Nevertheless, guns are for cowards.
And when did I say I wanted to take anyone’s guns away? I actually don’t care very much about gun issues, I just don’t understand the hysteria on the part of gun nuts. Is a trigger lock or a waiting period really the end of the fucking world?
Gun-grabber is a perfectly good descriptive term for people who want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.
I believe in calling a spade a spade.
What would you call them, then? What term would you feel is free of slanted rhetoric? Gun banner? Anti-freedom? Safety Patrol? Defenders of gunshot victims? They are calling themselves “Gun-safety” nowadays. Talk about slanted rhetoric!
Now if I called then “gun-grabbing nuts” – that would be slanted rhetoric.
OK, Mr. smarty-pants, how about giving us a term devoid of slant.
Backpedaling are we?
Sure. Reading your posts we can see that you “actually don’t care very much about gun issues.” Ted Kennedy would LOVE you…
It’s a stupid word to apply to people who simply want things like trigger locks. It’s possible to favor rational controls without wanting to “grab” everyone’s guns. I don’t know of a single notable politician who favors any kind of an all out ban. certainly John Kerry does not. Calling such people "gun-grabbers is just alarmist nonsense.
On the other hand calling someone a “gun nut” is no different than calling them a “science fiction nut” or a “sports nut.” It just implies enthusiasm.
Backpedaling are we?
[/quote]
Backpedalling from what?
I don’t. I’m just really annoyed by gun fetishists.
I don’t think I’m your ideal candidate for proof. I’m an Australian and so don’t see political ads, op-eds etc for either side.
I just don’t know a great deal about guns because I don’t care about them too much.
Question about automatics and semi-automatics - in what category does a gun like an M-16 / AR-15 fall? Perhaps it’s just inaccurate movies, but on those guns it appear to be the case of pulling the trigger once and letting out a spray of bullets, not once per bullet. If this doesn’t qualify as automatic, what does?
An M-16 is a miltiary, automatic weapon. An AR-15 is the civilian, semi-automatic counterpart.
The M-16 is a machine gun, while the AR-15 isn’t.
Movies are an extremely poor way to learn much of anything in a factual way. Learning about guns from action movies is like learning about physics from most sci-fi movies.
The M-16 is a military assault rifle used by the US Army and a couple other nations. It has two firing modes, selected by a switch on the side of the gun: semi-auto (one trigger pull = one shot); the older models have full auto(hold trigger to spray), which is replaced by three round burst mode (pull trigger, three bullets come out) in the newer models. Real M-16 are Class 3 weapons in the US and thus are highly regulated by the 1934 Firearms act, with some states banning them outright, and in the rest, you have to go though a rigerous background check & pay a rather hefty tax.
The AR-15 is semi-auto only weapon, though it looks nearly identical to the M-16 - a person unfamilar with firearms probably couldn’t tell them apart. The regulations on AR-15 are much less rigerous than those imposed on M-16s.
The bill this thread is discussing is the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban, which made building rifles with certain cosmetic features (like Bayonet lugs) illegal. Must be all those drive-by bayonets we have been having. 
Overall, a rather silly law, if you ask me.
Here is an interesting page, showing real M-16s, pre-ban AR15s, and post-ban rifles.
No argument there.
Right, this from the man that says “Guns are for Cowards”.
Personally, I always thought guns were for hunters, sport shooters, and those that wanted them.
Gun collector=stamp collector. The intent is the same.
Claiming anything else is just rhetoric.
The Assault Weapon Ban was and is a PR tactic more than anything else, but one that the gun rightists have played poorly and those advocating for gun control have (disingenously) played well.
In a recent thread (no utility in linking) I have already pointed out that these are not the weapons responsible for most of the deaths asociated with guns in America. But they are associated with some high profile deaths, the ones that scare Joe and Jane Public sitting in comfortable suburbia. The nutcase going postal is going to use a weapon like that. And Joe and Jane feel threatened by the nutcase, even though most gun deaths are by Gus the Gang banger using a fairly cheap illegal handgun either stolen or purchased on the Black Market, diverted from the legal stream in a variety of easy ways.
But Mr. and Ms. Public are very afraid of these weapons. And the gun rightists defending the right to own guns that have very little utility for hunting (their usefulness for killing prairie dogs notwithstanding) or advantage in self defense over less scary seeming weapons, painted them as uncompromising extremists to Joe and Jane.
The gun control side accomplishes little to reduce deaths with the AWB directly. But by getting the NRA to discredit themselves as reasonable people in the general public’s eyes, it was a huge tactical success for more effective regulations down the pike. And the NRA’s ongoing efforts to bring it down merely compounds their tactical stupidity.
Really?
Diane Feinstein = notable politician.
Diane Feinstein = “If I could say right now, ‘Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in,’ I’d do it.”
Alarmist nonsense?
Looks like you gotta do some homework.
Has Senator Feinstein attempted to introduce any legislation banning all firearms? No. You’re taking a rhetorical statement out of context and putting a hysterical spin on it. I know this quotation is popular on gun fetishist websites but it’s just alarmist nonsense.
Cynic, you just take any new information that contradicts your stance, change the question and use it to “prove” your position. You are being dishonest.
