Court Ruling on Machinegun Possession

Well, yes, but once you've admitted that basic principle, than even the freedom to use a machinegun might be up for debate. I don't even mean, that one side or the other is right, but it's still a valid debate as to where exactly that line goes.

I mean, even taking the self-defense scenario, IIRC last time I saw a comparison, an AK-47 even in short controlled bursts has something like 3 times the grouping size compared to single shots. (Which, granted, isn't the idiotic shotgun spread in video games, but it's still less accuracy.) Even more so, if you do a 30 round mag dump. Even more so if you use an RPK 45 round mag in it, or even more so if you mag dump an old 75 round drum mag. (Oh yeah, they still exist.)

And just to make it clear, not only they're effective to about 300m (past which, the trajectory curves above the head of a man sized target if you aim at the centre of mass), they're lethal to over 1km. As in literally, the sliding rear tangent is adjustable to 1000m as a distance it's still useful at.

So basically I could be shooting a LOT of bullets, at increasingly reduced accuracy, and each miss is a risk that I'd nail some kid as far away as a kilometre. Like, yeah, I may eventually nail whoever I think is a danger to me, but that's another 74 bullets that went everywhere else.

And that's before we even go into considerations like maybe I'm not acting in self defense, but some nutter shooting up the school or a local rally of the opposite party.

That also has to be considered into whether I should be able to own a full auto AK with one of those mags, or whether having to shoot more accurate semi-auto shots, even with the same mag capacity, is a more reasonable balance of self defence vs potential collateral damage. Again, I'm not even saying which answer is right. But that you CAN have an opinion on that question, without it going all the way into "just admit that you're against using deadly force" or such.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Well, yes, but once you've admitted that basic principle, than even the freedom to use a machinegun might be up for debate. I don't even mean, that one side or the other is right, but it's still a valid debate as to where exactly that line goes.
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I'm a little confused about your point here. Everything is always up for debate, whether we want it to be or whether we think it should be.
 
Also, mind you, that is with actual military training. I don't like to brag about it, because I'm no hero, I was just conscripted not some heroic volunteer, but just because the level of training makes an actual difference when talking about stuff like grouping size or such. Some random John Doe, who just got a gun from Wallmart and never actually trained with it, will be less accurate with any automatic weapon. He'll press the trigger, have the muzzle climb to 30° and definitely land some hits a kilometre or more away, regardless of whether we're talking about an AK, G36, AR15, MAC10 or really whatever.
 
Ziggurat said:
I'm a little confused about your point here. Everything is always up for debate, whether we want it to be or whether we think it should be.
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My point is merely that we shouldn't oversimplify it to the level of either you agree with one side's overgeneralization (e.g., the founding fathers said ARMS which includes an MG-42; just as an example of an actual weapon that's notoriously inaccurate in its high ROF, that even soldiers issued with it were told to re-acquire the target after each burst) or they're against self-defense as a whole.

If you don't do that kind of over-simplification, you're not my problem, and I might even enjoy a well reasoned argument from you.

I mean, you've seen from our physics talks that I actually enjoy a sound argument that proves me wrong.
 
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3point14 said:
Or, perhaps people think the term 'deadly force' covers a multitude of things from polonium umbrellas to Tzar bombs, from sicks of dynamite to hand grenades, from arsenic to fertiliser and they want to know, very genuinely, which 'deadly forces' are allowed and which are not and why.
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And they very genuinely want to not think for themselves about where they would draw the line, and why. Nobody who asks this question ever wants to give their own answer to it, or make their own argument about where to draw the line. When prompted, as I have done here, what results is a bunch of handwaving and dodging. Do you have a solution? No? Then stop browbeating me about mine.

Personally I think the right is upheld by allowing possession of semi-automatic handguns and rifles, but not hand grenades, land mines, or machine guns. I think the current arrangement in the US is more or less adequate on that count. I know it disadvantages sincere and peaceful hobbyists like Ranb, and I'm sorry about that, but sometimes tradeoffs have to be made.

I also think it's not a complete system of formal logic, and that any reasoning about why we draw the line between semi-automatic rifles and machineguns will ultimately seem ad hoc to at least some people. So it's not really something I'm interested in debating, when it's pretty clear to me that my interlocutor is looking to debate in bad faith, rather than actually come up with their own answer to the conundrum, and take responsibility for the answer they've come up with.

If you don't know why, exactly, we allow pistols but not nukes, great! I don't know why, exactly, either. But I do believe it's best this way and not the other way. If you have a good explanation for why one but not the other, please share it. That would be awesome of you.

On the other hand, if the gist of your argument is that you have to prohibit pistols for the same reasons that you prohibit nukes, then just argue for the prohibition of pistols based on those reasons.
 
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theprestige said:
And they very genuinely want to not think for themselves about where they would draw the line, and why.
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I'm pretty sure I just did, more than once, and you chose to ignore it and pretend that nobody did. Sorry, sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LALALA! I CANT HEAR YOU!!" is NOT a sound, or even valid, counter-argument. It's in fact what happens when people want to be right IN SPITE of not actually having an argument.

No different from when Flat Earthers choose to pretend nobody can answer their objections, or when ID-ers or even presuppositional creationists pretend that nobody ever actually answered their brain-farts, etc.

With all due respect, I'm not any more impressed when you do that silly wilful ignorance song and dance than when they do it.

As I was saying, you can logically address what was actually being said, or not. Your choice. Nobody is forcing you either way.

But sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LALALA! I CANT HEAR YOU!!" is NOT it. Come back when you can do better than that.

I mean, I know you can.
 
dudalb said:
I don't want to know what you think of me as a half owner for 12 Pound Napoleon muzzle loading cannon....
(12 pound is the weight of the projectile when fully loaded, not the cannot itself).
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Getting that into a Taylor Swift concert might be just a tad difficult! :p
 
And another school shooting with 4 dead in Georgia. Shooter is 14 years old and attended the school. Yep, all these gun laws are really doing the job. Thoughts and prayers being sent out....again....:mad::mad:
 
Stacyhs said:
And another school shooting with 4 dead in Georgia. Shooter is 14 years old and attended the school. Yep, all these gun laws are really doing the job. Thoughts and prayers being sent out....again....:mad::mad:
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This is the Republican answer to overcrowded schools.
 
The 14-year-old arrested for killing 4 and wounding 9 made online school shooting threats last year. He was interviewed by the FBI. During the interview, he denied making them and his father said he owned hunting rifles but his son had no unsupervised access to them/ Apparently, he did :rolleyes: .The family then moved to a neighboring county where the school district was unaware of Gray's history of making threats. The gun he used was an “AR platform style weapon”, likely an AR-15.

The only reason more aren't dead is due to the quick response of the police. But, ya know, our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims.
 
Stacyhs said:
The 14-year-old arrested for killing 4 and wounding 9 made online school shooting threats last year. He was interviewed by the FBI. During the interview, he denied making them and his father said he owned hunting rifles but his son had no unsupervised access to them/ Apparently, he did :rolleyes: .The family then moved to a neighboring county where the school district was unaware of Gray's history of making threats. The gun he used was an “AR platform style weapon”, likely an AR-15.

The only reason more aren't dead is due to the quick response of the police. But, ya know, our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims.
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This one actally has it's own thread going on, Another School Shooting
 
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