I’d need to see a cite for this. I personally don’t have any issue, in principle, with licensing; and while I don’t support registration I wouldn’t make too big a fuss over it either – but my impression is that these positions alone put me on the narrow end of the NRA spectrum. And limits on magazine capacity? Anybody who supports that on public safety grounds isn’t using their brain, and I would expect most NRA members to oppose that kind of pointless and invasive restriction.
These guns that hysterical ninny gun grabber wussies are misidentifying as “assault weapons”? How come they look so much like what they are not? What is the advantage? Do they perform better on the firing range in sports competitions, looking like military hardware? Better deer hunting, because deer die faster if they think they’ve been shot by something military?
I mean, it doesn’t change the ballistics any, doesn’t change the ammunition. But apparently if you want to market a gun to Americans, for some reason it helps if you make it look more like a military weapon.
Am I the only person who wonders why? if the performance characteristics are much the same between your Dad’s old .30-.30 deer rifle, why make the gun look like you just pried it from Rambo’s cold dead hands? Perhaps a marketing decision? Because the gun that looks that is more likely to sell? To the wholly rational American gun buyer.
Kinda like the motorcycle guy who tries to tell me that the really obnoxiously loud pipes are for safety. Uh-huh. Sure thing. Hugh Betcha.
(re-posted from the GD thread, because I can say “fuck” here)
You can say “fuck” there, but it should be organic to your argument.
It’s partly marketing and partly simple economy of scale. Many of these companies already produce similar guns for the military, so re-using the same parts and manufacturing processes makes sense. If you make M4s for the United States Army, it doesn’t cost you much more to use the same tooling to make AR-15s for the civilian market. Additionally, equipment used and trusted by the military acquires (usually) credibility and reputation (whether for effectiveness or reliability) by association.
Already answered in this thread.
One of the big mistakes you’re making is that you make it sound like some hunting rifle company specifically created a model to mimic the military looking guns to look badass. No, it’s the same companies making guns for the army modifying their production to limit their firing modes and then selling them to the civilian market.
The common army rifleman rifle has been in widespread use in the US for well over a hundred years. The idea that it’s perfectly normal to own a winchester 30-30 (which I think was a military rifle but I may be wrong on this), then a springfield '06, then an m1 garand, then an m14 is all fine and of course you’d own those, why wouldn’t you? but then suddenly in the late 60s the army starts building a polymer stocked rifle and if you own that you are sinister and probably want to murder children is ridiculous. People own AR-15s for the same reason tens of millions of people have owned the common soldier’s rifle for about as long as this country has functioned.
The reaction that somehow it became evil when they switched over to black plastic stocks is completely an arbitrary, nonsensical change in the view of gun control advocates. For gun owners, owning the common soldiers rifle of the day
has been a common continuous tradition for the practical reasons I already pointed out.
Edit: And to address 2 specific points, yes, actually they’re used for competition, because a lot of competitions have used the common army rifle as basis for competition. Lots of AR-15s are used in competition all the time. And no, they generally aren’t used to hunt deer, because as I’ve said, the round they fire is actually significantly less powerful and less deadly than what hunting rifles would use.
No, you’re reading that in.
I’m saying that your current-generation guns send a particular message that the guns normally in use 50 years ago didn’t. It’s not my main concern, by any means - but if you’re going to send an overtly hostile message, then OWN the message you send.
The AR-15 isn’t powerful enough to kill living beings.
I’m sure that fact will bring great joy to a few dozen parents in Newtown, Connecticut, who can welcome their suddenly resurrected children back into their lives.
Always good to have a reality check here. And if you’re that far removed from it, I think I will go back to the world where the sun is yellow and the sky is blue.
I meant to say “consistently kill large living beings”. Good job jumping on a flub, because you could not have possibly actually believed that I meant that AR-15s are incapable of killing people.
What I’m saying is factually true, people don’t use .223 to hunt deer because it’s not lethal enough. This is factually correct. You guys are somehow trying to de-legitimize AR-15s because they aren’t used to hunt deer, which is in essence saying “the guns should be banned because the rounds aren’t powerful enough”, which is, of course, fucking retarded.
And the rest is bullshit too. Accepting that people have owned the common soldier’s rifle of the day for a hundred+ years, and then saying WELL NOW IT’S DIFFERENT, NOW YOU ALL HAVE TOTALLY DIFFERENT MOTIVATIONS is a bullshit invention of your own mind. I own military rifles from all different eras. The idea that I own the WW2 rifles for wholesome reasons, but I own more modern rifles because I’m inherently evil and want to kill children is fucking retarded.
Nobody uses AR-15’s to kill deer. They do use AR-15’s to kill humans.
And that’s a compelling argument why everybody should have one?
Do you think guns are role playing game weapons that have specific properties? A Remington 750 is a +3 Rifle of Deerkilling, and an AR-15 has +5 to people killing?
AR-15s are less effective at killing people than the class of weapons they replaced, 30 caliber rifles. The fact that 30 caliber rifles are better at killing deer also indicates that they’re better for killing people. Hitting things with big, fast moving projectiles carries over.
