I was under the impression that the newest correct term is Modern Sporting Rifle.
because ignorance leads to bad policy. We’ve had legislators (who are people capable of drafting and passing laws) call a barrel shroud a “a shoulder thing that goes up” then there’s a problem. If you don’t even understand what it is you’re trying to ban, then you deserve to be questioned.
.22 caliber as noted, and if you mean SIG (Sauer), they don’t make what people see as deer rifles do they? There is the precursor JP Sauer & Sohn who joined with SIG on some ventures and makes more “traditional” arms.
Was a brand name, they no longer hold the legal rights to the name (The A stands for ArmaLite, not Assault).
The modern AR-15 is more modular than the original M-16 based on the original AR-15, to start.
Sometimes the sardonic term ERB “Evil Black Rifles” is used.
Because the “pedants” involved include presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was heavily criticized, in part, because the designation of certain weapons was “assault weapons” was an entirely arbitrary distinction. Some of the criteria used to define an “assault weapon” included bizarre and irrelevant things like grenade launchers and bayonet mounts. (When was the last time anyone was stabbed by a fixed bayonet? Ever?)
This is relevant for two major reasons:
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Where do you draw the line between a weapon that is sensible and one that is overboard? Why is a 30-round magazine prohibited, but a 29-round magazine is okay? What difference does it really make whether a gun has a bayonet mount or not? This a criticism that crosses both sides of the argument for different reasons… The Pro-Gun crowd pointed to the arbitrary definition of certain weapons as evidence that the assault weapons ban went too far. The Anti-Gun crowd claimed it proved the law didn’t go far enough. Either way, the fact that the definition was completely arbitrary undermined the credibility of the law.
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During the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, the legal definition of an assault weapon was defined by how many of the criteria a weapon met. The gun companies responded by altering their weapons so that they met the bare minimum criteria to no longer be considered assault weapons… And in the process it did not change the actual function of the weapon AT ALL. In the final tally, the number of assault weapons in circulation actually increased during the “ban” years because the way they defined the weapon was completely nonsensical and easily circumvented.
In the end, you really are asking the right question: Does identifying a certain weapon as more or less dangerous than other weapons actually make any difference whatsoever?
Currently, the “AR-15” brand name is owned by Colt’s Manufacturing Company … there are clones in abundance, but legally only Colt can use the name “AR-15”. It stands for ArmaLite Rifle model # 15, but the design and brand name were purchased by Colt in 1959.
It’s a rifle, nothing more, designed to kill things. Semi-automatic is handy when varmint hunting, popping a squirrel typically spooks another, and you don’t want to be fooling with the bolt or pump to get another shot off. Granted, that NATO cartridge is a bit much for jack rabbits and raccoons, but it’s fine for mule deer and coyotes. If you have brown bears as varmints, you definitely don’t want to be fooling with the bolt or pump, you’re going to want a high capacity magazine … several in fact … you may still wind up running.
Aren’t all definitions completely arbitrary. That’s why we have definition to tell you what a word means. If you could figure out exactly what a word meant by looking at it you would not need a definition. If one writes a law that says “all x are banned.” you should specify in the law what constitutes an x. Now one might say the definition is not sensible, but arbitrary seems to be a part of it.
All laws do this. Why can you deduct $3000 of capital gains from your income but not $3001? Why is 65 mph OK but 66 mph is speeding? In fact I’d say that the speed limit law is even more arbitrary. After all if 30 rounds are prohibited, but 29 are OK. Then people can just use 29 round magazine. With a car it’s harder to hold the speed at exactly 65 mph so I’d argue more lenience is relevant there.
Unless you wish to argue there should be no limit on a magazine size, then it seems to me the limit has to be arbitrary. You could always say why not 1 more.
In most states in the US there is no magazine size limit.
I think you mean 10 rounds, I think you mean. Most states that set the limit put it at 10, a few exceptions, and as noted most don’t have a limit. The AR typically uses 30 because that’s what became common in early configurations, and reliability becomes a diminishing return with larger sizes (I hear the drums are jam-tastic).
