# What's the threshold for a firearm to be too dangerous? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 25, 2019, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510 "2019-03-25T17:00:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2019, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/261 "2019-04-07T23:08:58Z")
> [@galen\_ubal](#): > > Biased in what way? Show your work, DrDeth. > It’s only fair - [here’s their methodology.](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology) What’s yours? How are you determining that they are wrong? They dont say how they counted them or what their sources are: \*What about Unreported Defensive Gun Uses There are sometimes questions about Defensive Gun Uses which are not reported to police. GVA can ONLY list incidents which can be verified. Our policies do not take into account stories not reported, “I can’t believe this happened to me” scenarios or extrapolations from surveys. Our position is that if an incident is significant enough that a responsible gun owner fears for their life and determines a need to threaten lethal force it is significant enough to report to police so law enforcement can stop that perpetrator from harming someone else.\* In any case, their numbers are even lower than the much derided Justice Dept survey: \* THE NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY (NCVS) However consistent the evidence may be concerning the effectiveness of armed victim resistance, there are some who minimize its significance by insisting that it is rare.15 This assertion is invariably based entirely on a single source of information, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Data from the NCVS imply that each year there are only about 68,000 defensive uses of guns in connection with assaults and robberies,16 or about 80,000 to 82,000 if one adds in uses linked with household burglaries.17 These figures are less than one ninth of the estimates implied by the results of at least thirteen other surveys, summarized in Table 1, most of which have been previously reported.'8 The NGVS estimates imply that about 0.09 of 1% of U.S. households experience a defensive gun use (DGU) in any one year, compared to the Mauser survey’s estimate of 3.79% of households over a five year period, or about 0.76% in any one year, assuming an even distribution over the five year period, and no repeat uses.19 The strongest evidence that a measurement is inaccurate is that it is inconsistent with many other independent measurements or observations of the same phenomenon; indeed, some would argue that this is ultimately the only way of knowing that a measurement is wrong. Therefore, one might suppose that the gross inconsistency of the NCVS-based estimates with all other known estimates, each derived from sources with no known flaws even remotely substantial enough to account for nine-to-one, or more, discrepancies, would be sufficient to persuade any serious scholar that the NCVS estimates are unreliable. \* [https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6853&context=jclc](https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6853&context=jclc) - Both the Hart survey in 1981 and the Mauser survey in 1990 were national surveys which asked carefully worded questions directed at all Rs in their samples. Both surveys excluded uses against animals and occupational uses. The two also nicely complemented each other in that the Hart survey asked only about uses of handguns, while the Mauser survey asked about uses of all gun types. The Hart survey results implied a minimum of about 640,000 annual DGUs involving handguns, while the Mauser results implied about 700,000 involving any type of gun.3 7 … Nevertheless, in a ten state sample of incarcerated felons interviewed in 1982, 34% reported having been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim. ’ 60 From the criminals’ standpoint, this experience was not rare. How could such a serious thing happen so often without becoming common knowledge? This phenomenon, regardless of how widespread it really is, is largely an invisible one as far as governmental statistics are concerned. Neither the defender/victim nor the criminal ordinarily has much incentive to report this sort of event to the police, and either or both often have strong reasons not to do so. Consequently, many of these incidents never come to the attention of the police, while others may be reported but without victims mentioning their use of a gun. And even when a DGU is reported, it will not necessarily be recorded by the police, who ordinarily do not keep statistics on matters other than DGUs resulting in a death, since police record-keeping is largely confined to information helpful in apprehending perpetrators and making a legal case for convicting them. Because such statistics are not kept, we cannot even be certain that a large number of DGUs are not reported to the police…Since as many as 400,000 people a year use guns in situations where the defenders claim that they “almost certainly” saved a life by doing so, this result cannot be dismissed as trivial. If even one-tenth of these people are accurate in their stated perceptions, the number of lives saved by victim use of guns would still exceed the total number 180 [Vol. 86 ARMED RESISTANCE TO CRIME of lives taken with guns. It is not possible to know how many lives are actually saved this way, for the simple reason that no one can be certain how crime incidents would have turned out had the participants acted differently than they actually did. But surely this is too serious a matter to simply assume that practically everyone who says he believes he saved a life by using a gun was wrong.\* and none of these figures are “mine”. They are from judges, peer reviewed journals and noted criminologists. