Right. It’s a case of brand erosion(*). IIRC, the Armalite Automatic Rifle Model 15 existed first, and was selective-fire. A milspec variant of this was eventually adopted by the US Forces as the M16, which was just the US-specific equipment designation code.
Una, the Selective fire AR-15(3 shot burst), like catsix mentioned is banned as a machine gun in the US, federally, AFAIK. THere are 40,000,000 variants made by 40,000,000 companies which conform to both the AWB as well as the machine gun ban and are legal in states other than california.
So yes, the AR-15, in certain configurations is banned in certain states as well as federally.
And it looks like we’ll disagree on that criminal thing, Tank.
Sam
I knew that the select-fire weapon would be an NFA weapon, as would any weapon that fires more than one round per trigger pull (except, I imagine, for double-barreled shotguns with composite trigger). I was only seeing the “AR-15” and fucked up. I’m not sure if it’s more accurate to call what I have an AR-15 or a “Sporter”, except I guess some people might not know what a “Sporter” is.
So you are seriously saying that a guy who mows down an office full of people is somehow not a crimminal? How do you figure that?
Sorry Una, I was only talking about the weapon that CNN apparently said is now legal, according to catsix. You have a sporter, AKA a clone, or a knock-off…a million different ways to say what you have.
Dave, who said someone who walks in to an office and executes his co-workers ins’t a criminal? Reading into my comment to catsix’s very specific comment much? Not everyone who shoots, injures, kills or maims a person with a firearm is a criminal. I know that may be hard to fathom for you.
Sam
Waves hand frantically
I know, I know… Until you are convicted of murder, you are not a criminal unless you had already been convicted of some other crime. ( major crime I bet too ) So, until you are caught and convicted, you are not a criminal, just a murderer. And that of course is not really a criminal.
So, as long as you have never done anything worse that a misdemeanor, or never been convicted, no matter your rap sheet, you are not a criminal because you ain’t been caught yet.
did I win? did I win? huh? huh?
Um, no. The last thing Ex-Tank said to you was this:
To which you replied:
Now, unless you are going the route that GusNSpot suggests and nitpicking this thing to death on technicalities, then you did in fact suggest that you thought someone who walks in to an office and executes his co-workers isn’t a criminal somehow. Which was why I questioned you on it. Which you still haven’t answered, BTW. A law abiding citizen could gun down a rapist intent on harming her and indeed not be found guilty of a crime, is that what you are talking about? I fail to see how the AWB was aimed at anything even close to such a situation. Maybe you should provide details of what you are referring to instead of snide remarks.
Who’s making demands? It would be interesting though to hear why people feel like they have to have their military style arms with flash suppressors and banana clips and all of that. If it hasn’t evolved beyond “I like to shoot shit and make it go boom”, fine. I guess. Done the same myself (though you don’t need that much of a gun to go plinking).
If it’s, “Because it makes me feel like more of a Man”, or “To protect myself from the Liberals/ATF/UN”, we have a problem. And that element is out there. Go to any gun show.
Unless you live in Liberia or Afghanistan or Iraq et al., I would be slower than that to lump such weaponry in with the “necessary” doodads of modern life. Of course, if you live in such a place you’re probably not concerned with what’s on cable.
I hope you guys and all the NRA slaves in Congress feel the same way, the first time some dude kills their boss and all of his co-workers and maybe a cop or three, using a newly-available weapon he bought sometime after this morning. Hopefully that doesn’t happen, but I feel rather certain it will.
You ExTanks of the world can parse meaning from gun specs all day, but when a newly available gun is used in a bloodbath somewhere we’re all going to hear about it, and what will you say then? “What a dumbshit - he could have bought a Mini-14 and killed those people last week”? Sheesh!
changing subject somewhat-
My uncle is about the most law abiding citizen you’ll ever see, and an avid hunter/sportsman. That’s right, he has a lot of guns, or should I say had - someone broke into his house while he was on vacation and stole all his firearms, (even the Mini-14). Guess where those guns are now? (hint: one was used in an armed robbery two weeks later.)
