One look at this thead reveals the very common misconceptions and ignorance that the Assault Weapons Ban thrives upon (which I view as nothing less than a very underhanded deception of the American people by politicians.)
The AR-15 is called a “machine gun” by several posters.
What can we take away from this?
That some people assume that actual machine guns, i.e. fully-automatic weapons, are readily available?
That the AR-15 depicted is one such machine gun?
It’s a semi-automatic rifle, chambered in 5.56 also known as “.223.” Now, if you were to get a bolt-action rifle in that cartridge, it would be considered a “varmint rifle,” in other words, suitable for shooting prairie dogs, squirrels, and maybe coyotes. Your dad’s hunting rifle fires a more powerful cartridge. In fact, the M-16, when it was first issued, was hated by a lot of servicemen, especially seasoned veterans who preferred the more powerful .30-caliber cartridges of the M14 and the M1. They used to call it a “poodle shooter” and some of them joked that it was made by Mattel.
Now, whether or not the M16 is a good combat rifle, is another argument, and both sides have their fanatical following. The point is that even the automatic version of that rifle was and is considered underpowered by a lot of people.
So we’ve got a semi-automatic rifle, in an arguably light cartridge, which is an “assault weapon”…because it looks scary, basically. I’d venture that the average non-gun-owning American would actually not even know that there is such thing as a semi-automatic civilian version of the M16 called the AR-15, and automatically (ha!) assume that the weapon in that video was an automatic rifle.
Now, how many crimes are committed every year with rifles? Not many.
Most gun crime is handgun crime. Now, of that handgun crime, how much of it is committed by CC permit holders?
See where I’m going with this?
Far from being a smoke-screen, these draconian gun laws are a reality brought to us by Democratic politicians (AND Republican politicians who don’t do anything to fight it, such as Rudy Giuliani.)