Your typical Johnny W. Asshole would probably be even more deterred if there were some basic licensing and registration (and possibly mandatory training) involved, than if he just couldn’t get the coolest style. Raising the barrier to entry just to a level that wouldn’t bother responsible enthusiasts would ultimately keep guns out of the hands of a lot of people who probably shouldn’t have them, without actually prohibiting anyone from getting the kind of gun that they like.
Banning cool looking guns might deter some less responsible assholes from getting guns, and mandatory licensing and training requirements might also be a deterrent. And I think both in combination would be even better. My post was addressing the AWB mentioned by the OP - I’m sure there’s a lot of other measures that would have a positive effect on gun violence (including the executive orders given by Obama recently - most of which seem to me to be saying that we need to enforce the laws that already exist).
But my post wasn’t just about criminals and assholes who use guns to commit crimes - it was also about respectable, responsible, law-abiding gunowners. They might not be deterred by registration and training, but they might not buy (as many) guns if they can’t get the really cool looking ones, and thus decrease other types of gun violence and death.
I think you overestimate the degree to which responsible, law-abiding gun owners (i.e., the sort who go in for training anyway) contribute to violence and death (pretty much not at all). You’re also underestimating their propensity for cheating. If they can’t get exactly the gun they like, they’ll flaunt your law with small loopholes and aftermarket modifications. They’re a wily bunch. 
When I lived in Michigan (1988-2007) the law required you go go to your police station and obtain a purchase permit prior to buying a handgun. Dealers couldn’t sell you one without it. After you bought it, you went back to the station for a “safety inspection” which was, in fact registration.
After 2002, If you wanted to carry the gun concealed, you had to get a concealed weapons license. This required a formal training course, fingerprints, and a thorough background check.
That barrier was already raised. A quick look at Detroit’s homicide rates during those years should quickly tell you that the laws didn’t do much to “keep guns out of the hands of a lot of people who probably shouldn’t have them.”
My point was that gun violence does not just include using guns to commit crimes or homicides. It also includes accidental shootings and suicides - which affect even responsible gun owners. In the US, suicides are a higher proportion of gun deaths than homicides.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who delight in seeking out loopholes and spending money on mods. But there also people who aren’t, and I think the point of the AWB isn’t to get rid of guns entirely but the writers of the bill hope it will reduce gun violence overall. Whether the AWB will actually achieve that is very debatable and I don’t really know if it would be successful or not, but my WAG is that’s Feinstein’s intention.
I think that if we’re talking about reducing the number of people who buy a gun who probably shouldn’t have one (but who can still pass a background check), then making the guns available to them less desireable (less cool/scary) might be a more effective deterrent than making them fill out a form at the police station.
This is true. But the failure of regional regulation isn’t itself evidence that such measures could never be effective on a national scale; after all, it’s trivially easy to smuggle weapons from an area where there are no restrictions.
Well, speaking as a gun owner, we’re not too keen on giving up our rights because of the actions of a few incompetent people, or because of some possibility we might decide to off ourselves with one someday. And besides, suicide by firearm is easiest with a handgun, not an assault weapon. And even if you used a long rifle (which is manageable if difficult) you only need one shot, so an AR-15 is the equivalent of a double-barrelled shotgun or a bolt-action rifle in that regard.
It makes no sense at all to even consider suicides when talking about an assault weapon ban.
After the 1994 assault weapon ban, the market for AR-15 style rifles exploded. Pre-ban weapons became hot items, and millions of new ones were made that just omitted banned features (like retractable stocks and bayonet lugs). People who hadn’t even given the matter much thought before suddenly were buying AR-15s in droves. It’s not really surprising; one of the most effective ways of making someone want something is to tell them they can’t have it. If you ban the style, the style suddenly becomes more desirable; gun manufacturers will toe the line as close as they can to deliver exactly what their customers want.
Basically, targeting weapon appearance is completely misguided. At best it achieves nothing, at worst it’s counterproductive. Banning functionality is unconstitutional, so look elsewhere.
