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Another inaccurate article on assault weapons.

lobosrul5 said:
Yes, there is some sort of historical exception for those. Good lord, a 2 gauge rifle means an 8oz round ball. I'll refrain from ever firing one. But, I read an article somewhere years ago that modern 12 gauge and 10 gauge rifled barrels are in a sort of legal conundrum.
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You can have one made to order

 
Polaris said:
Sometimes they have a point, when pro-gun people go into full-nerd mode and start hashing out technical minutia.

But there is a wide streak of ignorance-as-virtue - not in this thread as I can tell, but I have seen it in others, particularly just after Sandy Hook, where it went like:

Anti-gun person: Nobody needs a semi-automatic machine gun!

Pro-gun person: There's no such thing. Semi-autos only fire one round per trigger-pull.

Anti-gun person: Who cares?! You're just trying to change the subject and derail the thread!

It's like if someone kept referring to a Hawker Hurricane as a "fighter jet" and got highly upset at being corrected.
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See only a pedantic gun nut would worry about that we know what semi automatic is we know that 'machine gun' is a generic term.

Pedantic arguments over fine points of a gun are used for the same reason a conspiracy theorist will bog down a 9/11 or Apollo hoax discussion on an irrelevant detail. It's to stop the debate and retrench their position and claim to be winning.
 
Belz... said:
How does one define "assault weapon" anyway? I understood it to be a very murky concept.
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The core concept is that it utilizes a mid sized round so it can have a high rate of fire, large magazine capacity while still being light, easy to use and accurate at much higher ranges that sub-caliber weapons like pistols or sub-machine guns. IOW they are designed to shot lots of rounds accurately at medium ranges for a sustained period.



They usually have a burst or full auto setting for for use when using suppressing fire but this can be useful in close quarters as well. The second/third rounds are not accurate much past 50m due to recoil and after that you are basically shooting into the air. Forces that have a full auto setting train their troops to shoot in short bursts.

Since there are lots of takes on the basic concept coming up with a single feature that defines them can be difficult. The really only ubiquitous features are the mid-sized round and that they are all semi-automatic but it's difficult to regulate based on these. The next most common would be the high capacity magazine and most have a setting for full auto or burst but that isn't always the case and they can still shoot lots of bullets accurately without it. (walking into a room and shooting everything full auto like you would with an SMG is not what makes assault rifles such good killing devices)
 
Captain_Swoop said:
See only a pedantic gun nut would worry about that we know what semi automatic is we know that 'machine gun' is a generic term.

Pedantic arguments over fine points of a gun are used for the same reason a conspiracy theorist will bog down a 9/11 or Apollo hoax discussion on an irrelevant detail. It's to stop the debate and retrench their position and claim to be winning.
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Okay. If you aim to ban "machine guns", what do you intend the term to mean, legally? Can you give a coherent definition of the term, without appealing to technical pedantry?
 
Information Analyst said:
Unnecessary. Certain drugs are banned in most countries. Banning them means that they can't be sold openly in stores, and anyone caught with them gets in trouble. Certain broad types of firearms can be banned in the same way. Sure, some people might still get hold of them, but they'd be in trouble if caught.
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Generally the people who are going to do something awful cannot own any firearms to begin with, and they still have them and do horrible things.

So adding another law will do...?
 
sadhatter said:
Generally the people who are going to do something awful cannot own any firearms to begin with, and they still have them and do horrible things.

So adding another law will do...?
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Adding more laws, such as universal background checks and registration, can reduce fraudulent purchases and dissuade straw purchases. It can start to reduce the supply feeding into the black market.

The great majority of black market guns were legally manufactured, the great majority of imported guns were imported legally.

The fact that guns are widely a easily available on the black market demonstrates that many, many gun owners have been careless with who they sell to or how they secure their weapons from theft. The black market for guns is incredibly damning of the current state of gun ownership, which seems to feed an unending supply of guns into criminal hands. Every year vast amounts of guns move from legal ownership into the hands of those who no longer have the legal right to own them. Not all of that is theft. Not by a wide margin. Even then, there are proposals for laws that would address safe storage, both to reduce accidental/unintentional shootings as well to reduce theft, thereby further reducing the black market supply.

That does not get into laws that can be passed which would create temporary holds on the possession of firearms - so called "Red Flag" holds. The NRA has fought tooth and nail against those sorts of holds, yet it is just about the only thing that could have prevented the recent shooting in Florida.

There is quite a lot that new laws can do to reduce gun violence or keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.


ETA: Even that does not even get into laws that could be passed to end the non-sensible prohibition on electronic records within the ATF's gun trace program. That and a few other laws seem to be based on the "They're coming for your guns" myth.
 
