When Gun Nuts Write Gun Laws, Nuts have Guns

[The Grand Nudger]

The laws already exist Polaris, so, as much as I like to bitch and moan about politicians........in this case, it's enforcement, not legislation.

(as a minor aside, before I forget - my favorite manufacturer incorporates trigger locks into the receiver assembly. Nothing unconstitutional about mandating that this be industry standard - also nothing unconstitutional about holding owners liable in civil court for damage caused by unsecured firearms- just saying. Make it easy to secure the firearm, then hit em in the wallet when they fail to do so.)

[LastPoet]

By the stars, If I ever have a gun pointed at my face, let my words be my shield, otherwise let the killer rejoice on its cowardice.

[Cinjin]

I own 2 pistols, 2 shotguns and a rifle. I sport shoot and I only hunt fowl. I still support stricter gun control. Why?
Because a law abiding person such as myself will still have no problem procuring a firearm.

Sadly, this in and of itself is still the problem.
Many of our shooters, the most recent included, were technically law abiding citizens. Many serial killers have spotless criminal records. Many more mentally ill are capable of hiding their illness. And of course, as Syn pointed out, a gun can be acquired from a friend or a family member.

It's like I said in another thread, once you pull it out of Pandora's Box you can't put it back.
I really think the only way to safeguard our schools and colleges is to do away with the 2nd Amendment and start the long arduous task of confiscating hundreds of millions of weapons. And since that is HIGHLY unlikely and probably impossible, we may be forced to replace the fire extinguishers in our school hallways with .45 Carbines.

[KichigaiNeko]

Am I right to think that an inordinate amount of military assault rifles are in public circulation??

(Just querying)

[Cinjin]

Am I right to think that an inordinate amount of military assault rifles are in public circulation??

(Just querying)

There are many but in reality, most are just an "assault style" of rifle. The look is what is popular. They're not fully auto and most people don't know how to or have the wish to convert them. The truth is, a lever action Winchester can rattle off 3 rounds per second and more importantly any semi-auto pistol can fire every bit as fast as an "assault" rifle with clip replacement even faster.

In my opinion, when a newscaster throws out the term assault rifle, it's for sensationalism. I have a 9mm pistol that holds 17 rounds in ONE clip and I can fire them all off in less than 6 seconds. Which means with the purchase of 5 or 6 extra clips I could unload well over a hundred rounds in a minute without need of a "scary assault" rifle.




I know, it's a little disheartening, but this is exactly why there's no easy fix for this problem. You can't uninvent the damn things and there's no certain type of "demon gun" that could be outlawed to fix it either.

[Zen Badger]

Am I right to think that an inordinate amount of military assault rifles are in public circulation??

(Just querying)

There are many but in reality, most are just an "assault style" of rifle. The look is what is popular. They're not fully auto and most people don't know how to or have the wish to convert them. The truth is, a lever action Winchester can rattle off 3 rounds per second and more importantly any semi-auto pistol can fire every bit as fast as an "assault" rifle with clip replacement even faster.

In my opinion, when a newscaster throws out the term assault rifle, it's for sensationalism. I have a 9mm pistol that holds 17 rounds in ONE clip and I can fire them all off in less than 6 seconds. Which means with the purchase of 5 or 6 extra clips I could unload well over a hundred rounds in a minute without need of a "scary assault" rifle.




I know, it's a little disheartening, but this is exactly why there's no easy fix for this problem. You can't uninvent the damn things and there's no certain type of "demon gun" that could be outlawed to fix it either.

Yet Australia has done that very thing.

The government launched a gun buy back program that removed thousands of guns and tightened up the laws governing gun ownership.

The number of mass shootings since then?

None.

[KichigaiNeko]

Am I right to think that an inordinate amount of military assault rifles are in public circulation??

(Just querying)

There are many but in reality, most are just an "assault style" of rifle. The look is what is popular. They're not fully auto and most people don't know how to or have the wish to convert them. The truth is, a lever action Winchester can rattle off 3 rounds per second and more importantly any semi-auto pistol can fire every bit as fast as an "assault" rifle with clip replacement even faster.

In my opinion, when a newscaster throws out the term assault rifle, it's for sensationalism. I have a 9mm pistol that holds 17 rounds in ONE clip and I can fire them all off in less than 6 seconds. Which means with the purchase of 5 or 6 extra clips I could unload well over a hundred rounds in a minute without need of a "scary assault" rifle.




I know, it's a little disheartening, but this is exactly why there's no easy fix for this problem. You can't uninvent the damn things and there's no certain type of "demon gun" that could be outlawed to fix it either.

Agreed. There is no "easy fix".

We were lucky in Australia that there weren't THAT many semi- automatic rifles/ military style 'assault' weapons for our government to buy back.

[The Grand Nudger]

There aren't -that- many assault rifles in the US either - there's a marked difference between an assault rifle and a semi-auto. People play fast and loose with the terms - they are not synonymous...and an AR-15 is NOT an assault rifle. It's an "assault-style" rifle- a .22lr with a body kit.

Personally, I don't own one, they're trash. I have an SKS, all hail the mighty 7.62. An SKS is also....-not- an assault rifle, go figure (it's a self loading carbine- but I do have the Yugo M66 variant with grenade sights and rails- so there's always that).

[Autumnlicious]

I think a good question is, should guns with a high fire rate be allowed?

A handgun with a high capacity cartridge and the ability to fire many rounds a minute somewhat raises the question of what a max bullet rate should be.

An AK47 can fire roughly 600 rounds/min == 10 rounds/sec.

In the days of the founding fathers, the best rifle technology never eclipsed the rate of 1 round/30 seconds.

From their perspective, the most dangerous weapon of the times was limited in bullets, making it deadly but with the caveat of being able to realistically get out of line of sight once a round is fired.

Now, we have semi-automatics that are limited at the speed of twitching triggers (human hands can trigger an index finger muscle contraction at an average max rate of 10 contractions/second) with more ammo than ever before.

As Rhythm poignantly wrote, it would take him running out of ammunition before he could be taken on a fortified position, of which he'd have hundreds to thousands of rounds to consume.

So I ask, how good should consumer weapons technology be?

We clearly limit automatic weapons.

[The Grand Nudger]

A problem (rof) which they rectified by carrying multiple firearms. ROF is hardly a defining factor in the lethality of a weapon. Most .22's (read, only slightly more powerful than a pellet gun) are semi auto, and they're only good for shooting rodents (until you couch a massive charge behind them in the case of 5.56). It's actually a multitude of factors that go into creating one of those "scary" weapons we rail against (which are rarely the weapons we actually legislate against)- but in the end...those aren't the weapons that seem to be used in the vast majority of gun related crimes (or even mass shootings). I'm one of those guys that skews the gun ownership statistics here in the US and I do own a range of takedowns, black powders, semi-autos, and autos, but I've never committed a crime involving a firearm or been involved in a mass shooting (course I don't own a single handgun.....so maybe that's it, maybe if I had a handgun....).

It's equally as simple to effect mass death from fertilizer or bleach, perhaps more so...but we don't see any "ban and/or control bleach" advocates floating around. Personally, I say enforce the laws we have (which would drastically reduce our gun related crime statistics - mostly via handguns) and call it a day. Nutballs will still be nutballs, and some of them will be nutballs with guns. There's a price to pay for a freer society. If it's a price we just can't pay so be it (revoke em), but lets not blow smoke up our own asses about it.