Sorry, thanks. I knew Colt bought it but I thought they let it go since.
With a different upper. .223 is not sufficient for brown bear. I think most hunters would use bolt anyway because it allows a wider variety of more powerful calibers.
Because road engineers determined that that was a good limit for that particular road. It is often, but not always, based on what a certain percentile of drivers would drive at on that road. You are free to drive faster, but there are no governors on your car that set a hard limit.
The New York SAFE Act (magazine provisions since invalidated) was a good example of an arbitrary limit set by people who don’t understand guns at all.
Laws frequently involve drawing somewhat arbitrary lines. Maybe this 15-year old guy would be a better driver than that 17-year old, but we have to draw a line somewhere because we can’t let everyone drive and it would be time-consuming to deal with case-by-case.
And the bayonet mount we can turn around and say: “Why do you care if we outlaw bayonet mounts”?
If such weapons by definition were not assault weapons, then no, it’s not an increase in the number of assault weapons.
Or have you just given the game away that actually the whole distinction between assault weapons, assault rifles etc doesn’t matter a damn?
Okay, you all can play word games all you like, but the real caramel at the center of this candy is the following:
[ul]
[li]Any firearm is a hazardous tool which can be used to injury, maim, or kill other human beings by someone who is careless, malicious, or psychotic;[/li][li]An “assault weapon” is pretty much any firearm someone wants it to be, generally by defining a combination of caliber, ammunition capacity, and cosmetic or nonfunctional features which do not distinguish the lethality from “sporting” or “hunting” weapons; and[/li][li]The vast majority of gun control proposals and efforts are intended as ceremonial showpieces to make politicians appear to be “doing something” about crime without actually doing anything useful or effective, and are often actually counterproductive in terms of the effort and expense of implementing them.[/li][/ul]
Actual prevention and reduction of accidental shootings and crimes committed with firearms would consist of the following:
[ul]
[li]Comprehensive education on safe firearm handling practices;[/li][li]A universal licensing and training program for people who wish to own firearms of any description or purported purpose, including appropriate storage and use of firearms;[/li][li]Substantial penalties for the use of firearms in the commission of a crime or negligence in improperly storing, handling, or loading firearms, with latitude by judges to accept mitigating circumstances;[/li][li]And most critically, addressing the underlying socioeconomic and cultural inequality problems underlying urban crime which, media-promoting mass shootings aside, represents the bulk of criminal homicides.[/ul][/li]
The last is a really, really difficult problem that isn’t amenable to simple solutions which can be credited to a single bill or legislator, and for which there is little support by political action and lobbying groups. But the root problem of “gun violence” isn’t guns; it is violence, and the cultural acceptance of violence as a norm by both citizens and law enforcement.
Stranger
This is the kind of logic often touted by the gun lobby, but the simple fact is, gun bans in general and assault weapon / assault rifle / SMG bans in particular, actually work. We see examples of that all around the world, both in countries that have effectively always banned guns, and in countries that have recently tightened their laws, such as Australia and the UK.
One only needs to compare homicide, gun deaths and mass killing deaths to other countries to get a very clear idea of this (and yes, as a proportion of population, obviously)
Now, you may object to bans on civil liberties grounds. Fine.
But I think it’s totally erroneous to claim that attempts to restrict the sale of guns or assault weapons are counterproductive and just political showboating.
It is showboating just because of how badly some of the laws are written. When people see the word assault weapon they assume AR-15 or AK-47 derivatives but assault weapon laws have been so loosely defined that bolt action rifles have been classified as assault weapons and restricted in certain areas which is the opposite of what most people deem as being the targets for gun control.
General gun bans work, such as how some countries specifically ban all pistols or ban all rifles, but picking and choosing especially using such confusing criteria is what people mean by non-effective gun control. Instead of using such confusing criteria such as bayonet lugs go after stuff that actually matters like high capacity magazines (defined as being over 10 rounds) and not cosmetic features of guns.