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/262 "2019-04-08T00:37:49Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > ## An argument from authority. Right. > > The DGU statistic makes no sense whatsoever. 57% of homes in the US do not possess guns. If there were 340,000 DGUs where the possession of a gun “almost certainly saved a life”, these must have occurred in the 43% of all households that do possess a gun. > Assuming a random distribution of such life-threatening events, then (57/43 x 340,000) such events should have occurred in homes where no-one has a gun. That’s 450,697 events. > Either 450 thousand events have occurred in such homes but have largely gone unreported > or > they haven’t. > > Bear in mind these are events where a ‘gun saved a life’; this should be nearly half a million extra homicides. > > I call bullshit. You seem to be making the assumption that DGUs only occur in the home. I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. In any event, Kleck gets a lot of attention because the estimate his multiple studies came up with were the highest. But it’s not like that’s the only data point. From 1976 to 1994, [there were at least 13 other studies conducted](https://guncite.com/kleckandgertztable1.html), and they all came up with DGU figures that were quite high. Different methodologies produced different results, etc. but all the figures produced were in the several hundred thousand events. Even the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) that doesn’t even ask about DGU comes up with figures just about 100K. At this point, anyone claiming that DGU is rare has the burden of proof as far as I’m concerned. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/263 "2019-04-08T01:08:45Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > t this point, anyone claiming that DGU is rare has the burden of proof as far as I’m concerned. I’d say that anyone claiming that DGU is the only thing preventing the USA from being the country with the highest murder rate in the world has the burden of proof. I live here. The US isn’t that much of a shithole. Yes, our actual murder rate is definitely in shithole territory, but we are with the more high class shitholes, the ones with theoretically functioning governments. We are not inherently a country that would have 400,000 murders a year if not for gun toting citizens. Anyone who thinks that is living in a sad, frightening fantasy land. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/264 "2019-04-08T05:39:08Z")
> [@](#): > > Of those, 340,000 to 400,000 defensive gun uses were situations where defenders believed that they had almost certainly saved a life by using the gun. It sounds like the DGU enthusiasts are backtracking and admitting that their fellow enthusiasts were somewhat too … enthusiastic … to claim **that they had almost certainly saved a life**. No? For me, the lesson in all this repartee is just that: that gun enthusiasts are overly enthusiastic. And with this evidence — hundreds of thousands of life-savings falsely claimed — why should we trust them further? ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/265 "2019-04-08T09:18:25Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > If there are 1,247,321 violent crimes a year, then guns preventing a mere 340,000 of them is perfectly possible. Note that pretty much, IMHO any _violent crime_ prevented could be a life saving event. No, that doesn’t work. You still have 450,000 unprevented crimes that are notionally identical to the 340,000 prevented crimes, but you don’t have 450,000 deaths. In fact the homicide rate is about 4% of that. > [@](#): > > Perhaps they weren’t all lifesaving events, but no one claims they were. These events are claimed to have ‘almost certainly’ saved a life; it seems that the term ‘almost certainly’ has a large margin of error. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/266 "2019-04-08T10:08:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > If there are 1,247,321 violent crimes a year, then guns preventing a mere 340,000 of them is perfectly possible. Note that pretty much, IMHO any _violent crime_ prevented could be a life saving event. **Perhaps they weren’t all lifesaving events** , but no one claims they were. > > But sure, you can reject the reality and call bullshit. > > But those figures come from the Justice dept and a peer reviewed article by noted criminologists. Do you see how the data would cause someone to come to the conclusion that most of them weren’t lifesaving events? Your point is valid, there were a large number of defensive gun uses. But most of them, it seems if a gun hadn’t been used, the criminal wouldn’t have committed a murder. Nevertheless, your side of the argument has merit. Maybe it was 1% of these encounters would have ended in a murder. And some of the others, the victim would have been raped or beaten. It sounds like 400k times, the victim had some agency. They called on Smith and Wesson and they delivered. The problem is the guns also appear to have caused a lot of extra deaths, more than the number of times a criminal would actually commit a murder. As you might recall, murder is severely punished in all civilized countries, and potential murderers are sometimes at least vaguely aware of the potential consequences and probability of getting caught. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/267 "2019-04-08T11:26:37Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > At this point, anyone claiming that DGU is rare has the burden of proof as far as I’m concerned. ## Defensive gun use is vanishingly rare - in my country. Plenty of farmers, hunters and hobbyists have guns- but they would never brandish them against a human without a very good chance of being prosecuted themselves. More number wrangling. If there were 1,247,321 violent crimes in a particular year, but only 17,500 homicides, that means the chances of a violent crime turning fatal is 1.3%. If the 340,000 DGUs prevented homicides at this rate, they will have prevented 4420 deaths. Not 340,000 prevented deaths, but even this seems worth doing. It seems that I’ve made an argument in favour of DGU. Except. If the US had the same murder rate as the UK, the number of homicides nationwide wouldn’t be 17,500, but 3512. By living in a culture with such a high rate of gun ownership, you are saving 4420 lives, and losing 13738. Per annum. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2019, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/268 "2019-04-08T16:22:38Z")
