You’re going to give yourself a stroke.
I didn’t lie about what a machine gun was, because I never claimed anything about them. I just used the oh so hilarious turn-of-phrase: “endless bitching because someone might use the term ‘machine gun’ outside of the NRA mandated term usage rules.”
And what did I get? Endless bitching because someone used the term “machine gun” outside of the NRA mandated term usage rules. Go figure.
Hmm. An interesting question. I would say that it would be difficult to ban ordinary hunting rifles, NRA or no, though it would be MUCH easier without the NRA. But without the NRA, banning the sort of weapons that can easily be transformed into something like an assault weapon, as well as assault weapons themselves, would be all kinds of easy.
Leaving aside the ‘assault weapon’ part of this (which I think is a ridiculous claim on your part, FTR), it’s hard for me to imagine no gun advocacy group in the US that wouldn’t fill the same role as the NRA, if there was no NRA. IOW, SOMETHING would always fill that niche, even if the organization had a different name, simply because of how our system operates and how many citizens in the US want to continue to keep weapons. Attempting to envision a US without an organization like the NRA (or, conversely, like AARP, NAACP or any number of other advocacy groups) is futile IMHO, because it’s not going to happen unless our system itself has a fundamental change or shift to something that bears no resemblance to the system we have.
YMMV, and if you want to fantasize about a US without an NRA (and without some other organization filling that niche but simply named differently) then that’s your affair, but it’s really not reality based, and the question therefore isn’t really all that ‘interesting’.
-XT
To add to what’s been said upthread: if there was ever a time in the US when you could buy a semi-automatic version of a full-auto firearm and “file off the interrupter pin” and presto have a full-automatic, those days are long gone. It’s been the law for decades now that semi-automatics be designed so to not be convertable without replacing most of the internal mechanism.
No, I’m surrounded by ignorance for my entire life, much of it willful. While it certainly bothers me, you’re nothing special.
Ah, so you say something wrong and inflammatory and then set it up so that when someone objects, you can say SEE HAHAHA THIS IS WHAT I MEANT ALL ALONG.
We all know what you meant, you were implicitly responding to an argument not yet made but that probably would be. This is just weaseling.
I know you probably have no idea that you have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you’re interested in understanding, we’ve done this many times before. bonus!
If you want the TLDR version: the term “assault weapon” is meaningless - it’s a political term used to sound like “assault rifle” and deliberately designed to make people conflate the two. But the weapons popularly called “assault weapons” do not share the functionality of assault rifles. They can look similar and be based off the same models, but functionally they are no different from thousands of less menacing looking “legitimate” sporting weapons. And so all assault weapon bans are based on superficial or cosmetic features - because weapons that can be banned by functional features already are. So they define an assault weapon (at least the 94 AWB) by a collection of traits like bayonette lugs, pistol grips, folding stocks, and muzzle attachments - essentially, since they can’t define how assault weapons function (since they’re the same as many many publically accepted weapons), they define them by what they look like - or at least secondary features. I doubt the number of drive by bayonettings are a public safety issue.
So your use of the phrase “banning the sort of weapons that can easily be transformed into something like an assault weapon” doesn’t even make sense, unless you mean taking a not-quite-qualified-as-an-assault-weapon and changing the stock and putting a bayonette lug on it. Which I’m sure you don’t, since it’s silly. Which indicates that you don’t understand what an “assault weapon” is because you’ve been mislead by the media and the anti-gun lobby. Which you can find out more about by reading those threads.
Assuming that by “assault weapon” you mean “capable of firing multiple bullets on a single trigger pull”, the number of these weapons currently for sale in the US is essentially zero. You need to buy a registered and tax-stamped and highly controlled bit of assembly to do it legally, and to do it illegally requires a fairly high amount of gunsmithing experience/expertise for a less-reliable and less-sturdy firearm than if you’d just smuggled one in from somewhere.