Given that the Armalite started life as a military weapon, it was designed to “kill people and only people”. That it today gets used for hunting or target plinking and has all sorts of mods doesn’t mean that’s what it was designed for.
I think we can all agree that badly-written laws are bad.
What I was arguing against was the general disdain for gun control being shown in this thread. And the general arguments of “Well, lower-powered guns can still kill” and “How do you draw the line between low-powered and high-powered guns? Therefore all should be legal”.
None of this actually stands up to scrutiny. Countries can and have banned assault weapons with demonstrable success.
Putting aside the poor arguments in this thread, I think, yes, there are reasons for why naive gun control measures may not have the intended effect in the US: the ubiquity of guns, and their place in US culture.
But that’s not the argument being advanced by most in this thread.
Yes, but that is the history of almost all firearms. The Henry rifle designed in the 1860’s for the US army was a vastly superior rifle with a 16 shot capacity. Much better than the muzzle load rifles predominantly used prior to the invention of the Henry. It was designed to kill men.
After the Civil War, and men went back home, guess what type of rifle became prolific for hunting game, etc.? The Henry rifle. Why? Because it was better for shooting. The same thing happened after WWII. The 30-30 rifle, based off of the M1 rifle, became a favorite hunting rifle in the US. So it’s not surprising that rifles similar to the ones used by soldiers today, would become favored hunting weapons.
Bolding mine.
Huh? Do you mean the Mini-14?
I don’t care at all. It makes absolutely no difference one way or the other… And that is the problem. The 1994 AWB wasted time and energy outlawing features of the gun that nobody cared about and were easily discarded.
Yes. That is my point precisely.
I don’t know what “game” you are referring to, or what motive you think I have. You have interpreted me very well. There is little functional or meaningful difference between a so-called “assault weapon” and any other semiautomatic weapon. And this is where the fundamental schism between pro- and anti-gun groups comes in.
This arbitrary distinction has real-world impact on attempts to legislate guns. The 1994 AWB was problematic precisely because it was bogged down by this kind of stupidity. To return to my earlier example, the 1994 AWB declared things like bayonet and grenade launcher mounts to be features of so-called “assault weapons.” The ban was idiotic, because exactly 0% of criminal homicides are performed by fixed bayonets or projectile grenades. As I mentioned before, the AWB ban was easily circumvented by cosmetic changes to the guns that complied with the letter of the law but completely circumvented its* intent*.
This was by design. The anti-gun lobby knew that there was basically zero chance of passing meaningful legislation. If they had made the law more restrictive and also banned all of the various clones and ban-compliant versions, the law would not have been passed in the first place. So they were stuck with a problem: Pass a law that was entirely arbitrary and easily circumvented, or pass no law at all. They chose the former, and in doing so completely discredited their own goal. Now when politicians debate assault weapons bans (to the extent that they debate it at all) they recall the 1994 AWB and use it as an example of idiotic legislation that completely failed to accomplish its intent. If you want to ban “assault weapons” you need to use a much broader brush than the 1994 law did.
Second, by emphasizing “assault weapons” the anti-gun lobby has damaged their own credibility in other ways. Politicians and journalists often use “automatic weapons” and “assault weapons” in the same sentence because they either don’t know or don’t care about the meaning of the terminology they are using. This creates the perception that they are uneducated about the subject matter and therefore not qualified to speak with authority or write laws based on their obviously flawed understanding. Furthermore, groups like the Violence Policy Center have used the confusion between semiautomatic military style rifles and actual fully-automatic machine guns in media campaigns designed to deliberately confuse voters as to the facts of the debate. It doesn’t matter whether you hold “pro-” or “anti-” gun attitudes… We can all agree that laws should be written on the basis of empirical understanding of the expected outcomes. A speaker or leader that intentionally or unintentionally misuses the vocabulary loses credibility and, in the long run, damages support for even the most well-intentioned legislation.
The Mini 14 was not introduced until the 1970’s.
The 30-30 dates back to 1895.
The M1 Garand used the .30-06 Springfield. Later models used the .308 Winchester (7.62 NATO)