Sure, or nukes or tanks or napalm. But the utility of those things for self defense is vanishingly small. Like approaching zero for the average civilian. While the utility of a magazine, since you keep bringing it up is…small, but detectable. While how useful limiting magazine size with respect to it’s actual effect on mass shootings (another very rare occurrence) is questionable…or at least debatable. The others (plus the action which you didn’t mention) WOULD have a more profound effect, assuming you could actually get major changes and assuming that the people who are writing the legislature actually know enough about the subject to understand what they are asking for (i.e. caliber isn’t really going to help, since .223 is essentially .22 ammo wrt caliber size or bore size, but with a much higher muzzle velocity and more ballistic shape…it’s basically the same round that the M-16 and the various variants use…as for barrel length, are we talking actual length or apparent length, as in would a bullpup design meet the length requirements?..etc etc).
Obviously this will vary a little depending on which hellhole you live in, but I’m not convinced that the ability to ‘stop’ a threat is the greatest utility of a gun as a defensive tool. The extremely consistent impression I’ve gotten of the ‘threat profile’ that random civilians will encounter is that most threats they encounter will elect to retreat after the person they’re threatening both shows them a gun and demonstrates a willingness to use it - which requires one, maybe two shots. (If that.) I get that this may not apply if everyone in your neighborhood is constantly strung out on crack, but I don’t really get the impression that that’s the norm.
Police of course regularly encounter the subset of humanity that are more likely to be strung out on crack, and failing that the people they’re after know that the police they’re facing intend to capture or shoot them, and thus have reason to press the attack unrelentingly.
For the purpose of gun discussions, I don’t. Police clearly are in a different situation regarding threat encounters than the average person, and beyond that are authorized agents of the state who quite reasonably could have separate gun rules than the average joe.
At the time of writing “well regulated” did not have the current connotation of being controlled by an authority but meant in good working order. Militia during that time was not like the National Guard but referred to all the adults in the community who could be called upon to serve when necessary.
This is not just a hypothetical, in 2015, 435 Americans were killed by blunt instruments such as hammers. In England and Wales in 2018, 36 people were killed by blunt instruments. Apparently American hammers are deadlier.
I appreciate the goal of a bright-line rule. Kudos on that. I do wonder if you realize just how broad that would be though. Do you have even a SWAG about how many guns you’re talking about?
There are restrictions that have stood up to scrutiny beyond “whatever the police get”, so whatever legal argument that is made for them could be made for the restrictions I’ve suggested. But I’m making a reason and logic based argument, not a constitutional one. It’s indeed possible that there are no further restrictions of any kind that would pass constitutional scrutiny, at least at present. But that doesn’t change my mind about what might actually be good policy, at least to explore, that might reduce the number of dead kids.
Do you have a SWAG about how many Americans have died from bullet wounds since 1980? That’s a big number too. Really MF’n big. And that’s not a count of little pieces of metal, of property, that’s a count of lives violently ended.
So, yeah, my bright line rule encompasses a lot of property, a lot of pieces of metal, a couple hundred million of them most likely.
You see, I’ve got another 30 years or so left on this planet before I age out. I’m a hell of a lot more interested in how many more dead people those little pieces of metal are going to make before I join the ranks, than I am about how many of those guns get melted down.
Gun violence isn’t something I’m personally worried about, but I don’t think that pointing out that X regulation wouldn’t have stopped one or a few specific incidents is a persuasive argument against X regulation.
Well, I’d guess that it’s, oh, say 3 orders of magnitude difference in big-ness wrt number of folks killed by guns since the 80’s verse the total number of guns you are talking about eliminating (a strange comparison, to be sure, but you were the one that brought it up). Maybe 4, it’s just a SWAG. You know what are bigger numbers? Number of Americans who have died due to alcohol since the 80’s. Or number of American who have died do to tobacco since the 80’s. Or the number of Americans who have died due to cheeseburger (a.k.a. heart disease) since the 80’s. All of those numbers are a lot bigger than the number of Americans who have died due to bullet wounds since the 80’s. They are also things that are more likely to kill you than a gun, even if you live in an inner city war zone in one of the worst gun violence cities in the US.
That’s the thing about ‘too dangerous’. People are really, really bad at risk assessment and understanding relative risks.
drugged out dudes who dont case the joint and can act violently if they find people inside
“pro” burglars who will never hit a house when anyone is home
Heavily armed Home invasion types who come in deliberately when the owners are home to torture them into revealing where the money is, and half the time kill the witnesses.
So, if you hear a intruder- how do you know what type it is?
A bolt action rifle can lay down a “stream” of bullets pretty much as fast as a semi-auto. And of course, they’d be next then.
And why no double action revolvers? No faster than bolt action rifles.
You also forget lever action rifles, double barrel shotguns, etc.
Remember, despite the media attention, it isnt the crazed shooter with a AR 15 that is dangerous as a %, it’s the gangbanger with a cheap handgun.
We could end every mass shooting in this nation and not see a significant decrease in murders.
There is a article out there by a noted sociologist that blames the media for school shootings that without the attention given them, they’d be much, much more rare. Shall we muzzle the media instead?
Around 10,000 Americans are murdered each year by guns. That’s a lot, but to keep that in focus, 500,000 Americans each year die thru tobacco. 40,000 or so due to auto accidents, 70,000 to drugs and 90,000 due to booze. Lets ban smoking first, eh? No Bill of Rights.
Your rules would ban about 200 Million guns. Perhaps more. (You left off double barrel shotguns, lever actions, and for some arcane reason included double action revolvers, which makes no sense, which basically bans 95% + of all handguns).
Well, jeeze, if the threshold of “too dangerous” is whatever guns are effective in a mass shooting, then, pretty much all of them? A decent shot can kill 4+ unarmed people easy-peasy with just about any firearm.
The Columbine shooters didn’t have particularly impressive guns compared to an AR-15, never ran out of bullets, and, in fact, could have killed a lot more people than they did. Thankfully, they appeared to have gotten bored and offed themselves instead.
Honestly, I don’t think anything is going to stop mass shootings, until we find out WHY they are happening. We’ve always had plentiful, easy to access guns. Getting rid of all the guns is not going to happen, and I honestly question further legislation is going to have a huge impact.
For a “since 1980” SWAG, let’s just assume domestic firearm deaths. At some point I’m sure I’ll wind up comparing the SWAG to all of the war dead in the history of our great nation, may as well avoid double counting right from the get go.
Probably more, but 200 million is a good ballpark number. The thing with the rest is trying to put some context and perspective into things. When folks start talking about ‘too dangerous’ then it helps to put things in context, because, again, folks suck at assessing risk. Gun deaths are one of the things people really suck at assessing or putting into context wrt relative risk. It’s rather like the person deathly afraid of flying who blithely drives his car on the freeway without a seat belt while talking on his cell phone and munching on a cheeseburger with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Which behavior or action is actually ‘too dangerous’? Probably the air travel is the least dangerous thing. The magazines in the guns are definitely the least useful thing to limit if you want to have a real effect. If you want something that looks good and plays well to the faithful, then it’s something you focus on as it’s something you can get in, even if it’s basically meaningless (unless we are talking the long game…which is what we are talking about, in reality).
You are correct to focus on the action, specifically repeating action firearms (semi-auto, bolt action, lever action, etc), as that WOULD have a very real effect…IF you could actually do it. That’s really the rub especially when you think about the scale (i.e. 200+ million). But it’s a valid line to draw wrt firearms and as an actual answer to the OP.