[QUOTE=straight man]
Think for a moment. You are proposing that a group of people can, armed only with what is constitutionally protected, take on the United States government and win.
[/QUOTE]
The population of the US is about 300M. Halve it to get rid of the old and the young. The US armed forces are what, 1M? You do the math.
[QUOTE=Quartz]
The population of the US is about 300M. Halve it to get rid of the old and the young. The US armed forces are what, 1M? You do the math.
[/QUOTE]
How many would side with the authorities? How many would spend their time fighting other militias? Do you really think insurgents will be able to organize a single, unified group more powerful than those 1 million (pre-draft, of course) soldiers? You do the math. Militias are best at fighting other militias.
Actually, I’m wrong. What militias are best at is killing innocent civilians.
[QUOTE=DanBlather]
I think the gun lobby has convinced me that banning guns is as pointless as the war on drugs, but whenever I read comments like the above it just brings home how emotionally stunted and pathetic gun-nuts appear to be.
[/QUOTE]
Which brings home my point from the original OP…I truly have nothing against the legitimate hunter or those who use guns for target practice. But the fact that they (the NRA) let slide the fact that there are truly gun NUTS out there who shouldn’t be allowed to own a Swiss Army knife, let alone a firearm - well, that is like me being in favor of legalizing marijuana but aligning myself with heroin addicts.
You have to draw a line somewhere - but lordknows, the gun NUTS just refuse to bend an iota for fear they will not be able to arm themselves with bazookas, cannons, hand grenades and land mines to defend their forty acres. Hell, why not just give everybody access to a nuclear bomb in a suitcase? I mean, come on - that is, after all, within the right to bear arms, isn’t it? There are no limits - whatever it takes should be legal - isn’t that the philosophy?
As is typical with hysterical gun control types, if you look and read every word DMark has said in the thread, it has been hyperbolic and loaded. Why do you feel as though you have to constantly resort to hyperbole and straw men to make a point, whereas other people in this thread have been calm, honest, and rational?
The NRA has always been one of the leading advocates of enforcing gun laws and punishing people who use guns in crimes. You, and others like you, always portray them in a way that suggests that they advocate the abuse of guns. Of course they don’t.
Unless you’re defining people who believe in firearm rights, and not the convenience of hunters and target shooters, as psychotically dangerous gun nuts. Which you may be, because your view doesn’t seem very firmly attached to reality.
People who defend gun rights on the basis of hunting and target practice miss the point entirely of what gun rights are about.
The funny thing about this thread is that if someone suggested that people openly criticizing the “war on terror” wasn’t an act of free speech, but rather, an act in support of terrorists, most of this board would either flame them or laugh at them. But there are people who think this way.
Yet, if someone says that owning a certain type of gun is a terrorist action, which is ridiculous, the same people who would chastise using “terror” as a vague scary concept to control people’s thought processes would now be engaging in the very same behavior.
Being able to write a post on this message board without fear of arrest is part of free speech, but it’s not the entirety of it. It’s one particular useful application of it. But if I were to say that I have no problem with people who speak their mind on message boards, but people who get on TV and criticize the government are using terrorist speech, it would be roughly analogous to people saying “I respect the rights of hunters, but not people with terrorist guns” in as far as you would support one particular aspect of the freedom in question but not really understand or support the freedom as a whole.
[QUOTE=silenus]
Nope, the differences are in cultures. There has never existed a culture or expectation of private ownership of self-defense or militia weaponry in any of the countries you mentioned other than the US.
[/QUOTE]
They have high gun ownership, but low overall crime.
-Tcat
[QUOTE=Muffin]
Well, there you have it, folks. The freedom to go postal – if that isn’t a freedom worth dying for, I don’t know what is. At least now when the USA calls itself the leader of the free world, we will know what it means by “free”.
[/QUOTE]
I think that even sub first world countries with societies that very much lack in freedom outlaw going postal.
I forgot to add…
Sometimes these arguments seem to have too many other analogies that point out the strangeness of the statements that equate bigger, more-powerful and mean-looking guns to terrorists.
Porches are only good for speeding. Why can’t everyone be happy with a mini-van?
Pitt bulls are only good for dog fights and mauling children. Why can’t everyone just own a collie?
There are many aesthetic reasons to own big-scary guns outside of just wanting to kill other people. I don’t buy the argument that taking away big-scary guns from people would incapacitate their ability to wreak havoc. Bombs are easy to make, M’kay? Cars can be driven into street fairs, M’kay? Huge tractors can be converted into tanks and used to destroy Granby, Colorado, M’kay? Kitchen knives can be used to kill many children, M’kay (this one specifically to counter Muffin’s list of massacre’s with big-scary guns and comments about killing children in schools)?