The moral of the story is, being a law-abiding, flag-wrapped citizen doesn’t guarantee that the military hardware you buy for shits and giggles isn’t going to end up jammed in the face of some grandmother down at the 7/11.
What was the point of that? Should I feel guilty about my firearms because some fuckhead criminal might one day break into my home and steal them to use them in a crime?
If that’s what you want, and if you think I should even consider that when purchasing a firearm, you’d better think again.
On the “people not shot by a criminal” comment, I parsed it as to referring to a combination of: accidental shootings + negligent shootings in which there was no criminal intent + legitimate self-defense or line-of-duty shootings.
(And looking at this side-debate and other threads in the past, maybe what we really need is to clarify when the average person says “criminal” meaning a person for whom breaking laws and hurting people is a major part of his life, as opposed to every single person who breaks the law.)
You know what? I am smart enough to realize that in such a situation there is no “newly available weapon” to blame. Don’t you know anything you dumb shit? The AWB didn’t do a thing. It outlawed “scary looking guns” as determined by one or two cosmetic features, such guns were immediately made available lacking the offending features. If you want to argue gun control pros and con, feel free, but don’t pretend the AWB was an effective, reasonable or even logical “gun control” measure. It wasn’t. It was shoddy, knee jerk legislation at its worst, a waste of taxpayer’s money and law enforcement’s time that made you, me or the grandma behind the counter at 7-11 not one wit safer.
Yea, that’s exactly what I am going to say. More precisely, I am not going to focus on the weapon used by the maniac when identical weapons have been available for years legally (through grandfather clauses) or weapons that perform identically have been available legally because the AWB didn’t mean shit IRL. You know why? Because I have a brain and common sense, not just a “Guns are bad, mmkay?” mentality.
-Weirddave, who doesn’t even own a pistol or an assault weapon, in fact, the only gun I do own, a Winchester Model 190 that I inherited from my Grandfather, hasn’t been out of it’s case in years. BTW, that innocuous looking little gun I linked to can put out 15 rounds as fast as I can pull the trigger, emptying the rifle in maybe 2-3 seconds. That sounds to me like a lot of firepower, we wouldn’t want someone to be able to shoot 15 times that fast, would we? Maybe we should ban the gun.
I am of the mind that there is no such thing as an accidental shooting, because had the proper rules of firearms handling been followed, nobody would’ve gotten shot. Someone had to break a safety rule for it to happen.
As foar as self defense or ‘line-of-duty’ shootings, they should never, ever be confused with negligent shootings.
Such firearm had to have a detachable magazine and two or more of a list of features:
Rifles
-Pistol grip protruding ‘conspicuously’ beneath the stock
-Folding or telescoping stock
-Bayonet lug
-Grenade launcher (note that the grenades themselves were not legal for civilians even before 1994)
-Flash suppressor or threaded barrel
Pistols
-Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
-Threaded barrel capable of accepting a barrel extender, flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer, whether or not it actually had one of these add-ons
-Shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel and that permits the shooter to hold the firearm with the non-trigger hand without being burned
-Manufactured weight of 50 ounces or more when the pistol is unloaded
-Semiautomatic version of an automatic firearm
Shotguns
-A folding or telescoping stock;
-A pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;
-A fixed magazine capacity in excess of 5 rounds; and
-An ability to accept a detachable magazine.
High capacity was defined as magazines holding more than 10 rounds, despite the fact that a 10 round magazine was a ‘low capacity’ magazine for most firearms, below what they were designed to hold.
Dave, In an embarassing concession, I must admit that I didn’t read all of ExTank’s comment to me. Mainly because this isn’t a discussion on what constitutes a criminal and what doesn’t and I wanted to avoid a complete hijack. My apologies.