Using your standards we can take the Bush comments on same sex marriage and abortion as more “alarmist nonsense?”
You said:
I showed you you were wrong.
Senator Diane Feinstein favors an all out ban. And she’s not the only one, she’s just stupid enough to have admitted it publically.
Out of context? What, do you think they were talking about, sugar beets?
So, in the face of facts, you call it:
YOU are the only one spouting nonsense here, DtC. If this is what you call your contribution to a great debate, I highly recommend you getting a second opinion from a medical professional.
I’m done with your “baiting.” Your “arguments” are worthless.
No, Feinstein does not favor an all out ban, nor has she tried to introduce any such legislation. She just made a rhetorical comment that it would be nice if Americans didn’t own guns.
Bush, on the other hand, is flogging a constitutional amendment to enshrine his personal bigotry into law.
No comparison.
Here we are again, Americans and their guns. Try as I might, I struggle to resist the impulse to surreptitiously turn to the rest of the industrialised democratic world and whistle while revolving my index finger near my temple.
The UK’s gun laws are overly restrictive, I’ll admit. There is no reason why someone who likes shooting guns at targets (or even living creatures unless vegetarianism one day becomes mandatory) should not be allowed to do so. But I do not understand why they must be allowed to take their guns home, or indeed take their rocket launcher down to the pub as some in this thread appear to advocate, rather than lock them in the club vault.
“The right to bear arms”. Never have so few words on a piece of paper killed so many.
You may now return to your quaintly 19th Century discussion.
Coming from a ‘subject’, that is pretty ironic.
I think it is unfair to label all gun owners as “cowards.” Perhaps in your mind you think that all gun owners require weapons to instill some sense of power in their otherwise vulnerable lives. But most gun owners don’t walk around armed all the time. I’m a gun owner and the only time I am ever armed is when I go out to the range. I own a 22 semiauto rifle because it is cheap to use for target shooting and a 8mm M48 Mauser because I like historic rifles. Neither of these guns is practical for self defense.
Additionally, you cannot group all gun owners as being opposed to trigger locks and waiting periods. I have no problem with either.
Were I the criminal element type, I would venture that I could do a whole lot more damage with a standard hunting rifle than something like the Colt AR-15, Bushmaster XM-15, or Ruger Mini-14.
Also, the Mohammed/Malvo killings in DC are a rare example of using a semi-automatic rifle in the commission of murder. They’re just not the firearm of choice for the vast majority of criminals.
Obviously this will vary by ability, but I can empty the magazine on my bolt action Remington 700 (four shots) in less than a minute under good conditions.
Granted, it takes me a little longer to reload than it would if I had a drop-out magazine, but the 700 is also far more accurate for much longer distances than many of the ‘scary looking’ semi-autos.
And how many regular civilians can get live grenades anyway?
Guns are for hunters, sportesmen, target shooters, self defense, ranchers, collectors, etc. Collectors tend to see them as financial investments. Some of the more ‘specialty’ guns like the Dirty Harry .44, older and unfired, are worth a nice amount of money these days.
Those would be called select-fire then, and are covered under the 1934 Firearms Act, if I recall correctly, and it’s necessary to get a federal tax stamp and pay the thousands of dollars for the rifle itself if you want one.
In .308 or .280, the Remington 700 would still have been a lot ‘better’ a choice for them. Accurate to much longer distances.
Which made it all the more absurd when I saw the video of Diane Feinstein moving a semi-automatic rifle in a sweeping motion across a crowd to demonstrate it in a speech. Gun safety my ass. Cardinal rule #1 is that all guns are loaded. Cardinal rule #2 is that you never, ever point the muzzle at anything you do not intend to destroy.
Trigger locks are a bad idea. You can’t use them on a loaded firearm, which renders your defense gun useless. The reason you can’t use them on a loaded firearm? Because in many cases you can fire the gun by pulling on the trigger lock.
The M-16 is a military grade rifle that was originally fully automatic but is now designed to have a three round burst pattern. The AR-15 fires one shot per trigger pull and is semi-automatic.
The actual Feinstein quote is ‘If I could’ve gotten 51 votes in the Senate, Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in, I would have done it. But the votes weren’t there.’
I’d say she’s pretty damn serious.
True story before I start yelling at everybody else who has been hijacking this thread: My wife knew a gent from somewhere in the Middle East who said, “Guns are for cowards,” but added, “A real man uses a knife.”
Okay, campers, this discussion is SPECIFICALLY about assault weapons as defined by the government. It was NOT about Sen Feinstein coming in the night to take away your single-shot .22. It was NOT about trigger locks being dangerous on a fully loaded gun when any idiot knows you don’t store a gun with one in the chamber. Let’s TRY to stay on topic for a change, people.
Words killing people. That’s a new one. :rolleyes: All this time, I thought that you had to some physical actor behind the whole mess.
We have bits of freedom in the US, and it scares the hell out of some people or pisses them off (often because a particular freedom is heralded by their political opponent). So they try to whittle it away a bit by bit. Like the Patriotic Act, the Gay Marriage Ammendment, the Aussault Weapons Ban, etc. All birds of a feather AFAIC.