So if the Lanza kid had “low capacity mags” the grade school kids would have time to tackle him while reloading? :rolleyes:
How do you tackle a taxi driver with a double barrel shotgun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings
I posted this elswhere but this is an example of someone trying to tackle a reloader and got shot and his daughter explaining the difference a gun would have made.
Susan Gratia on the Luby’s shooting
Ban cool looking guns? WTF does that even mean? yes the sociopath will be deterred in getting a firearm because whelp the cool looking ones are banned. not enough roll eyes for that.
Out of curiosity I’ve checked some of the gun sites, and there are people now paying $2200-2500 for an $800 AR variant or Ruger. But the gun market is terrible like that, people honestly get crazy at the merest hint of regulation. When Obama was elected many people paid inflated prices on ammunition and guns for months, even though Obama took absolutely no regulatory action against firearms the entire first term of his Presidency.
As someone who mostly owns bolt-action rifles for hunting and occasional target shooting, I don’t particularly care when guns like the SKS or AR-15 variants are jacked up in price, but it does unfortunately tend to jack up the price of all ammunition during these times.
I think it’s possible my two scenarios are both happening at once. That Feinstein is an idiot who doesn’t understand the political calculus and is out of touch with how extremely unpopular this would be in the rural states (which each get two senators), and at the same time the more savvy Democrats are maybe eyeing Joe Manchin’s background check bill as a quiet, effective alternative they can pass as a much more reasonable piece of legislation in comparison to the pipe dream of a California liberal.
Actually a large crowd of unarmed people without easy escape, should always bum rush a single shooter. It’s irrelevant if he’s reloading or not, the key is a willingness to physically overwhelm. People are going to get shot and probably killed regardless in the mayhem.
It’s like I said about Utøya, you have over a hundred people who start out in a crowd, stuck on an island, the right answer was to rush him and disarm him. Instead, they fled and scattered, and he basically walked around until the police arrived, picking people off one by one.
But it’s a psychological thing, in a scenario where many could overwhelm a single shooter, it requires each individual to be willing to die in order to make it work. The effect would be fewer deaths, but very few people are willing to do something that they believe will get them killed.
If I was in an hardened position with great vantage, and people were rushing up a hill at me and I had a true belt-fed machine gun, I could probably kill many, many, many people regardless of how much they rushed or were willing to come at me. A single person with a semiautomatic rifle, who calls people over to him and is basically surrounded, can only fire so fast and in so many directions, a rush would have easily overcame him regardless of whether he reloaded or not.
They’ll flout the law with small loopholes. When they’re done flouting the law they might flaunt their functionally the same but not really an assault weapon in the faces of their opponents but they may face charges for brandishing a firearm.
Just a data point, since I’m getting sick of all the gun control threads and I don’t feel like debating…
Pre-ban firearms are still expensive. My first AR-15 is a Colt Model SP1 that was made in 1979, and which I bought at a gun store around 1984 for $400. Just before the ban, a decade later, ISTR prices of a new SP1 of around $700 or $800. I have not paid attention to prices over the years, but I think I remember seeing prices of around $800 to $1,100 for a new Colt AR-15 (or whatever they changed the name to, since ‘Colt AR-15’ was on California’s banned list, and the new name wasn’t for the exact same rifle without a bayonet lug or flash hider) or for a Bushmaster clone (XM15-E2). After the ban expired, AR-15s were again allowed to have a bayonet lug and flash hider.
But Colt Model SP1s (the pre-ban model) still commanded a premium price. Why? I think there are a few factors. For one, some people are more comfortable owning a pre-ban rifle because their ownership is already grandfathered in. Maybe they think a new ban would not grandfather previously legal rifles that were made after the original ban. Some people like the older style. If you happen to see what people are buying, it seems that most people want the ‘latest and greatest’. They want an M4 clone like badasses use. Or they want a flat-top model that shows everyone what a serious shooter they are, and that they can decorate like a Christmas tree with all sorts of tactical accessories. But there are still people who like the looks of an SP1. They don’t want a brass deflector or a forward-assist plunger. They don’t want the fully-adjustable rear sight. They like the old triangular handguards. SP1s are lighter than the new offerings, and some people find them more fun to shoot. Since Colt no longer makes that style, and since they are desired by collectors, the prices have remained higher than a new rifle.
