Demise: It is not a hijack to criticize the OP’s reasoning, even if one agrees with the OP’s conclusion. And since everyone else here seems to be quite fine with the discussion as it is, perhaps you could just learn to live with it, yes?
Anthracite: I certainly did see your post opposing the brass knuckle and switchblade bans. Several others have made the same point (though Scylla has chosen to defend what I would agree is a rather inconsistent application of weapons regulations principles). Of course, that does cause me to wonder what’s so special about guns, since nobody every starts threads complaining about knuckle and switchblade bans, but that’s an issue for another day, I suppose.
How many of those are switchblades or brass knuckles? I’ll suspect 0, or maybe 1. Not that it matters as…
…we seem to agree concerning BKs and SBs. Before we put those to sleep, I’ll just add that like a set of picks the outlawing of these two items is because of their primary use as criminal tools. They really have little other practical application.
As for the .50, I would strongly disagree about it’s use. I neither have nor desire such a rifle. It is very large heavy and expensive, yet I know those that own them and especially in the west it is a good big game hunting rifle, as well as as useful for long range sharpshooters and benchshooters in their sport.
My .50 handgun is a wonderful implement of home defense given to me by my grandfather. So would a rifle in this caliber. I’ve gotten rid of my small concealable handgun that I used to carry while investigating tresspassers and poachers on the farm. It is much more dangerous than my .50. As a semiautomatic, the nine fires easily and repeatedly and doesn’t have much of a sense of direction to it.
With the .50 on the other hand, there is really no question where it is pointing, and it makes a very very loud bang which is what I want from a self-defense weapon. Firing it is very deliberate, and it has the added benefit of being useful for firing through walls floors, cars and such.
An intruder will hear an astounding boom and see great big gaping holes and chunks of walls and plaster fly about if I fire it. Like a shotgun with slugs, it will likely provoke a flight response and certainly startle the crap out of anybody in the vicinity. It will also likely summon aid as everybody within a couple of miles will know that I’m firing the gun.
I would think that a .50 caliber rifle would be up there with a shotgun in terms of presence and power which would be what I want with home safety.
On the other side of the coin, I do understand governmental fears about this weapon. A policeman in armor hiding behind his car might as well be protecting himself with tissue paper if he’s facing a .50.
tejota:
Your ignorance in this is pretty apparent. A .50 is an excellent big game hunting rifle especially in the plain states and western states where long range shots are the norm.
Completely false. Switchblades and brass knuckles are very poor personal defense choice but excellent sneak attack choices.
.50 caliber rifles are excellent bench and hunting rifles. They are excellent home defense rifles. They are a poor choice for criminal activity because of their rarity, expense, expense of ammo, difficulty to conceal, difficulty to silence, and incredible ungainliness.
A .50 is a poor criminal choice in most circumstances. Bks and switchblades are excellent criminal choices.
My stance is simple and consistent.
Weapons designed for criminal use with little or no legitimate application can reasonably be argued as targets for banning.
Weapons with legitimate uses, and poor prospects and history for criminal activity should not.
Sheath or one-handed folding knives would work better. Remember, swithblades are long and light, like stilletos. They make poor working knifes because of the lack of weight in the blade and tang. They rarely lock (since that’s besides the point.)
Like a butterfly knife, they are pretty much a ridiculous tool.
I got one that’s about as big as an Old Timer and functions about the same, and it fits neatly in the pocket on the inside of the left leg of my flight suit. Thus I’m less likely to lose it in the event of an emergency, and at the press of a button it’s available.
Oh, and it does lock. It’s actually not a bad knife at all.
So when is someone going to register the user name .50 caliber rifles just to get banned?
Esprix
Everybody should be able to carry whatever they want. If they use the article against someone else be prepaired to pay the consequences. Brass knuckles and switchblaces are no more than nut crackers and tooth picks.
Banning the .50 caliber rifles is just a place to start. The idiots who think this foolishness up are afraid of their own shadow. They can’t stand the thought of someone else enjoying them so they try to ban them.
Nothing particularly major to say here, just some little stuff.
I read the article on the shooting in the Swiss city of Zug that MSU cited. Good article, but it contained one real howler:
It would also be forbidden to sell arms though the Internet or newspaper advertisements, and the possession of dangerous objects such as baseball bats in public places would be outlawed.