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Giz said:
Myth?
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No one is coming for your guns. No one ever was.

You can find gun control proponents who advocate seizure of guns. They are a lot less common than people who think the earth is flat, or that Barack Obama was born in Kenya - and far less influential.

Its just a stupid bogeyman.
 
Giz said:
Myth?
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I think so, yes. With little political appetite for any sort of total gun ban and robust protections for the right to bear arms enshrined in the constitution, recognized by the courts and vigorously supported by a large number of American citizens including many members of law enforcement I think it very unlikely that anyone is coming for our guns.
 
crescent said:
No one is coming for your guns. No one ever was.

You can find gun control proponents who advocate seizure of guns. They are a lot less common than people who think the earth is flat, or that Barack Obama was born in Kenya - and far less influential.

Its just a stupid bogeyman.
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It takes gall to claim that on a thread where most of the posters are clambering for guns to be banned.
 
crescent said:
That line was destroyed last week by the shooting in Florida.

Public opinion has shifted pretty dramatically, I don't think it will stop. (ETA: The "enthusiasm gap" has always been in favor of firearms-rights advocates. That's probably the biggest change resulting from Florida. Firearms right advocates can no longer assume they have an edge in enthusiasm. Time will tell)

As for removing certain guns from circulation, slow is not at all bad. Ban legal manufacture and importation. Such weapons seized by police due to use in criminal acts get destroyed, not auctioned off. The supply starts to dry up. Guns can last just about forever, but not all of them do.

If you want to ban a given type of gun in it's entirety (I generally think that's a bad idea, but...) there are ways to make it happen.
  • Order them to be turned in, you might be surprised by the number who do it voluntarily.
  • Allow a long grace period where police would seize one if they encounter it but would not seek them out, and the owner would not face prosecution for having it (ETA: unless the owner was already otherwise prohibited from owning firearms).
  • After that, there would still be no prosecution for turning them in, ever, but it a person could be prosecuted if they somehow get caught in possession of one - but still no active seeking out.

Use the background check system for that to start building a registry.
  • Modify the system so that ALL gun transfers (sale, trade, inheritance, gift) require a full background check, with the type of gun included as a component of the information entered.
  • That information is retained and becomes the basis of a registry
  • Grandpa does not need to register his duck gun in the closet, but once you inherit it, it you get a background check and it gets registered that way.
  • The system builds gradually.
  • That's illegal under current law, but opinion is shifting fast and laws can be changed
.

You can dry up and severely reduce the supply without targeting them for seizure.

That said, I have doubts about any sort of plan that involves a full ban on anything currently in circulation. I can support banning manufacture and import of new weapons or accessories of this or that type and letting the supply slowly dwindle.
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Good piece published in the Wake Forrest Law review on the efficacy of firearms bans:

https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/v...ir=1&article=1438&context=faculty_scholarship

Imagining Gun Control in America: Understanding the remainder problem.
 
Giz said:
It takes gall to claim that on a thread where most of the posters are clambering for guns to be banned.
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Nobody is proposing banning guns. The core problem is when the gun crowd claims that reasonable, widely supported measures like requiring universal background checks, limiting magazine size and restricting public carry are the same as "bans."
 
crescent said:
No one is coming for your guns. No one ever was.

You can find gun control proponents who advocate seizure of guns. They are a lot less common than people who think the earth is flat, or that Barack Obama was born in Kenya - and far less influential.

Its just a stupid bogeyman.
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San Francisco passed two laws banning handguns and lost both cases in court, and banned firearms in public housing and lost that one too.

The city has successfully driven every licensed firearms dealer out of the county.

A more accurate description is that no one wants to take all the guns.

Only the ones that are too big, the ones that shoot too fast, the ones easy to conceal, the ones that "aren't safe" ( another great contribution to safety from the folks in Sacramento) and the ones somebody doesn't understand why anybody needs.
 
theprestige said:
Okay. If you aim to ban "machine guns", what do you intend the term to mean, legally? Can you give a coherent definition of the term, without appealing to technical pedantry?
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We don't have to. The BATF has done it for us:
Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger
​
The frame or receiver of any such weapon
​
Any part designed and intended solely and exclusively or combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, or

Any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.
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https://www.atf.gov/firearms/firear...-firearms-national-firearms-act-definitions-0
 
BStrong said:
....
A more accurate description is that no one wants to take all the guns.

Only the ones that are too big, the ones that shoot too fast, the ones easy to conceal, the ones that "aren't safe" ( another great contribution to safety from the folks in Sacramento) and the ones somebody doesn't understand why anybody needs.
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Sounds like a great place to start. And still much less restrictive than almost every other industrial country.
 
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