I own a Ruger 10/22 (shoots .22’s for those that don’t know). I used to own banana-clips that held 50 bullets each (late 80’s), and could be snapped together. I could empty both of those things in under a minute…I am positive that someone in the right place with a couple 10/22’s and many clips could shoot 500 rounds before the police would show up. And even though the bullets are some of the smallest out there, with 500 flying all over the place I’m thinking the ‘worst school/sports event/church/??? massacre in history’ could occur.
Some people is crazy. Taking away the means will not solve the problem. A vast majority of gun owners are responsible people that obey laws. So what if they want to legally kill prairie dogs with an AK-47? So what? How does that harm you?
-Tat
[QUOTE=Tomcat]
Some people is crazy. Taking away the means will not solve the problem. A vast majority of gun owners are responsible people that obey laws. So what if they want to legally kill prairie dogs with an AK-47? So what? How does that harm you?
[/QUOTE]
Nothing pisses me off more than variations of “Taking away means will not solve the problem.” Using this asinine argument, why should we lock our houses up-houses are still broken into, right? Why should we try to slow speeders down-people still speed, right? For that matter, why should we have laws at all, people still break them, right? You confess to owning two banana clips holding 50 bullets each(that can be clipped together), and the first sentence in the next paragraph is “Some people is crazy.” Yeah, some people is crazy, and will probably go out and find some other weapon if they can’t get a hold of a couple of 50-bullet clips that can be connected to spray 100 bullets without having to reload, but don’t you think making those more difficult(if not impossible) to obtain might not at least slow those crazies down just a bit? Bombs are easy to make, but they are still illegal. Would you use this argument to defend the ownership of bombs? Banning the use of bombs doesn’t solve the problem.
Right?
BTW, Tomcat, the janitor with a knife in one of your examples killed eight children, and the goofball with the “killdozer” killed only himself(with a shotgun). Try to imagine the carnage if they had been given a rifle and a chance to fire 100 rounds in under a minute. I don’t think any of the survivors or any of the victim’s families would have thought to themselves, “Oh, well. It would have been just as bad if he had brought a knife, instead.”
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Nothing pisses me off more than variations of “Taking away means will not solve the problem.”
[/QUOTE]
But you know it’s not that simple.
This thread is just devolving into the generic gun control threads that they all turn into after 30 or 40 posts, and we’re going to cover the same ground we already did.
But “taking away the means” is not a simple process. The measures you enact to attempt to take away the means typically disproprotionately disarm the people who have no ill intent, and have no, or a small, effect on people who do. The genie isn’t going back in the bottle.
And it becomes absurd when you try to stigmatize certain classes of weapons that are functionally identical to ones that you approve of. Any rifle designed for detachable magazines - and that’s very common, all sorts of hunting and plinking rifles do - can take a magazine of any size you want to make a magazine for. A rifle would work just as well with a 10 round magazine or a 50 round magazine - this goes for ordinary hunting or target rifles that don’t look like scary evil weapons.
You may or may not be experienced in handling guns, but people who do tend to realize that they’re not nearly as scary or effective as the popular perception of them is. A rifle with, say, a 30 round magazine isn’t the massively effective death dealing device that people seem to think it is. It’s not leaps and bounds more effective than having 3 10 round magazines.
Now if you want to compare it to rifles without external magazines, then yes, the loading is much quicker and more efficient. But many many conventional non-scary rifles accept detachable magazines, and those aren’t being rallied against.
Because the classifications we’re using aren’t functional, they’re cosmetic.
[QUOTE=Tomcat]
Some people is crazy.
[/quote]
Ah, gun logic. Like jazz and comic books, a uniquely American art form. Really, what are the odds that an AK-47 used to mow down prairie dogs would fall into the hands of a crazy person?
“To kill, you must know your enemy. And in this case the enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit… they’re like the Viet Cong. They’re the Varmint Cong.”
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
BTW, Tomcat, the janitor with a knife in one of your examples killed eight children, and the goofball with the “killdozer” killed only himself(with a shotgun). Try to imagine the carnage if they had been given a rifle and a chance to fire 100 rounds in under a minute. I don’t think any of the survivors or any of the victim’s families would have thought to themselves, “Oh, well. It would have been just as bad if he had brought a knife, instead.”
[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure why this is an example exactly of how people would go get scary looking weapons and massacre people. I didn’t read the janitor story, but guessing that this refers to something in the US, they had the ability to acquire these weapons but didn’t. Hence, a law to ban scary weapons isn’t going to affect their sprees. So it’s an odd example to use in support of an agenda that doesn’t even address that example.
