Then the people who understand guns and know these things should be thinking about where the ‘sweet spot’ is which keeps their fellow citizens a lot safer than they are now, while still allowing them as much freedom as possible to carry guns.
But AFAICT, the “people who understand guns” haven’t put one lick of work into trying to find some solution to our monthly massacres. (Dayton took care of the “good guy with a gun” idea, which we knew was bullshit anyway.)
And in the absence of pro-gun people working towards a solution, it’s clear that the right to possess guns is something they value well beyond the value they assign to the lives of their fellow citizens.
Gee, I just can’t figure out why we haven’t expended time and energy helping you guys write competent legislation to restrict our rights. It couldn’t have anything to do with hateful attitudes like this … could it?
Except, duh, cars are far more useful in many ways other than to kill. Killing is an unfortunate side effect that is constantly being studied and lessened. Unlike a certain tool that is designed from the beginning to kill…
Lol, Colt removing these things from the civilian market but keeping it open for the military market sure beats the shit out of future “AR-15’s are not military/are for civilians” arguments, so at least the Left now has that one put in the W column.
And that’s an important point. The NRA has lobbied to prevent even public health research into seeing how guns could be made safer and less prone to accidental deaths. Cars have been studied extensively, including messaging around drunken and distracted driving, and have become much safer over the years. Car manufacturers were incentivized to study safety and improve on it.
That research into gun deaths and how to minimize them is blocked, primarily by NRA lobbying, shows the moral bankruptcy of these industry leaders, and that they shouldn’t be trusted in deciding what’s fair and what’s not.
A 2015 business case analysis of the AR15 market. Just found this and am on my phone, but:
Data goes to 2013
90% of all AR15s are sold to the “civilian and police” (C&P) segment.
4.7 million AR15s were sold in that time (4.23 million to the C&P segment.
Colt was the #3 seller w/ 388k units sold. (Smith & Wesson #1 with 1m sold.).
Page 18 makes the claim that in 2012 974k AR15s were sold.
Using analysis which may be flawed, the authors then deduce that of that 974k, approximately 499,000 (51%) went directly to civilians.
Page 52 states that Colt has 13% of the market and sold 147k AR15s
If Colt has the same ratio as the industry, that means 79k AR15s were sold by Colt to the civilian market, for (using the analysis’s numbers) $79m in civilian AR15 revenue, and $7 million in profits.
Guys, I’m not going to review 10k’s while using a phone, but I don’t think the numbers are speaking to many of the arguments being made here.
They have banned switchblades, skateboards, firecrackers, nunchuks, and many other things over the last century or so. Communities that want to ban knives have about zero to do with the lethality of some guns vs others. But you are right we have always been on the slope. It’s not new and not alarming to good citizens.
So just to be straight I am OK with communities banning a scary knife if they want to.
Again you are just ignoring the proportionality but I guess that was your point?
Just think of responsible gun control as a wall that we need to build. Big beautiful new laws that will make bad foreign (but also domestic) dark colored (But also vanity, pastel, and girl models) weapons much scarcer in the future.
Because I didn’t take your bait about killing kids, or allow you to frame the question in a way that removes the obvious way to increase firepower - bringing two pistols?.
But if you want my honest answer as to which single gun would be able to rack up the biggest body count, I’d still have to say ‘that depends’. There’s no doubt that an AR-15 is a lethal gun in the right hands. If it were a Navy SEAL doing the shooting, I’d say whatever assault weapon they have trained on. For the average, untrained user I’d probably say a magazine-fed sawed off shotgun or a handgun
But the difference between all these guns, including various handguns, is going to be far smaller than the difference in ability of the shooter. A trained shooter with a Glock 19 is more dangerous than a kid who just got his hands on an AR-15.
And there is no difference in lethality at all between an AR-15 and a sporting rifle like the Mini-14. Both of them shoot the same ammo, have similar firing rates and ease of changing magazines.
And neither of them pack as much of a wallop as a 12 gauge shotgun or a high powered hunting rifle. Because the .223 Remington, which the AR-15 shoots, is a rather underpowered rifle cartridge.
As a comparison, a .223 has a muzzle energy of 1252 ft.lbs. A 30-30 Winchester round (used in those old west lever guns among many others) has 1903 ft.lbs of energy. But a .308, which is the most common rifle round for hunting, has 2820 ft.lbs of energy - more than twice that of the AR-15.
So a semi-auto .308 like a Springfield M1A is twice as lethal as an AR-15. It also has an interchangeable box magazine, so it can fire just as many bullets in the same amount of time.
So to answer your question, I’d take a semi-auto large caliber rifle if I was trained to use it properly. If not, probably a handgun like an M1911 or a Glock.
Thank you for answering. I think magazine capacity has some bearing on what gun people would choose to take on a rampage. Fewer magazine changes means less down time.
It may have “some bearing” but it’s certainly not the determining factor. The Virginia Tech shooter used a Walther P22 as one of his guns and a bunch of 10-round magazines.
