semiautomatic rifles (that don’t fire cartridges with high muzzle energy but low momentum, and don’t have any existing full-auto variant). Scary-looking features which do. Not. Make. The. Rifle. Any. More. Lethal.

286

I heard on the news this morning that private ownership of automatic weapons will be banned in Iraq under the new American administration. An interesting turn of events.

287

Re: tracer’s #4 . . . I wouldn’t have thought I was being all that unclear when pointing out that high-velocity rounds are more dangerous than the similar caliber rounds fired with lower velocity. And once again, it’s not merely the velocity of the round that justifies the AWB, it’s the combination of features that are associated with, but not defined by, the boogeyman of “scary looking features.”

288

I love how you deliberately stay enigmatic on what the “combination of features” are. Look, here is a modified version of tracer’s list. Is this a reasonably accurate assessment of what you consider banworthy?

  1. A high rate of fire, i.e. semiautomatic;
  2. The ability to accept a high-capacity magazine;
  3. High muzzle energy (as tracer defines it: mass of bullet x muzzle velocity).
  4. Low bullet momentum (again per tracer), i.e., high effective rate of fire.
  5. Ease of conversion to full auto.

That last one is in dispute, of course.

Assuming that list is accurate, the logical next step is to ask: Does the AWB effectively reduce the number of weapons meeting the above criteria?

And I think the answer to that question is decidedly “no.”

All the act does is force consumers seeking such guns to turn to other, non-listed guns that also meet the above criteria. Oh, and to refrain from placing certain combinations on their weapons – you can get that folding stock as long as you don’t also want a bayonet lug.

The act also forces companies making the listed weapons to engage in a little dodging of their own. All a maker of an AR-15 has to do is make some superficial changes to the weapon, give it a new name, and bingo – it’s perfectly legal.

Even if you think banning such weapons is a laudable goal, I think it’s pretty clear that the AWB is a really stupid way to go about doing it. The better answer for gun control advocates is to let the law sunset, and propose legislation that makes a little bit of goddamned sense.

289

Nitpick:

A bullet’s muzzle energy is equal to half its mass, times its muzzle velocity sqaured.

A bullet’s muzzle momentum is equal to its mass, times its muzzle velocity.

Muzzle energy goes as velocity squared, while muzzle momentum goes as velocity to the first power. The trick in making a cartridge with a high muzzle energy but a low momentum, then, is to give it a very lightweight bullet and a very high muzzle velocity. Cut the bullet weight in half and double the muzzle velocity, and you’ve got the same momentum but twice the energy.

290

And in case y’all were wondering, the amount of damage an individual bullet does to its target, and hence its overall lethality, is based on its muzzle energy.

However, this is the lethality of a single bullet, not of the lethality of the gun as a whole – a low recoil (caused by maving a bullet with low momentum) allows the shooter of a rapidly-firing gun to fire several rounds at the same target in quick succession without having his aim thrown off between shots.

291

This “combination of features” may well be what Mints has in mind for a preferred or future ban-everything law, but the fact of the matter is, either list as posted has nothing at all to do with the '94 AWB.

As Dewey notes, those features may be an excellent point of discussion, but they’re irrelevant and meaningless to this topic.

Sure, we can debate whether or not Minty likes 'em 'til the cows come home (whenever that is) but that has nothing at all to do with the Law, it’s enactment or it’s proposed sunset.

292

What’s an exponent or two among friends? :slight_smile:

I went to law school because I am bad at math.

293

Well… Seems I missed some activity durring the weekend. Sorry for the delay before replying…

If Kip had brought along the 12 guage shotgun he left in the car, he would have killed a lot more people. And if he had no guns, and instead set off just one of the (Very powerfull) explosives that were found in his home, he would have killed many more. Neither requires his parents spending the several thousand dollar (and Class III licensing) difference between that Ruger 10/22 and a M16 assault rifle.

Maybe you should deal with some real cases, instead of hypotheticals. We can throw hypotheticals around all we want, bawling about how dangerous the “scary black assault weapons” are, but maybe you can start citing how those assault weapons are more dangerous, using actual comparitive statistics. You know, if they’re so dangerous, you should be able to find some cites that actually show this, right? But you seem to be adamantly against digging up any solid data, so I’ll do your homework for you:

The US Justice Department page you keep refering to works against you, really. PDF, as well as other places on their page. Handguns comprise about 34% of all firearms, but 86% of all firearm crimes are commited with handguns. “Assault weapons” comprise about 2% (Though with the mis-classification of many weapons as “assault weapons”, this number can be as high as 5% or more), while the highest number atributable to “assault weapons” (Under any legal definition) for use in firearm-related crimes is only 1%. This means that an individual handgun is about 5 times as likely to be used in a crime as an individual assault weapon. And FYI, the most frequently used weapons in firearm crime are large-caliber revolvers.