(bolding obviously mine)
“What are you doin’ carryin’ that there baseball bat around in public, little boy? You goin’ to little league practice or something?? GET YOUR ASS TO JAIL!!”
It just struck me as hilarious. Are they going to ban carrying around big rocks too? Hey man, you could clock someone over the head with that thing!
Seems like there are always a few nutjobs who won’t be happy until we’re all locked in padded rooms with access to nothing sharper than a cube of jello…
MSU sez:
- I believe that each of us has in his mind an amount of firepower that should be in the hands of the public. My acceptable amount is something less than a 50 caliber armor piercing weapon.*
Well thank you for being honest. You get points for that.
mintygreen
Of course, that does cause me to wonder what’s so special about guns, since nobody every starts threads complaining about knuckle and switchblade bans,
My preception previous to this is that those were weapons often abused by criminals. And while I don’t advocate banning something because it’s misused (blaming the tool rather than the person), I can at least see the public safety argument for those kind of laws.
I can’t see any credible public safety threat from .50 cal rifles. I mean yes, obviously they have a huge potential to cause damage - but the historical record shows that they simply have not been used that way. Probably they are quite simply too expensive for crooks to afford.
As for shooting down planes, I expect just about any bullet entering into the front of a jet engine is going to take the engine out. I don’t have any cites except the case of the birds flying into the engines of the B1 bombers. If a relatively soft and slow bird can destroy an engine, I imagine a bullet of any caliber is going to at least knock off a couple of fan blades - which will probably unbalance the turbine assembly enough to destroy the engine. So while shooting down aircraft may be a good argument for banning all guns, it doesn’t make sense to ban just .50 cal because they could theoretically shoot down an aircraft.
-Ben
Ok, so its the 1950’s, and you go to your local weapon supply person, and he informs you that switch blades, and brass knuckes are now illegal. He tells you that you can still order a pair of brass knuckles, but then he suggest why not just move up to a gun, since they are both illegal?
I believe that is what happended in many cases, that hoodlems just moved up in weapons. In fact, there are some that suggest that some criminals are wanting to carry full auto weapons, if they are as illegal as semi autos in some localities.
If YOU were a criminal, does it really matter if the weapon you eventually choose to use, is legal for law abiding citizens to carry or not?
Do criminals choose their own weapons that they use in crimes, based on what law abiding citizens carry for hunting?
and if you think so, then why would they do so?
I was actually trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and not respond to your unprovoked diatribe. I didn’t say that I didn’t want to ban the weapons, I said I hadn’t called for their ban and at that time I hadn’t. I was merely responding to the silly slippery slope (STILL waiting for someone to identify that bogeyman that wants to ban all guns). Doing some research, I concluded that these weapons are far above and beyond a reasonable use for hunting or self. If your hunting requires that you be able to penetrate one inch of steel at 2000 yards, I suggest you pick a new hobby.
If you want me to insult you back, sorry. I don’t do that.
Airman:
Your knife sounds pretty nice. You do realize it’s quite the exception, right?
I do understand the OPs reluctance to the idea of banning this particular gun and his logic is very sound and his arguements are totally reasonable and true.
However, I have no real compelling reason to oppose banning this thing out of the lack of any particular legitimate need for the average person to use this weapon. I dont mind the banning of fully automatic machine guns (the hollywood bank robbery illustrates the necessity for that), but neither to I mind banning grenade launchers, silencers, shoulder fired rocket launchers, anti-personnel mines or russian spy knives that launch their blades thru a powerful spring in the handle. None of these items have any significant number of crimes attributed to them either. But what the heck are you gonna use them for? If you do have a specific and legitimate use for them, I would like the ability to get a waiver or a license to get them.
If I did have a license to carry a 50 caliber sniper rifle and one happens to have been used, I would rather the FBI know I have it and let them check it out and clear me rather than have them skulking around my trash trying to find evidence.
