It seems to me that most multiple shootings happen rather slowly (at least until police or someone starts shooting back).
Can anyone comfirm this, or am I just generalizing from a few of the most famous incidents?
Every chance I get, my man. Unless, of course, you meant that as an insult, in which case I invite you to ponder what forum you’re in and, perhaps, reconsider your choice of words.
Hmmm. Okay. How about this.
Ok. Please explain how this rifle:
FN-FAL
can kill assloads of people better than this rifle: M1A
Same caliber. Same magazine capacity. Same rate of fire. What’s the difference? (Hint: one is banned, guess why)
Costs and benefits, Dewey. Hunting has greater societal benefits than target shooting. While they’re both entertaining, hunting also provides food for the hunter and (much more significantly IMO) helps reduce numbers several hunted species that have become vastly overpopulated since we wiped out their natural predators. As hunting has greater social utility than target shooting, hunting properly gets greater legislative deference.
Emphasis on the word style. The guns specifically named in the ban don’t have extraordinary performance characteristics – they just look nasty. **
That’s a mighty stupid way to go about things. If Congress is concerned about guns that have a certain effective rate of fire, why not premise the ban on, gee, I dunno, the effective rate of fire?
Seriously. The assault weapons ban is like banning racing stripes on cars on the theory that such cars are more likely to go faster (and are thus more dangerous) than average automobiles. It’s beyond stupid.**
Dare I ask for a cite? I’m no expert on firearms, but it seems to me the limiting factor on firing speed for a semiautomatic weapon is the shooter’s trigger finger.
And my Remington 700 will fire those shots at much longer range much more accurately than any AK-47. Of course, you wouldn’t ban my Remington 700, because it’s an ordinary hunting rifle.
Could you provide a cite for the number of deaths annually that are directly attributable to target practice at a firing range?
Fine then. Please leave me alone to target shoot with my AK-47 and H&K MP5.
As has been explained to you several times, they were banned entirely based on their names and cosmetic features like pistol grip stocks, material the stock consisted of, having a bayonet lug, and having a folding stock. Not one of the features that caused those particular guns to be banned, or that are listed in the ban, have anything at all to do with how the action of the gun works. They do not influence accuracy, rate of fire, or the type of ammunition the rifle uses.
The banned features have absolutely nothing to do with the functionality of the rifle.
Fifteen rounds in a second and a half from the AK, and the same fifteen rounds in a second and a half from my Ruger P95D. One’s a rifle, one’s a handgun.
Yet no matter how many times you’ve been asked, you have yet to give a specific reason. What are the risks you think exist, and what evidence do you base your belief on?
Actually, it is quite as easy as that. The parts are fully interchangeable. At least they were. It is possible that Colt changed the layout for post-ban guns. (Mine was made in 1979 and my other lowers are pre-ban.) Also, the “drop in auto sear” will allow selective fire with the M-16 selector.
The AR-15 will not accept an M-16 automatic sear, since the interior of the receiver where the sear goes is narrower than on an M-16. That’s why people came up with the drop-in sear. Otherwise the AR receiver would have to be machined.
AFAIK, you can legally buy a drop-in auto sear; but it has to have been made before a certain date (1984?) and you must live in a Class III state and pay the transfer tax and buy it from a Class III dealer and undergo the background investigation and register is just like it is a machine gun. I’m not sure if you can actually use it in your AR though, since that would make your rifle a “machine gun” and manufacture of new machine guns for civilian consumption has been illegal for a number of years.
You’ve made a compelling argument for drawing the line to include a weapon not covered by the original legislation. Thank you for your contribution.
Hogwash. First, let’s be clear on the AK-47. It was a select fire weapon. It hasn’t been manufactured even in its country of origin in decades because it was long since superseded by the AKM, the AK-74, and other weapons all of which were also select fire. There is only a tiny number of true select fire Kalashnikovs in the US because they were never imported for civilian sales. The ones that are here are as tightly regulated as all machine guns have been since the '30’s.
Presumably, you are using “AK-47” as a generic term to mean all the semi-automatic rifles that were imported from China, Egypt, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia. They fire exactly one shot per pull of the trigger just like any other semi-automatic firearm. If by “effectively” you are refering to hitting a target, rifles in general are easier to shoot accurately than handguns in general. Clearly, you know very little about firearms in general, and military type weapons in specific. Why don’t you go do a little studying so that you have more to contribute to the debate than “they scare me!”
You draft up that letter, Dewey, and I’ll be happy to send a copy to my representatives too.
