What's the threshold for a firearm to be too dangerous?

Well, I took it as a dividing line for general (in the US anyway) use. Those other weapons I mentioned are probably not a practical weapons for most people, so they would be very niche weapons wrt crime. They WOULD, if available to the general public, be ideal for mass murders on a scale larger than anything outside of the box cutters and planes or big bombs level of crazy, so that’s why I drew the line I did. If you make the basic assumption that a gun, in and of itself isn’t ‘too dangerous’ then that’s where I draw the line. If you don’t, then talking about magazine capacity is meaningless, and instead you should focus on the action. Any gun that is a repeater is probably ‘too dangerous’, and even a single shot weapon with modern ammo is probably ‘too dangerous’ in that context. Like I said, a valid argument would be semi-automatic or repeating actions (bolt action, cylinder or pump action). It’s the action that makes such guns more dangerous than a single shot weapon. So we have several levels here…all guns being ‘too dangerous’, semi-automatic or repeating weapons being ‘too dangerous’, and highly specialized weapons like those I mentioned and the ammo types I noted, with a whole bunch of levels in-between that that folks can use to draw the line (say, caliber or muzzle velocity…I think they would be valid arguments especially the latter). I gave my answer to the ‘too dangerous’ (for civilian I presume) use answer.

I’m talking marginal improvements. I have no illusion that even a total ban and successful elimination of every >10 round magazine in the country would make a huge difference. But it might make a small difference - maybe a shooter kills 11 instead of 14, because 3 got away while he was reloading. Or with a ban on carbine length barrels with rifle caliber ammo, maybe 9 are killed instead of 12 because 3 of them had survivable wounds. Or similar. Even a few seconds can be a really long time in the moment - certainly long enough to increase the chances of escape.

It’s a monstrous, massive problem, largely driven by culture, including our culture that worships violence and especially gun violence.

But looking at it rationally and logically, some weapons are more effective at different tasks than others. It’s not ludicrous to surmise that targeting certain features with legislation might have some non zero effect on the body count of shootings. I understand that many are philosophically opposed to anything like this, but the idea that there’s no possibility any such legislation could have any effect is not credible.

I think all long guns should be muzzle loaders.

All of this applies to someone in a defense scenario as well. You seem to only be considering potential positives, not negatives.

Actually, very very small.

Here’s the top 50, guns arent even in the top 100.

https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/318177-lobbyings-top-50-whos-spending-big

Big Health and Pharma together are the biggest.

Big Tobacco, which kills 500,000 Americans a year, spends about 10-20 times what gun companies and the NRA does. … and kills 50 times more.

Then that would be limited to the .50 BMG, and possibly not even that.

How many were killed?

One dead, two vehicles struck by bullets, although the no one was injured in either one. Three suspects in custody, one still at large. And for the sake of accuracy, it was 60 shell casings, not 80. My mistake.

My question to you. Does 60 shots fired and only one death make it okay?

Charles Whitmanwould agree with you.

Actually, this guy did some real damage with a breach-loading shotgun. And accounts say the body count would have been higher if some of the shells he carried hadn’t been bird shot.

The common factor with these seems to be their portrayed use by criminals: “Tommy” guns by gangsters, silencers by assassins, robbers hiding short-barreled guns under a coat. Even back then Hollywood was sensationalizing gun crime.

You’re thinking of the infamous University of Texas tower shooting?

It suggests to me that some people’s aim sucks. :stuck_out_tongue:

Ninja’d.

Has any one even used a 50 caliber sniper rifle in a mass shooting before?

No, I just wanted to know, gang bangers are notoriously inaccurate. It was quite possible 80 casings, no one was hit. But actually, according to that, no one was dead and only one critically injured.

The law says you can reasonable and proportionate force if attacked, but as to what that might be, that depends on the how the circumstances are eventually viewed by the police, prosecuting authorities and if necessary the courts. On the whole, we don’t attempt to prescribe every possible situation in legislation.

But burglars here don’t, on the whole, set out to attack, rather to steal, and very rarely have guns in the first place, so the use of a gun on the average thief would be wholly disproportionate. If you do get one waving a gun around, well, your life is worth more than your family heirlooms.

I’ve been burgled in the UK three times (each time, before I managed to install a burglar alarm). One when I was in the house. At no time was I in any real danger, and I had no desire to shoot the kids who did it. Why do Americans always want to shoot burglars?

That seems reasonable. And thank you for recognizing that there could indeed be some positives to this kind of idea.

Do you know how many civilian self defense instances in the last decade or so involved reloading, or more than ten shots fired? I don’t, but I suspect the number is smaller than the number of mass shootings with more than ten shots fired.

We have an extremely violent culture that worships the idea of “shooting bad guys”.

What’s the line in the military, or other enforcement organizations? Even in a context in which we might expect legitimate access to high powered weapons, I doubt they just open the door to the armory and say have fun! Plus, there are a hell of a lot of people, in a fairly high stress environment. There’s got to be at least one or two mental meltdowns just waiting to happen.

Since everyone is so focused on the militia aspect, maybe we should just say use any weapon you want, you just have to be a current or standby member.

What’s up with non semi automatic anyway? On TV there’s often a scene where someone is pointing a gun for some time and exchanging banter and then just to show they are extra serious, they cock the gun. What? What does that do? Does it make the bullet meaner? Or would the gun not have worked until then? In which case why pretend it’s a threat?

Lumpy, or anyone else, what do *you *consider an acceptable level of dangerousness, and why?

It’s common sense: the more people that a weapon can kill in the hands of one person, the more dangerous it is. If we’re going to allow the average person to carry assault-style weapons why not let them carry hand grenades and IEDs.