[QUOTE=Terrifel]
Ah, gun logic. Like jazz and comic books, a uniquely American art form.
[/quote]
Er, isn’t it just logic in an argument about guns? Is there something illogical about what he said?
Technically speaking, miniscule. Very few people in the US own AK-47s. This is a point that people keep ignoring. The rifles that look like AK-47s that you commonly see are modified to be functionally different. In their current form, they function identically to many, many mainstream hunting and target rifles.
And otherwise - we have tens of millions of gun owners in this country, and probably at least several million semi-automatic rifles but I’m just taking a guess here. We see them misused in big tragic ways extremely infrequently, despite the vast number of owners.
The perception around them suggests that they do more damage than they actually do. It’s a lot like air travel. Air travel is very safe, yet in part because every incident of air travel related fatalities gets hugely overblown in the media, a lot of people are scared to death to fly, but are fine driving on roads where many more people are killed. It’s an irrational evaluation brought in by biases in perception. It’s very much analogous to scary-looking guns.
In a crowd, a 30-round magazine is deadlier than a 10-round magazine, and a 100-round double clip that empties out in under a minute is deadlier still. Would you have any objection to outlawing clips that hold over ten rounds? How about twenty rounds? How about fifty or a hundred rounds?
Or are we going to get yet another variation of “Well, that won’t solve the problem!”
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
I’m not sure why this is an example exactly of how people would go get scary looking weapons and massacre people. I didn’t read the janitor story, but guessing that this refers to something in the US, they had the ability to acquire these weapons but didn’t. Hence, a law to ban scary weapons isn’t going to affect their sprees. So it’s an odd example to use in support of an agenda that doesn’t even address that example.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe you should have read the janitor story before answering. It took place in Osaka, Japan, where the gun laws are a bit stricter.
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
In a crowd, a 30-round magazine is deadlier than a 10-round magazine, and a 100-round double clip that empties out in under a minute is deadlier still.
[/quote]
I agree, but probably not to the degree to which you assume. Really, all of the focus on rounds emptied per minute suggests you are unfamiliar with using rifles effectively.
Of course I’d object. In fact the AWB from 94 to 2004 did this exact thing. (With a grandfather clause for old ones) Did you feel safer then? Do you feel in more danger now? No, almost certainly it made absolutely no difference to you, and did not put you in any danger. But it did make things difficult for law abiding gun owner. It’s not uncommon for even non-military weapons to be designed for magazines that use more than 10 rounds. Manufacturers would have to specially manufacture new magazines to comply with the ban, which would raise the price, and limit your selection, and if manufacturers didn’t bother to do that, you were screwed. There were people that owned certain types of guns who simply couldn’t get a post-ban magazine for them. Not the biggest inconvenience in the world, but the threat such things pose is even more insignificant.
So we’re talking about marginally impeding, at best, someone who’s in the rather rare situation of just randomly shooting people in a crowded situation. Perceptions aside, this is already an extremely rare occurance. And so we’re marginally reducing the damage potential for something that happens extremely rarely. It wouldn’t even be worth the time to write and enforce such a law. Would people who forgot to throw away old magazines, or didn’t know about the law, be sent to jail over such an insignificant distinction? How are we going to allocate our law enforcement resources to combat this phantom threat?
Besides that, for anyone determined to go on such a spree, it doesn’t take a huge amount of skill to make a large magazine from smaller ones. And if we’re not dedicating a lot of law enforcement to eradicating this phantom threat, there will be plenty around anyway.
This doesn’t even touch on the argument of whether it’s philosophically right to limit the weaponry available to citizenry in this way.
It would be a law with almost no benefit, with potential downsides should we allocate resources to enforcing it and actually send people to jail who did nothing really wrong over such an issue, that’s not even, in my view, philosophically correct, so yes, I would absolutely object to it.
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Maybe you should have read the janitor story before answering. It took place in Osaka, Japan, where the gun laws are a bit stricter.
[/QUOTE]
Fair enough, but it doesn’t really matter. You could pull out a thousand stories of people going on knife killing sprees in the US.
[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
Technically speaking, miniscule. Very few people in the US own AK-47s. This is a point that people keep ignoring. The rifles that look like AK-47s that you commonly see are modified to be functionally different. In their current form, they function identically to many, many mainstream hunting and target rifles.
[/QUOTE]
So logically there is no reason why a ban on such weapons should affect hunters, right? Since there are so few AK-47s in use now, it stands to reason that very few people would choose one for hunting. And since the modified AK-47 clones are just the same as ordinary rifles, a ban on them wouldn’t affect hunters either.