Grenade launchers, bayonet holders, flash suppressors, folding stocks, and pistol grips are hardly decorative, you know. They serve quite functional purposes, particularly military purposes. If you really want to get your analogy up and running, try high-performance tires and scooped engines.
As any shooter can attest, there is a vast difference between pulling a trigger and hitting a target. Go down to the range sometime and see how accurately you shoot, pulling the trigger as fast as you can, with an assault weapon vs. a pistol.
Chill, Scumpup. I was using “AK-47” as a generic assault weapon of the type covered by the '95 ban. And “clearly,” you don’t know me or my personal firearms experience, so you might want to make be a little less cavalier in making such assertions. I’d hate to see you fall into the same ridiculous argument that so many past gun debaters around here have made: “You’re just afraid of guns and think they’re yucky and they scare you and you don’t know anything about them.” I assure you, that is not the case.
Minty, I have a sense that you’re not fully serious in your arguments. Let’s get real. There are people who, rightly or wrongly, want guns to generally be banned. They have gotten such a law passed in a few places like New York City and Washington, D.C. (I won’t dwell on the murder rates in those “fortunate” cities.) However, it’s politically impossible to get a federal ban on guns enacted. So, gun opponents have sought bans on certain allegedly special classes of guns, even though the arguments might be contradictory.
E.g., assault weapons must be banned according to these people, because they’re powerful, accurate, expensive, and look like big military weapons. OTOH, “Saturday Night Specials” must be banned because they’re weak, inaccurate, cheap, and small.
See, the reasons don’t really matter. The real goal is to ban guns, one type at a time.
I generally don’t support gun bans for constitutional and policy reasons. But I think it reasonable to say that, if there must be a ban, at least let it make sense.
With the possible exception of flash suppressors, this is a crock. No civilian purchases a weapon with a bayonet holder because he’s planning a bayonet charge. He buys it because it looks cool. Grenade launchers are eye candy without the already-highly-regulated grenades. And folding stocks and pistol grips just plain don’t add much to a weapon. **
Why do you insist on comparing a rifle to a pistol? Let’s compare a banned semiauto rifle to a non-banned semiauto rifle and see what the effective rate of fire is.
Cite? Ive fired an AK-47. I’ve also fired an M-16, a SKS, An M-1 Carbine, and numerous semi auto rifles and pistons.
The highest rate of fire I got out of any of them was a glock 9mm pistol. I would bet that most semi auto pistols fire faster than an AK…
Full disclaimer: I am not a gun expert and am perhaps about to display shocking ignorance here. However… let me understand your argument, minty. Certain features such as folding stocks serve a military purpose. Therefore, we should ban them, as there is a risk associated with them (which you really do need to quantify, I think) which outweighs the benefits (which people who like them ought probably to quantify as well).
Working for the moment under the assumption that this isn’t misrepresenting your argument (if it is doing so, it isn’t intentional, at least), I have to wonder something. If that which is banned is really features such as grenade launchers and pistol grips, when you do your risk-benefit analysis, how can you possibly justify analyzing anything other than the risks and benefits of grenade launchers and pistol grips?
And having done that, I’d be very surprised to hear that bayonets mounted to an assault weapon are involved in anything more than an utterly negligible fraction of violent crime. Similarly, I’d be rather surprised to hear that pistol grips are involved in more than a similarly small fraction.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’ll buy an appeal to a risk-benefit analysis, but it has to be a good, useful, risk-benefit analysis. I mean, if a bayonet kills 2 extra people a year, I could see no reason whatsoever to ban bayonet mounts. Whereas if bayonets killed 10,000 extra people a year, there’d certainly be a point to banning them. I, perhaps naively, expect that the first is rather closer to the truth than the last.
Beer kills far more people every year than assault rifles. I say we outlaw beer. I know people will still get beer, but it will be so expensive to get that it wont be a problem. Worked last time we did it.
The difference with most of the examples you cited are the risks are assumed by the person engaging in the activity…not by bystanders. If you drown while swimming or shoot yourself while hunting it may be sad but not, in my view, as upsetting as if you intentionally drown or shoot someone else.
I find the lack of responses to what legal restrictions to weapons should be in place interesting. I got one answer…no machine guns (without a special permit so even that restriction was mitigated).
I can follow the reasoning here and see thatthe AWB as it stands today does seem silly. Still, I get no answer as to how the original bill might have been conceived and how it may have been whittled away at till something that could be passed was brought to the floor for a vote. Given the power of the NRA and other lobbies I do not find it surprising that a bill to pass over their objections would almost perforce have to be close to useless.