In general, regardless of how useful “assault weapons” are for crime, they are used much less frequently than most other types of weapons.

294

Heh. :wink: Turns out, though, that that one little exponent is crucial to the discussion. Because energy goes as mv[sup]2[/sup], but momentum goes as mv[sup]1[/sup], it’s possible to raise the energy while lowering the momentum (or keeping the momentum the same) by raising v while lowering m. Which is what the .223 rifle cartriges used in the M-16 do.

295

Fun fact I forgot to add:

The 7.62 mm cartridges for the older M-14 use heavier, lower-velocity bullets than the .223 cartridge for the newer M-16 do. This was one of the improvements in the M-16: faster, smaller bullets meant you got roughly the same amount of muzzle energy but lower momentum (for less of a “kick” to the shooter’s shoulder when firing, thus making it easier to stay on target between shots). A beneficial side effect of the lighter bullets that a soldier carrying hundreds of rounds of ammo wouldn’t be weighed down quite as much. A bad side effect of the lighter bullets was that they had thinner bronze jackets, which increased their chances of breaking up on impac and doing greater internal damage to their targets (Geneva Convention rules mandate the use of metal-jacketed bullets in warfare, so as to reduce the permanent injuries and deaths inflicted when someone gets hit by one.)

296

So assault weapons are pretty low on the list of firearms used in crime. Not to put too fine a point on it, Phoenix Dragon, but so what? Nerve gas is used in crimes with far less frequency than assault rifles, yet nerve gas is still illegal–and justifiably so, given the risks and benefits of nerve gas.

I agree that if gun control were to be implemented with the goal of drastically reducing gun crime, then the place to start would be with handguns. But if you think my argument in this thread is made out of a desire to drastically reduce gun-related crimes overall, you are mistaken. My claim is simply this: When you weigh the costs, risks, and benefits of essentially unregulated private ownership of assault weapons, the costs and risks outweigh the benefits.

Quite possibly. Nevertheless, the availability of alternative means of destruction does not lead to the conclusion that any particular means of destruction should be left unregulated. Propane tanks (or was that Columbine?) and shotguns have their own costs, risks, and benefits that are different than those for assault weapons. Each should logically be evaluated on its own merits.

297

-Except you keep either forgetting or intentionally ignoring a few rather important facts:

A) The ownership of firearms in general and so-called “assault weapons” is hardly “essentially unregulated”. BATF form 4473, FBI background checks, age restrictions, local, State and Federal restrictions, strict licensing and oversight of dealers, an entire Federal bureau devoted to controlling firearms sales, manufacture and import, in some places there’s fingerprint records and a few places still have waiting periods…

And a whole host of penalties for violating existing laws: five years/$50K for falsifying information on the 4473, five years/$25K for being a felon or other disallowed individual just attempting to purchase a firearm…

Yep. Essentially unregulated.

And B) even when presented with data that said firearms are actually less of a risk than other guns, you yet again simply repeat that they’re so much more dangerous they’re not “worth” the risk. (From which I can only assume it’s because their appearance scares you somehow.)

Risks and societal “costs” you have yet to enumerate.

298

Good! That means you’ve done some kind of quantitative analysis where you were able to measure the costs, measure the risks, and measure the benefits in the same units (say, U.S. dollars), so that you could compare them, right?

299

Costs are relatively easy to calculate–just look at the numebr of crimes committed with assault weapons. I don’t see much of anything in the way of benefits, since assault weapons aren’t really all that useful for ordinary self-defense, unless you’re defending the Mekong Delta. Risks, of course, are a bit more ethereal, since they’re essentially costs that may be incurred, but have not yet.

All in all, bit of a judgment call, I’m afraid. As soon as catsix’s check clears the bank, however, I’ll get straight to work on quantifying the data.

300

Gah. You’re confusing the costs and benefits of assault weapons with the costs and benefits of assault weapon legislation.

There’s no evidence of any benefit whatsoever with respect to assault weapon legislation.