Sam
Fair enough, GaWd, and completely understandable, I think we’ve all done it. My reaction was “He CAN’T be saying THAT, he’s shown himself to be far too smart a poster to say something like that”, which was why I pressed you on it. Also, kudos for being able to say “I made a mistake”. Far too many people on these boards can’t-which leads them to either pigheadedly defend the stupid or to leave the thread in a huff, neither of which is a trait I associate with reasonable adults, although the former can be quite amusing.
I’m a liberal Democrat, and disagree with you. Working closely with the gun lobby, NRA people and people who run afoul of the law with guns, there is definitely “that element” out there. I dislike it and I personally wouldn’t want their hands on ANY weapon, let alone an “assault weapon”. Unfortunately, the AWB is a sham and has banned weapons based on aesthetics, not firepower, or prevalence of use in crime or any other useful tactic.
But for the most part, that newly-available weapon will be a weapon with a new stock, or a new barrel, or a clip…not a totally new super-urban assault weapon. It would have been available weeks before without a clip or a thumbhole stock or a folding stock, Etc. Really no damned change.
See above.
I’m not sure what your point is here. Your uncle fucked up. He was a negligent flag-wrapped, law-abiding citizen. If they didn’t get the guns from the local guy with the NRA stickers on his truck, they would have purchased one on the street, dirt cheap. That’s how it works and no weapons ban will stop that from being SOP.
Sam
RTA:
WHOOPEE! I’ve been elevated to Adjective Status! 
The point you are missing, RTA, is that the passage of the AWB may put a few new models of guns on the market, but for the most part, it won’t. Because after the AWB, manufacturers merely changed a few cosmetic features on BANNED weapons to make them legal, and sold them throughout the BAN period.
If we say, “What a dumbshit,” it won’t be just about the shooter; a fair amount of the vitriol will also be applied to the hand-wringers wailing over how bad it is the ban on Mini-14’s* has lapsed and allowed this massacre.
Because our nominal shooter could’ve bought any number of functionally identical, NON-BANNED rifles at any time during the BAN period and accomplished his dastardly deed.
Hence us guys’ contempt for this ineffectual law, and our expressing our contempt through our NRA slaves in Congress. :dubious:
:wally
*The Mini-14 didn’t appear on the Federal Ban list, but may be on some state lists.
Now I’ll admit first off that this requires a bit of gadget style trickery, however there is a good point here.
First off, one would procure a Ruger Mini-30 Ok, perfectly leagal to own under the 94 ban. So far so good.
Next, we go over here and ourselves up a pre-ban high capacity magazine. Since it was manufactured before the ban, it is also quite legal.
Then, we stroll over here , get us a scary black stock. I like the second one down, it’s very A-Team. Since it’s folding stock is welded into the open position, it’s legal under the ban.
Finally, we go here . Now, it’s a gadget that most self respecting gun owners would never use, but this legal to own device can make your gun as close to full auto as possible with out being an actual “machine gun”.
Here’s the point. This configuration was totally legal to possess during the assault weapons ban. It’s either grandfathered in (for the magazine),or not banned (for the rifle, modified stock and trigger device). I do not remember a rash of “machine gunnings” taking place using this, or a similar configuration. So exactly how were we “safer” with the ban in place? Are we just plagued with lazy criminals who lack the manual dexterity to turn a few screws? These are not “radical” modifications. None of them requires a trained gunsmith to accomplish. The ban was a waste of legislation.
GaWd …how did RTA’s uncle fuck up? I was following you until there and then could not figure that comment out.
But not a person that doesn’t have a handgun… 
I believe in securing my arms, especially when leaving the homestead for an extended period, like a vacation. Gun cases with locks, safes, triggerlocks that will most likely destroy the trigger mechanism before removed…
Maybe that’s asking too much? Way too often the headlines tell stories of kids blasting their friends because daddy’s weapon was lying around, loaded. Way too often also, one hears about stolen weapons used in robberies and murders like RTA’s story.
I find it negligent behavior, but it doesn’t necessarily mean RTA’s uncle is a bad person-he just made a mistake in not securing his weapons.
Sam