Negative. There is such a thing as “armor piercing” rounds, but the reality is that most ammunition suitable for rifles will easily penetrate walls and cars. With regard to the robbers’ body armor, they fashioned their own, which weighed them down considerably and, while it helped them survive for a long time it also hindered their escape.
That has yet to be demonstrated. Just because you assert that it is the case does not mean that it is true. Perhaps you can tell me the difference between this weapon and this weapon. Hint: one is black, the other is not.
The difference from one weapon to another is almost never as obvious as you would like to think it is.
Removing controls? Who is removing controls? Automatic weapons have been controlled since 1934. Some cities have de facto bans on handguns. Some states are passing laws that ban entire classes of weapons (California’s .50 BMG ban comes immediately to mind). How can you say that guns are not controlled? They are probably the most controlled thing in the entire United States.
Typical “anti” nonsense. They have absolutely no idea what in the blue fuck they are talking about.
glee, there’s no crime in the United Kingdom? Boy, that’s news to me. Fuck, I’m getting on the first flight to London. Cheerio, chaps. I want to be safe.
I’m going to leave the humiliating piece-by-piece field-stripping of these arguments to the posters like Stealth Potato and Airman who are more articulate than I am. Carry on, gentlemen.
The earliest acts regulating the militia specified that adult males were automatically a part of it. This wasn’t a satisfactory situation for anyone, though, since in times of war the Army was presented with a bunch of people who were very poorly trained, and ordinary citizens at any time generally wanted to be left alone rather than be bothered with training requirements for an organized militia.
The Militia Act of 1903 solved much of this problem by creating National Guard units with explicit training requirements - but it also left in place an “unorganized” militia with no explicit training duties spelled out to it. But this militia did include adult males, as it did before, and this militia could in an emergency be activated.
So you’re right, the National Guard is in every way the successor to the old militias - but it isn’t at all clear that this has any bearing on Second Amendment jurisprudence since the unorganized militia still exists.
Huh? I’m not one of those posters who gets roses thrown at their feet on gun issues, but even I know that one is .308 and the other is 5.56 (.223). Did you link to the right weapon?
Um, dur? I have no excuse. Rather than the M-16, I intended to link to the M-14, the US service rifle immediately preceeding the M-16. Sorry.
The point, my error notwithstanding, is this: appearance has no effect on functionality. When a group of weapons are controlled primarily on the basis of appearance, it can be said without hyperbole that those controls are patently ridiculous.
The M-14 is a nice weapon, Airman. When I was younger and had a good outdoor range, I wanted one. Now that I’m old and time is short, it seems like a frivolous thing to buy.
Tbrown posted ‘In a country of supposedly “free” people, if you are not allowed to have weapons with which to defend yourselves or your loved ones, then you will always be the subject of any criminal, tyrant, or other individual looking to usurp your rights and belongings.’
Since we here in the Uk don’t have any guns for self-defence (including the regular police), and yet we are not constantly faced by armed criminals, tyrants or individuals seizing our rights and belongings, this shows Tbrown was wrong.
Yes, there is some crime here in the UK. (We have more mobile phones stolen here than in the US.)
However we have a smaller murder rate and no school shootings. None ever.
It is therefore hard to see how the millions of guns US citizens have for self-defence is a policy that works.
That doesn’t appear to be the exclusive preserve of the “anti” lobby, if this post is any guide.
Also to me, and I live here. However, I read glee’s point as being more to the effect that, despite being deprived of the right to own handguns, we’re not going in daily fear of either armed criminals or tyrants.
And you’d be welcome, although if you found you couldn’t sleep at night without the comforting bulk of a piece under your pillow, perhaps this isn’t the place for you.
There’s likely to be some humiliation going on, I agree - just possibly not what you were counting on. And if I were Stealth Potato or ADUSAF, I’d be vaguely insulted by the implied grading on the curve. :dubious:
This is not correct, and is in fact the root cause of the gun ban in the UK: the Dunblane Massacre. If by “none ever” you mean after that one, you would be correct, but it does you a disservice to exaggerate.
I’ve been guilty of making the comparison myself, but I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that it is an apples-to-oranges comparison. The culture is different, the geography is different, and there’s really no point in making such a comparison between the two countries.
I will note, however, that one of the reasons that school shootings are so successful is because schools are low-hanging fruit. Nobody in a school is armed, therefore there is no possibility of being stopped in any reasonable amount of time. That’s not a debate I want to get into, though, because the idea of arming people in schools arouses even more ire than the typical gun-control debate and causes nothing but bad feelings and suspicion.
And to add (too late for edit), Dunblane was the cause of the handgun ban, but handguns were not generally used for home defence before then (nor generally permitted to be used for such) - so Dunblane had negligible impact as far as that was concerned.
The ultimate irony is that due to the Gun Control Act of 1968, smaller caliber handguns are often ineligible for import because they fail to achieve the required total of import points, thus ensuring that the weapons used are generally of a higher caliber and therefore more effective. What’s more, the Assault Weapons Ban of 1993, with its 10-round magazine restriction, encouraged the development of smaller, more concealable weapons in those higher calibers. The current wave of subcompact automatics can be directly attributed to laws that were intended to prevent crime, thus allowing people to more effectively commit crimes.
Yes, thanks for pointing that out and I apologise. :o
(My only excuse is the totally ludicrous claim by Tbrown that a disarmed citizenry would face constant danger, followed by Argent Towers completely misinterpreting me. I posted in irritation.
P.S. It is true we have never had a pupil shoot up a school.)
Of course Americans have that reference in their Constitution and also there are currently millions of legally-held guns in the US.
However we used to have laws insisting that every able-bodied man was armed (the long bow - definitely the automatic rifle of its time, as the French can testify). And now our regular police are unarmed, yet nothing significant has happened.
I don’t see why the different geography matters.
Both our countries are democratic, capitalist, industrialised - and even speak the same language. We’re your closest allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While it is undoubtedly impossible to change the gun culture in the US in the short term, perhaps the UK can serve as a model in this one area for the future.
Geography is important because the UK has a natural barrier. Being an island it has a natural barrier to importation, thus a ban is more likely to be enforceable. We can’t even keep illegal aliens from crossing the border, let alone guns or drugs. Our borders make enforcement largely academic, and thus it would be an exercise in futility to attempt to ban guns in this country even if they weren’t Constitutionally protected.
