Consider me Litella’d.
So you think a national registry that keep track of all gun ownership (like we do with cars), and thereby eliminating the gunshow loophole and straw purchasers, is doing nothing about handguns?
Do you think that licensing requirements for gun ownership and use is doing nothing about handguns?
Short of repealing the second amendment, what do you propose we do about handguns?
Half the guns in this country are long guns, something like 5% of murders are caused by long guns (and even a smaller percentage of homocides (BTW, more suicides with guns than homocides).
Like I said, focusing on assault weapons as a method of reducing gun violence is like focusing on partial birth abortions to reduce abortions.
The only functional difference is the automatic fire. When people say that the bayonet lock, pistol grip, and flash suppressor are largely cosmetic, they mean that it doesn’t really affect the functionality of the gun, its more personalization than improving lethality (the extended magazines are another matter but still defensible IMHO).
Yeah I don’t get the recent habit of using “military style” weapon as if that should scare us.
Folks like the police and the military set the civilian standards in firearms.
For example two of the most popular revolvers are the Colty Python and the S&W 686. The reason is that they were both very common police service revolvers and this created a long track record of reliability and functionality.
Same with the AR-15 and AK-47. There are fancier designs out there but these designs have decades of field use and people know they are reliable.
Its not a lack of good faith. In my experience it is a lack of information. I am pretty convinced that many SDMB members will flip their position on an assault weapons ban (or at least how unimportant it is compared to other things like registration and licensing).
I’m not sure that a resource officer is a cop but we are not going to get rid of all guns so if you are afraid of some guy with a gun, the answer isn’t going to be banning one type of gun.
Today’s military rifles, and their civilian imitators like the AR-15 Bushmaster, look nothing like the rifles I learned to shoot at summer camp back in the day. They don’t look at all like the rifles my late uncle, a Kansas rancher, had on his ranch. They don’t look at all like the rifles my late stepfather had at his hideaway in the Appalachians.
Those rifles looked like something you’d hunt with, although obviously one could scare off hostile humans with them too in a pinch.
Today’s military-style rifles…does anyone ever hunt game with them, other than once in awhile to show it can be done?
In the civilian world, they’re the equivalent of an animal puffing itself up to show that you’d better not mess with it. They’re obviously about hunting humans. Which carries a nastiness and hostility of intent that the rifles of that previous generation didn’t.
If you’re trying to scare people, or carrying something that someone else clearly designed for the purpose of intimidating people, don’t act all innocent and surprised when some people are scared, and others are pissed as hell by the idea that you’re waving this scary piece of machinery around.
You’re sending a message. Message received and responded to. Now man up and own your message, or stop sending it.
Oh, cool, so you admit then that your major concern is how the weapons don’t look like weapons from 100 years ago.
Only small game. The AR-15 is used commonly as a varmint rifle. They’re rarely if ever used to take down larger game like deer because they just aren’t deadly enough. That’s ironic, right? You want the guns banned because they just aren’t powerful enough to kill living beings.
That’s another irony in all this - rounds like .223 are actually significantly less lethal than the rounds they replace. An M14 is pretty much all around more lethal by a decent bit than an AR-15, but they look like a conventional rifle, so who cares.
Oh, that’s nonsense. People having been using the common soldier’s rifle for 150 years now. They’ve got a proven track record, they’re relatively cheap, they’re reliable, rugged, they may be familiar with the ergonomics from their time in the military, a lot of people know how to repair them, accessories and spare parts are cheap and common.
Owning an AR-15 now is no different from owning an 06 springfield 100 years ago, an M1 garand 60 years ago, or an M14 40 years ago. “Black polymer means you want to kill humans” is juevenile.
I own military rifles from different eras. The idea that some of them are just fine but some of them mean I encourage the killing of humans is silly.
The message that we’re trying to send is “gee I sure do hope someone these rifles to shoot up a school”?
They sure got the job done at Newtown.
Shooting unarmed people at point blank isn’t exactly something that requires exceptional terminal ballistics. Substitute any other weapon with the possible exception of .22LR and you’d have the same results - probably significantly more kills with a run of the mill 12 gauge shotgun, actually. There was certainly nothing about .223 that made it especially good in that situation.
What did the AR-15 do there that other guns couldn’t have, is the relevant point, if you want to convince anyone that somehow they’re deserving of special treatment.