I would have a LOT more respect for the NRA and pro-gun groups in general if THEY sat down and agreed on what should and should not be allowed when it comes to firearm ownership and presented that to the American public. Perhaps they view it as a slippery-slope where they cannot give an inch for fear that bending will bring an outright ban on firearm ownership that much closer…a fair concern in my view. Still, I would have much more faith in their credibility if they allowed that some weapons and their add-ons are simply inappropriate for public use.
I have seen many posters say there is really no difference between weapon X and weapon Y and I am nowhere near expert enough to argue. However, I worry at the sense that a gun is a gun is a gun…all the same when you get down to it. To my mind there is a reason for different types of weapons on the market (not including overlap by competitors). Each weapon will either surpass any other weapon for a specific application or it will be more cost effective (cheaper and thus easier to obtain).
It was said earlier that while it is possible to turn a semi-auto weapon into a full-auto weapon it isn’t all that easy considering you can make a homemade bomb with gasoline and fertilizer. Well…I can kill with a pen, a rock, a pillow or my barehands. The argument that guns should be legal because if you want to kill womeone getting rid of guns won’t stop them is disingenuous. We arm our police and troops with guns rather than pillows because guns are MUCH more efficient at killing people than pillows are.
At some point I maintain that a weapon’s efficiency at killing surpasses what is needed for target shooting or hunting (or other legal, non-police/non-military applications). While greater accuracy, larger calibers and higher rates of fire might make anyone a more successful hunter at some point I think you need to stop the betterment of the weapon and focus on your skill and live with it.
I am willing to discuss and debate where that line might reasonably be drawn but I feel the line must be drawn.
The NRA has allowed that, in that they’ve never suggested getting rid of the federal class III restrictions, never argued that citizens have a right to have RPGs and grenades, etc.
The NRA has supported crime bills that punish offenders more severely if they use a firearm in the commission of a crime, was instrumental in the creation of NICS (National Instant Check System).
The NRA has drawn a line between what they believe citizens should reasonably be able to own and what they don’t, the thing is, you just don’t seem to agree with where that line is.
Nope, sorry, it isn’t. Get yourself a copy of The AR-15/M-16 Sourcebook 2nd Edition by Duncan Long. It has lots of information about building your own AR and the various full-auto conversions. Well before the ban Colt AR lowers were different from the M-16 lowers they also manufactured specifically because they were trying to make it as inconvenient as possible to convert an AR to full auto.
You might also consider going over to http://www.ar15.com/ and poking around. The site is a treasure trove of AR information and was invaluable when I was building two of the ones I own.
To some extent yes but we have to be careful here. There are black areas, white areas and gray areas. RPGs and rocket launchers are pretty easy for all to agree to restrictions. Machine guns as well (probably). I personally feel the bar needs to be lower than prohibitions on the ownership of bazookas.
Stronger laws to punish people more severly if they use a firearm in the commission of a crime is all well and good (and appropriate IMO) but I have seen people on this board state that someone who is ready to kill someone won’t be deterred by stronger legal penalties (and I agree). Either criminals are irrational so laws won’t help no matter what or they are rational and figure a firearm gives them more benefit than the legal penalties they risk by its use.
Does the AWB do any good? Probably not. Besides what has been written here I doubt most criminals would use them (assault weapons) anyway. They want a weapon that can be concealed and is good for close-in work. If they plan on squaring off with a rival gang across a parking lot with dozens of people involved then an assault weapon would probably be useful but that rarely (if ever) happens. Additionally I don’t think even most criminals who are willing to shoot someone want to fire indiscriminantly and catch bystanders. They may not care overly much but they aren’t gunning for those people either (a few wack-jobs aside). If they did use a machine gun and/or caught innocent bystanders the police are going to be MUCH more interested in chasing them down. Basically, I think the police will try much harder to catch someone who killed a six year-old girl crossing the street with her mother than one crackhead who killed another in a drug deal gone bad.
In short, semi-auto ‘scary’ looking rifles don’t bother me too much (which is not to say I wouldn’t be scared staring down the barrel of one…I would be very scared as I would with any weapon pointed at me). Handguns scare me more. Barring an outright ban on firearms of all types I could support anything that aids me should I be unfortunate enough to have someone shooting at me. No silencers (which might give the criminal more reason to think they can shoot and not alert authorities), flash suppressors (same idea), laser sights, unusually damaging ammunition (I seem to recall some kind of ‘razor’ ammo that would go shrapnel inside the body but I can’t find a link), calibers so large that cause huge amojnts of damager regardless of where I might be hit and still threaten my life, high rates of fire and so on.