[QUOTE=Terrifel]
So logically there is no reason why a ban on such weapons should affect hunters, right? Since there are so few AK-47s in use now, it stands to reason that very few people would choose one for hunting.
[/quote]
What ban are we talking about? Banning ownership of AK-47s? It effectively is. You can’t buy one manufactured past 1986, or imported after 1969. And the few exceptions there are to that require a whole shitload of paperwork and approvals process and an artificially inflated market due to fixed supply. People who like such things pay large sums of money, and, I might add, no citizen has ever used a legally owned fully automatic weapon in the commission of a crime despite hundreds of thousands of people owning them over decades. So, are you asking if I’d object to taking those few guns away from people who have never misused them?
Anyway, I don’t know where you get this impression that I care about hunters. If you’ve read the thread, you’ll notice that several times that I don’t care about the rights of hunters specifically. I think it’s selfish and short-sighted to view gun rights through the perspective of people who are only interested in hunting. I have no objection to hunting, though. But why are you asking me, someone who has argued that suitability for hunting is a totally irrelevant issue in regards to gun rights?
So you’re admitting that they’re functionally identical, but that you want to ban them anyway, right? Because… they’re scary looking, I assume.
Both of your points are good insight into the mentality of a gun control advocate. In the first one, you want to ban something that has never been used in the commission of a crime, and in the second one, you admit that you want to ban one thing but don’t seem interested in banning another thing that you admit is functionally identical.
“Military Rifles” is a misleading term.
99% of hunting rifles in the world are based on Military rifle designs. The vast, vast majority of modern bolt-action hunting rifles use the Mauser design (used in the Mauser K98, standard arm of Germany in two World Wars), with those that are not based on the Mauser action using a derivative of the Lee-Enfield or Mosin-Nagant action. Most Lever Action rifles (Such as the Winchester Model 94) are based on lever action rifles used during the US Civil War and by the Army, Navy, and Cavalry during the Wild West era.
In short, almost any rifle is or was arguably a “military rifle” at some point in the design process.
The thing I’ve noticed is that people who hate guns tend to hate Shiny Black Tactical Guns. Show them a SMLE Mk III*, M1 Garand, or Mosin-Nagant M91/30, and they’ll say it’s “old junk”, but show them an AR-15 or AK-47 and they freak out. You’d think the AR-15 comes with a special attachment for puppy kicking and there’s a variant of the AK-47 that makes obscene gestures to kittens.
The AK-47 cops a lot of flak for being a “Commie Gun”- and remember, kids, anything to do with Communism is bad, M’kay?- and now that International Communism is no longer the threat it once was, the AK-47 is seen as a Terrorist Gun- ironically as a result of China and the Soviet Union supplying them to all and sundry in the '70s and '80s.
The M-16 has been held up by the Internet Gun Commando crowd as being the Epitome Of All That Is Right With Firearms, leading to negative connotations involving people in black tactical gear with tactical harness rigs at the range arguing over which Laser Sight to put on their Bushmaster, or what type of ammunition will make the biggest hole in their target.
The solution, of course, is for the semi-auto rifle shooter to get an L1A1 SLR or M-14- neither rifle being tained by connotations of Communism, Terrorism, or Internet Tactical Gunwankery. 
As for Automatic Weapons- here’s the thing: A Machine Gun (say, a GPMG) has a rate of fire of approximately 600 rounds per minute, or rounds a second. Most MGs have a rate of fire in this region.
Ammunition is not all that cheap, really. The cost for centrefire ammunition in Australia hovers around AUD$1/round, depending on calibre (.223 and 6.5x55 Swedish are about 80c a round, .458 Weatherby can be as much as $3 a round, and .500 Holland & Holland is about $5-$10 a round, assuming you can even find the ammo). In short, even getting enough ammunition to fill the 250 round belt on a GPMG is going to be expensive. 250 rounds of ammunition is heavy. Really, really heavy. As in, too heavy for most non-specialist military people to effectively carry, along with the MG, and still be able to operate it all.
Personally, I think the NRA does more harm to the cause of legitimate firearms ownership than good, but I accept that’s a minority opinion not shared by many gun owners, least of all in the US.
I grew up in northern Idaho with a gun-totin’ father in a part of the country where for a lot of folk hunting is necessary to survive the winter. If we found out that one of our neighbors had an AK-47 or the like and/or magazines that held 50 rounds each, we’d steer clear of that neighbor, and we’d probably call him a “gun-nut”.
Just sayin’.