Personally, I was most surprised by Obama’s proposal to disarm his Secret Service detail, since having guns doesn’t provide any additional level of protection to anybody.
The Secret Service guns sure helped Reagan and Kennedy . . . :smack: you’re right “having guns doesn’t provide any additional level of protection to anybody”.
CMC
It’s a four corners strategy. If you propose banning types of guns similar to the ones used in Newtown or Aurora or some other event, they’ll say you’re being hysterical and you can’t t rush into a gun ban based on just one (!) event. Or if you propose other bans or measures that are more general, they’ll say those measures wouldn’t have prevented [insert name of mass murder]. In any event, your incorrect choice proves you’re cynically using this tragedy to ban guns, you untrustworthy anti-gun zealot. Or they’ll say instead of banning assault weapons you should do some other thing. Of course they don’t support that thing either, but they’re happy to tell you how you should conduct your campaign. Oh, and that other proposal? It’s something that has even less chance of passing than an assault weapons ban. They want to make sure you accomplish nothing and the status quo doesn’t change even though the status quo is batshit crazy.
I’ve seen some similar patterns in the health care debate: Republicans kicked and screamed over every single detail of the proposed bill and refused to get involved. It took a hell of an effort to prevent a filibuster, nevermind the ‘no’ votes. Then they said it was unfair they hadn’t been consulted. The bill was rammed down their throats. Then some of them started saying the law was a failure and didn’t cover enough people, and Democrats should have passed true universal health care instead… neglecting to mention that conservatives are adamantly opposed to universal health coverage, and the reason the bill doesn’t provide universal health coverage is the fact that conservatives and moderates wouldn’t do it and the bill had to be watered down to get it through Congress.
“Disingenuous” really doesn’t do it justice.
And yet, our Platinum Plus Citizens still insist on having and using the right to carry them. I’m sure you will be informing them of the error of their ways.
Off-topic, insincere strawman arguments from Condescending Robot? My eyes must be deceiving me.
Let’s establish something. Since I’ve asked you to substantiate why assault weapons are so disproprotinately dangerous, and you have not done so, let’s assume that we both agree that they aren’t. If you disagree with this, then make your case.
Do you think the status quo of gun ownership in the US has always been crazy? Because it’s only getting better. More guns are out there, and yet fewer gun homicides every year. The idea that guns are out of control or somehow worse recently is entire fictitious and based on media sensationalism. So either you think gun ownership in the US has always been crazy, or you are simply being wrong.
Okay, on to the main point. The gun control efforts in the US of the last 20 years or so have repeatedly and largely been to go after a fictitious class of weaponry called “assault weapons”. They seem to be more interested in this than, say, going after the class of guns that kill a hundred times more people, or enforcing our existing laws which would give greater penalties to the misuse of guns, or even enforcing or expanding preventative laws designed to help keep guns out of the wrong hands.
This fixation is bizarre. Those who are familiar with it understand that it’s bullshit. I mean, we had a similar law in effect for 10 years. Gun control proponents spent so much effort and fought such a hard fight to enact a law that did jack shit - which everyone acknowledges didn’t have any effect on anything - and yet they are determined to repeat the mistake again, instead of spending the efforts on what might actually be reasonable measures that we could agree on that would actually impact public safety.
You, Marley23, know that the assault weapons bans are bullshit. I know this because you’ve participated in threads where this has been factually explained to you, and you are a rational person. You skirt around my questions about the rationality of such a law. It’s pretty clear that you know it is not only ineffective, but nonsensical, and yet here you are advocating for it.
You call the gun rights advocates the batshit crazy ones, the ones unwilling to compromise, and yet here you are advocating a law that infringes on the rights of law abiding citizens for WHAT YOU KNOW to be no gain in public safety.
If you, someone who’s rational, someone who supposedly wants reasonable gun control, who’s at least educated enough to know about assault weapons still advocate for this bullshit, then it’s entirely clear that your goal isn’t to improve public safety and reduce gun deaths. If it were, you could recognize that wasting your time on these nonsensical laws only hurts your side and keeps them from enacting laws that might actually do some good. But instead of that, you will still defend something you know to be nonsense.
You guys have the audacity to call gun rights advocates the unreasonable ones, the paranoid ones, the ones who are worried you’re going to try to take all our guns. And yet, at the same time, you push for laws which you no will have no substantial effect on public safety simply because you believe that it’s viable for you to be able to lie to the public and get enough support from them to push these bans. Effectively, you are doing exactly what gun rights proponents accuse you of - you are taking the opportunity to ban any gun you can, even there’s no real gain to public safety.
