Yes. Do you have any hunting experience?
That was NOT my assessment. It was something you made up.
I don’t know anything about hunting small game. Why is a semi-automatic rifle good for small game hunting? Is the ability to fire relatively rapidly particularly useful? Is a semi-automatic a better choice for hunting in general?
It’s a strange position to be in. Open carry of long guns is legal in those states but people often act like it’s not - calling the police, panicking. If I were a gun owner I would be very annoyed. I don’t personally agree with lax gun laws, but if that’s what the guns laws are then people should chill out. I think that given the US constitution sets out very broad rights, I disagree with the convoluted state laws for open and concealed carry that are contradictory and at odds with eachother. Both open carry and concealed carry should be legal in all states because that the right. However, I admit to not knowing the history and how the laws became so contradictory in the first place.
Seems clear to me that if you normalise the owning and using of guns in society for personal defence then you shouldn’t be surprised when you have a high incidence of gun usage and deaths.
Open carry of whatever weapons does precisely that. The message is " I have a gun and I am willing to kill you with it if I feel threatened" Doesn’t sound like a healthy societal mindset to me.
All the technical definitions in the world regarding “assault weapons” are irrelevant when the overriding purpose is to remind others of a deadly threat.
That’s part of it, yes. Also, from this decent article:
There are lots of types of hunting and lots of different firearms that are more or less appropriate choices for those various hunts (and hunters). I don’t know that I’d be comfortable making a sweeping statement about what’s a better choice for hunting “in general”. It depends. In the article I linked above, for example, the Pennsylvania hunters they surveyed supported semi-autos for hunting small game but not big game.
I’ll note that the Ruger 10/22 has been a very popular choice for hunting small game across the country for many years. It’s a semi-auto rifle.
Just an addendum
I guess if the primary reason you are doing something is to provoke a reaction then it’s a bit jerkish - Like the “I’m not touching you” behavour of kids. If what you are doing is also fundamentally dangerous to yourself and others, then that ups the jerk scale to something else. It was silly of me to say above “people should chill out”. People very rarely do what they “should”.
Yes, there’s nothing magical about the AR-15 in particular. Any weapon that is designed to kill a lot of people in a hurry shoudn’t be in civilian hands. Period.
Go to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and explain to them that such guns are merely ‘scary’ and they should get the fuck over themselves.
So what? My criteria are stated above. Obviously if I was in Congress, trying to turn those general criteria into legislation, I’d get some expert help.
But for purposes of this discussion, banning “weapons designed to kill a lot of people really fast” should suffice just fine.
If banning guns that enable massacres like the one that happened two days ago, and like so many others we’ve had in recent years - if that’s a stupid idea, I don’t want to be smart.
Fuck just banning their purchase, I want to ban their possession.
Whatcha gonna do, call me a ‘gun grabber’? Too late - you pro-gun types have used that up on every trivial gun-control measure, all the way down to closing the gun-show loophole. What are you going to say about me - “he’s a gun-grabber, and we really mean it this time, we were just bullshitting every other time we said that about someone”?
I like this - although I would add “outside of hunting season” after the word “carry”.
It would be superfluous.
It would be monotonous.
If I saw someone open carrying in my state I would immediately call the police. I have NEVER seen anyone open carrying a rifle or a handgun in RI and so anyone doing so would be so far outside the social norms around here that I would be immediately concerned and call the authorities.
Just the carrying of a rifle of any sort doesn’t indicate an intent to harm anyone.
More often than not, people doing that fall into one of two categories:
-
Member of a minority carrying it to signify that they’re not pushovers. We saw a lot of that around here (Dallas) right around the BLM protest times, and notably during the police shootings a couple of years ago.
-
Right wing white doofuses. Typically the sorts who will do stuff like this because they can, and it makes people uncomfortable. In my experience, it’s either grumpy middle-aged or old men who want to make a political point, or it’s dorkish younger men who like the thrill of wandering around openly armed.
Nobody just carrying a rifle normally (slung, no magazine loaded) is intending to commit a crime. But if the person has a magazine in it, and is at port arms or worse, then maybe you can start making some assumptions about what they’re going to do with it.
Believe the need to carry an assault rifle into a Walmart is a sign of mental illness . . . Negating the right to own a firearm . . . That would make it a crime . . .
You saying this does not make it true.
FYI:
A guy is walking down the street with an AR-15-What is the minimum specific action he could make that would cause you to call the police?
Fortunately we live in a country of due process, where a court appearance and a judge’s ruling is necessary before you can be labeled incompetent.
I am fully aware of the gun laws in this state. Let me repeat, I have NEVER seen anyone open carry around here. Not rarely, not once in a while - never. I would immediately call the authorities if I ever saw someone carrying a rifle of any kind walking down the street because it just isn’t done here. And I am certain that most of mu fellow state residents would have the same response. If you don’t like my answer don’t move to Rhode Island. Quote all of the second amendment blather you want, I will still drop a dime on you.
Good question. I don’t know where these would all fit on the “minimum-maximum” scale in your mind, but some examples:
-
if I knew that the guy was a prohibited person, I would call the police without any specific action by him.
-
if he was making verbal threats towards people (e.g. “I’m going to kill _____”)
-
if he was pointing the weapon at people with a finger on / near the trigger.
-
if the news was lit up of a recent shooting spree in the area with a suspect at large, and the person did not appear to be law enforcement, I’d probably call the cops.
There are probably others, but I think that’s sufficient to answer your question.