I certainly hope **SenorBeef **doesn’t own any *assault weapons *… he sounds unstable.
It’s funny you should say that. I don’t actually own any weapons that would qualify under the '94 AWB, because they actually took a saw and ripped off the bayonette lug on one of my rifles. So don’t worry, no danger here.
But your whole line of trolling here is tiresome and boring. I don’t sound unstable whatsoever - I have been level headed and rational at every point in this debate. You’re being a weasely troll making personal attacks because you know you have no merit on which to argue the issue.
No surprise there – many people who are ignorant, or illiterate, or otherwise possessing any significant deficiency which they could with effort correct, seem to take a perverse pride their deficiency, as though it makes them better men than the pedants who demean themselves with undue attention to irrelevant conceits such as accuracy and reality. Pointing out their flaw never helps: they just see it as more proof that the problem lies with you.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’d have any particular reason to worry if SenorBeef were behind me with an M1 Abrams. You, on the other hand, would make me nervous if you had anything more dangerous than a toothpick. I’d be afraid that you, not being sufficiently educated to tell the difference, might have picked up an assault toothpick by mistake.
A personal attack in the Pit. What the fuck was I thinking?
Do you actually have a position worth articulating or are you trolling?
It’s not the presence of the personal attack that bothers me, but moreso the deliberate ignorance and lack of an argument. I’m just making sure it’s totally clear that you’re doing way more weaseltrolling than saying anything of substance.
Where do you all get the idea that the NRA is the only pro-gun organization? 
There are dozens, if not hundreds.
Notwithstanding some people clinging desperately to their willful ignorance, American media’s reporting on gun rights grows more accurate.
By continuing to bandy these terms around as if they were meaningful they relegate themselves to the ranks of the flat-earthers and moon-landing-hoaxers. People to be looked upon with pity rather than taken seriously.
So if the media can be educated, then the fight on ignorance is progressing. Slow progress certainly, but progress.
Anecdotally that seems true to me but I don’t watch nearly as much TV and mainstream news as before. I wonder if anyone has quantified a potential shift in how the media treats guns. I’ve seen various reports made 3-6 years ago detailing the number of slanted gun stories in the media and it’s probably the most blatant issue on which they lie about.
How on Earth did ANY ban on weapons of this sort with “scary-looking attachments” get passed in the first place? Did no one with sanity show up at the congressional hearings to set the record straight? Aren’t there any hunters amongst our elected representatives?
What a complete knee-jerk, ignorant pile of shit that is.
We’re regressing towards muskets. But no bayonets on those either, please. For the children’s sake.
Hunters are dicks. Most of them are fine with banning “what do you need them for anyway?” weapons based on modern military designs as long as you don’t touch their duck guns.
Pretty much a conflation of the following:[ol]
[li]The gun control crowd would like to see the eventual abolition of firearms from private ownership. Any ban of any type of gun is a step towards this.[/li][li]Worries about gang and drug related urban gun violence, including the belief that criminals were obtaining military-grade weaponry, the result perhaps of a handful of sensationalized news stories and reruns of Miami Vice. People will almost always support banning those other people from owning guns.[/li][li]Large segments of the population have confused notions about firearms; many perhaps thought it was a ban on full-automatic firearms, or firearms whose features somehow made them functionally deadlier than dad’s deer rifle.[/li][li]Congresspersons who will vote for anything that they think will get them reelected, no matter how stupid they know it is.[/li][/ol]
There may be some truth to that. Goddamn purists with their double-barreled shotguns loaded with birdshot for hunting quail in Nantucket.
sighs
I only don’t own a firearm because I have small boys and live in a quiet, relatively safe residential neighborhood. But once my sons are grown enough, and if I feel I need a goddamn gun, then I’ll fucking buy one.
I don’t understand the argument as presented. The OP is pretty out there.
Claiming that the definition of “machine gun” is an NRA-mandated term is factually incorrect.