You dare call me disingenuous? You’re the one actively stumping for something you know to be not only bullshit, but an active diversion from things that might actually do some good, because you want to inflict any punishment on the gun nuts that you can. If it helps you to understand, replace “assault weapons ban” with an “all guns manufactured on a Tuesday” ban, and think of why it would be logical to oppose such a thing.
If the gun control side wanted credibility, they would give up on this fucking retarded fixation on assault weapons bans. Since they have not, they are only proving themselves to be more interested in restricting gun ownership any way they can, with any shitty law they can foist upon the public, rather than having a good faith interest in improving public safety. With an agenda like that, fighting it pretty much entirely is actually the only reasonable outcome. You make meaningful discussions about gun policy and public safety impossible when you make it clear that public safety isn’t truly your main priority.
A serious question on this.
In my days of training with the M-16 we were told that two of the many reasons for the switch from the heavier .308/7.62 M-14 round to the lighter .223/5.56 M-16 were:
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You could carry more of the lighter .223/5.56 rounds
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The lighter .223 would tumble upon hitting flesh, causing more severe wounds than the .308 which might punch right through a body.
So, has the .223 round changed since my Viet Nam era training?
The real reason is the weight. The entire decision was based around that. The idea that almost all small arms fire in battle is suppressive anyway, so the side that could carry more ammunition and throw out more lead would have freedom to manuever and would face less incoming fire. All other concerns were secondary.
All bullets will tumble, just at different points after they strike a target. Smaller rounds often tumble more quickly, and this makes them more lethal for their size, but stlill less lethal than simply punching open big holes with a lot of energy.
The .223 round actually has changed substantially since then, though, too - the SS-109 round in common use now is over-stabilized and will not tumble any faster than a bigger round. The most famous reports about this were in Somalia, when their drugged up soldiers (who were too high to care about their often safety) could take a dozen or more .223 rounds to bring down.
Both the army and marine corps have been reintroducing the M14 (as the DMR, designated marksman rifle) as a way for a squad to actually kill someone if they have targets that really need to go down.
Thanks, but I think I’ll disagree a bit - I should have checked the web first.
You might be interested in this study by the guy who pioneered the study of wound ballistics. He shows that there was little difference between the SS-109 and the earlier M-193 round. He also shows that a full-metal-jacketed .223 round leaves a larger wound cavity than the .308. I’m sure this all changes if you compare soft points.
I agree that the M-14 is a better weapon for long range accuracy and penetration.
No. I think gun regulations have been getting peeled further and further back and the enforcement of regulations on guns has been obstructed more and more. I think at this point, some people would have the public believe that the phrase “well regulated” in the Second Amendment means “unregulated,” which in addition to being nuts is obviously wrong because that’s not what those words mean.
I have flat out stated that elements of the 1994 AWB didn’t make sense, and I’ve said “assault weapon” is an ill defined political term. This makes no difference in your posts, of course.
See? I’m not advocating for “it,” whatever “it” means to you. I am advocating for sensible regulations on guns. I’ve even said I don’t know enough about the things to regulate them myself, which I think is reasonable.
“Gun rights advocates” is a bullshit term and I think I’ve used it exactly once before this thread:
That was a month ago in response to Scumpup, who was doing pretty much the same strawman nonsense you are engaging in here. I’ve said I think people have the right to own guns. I think there need to be sensible laws in place, and “there’s an incomplete background check process on some gun sales but with lots of other guns, do whatever the fuck you want” is not sensible. It’s completely stupid, and it’s stupid by design. I have said that people who oppose any kind of rational regulation on guns, like the leadership of the NRA, are batshit crazy and unwilling to compromise. They are batshit crazy, and they will tell you themselves that they are not willing to compromise. Lumping together sane people who would support rational gun regulations, as many gun owners do, and fucking loons who like to fantasize about shooting ATF agents under the heading “gun rights advocates” is a bullshit tactic, and I guess it’s supposed to suggest I have a problem with all gun owners and think they’re all maniacs. I don’t, and that’s actually what you are doing - you’re just attempting to attribute it to me.