The idea that the AR-15 type rifles are unusually powerful or lethal is bullshit. They are actually less powerful and lethal than the rifles they’ve replaced, and the sort of common semi-automatic hunting rifles that no one is going after. They are actually less suitable for killing people than the M14, which is the rifle they replaced in the US army. Well, mostly, as I said, the M14 is making a comeback on account of the AR-15’s limitations. M14s that would not be affected by the assault weapons ban because they have a conventional rifle look.
And I’ve never said “everyone should have one”, so I don’t know where that’s coming from. I’m not giving a sales pitch.
nvm
I meant Remington 750, which I edited in, which is commonly used semi-auto hunting rifle. The assault weapons doesn’t ban guns based on rate of fire nor ammunition capacity, which is why hundreds of models of semi-automatic hunting rifles with detachable magazines will still be legal after it.
The why don’t you all just specify a rate of fire and ammunition capacity limit rather than arguing about labels or inventing categories based on how scary a gun looks?
Here we go with “you should” again. I agree it’s exceptionally hard or impossible to stop individual crazy people from doing things. Reverse-engineering a way to prevent an individual shooting spree is a bad idea and I don’t think there’s any law that will make those shootings impossible. So Obama’s executive orders include a bunch of steps to reduce gun violence generally. The assault weapons ban can be changed and probably won’t become law no matter what, but the hue an cry is deafening. Of course you don’t have to look very hard to find people saying that those other steps - closing the gun show loophole and so on - are also unconstitutional, violations of privacy, none of the government’s business, a punishment of law-abiding gun owners that won’t stop spree killings, and should be opposed unconditionally because they are (or just could be!) a step toward confiscation. Gee, what a surprise. I guess I’m supposed to believe that the AWB proposal is the cause of the opposition to all of those measures, but the people opposing those measures will tell you otherwise.
Not only are you wrong, you are fucking wrong, and a fucking idiot to boot.
Field & Streeam Picks the 25 Best AR-Style Rifles
The AR15 Platform As A Hunting Rifle
The AR15 platform is verstaile, adaptable, and familiar to millions of veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces.
I will answer here as well.
The initial AR-15 sales took off because a lot of us in the military wanted to be able to practice with the same firearm that we we trained with. Ammo supplies and trips to the range were limited (plenty of money for new subs, not much cash to pay for bullets at the range). Most of guys in my unit had an AR-15.
The only difference between the AR 15 and the M16 was that the M16 was full auto (and switching over to 3 round burst mode while I was in). Everything else was identical. So you could practice field stripping, carrying styles, shooting, accuracy, etc.
This helped create a market for it. Then people discovered that the pistol style grip and the plastic stock made it nice and lightweight - much easier to haul around than the Ruger Mini-14 (the Ruger had a wooden stock, also shot the .223 round, took magazines, etc.).
Then, like the mod options on a classic muscle car - the number of AR 15s in the marketplace meant that you had a ton of after market options. You could get different barrels, different stocks, and TONS of surplus military ammo, magazines, stripper clips, etc. Replacement parts were easy to come by.
It became the default “plinking” firearm for a lot of shooters. Most guys who served at one point have at least one in their collection. They trained on it, they know it, and the go back to it.
Now add in the knee jerk desire to on something that others want banned. Whenever a ban notice goes out, people start looking to buy that which is banned.
Finally - yes - I am sure a fair number of purchases are made due to them looking cool.
When speaking of the assault weapons ban of 1994, most gun advocates:
a) Deride it for stupidly focusing on a circumscribed subset of weapons that was easy to evade through very insubstantial modifications
and
b) Assert mockingly that it proved that banning these weapons had no effect
If (a) is accurate, we can draw no conclusions in regards to (b). In fact, since the AWB was also described as significantly difficult to implement, even with all the inherent holes, it’s safe to say that we’ve never tried really implementing a ban on these weapons.
Furthermore, it’s not entirely true to say there was no effect whatsoever. See this NIJ summary. What is clear is that the artificial limitations placed on studying the effects of the already-acknowledge porous gun ban have limited the ability to detect effects. The data suggest effects may very well have been possible to find if they were properly looked for.
Since the limitation on research was the result of machinations by the gun advocates themselves, I’m not inclined to think much of their dancing in the streets regarding the absence of evidence.
What we ought to do is try a real, actual, substantial ban on such weapons and actually test the results. Then we might be able to draw the conclusions that the gun advocates want to pretend we have right now.
Yeah, sort of the same way that Marlboros were marketed to rugged, manly men, coughing their lungs out on horseback.
Except that Marlboros were marketed using Cowboy themes in print and television (before banned).
Most firearms advertisements that I see focus on on functionality. They list weight, caliber, options, accuracy, etc. Minimal use of models, typically just tables of information.
Most gun collectors are geeks. They get into the mods, accuracy, loads, etc. They like to see if they can improve on their shooting, or weight, or distance, or speed. the marketing speaks to that.
I would guess that 80% or more of guns ads are just nicely put together spec sheets.
How would you limit rate of fire?
Are we talking about banning revolvers too?
I would ban all guns with a magazine capacity of over 6 and a fire rate of over one shot every three seconds but we’re talking about America, not Magic-Land.
I also know that not one thing is going to be done and we’re going to keep reading about school massacres from now until hell freezes over. I know Obama has to be seen pretending to do something for a bit but he’s wasting his time.