This one only applies to handguns, it seems, but it does indicate the intent behind incremental legislation as a practical method of accomplishing a ban:
“Our ultimate goal- total control of handguns in the United States- is going to take time…The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced…The second problem is to get handguns registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of handguns and all handgun ammunition- except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors- totally illegal.” -Nelson Shields (Sarah Brady’s predecessor at HCI), New Yorker Magazine 7/26/76 p.53
“We must get rid of all the guns.” - Sarah Brady President Handgun Control, Inc. Phil Donahue Show, September 1994 — with Sheriff Jay Printz & others
“I just believed that what I was doing was right. I told the NRA (National Rifle Association) I would make it my life’s ambition to see you all don’t exist anymore and I will do this until I put them out of business. That keeps me going when I have to deal with rude people.”
Jim Brady, of Handgun Control Inc., in the _Hartford Courant,_May 21,1994
I can probably find more if you’d like. Those are just ones I had handy. As HCI/Brady campaign/whatever is probably the most well funded of the groups, possibly largest, such things aren’t insignificant.
Indeed, we should make those terribly machine guns illegal because… oh, wait, they already used illegally smuggled Chinese weapons.
The north hollywood bank robbery goes to prove that anyone determined to get a certain weapon isn’t going to be deterred by bans. Seemingly touted often as evidence for gun control, it really only serves as an example to prove that gun control is ineffective.
The ironic thing is that the police had to go to a local gun shop for AR-15 type rifles to stop them. Many people advocate bans on those. If they were banned, what’s the end result? The bad guys still get their weapons, but the good guys don’t.
In itself, it serves as a little microcosm example of the whole gun control issue, I think. It’s ironic that in the face of all logic, anti-gun types tend to ignore the obvious implications of certain cases as working against their cause, sidestep reality, and try to use the situations to their advantage through deception and hysteria.
While I think this ban, like most gun control laws, is stupid and futile, and would concede most of the points you made about your .50 handgun, calling .50’s excellent home defense rifles is kinda silly. While they would look extremely imposing, that’s about the only point in their favour. Being large and very heavy, they are poor close quarters weapons, and as nearly all are single shots, you give up a ton of flexibility in how you use it to chase off your burglar. Furthermore, they will damage your own property a heck of a lot more than most other firearms, and pose a far greater threat to your neighbours should you happen to miss your target. If you want to defend your home with a rifle, a semi-auto in the .30 calibre range is far more practical, and if you want the imposing sight of a great gaping hole in the muzzle of your gun, a pump action 12 gauge will do nicely.
And I stated earlier that there is no requirement of an actor personified as a “bogeyman” in the slippery slope argument. I also stated that it can be a natural evolution of society, and it does not have to be the result of malice or a conscious desire to achieve the ultimate Very Unacceptable End. Why are you focused on this side argument of wanting people to identify a specific actor or actors to be the cause? Did not HCI change their charter a while back to include working to ban all guns? I’m not sure; maybe you have a link to their corporate charter, since you were on their site earlier…quick web searches can find numerous organizations working to ban guns of all types and all modes of operation.
And have you seen what’s gone on in the UK over the last 10 years? Might want to check it out…including Prince Philip’s speech.
How much research did you do, exactly? Did it involve an hour’s Googling? Seriously, with no malice intended, how much actual research did you do between your first post in this thread and your later one? 
And “reasonable use for self” seems, sadly, to be as subjective a statement as any in here. I’m a (or was, rather) a fair target shooter. I don’t see the point in a 50-caliber weapon for target shooting, but I acknowledge that they are very well suited for very long-distance target shooting.
How about this: at what bullet weight, kinetic energy, or velocity does a weapon become “beyond a reasonable use for hunting or self”? Without being facetious at all, how are you defining this? You know what a steel-jacketed 7.62x39 will do? It will go through a fair bit of steel as well, and yet it’s in the middle range of hunting calibers. I’ve seen one go completely through a Master Lock - so are we banning all .30 caliber rifles now as well?
Or, to be more correct, what logical engineering process did you go through to determine that 1 inch of steel at 2000 yards was too much firepower? It sounds like it could be from a tabloid headline standpoint, but I thought we were supposed to be smarter than that here. How do you draw a boundary? I mean, if you can make judgement calls about that, surely you must have a clear defining point.
So what shall it be? 400 grains? 200 grains? 3000 fpm? 10,000 ft-lbf? You can’t say that a weapon is “too powerful” and must be banned, without defining the reasons why exactly. Well, you can if you’re a California legislator - let me give you the benefit of the doubt and hope you aren’t that odd of a duck.