This is what I was saying in the other thread, but you didn’t listen and you won’t listen now, either: you are determined to “discover” by any means that your opponents are acting in bad faith so you can declare yourself the winner of the debate instead of entertaining their arguments. Who is supposed to take that seriously?
The longer I discuss politics and observe politics, the less I care about suggestions like these. Of course it hurts “my side” - with you. But you’re opposed to what I want anyway, so what difference does that make to me? I don’t want a new '94 AWB. I want some sensible gun regulations, and some of Obama’s executive orders sound like basic common sense ideas that just about any rational person would support. If a new '94 AWB is introduced, it should be shaped into something better. The odds of Congress passing any gun law, rational or no, are pretty slim. You know the reason for that as well as I do: it’s not because the Democrats want irrational stuff, although some of them do. It’s because no matter what is suggested, the answer from Republicans is going to be “no.” In fact you could say that for almost any proposed law at this point.
I have flat-out said that’s not the case and I’ve explained why I think a ban on some types of guns can be justified even if they are not the types used in most crimes. But what a surprise! You vindicated your own point of view about the conduct of others regardless of what they say! How often does that happen except for every day?
Yup. You didn’t invent this kind of bullshit, but yes, you’re practicing it quite openly. You certainly recognized yourself in my description because you’ve done every one of those things.
I think they’ve stopped caring if you think they’re credible. And really, why should they care? You’re making it very clear that you’re going to make the same criticisms no matter what they do. Democrats have been taught that lesson over and over the last few years: your opponents will decide how to attack your agenda and they will make those attacks regardless, so you may as well do the right thing. It’s essentially same moral as The Boy Who Cried Wolf. If you look at the Republican responses to Tuesday’s executive orders, you can see that a lot of them either didn’t listen to what Obama actually said or they were ignoring it. They wrote their responses ahead of time expecting something they could call a massive overreach. It didn’t happen, but they went ahead with the same criticisms anyway. Why should anyone take that kind of crap seriously? It’s idiotic.
…to be the thing I was saying about them anyway and which I was determined to find a reason to continue saying.
That’s some rich irony right there.
The NRA compromised and backed the National Instant background check system.
The NRA had repeatedly highlighted those gun control laws that go in enforced.
The NRA lauds those who use firearms to protect themselves, something the media rarely does. We are taught that names of killers, not savior a.
Yes, the NRA has been very consistent about changing its mind and endorsing new regulations as soon as it realizes there is overwhelming public support for them. Then it wholeheartedly pays homage to those new rules while quietly lobbying against them and encouraging Congress to undermine them and opposing new regulations by saying the current regulations just need to be enforced. You’ve got to love them and their compromising.
Absolutely. The correct terms are “gun nuts” and “gun grabbers.”
And those of us trying to navigate a middle way: the nut grabbers.
My Glock probably doesn’t really look like anything your uncle or stepfather used either. Semi automatic guns have been around a long time. The M1 Garand has been in use since WWII. It was the rifle that beat Hitler. It was a weapon of war and under any assault weapons ban contemplated today it would be legal because they were semi-automatic but did not have a detachable magazine or any of the mainly cosmetic upgrades that turned a plain old semi-auto rifle into an “assault weapon”
In fact a government chartered program sells surplus Garands to the public through its Civilian marksmanship program (they are expensive right now because everything is very expensive right now but they used to be a very good cheap rifle.
Well its the most common competition target shooting platform and but while they are a bit underpowered to hunt deer with but you can certainly hunt for small game.
Yep, and the M-14s were available in full auto and select fire.
Thats the thing. You should be focusing on gun violence generally, you can’t do a lot about the crazies out there. If these tragedies give you a little political will to make changes then don’t pretend its about preventing what is damn near unpreventable without repealing the second amendment and try to regulate in a sensible way that will reduce gun violence.
The majority of NRA members (not just gun owners, NRA members support registration and licensing requirements. Heck they’re even OK with limiting magazine capacity (anyone who thinks they need more than ten bullets actually need more time at the gun range, we beat Hitler with clips of 8).
But the assault weapons ban is hard to justify on anything more than emotional grounds.
It is clear from the speeches that we have heard in recent days that the gun control advocates don’t understand or are being deliberately deceptive. I.e. lying or stupid.
According to wiki it was because the M-16 was lighter and sacrificed range and accuracy that you simply didn’t need in a firefight and you could carry more of the smaller rounds in a magazine. Battle rifle - Wikipedia