I am a collector. I recently paid $1,600 for a like-new Colt SP1 carbine. That’s four times what I paid for my SP1 rifle. But the Model SP1 is a collectible since they haven’t made them since 1994 and people still want them, the factory carbine version is particularly desirable, and the price rise reflects a difference of nearly 30 years. Would I like to have bought my carbine for the same price I paid for my used rifle three decades ago? Sure. But all things considered, it was not too outrageous. Thursday I decided to buy a new Bushmaster lower receiver for the ‘-A1’ style carbine upper receiver I’ve had sitting around for 20 years or so. The seller had bought 20 lower receivers with all of the internal parts and pistol grips and butt stocks after the Columbine shootings. He said his wife told him he needed to sell them. $575 seems a high price to pay for half a gun; but the dealer cost from Bushmaster, without the stock, is $295. A dealer has to make a profit (when I worked in a ski shop, everything was marked up 100% – I wouldn’t be surprised if guns had a 50% markup), and the stock could cost up to $100. Plus I’ve seen stripped XM15-E2 lower receivers sell for $575. I reckon I got a bargain.
Martin Hyde is right, though. I got lucky with the carbine and the lower receiver assembly. I’m seeing selling prices of the SP1 rifles and carbines up to $2,500. New-manufacture AR-15 types are selling for up to twice what they cost a year or so ago. Lower receivers are virtually impossible to buy, other than from a private seller. Everyone is out of stock of nearly everything. The one manufacturer I know of who makes the old-style lower receivers (and upper receivers) as used on the SP1 has stopped taking orders because they don’t have the capacity to meet demand. The current hysteria has driven prices up for people who have a particular niche to fill in their collection. It has also put many thousands of AR-15s into the hands of private citizens. It may have taken the manufacturers years to make as many sales as they have in the last several months.
TL;DR version:
[ul][li]AR-15 style firearms have become more expensive.[/li][li]Reasonable prices are still out there.[/li][*]The best way to sell firearms (and other things) is to threaten to ban them.[/ul]
$400 in 1984 has the same purchasing power as approximately $880 in today’s money. Adjusted for inflation you only spent about twice what you paid back in 1984. But your point about it being more expensive still stands.
Do you agree with Obama limiting magazines to ten rounds and banning high assault weapons? Why or why not?
Yeah, because someone who is determined to commit cold blooded murder will be deterred by some bureaucratic regulation.:rolleyes:
Really? Really? Do some of you really believe this crap? Criminals don’t give a rats ass what the law is. **THAT’S WHY THEY’RE CALLED CRIMINALS! THE COMMIT CRIMES!!! **
Do you think a guy who wants to mow down a bunch of people in a store will stop when he sees a “no guns” sign at the door? “Oh, wait! I better not go in here and kill everyone, I’ll get a $100 ticket for bringing a gun in a posted business”.
:smack: Jebus Khrist!
That kid in Connecticut just stole his moms guns and committed his atrocities. If it wasn’t his moms guns it would have been his uncles, his neighbors, or a stolen one he bought on the street. You think that nutjob was going to sober out of his insanity because of some legal paperwork he wanted to avoid? What fantasy land do some of you live in?
No. Because it’s stupid.
(Sorry, that seemed to be the correct level of participation considering the bare bones OP…also, we have a ton of threads already on this subject, do we really need another one??)
I thought that was Feinstein’s bill.
The President cannot submit a bill for consideration, they must come from a member of Congress.
As I posted in one of the other threads, the police seem to feel that if they ever need to use their sidearms, they want seventeen+1 rounds available. I presume they think that for a reason. If they were really honest about just wanting to ban “high capacity” magazines of the type used by assault-rifle clones, they’d ban 20+ round magazines.
Merged two threads on this topic.
You’re not in The BBQ Pit, so this is inappropriate. Don’t do it again.