The point behind this is I’m illustrating the difficulty of defining a limit on a weapon based on one person’s highly subjective and biased reading of a few hits from Google. How would you write legislation to ban these weapons, exactly? You can’t just say “50 caliber weapons”, because that includes black powder weapons, including handguns. Are you going to do it by bullet weight? By energy? How does one apply a metric to define what is acceptable and what is not?
Seriously?
PS: “Unprovoked”? Maybe a re-reading is in order. Didn’t you make that snide comment right after mine about the NRA’s myopic vision on the SA (which you still categorically refuse to acknowledge)? The real meaning of the SA has been debated by me and others for 3 years on this Board, and all possible aspects have been fully explained by numerous people on both sides of the fence. No one who has been involved in this debate for these years is subscribing to any “myopic” view. Some of us do, and did, actual research on the subject - on both sides of the issue.
Well, minty, after you said this, I had a long thought about it.
I think, in my mind, the main thing is I’ve never had access to any of the thing you bring up (switchblades and brass knuckles), and thus I don’t have a sense of being deprived of something, as I’ve always been deprived of it, and thus would not feel disenfranchised.
That’s an honest answer. I suppose it’s like my many friends in the UK feel about handguns - almost all of them, to a woman, have never even held one their entire lives, let alone fired or used one, so they don’t feel like something is being or was taken away - you just grow up used to it.
People get used to not having freedoms if they’ve never had them before. I for one would like to have a switchblade, for no other reason than ease of carry. But not for any other reason.
It sounds like more stupid, feel good waste of time legislation. My biggest argument for gun control is my cousin Charley. Jesus if there was ever anyone you wanted to keep guns away from it would be him. He is of course an total gun nut . Between his ditribes about NATO tanks being hidden in Montana, UFOs, How the nazis "wasnt really all that bad " and bigfoot. He will ask if you want to go with him to empty some beer bottles and then shoot them off of a fence post with his fully automatic AK 47.
Actually, my father accidentally discovered he was carrying around a switchblade about two years ago. Of course, like a good citizen, he got rid of it. See, in my family, we have a tradition of carrying knives. They’re handy. Open boxes, trim tape, whittle, play mumblety-peg, trim things, cut lines…
So, he got one in Germany… it was spring loaded, so he could just squeeze, and pop, open. Good for when one hand’s full. Suddenly realized on coming back, hey, that’s a switchblade. Oops.
Since switched to a one handed flick knife, which is legal.
-Oh, you mean like the ones available through mail-order, at “Cutlery World” stores and at fairs and carnivals, no questions asked?
The ones that, in most cases, aren’t actually illegal outside of many large cities?
Where I live, “switchblades” aren’t illegal- At one time they were, in response to laws in other States, but when it was argued that it’s silly to outlaw a spring-loaded 3" knife when one could still buy larger folding knives, butterfly knives, machetes, axes, swords, nunchaku, sais and throwing knives, the prohibition was quietly dropped.
Check your local laws. There are places where such things are illegal, but that’s also a lot of places where they’re not. This is often one of those “everyone knows they’re illegal” without having actually checked.
Oh, and the “shooting down planes” bit is wholly a strawman argument.
It is incredibly difficult to shoot down an aircraft with a rifle- not because of stopping power or any such nonsense, but by way of actually trying to hit the damned thing.
Yes, low-flying and slow-flying aircraft such as helicopters can and have been hit by small-arms fire, but anything higher or faster than that takes a great deal of training and practice to even have a chance.
In WW2 we used two dozen rapid-fire 40MM automatic cannons with altitude-fuzed high-explosive shells to bring down relatively slow-flying prop-driven aircraft, and even then many got through to attack the ship or the airstrip.
A man on the ground with a single-shot .50 is virtually guaranteed to not come anywhere close to an aircraft.
Even if the bullet managed to contact the plane- and again, the odds of doing so are astronomical- other than striking the pilot him (or her) self, even small single-engine planes would have little difficulty making it to the ground relatively safely.
Anything multi-engine, even with the catastrophic failure of a turbine due to the “magic bullet”, can still land on the remaining engine(s).
The entire idea is, while not entirely impossible, is almost entirely hyperbolic- it’s a nonsense argument only brought up by those looking for some reason, any reason, to demonize the caliber and get them banned.