After 5 page of the usual BS, I’ll answer the OP’s question directly: 1. It goes “bang” even when you have NOT pulled the trigger. 2. It does NOT go “bang” when you pull the trigger. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2019, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/269 "2019-04-12T23:47:04Z")
Here is proof that no amount gun laws is too many _and_ that they dont work: > **[Soda, water, guns, and tires: They could all be taxed if California Democrats...](https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article226657929.html)** > > It’s a standard California Republican talking point that Democrats want to raise taxes. And it’s true that Golden State Democrats have introduced, or plan to introduce, legislation that would raise or create several new taxes. \*FIREARMS EXCISE TAX “Although California has the toughest gun laws in the nation, more effort is necessary to curtail gun violence,” Assembly Bill 18, sponsored by Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-Greenbrae, reads in part. AB 18 “would express the intent of the Legislature” to impose an excise tax on the sale of handguns and semiautomatic rifles, with that revenue going to the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Grant Program. According to the bill language, between 2014 and 2016, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation found that gun homicides in the state increased by 18 percent.\* **Although California has the toughest gun laws in the nation,=gun homicides in the state increased by 18 percent…** Fail! ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2019, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/270 "2019-04-12T23:51:17Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Here is proof that no amount gun laws is too many _and_ that they dont work: > [https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article226657929.html](https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article226657929.html) > > \*FIREARMS EXCISE TAX > “Although California has the toughest gun laws in the nation, more effort is necessary to curtail gun violence,” Assembly Bill 18, sponsored by Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-Greenbrae, reads in part. > > AB 18 “would express the intent of the Legislature” to impose an excise tax on the sale of handguns and semiautomatic rifles, with that revenue going to the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Grant Program. > > According to the bill language, between 2014 and 2016, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation found that gun homicides in the state increased by 18 percent.\* > > **Although California has the toughest gun laws in the nation,=gun homicides in the state increased by 18 percent…** > > Fail! I don’t trust your source as far as I can throw it, but if you’re proposing that we should grab and destroy all the guns, I will commend you on your forward thinking plan. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2019, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/271 "2019-04-12T23:54:12Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I don’t trust your source as far as I can throw it, but if you’re proposing that we should grab and destroy all the guns, I will commend you on your forward thinking plan. I (fortunately) don’t live in California, so I’m unaware: is the Sacramento Bee a right-leaning news source or something? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2019, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/272 "2019-04-12T23:58:44Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I (fortunately) don’t live in California, so I’m unaware: is the Sacramento Bee a right-leaning news source or something? I opened the link and the writing style and word choices alone lead me to believe that 1) yes it is, and 2) I would take literally everything said by that article with an entire salt lick. Don’t know nothing about the Sacramento Bee, but that specific article is fail in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2019, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/273 "2019-04-13T00:47:04Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I don’t trust your source as far as I can throw it, but if you’re proposing that we should grab and destroy all the guns, I will commend you on your forward thinking plan. You dont trust the sacramento bee? how about the actual site for the state itself? [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill\_id=201920200AB18](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB18) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2019, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/274 "2019-04-13T00:48:34Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I (fortunately) don’t live in California, so I’m unaware: is the Sacramento Bee a right-leaning news source or something? No, kinda liberal actually, since this IS California. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/275 "2019-04-13T21:39:27Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > ## Defensive gun use is vanishingly rare - in my country. Plenty of farmers, hunters and hobbyists have guns- but they would never brandish them against a human without a very good chance of being prosecuted themselves. > > More number wrangling. > > If there were 1,247,321 violent crimes in a particular year, but only 17,500 homicides, that means the chances of a violent crime turning fatal is 1.3%. If the 340,000 DGUs prevented homicides at this rate, they will have prevented 4420 deaths. Not 340,000 prevented deaths, but even this seems worth doing. It seems that I’ve made an argument in favour of DGU. > > Except. > If the US had the same murder rate as the UK, the number of homicides nationwide wouldn’t be 17,500, but 3512. By living in a culture with such a high rate of gun ownership, you are saving 4420 lives, and losing 13738. Per annum. OK, you’ve watered it down from 340000-400000 lives almost certainly saved, to between 4420 and 5200 lives probably saved. And that’s your claim, not that of Kleck & Co. If you quote this cite in the future, I would highly recommend that you leave out the 340,000-400,000 entirely. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2019, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/276 "2019-04-13T23:58:23Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > **Although California has the toughest gun laws in the nation** , or at least, that’s what one state legislator said, so it must be true, amirite? > [@](#): > > Fail! Can’t argue with you. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/277 "2019-04-14T10:31:34Z")
My apologies, **eburacum45** , I thought I was responding to **DrDeth**. Sorry for any confusion. Since I was responding to the words of his that you quoted, both of you can take it as a given that I was responding to him. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/278 "2019-04-14T10:48:49Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > , or at least, that’s what one state legislator said, so it must be true, amirite? Can’t argue with you. 😃 My point here, **DrDeth** , isn’t about whether or not California has the toughest gun control regs in the country. The point, or rather the **points** , are: 1. _“You dont trust the sacramento bee?”_ Your authority here wasn’t the Sacramento Bee. The Sacramento Bee wasn’t making any claim at all; it was just reporting the news. 2. In this case, the SacBee was quoting the words of a particular state legislator, California Assemblyman Marc Levine, who wrote those words into the preamble of a bill he sponsored. **He** was your source. You did the same thing earlier when you said, _“Not me, issue is with HON. ROGER T. BENITEZ United States District Judge.”_ Once again, he wasn’t the source of the information you quoted. He’s a judge, not an expert on either guns or statistical surveys. He was citing a survey done by Kleck and Gertz. You should be able to read your sources sufficiently to know whether they’re the original source of the info you’re citing, or whether they got it from someone else, because you need to know how good your ultimate cite is. 1. The reason you need to do this is that, presumably at least, the reason you’re citing it is that it supports the position you’re making in a debate here. If it’s a crummy cite, it’s your problem because it’s your argument that gets the supports kicked out from under it. Just sayin’. ---
**Author:** ![obbn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d6d6ee/32.png) [@obbn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obbn)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/279 "2019-04-14T18:42:44Z")
To all those wanting to ban our restrict semi auto firearms, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish? There are by some estimates 200 million to 300 million firearms in the United States. When talking about mass shootings there are what, a handful? (Not that having any is a good thing) How much safer does anyone really believe we’ll be if semi auto firearms are banned? Not much as the overwhelming majority of firearm owners are law abiding citizens. Taking their firearms does exactly zero to stop mass shootings as those firearms would never be used that way. So, what do we have left? We have individual’s that are willing to commit mass murder and I just don’t see how any law or ban is going to be effective at stopping them. They obviously don’t give a rat’s ass about laws and have no intention of following them. I’m all for stopping mass shootings, but taking firearms out of the hands of law abiding citizens just isn’t going to do it. Finding a way to identify those who are predisposed to violence would be a better use of our resources. Keeping firearms from mentally unstable persons would do more than any ban. How do we do that? No idea. But as I’ve said, if you came tomorrow and emptied my gun safe of the 20+ semi automatic firearms in it the world would be zero percent safer. Those firearms will never be used in an unlawful way so eliminating them will do nothing to stop the problem. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510/280 "2019-04-14T18:50:41Z")
One objective starting point might be to simply measure or calculate how much kinetic energy a weapon can put downrange in a given period of time by a skilled operator with unlimited ammunition at its maximum effective rate of fire. We could do empirical tests on it. It wouldn’t be the only criterion to look at, but it would be a way to start tightening up what we mean by “assault weapon” or whatever. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-threshold-for-a-firearm-to-be-too-dangerous/831510.md?page=15)