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Assault Weapons Ban 2019

Dr.Sid said:
Indeed .. is there even clearly stated reason why barrel shroud, collapsible stock, flash hider etc. are regulated ? Or even study they play any effect ?
Mags sure are far from perfect, as they are cheap and easy to stockpile, but it's something.
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I suspect that it is to provide an easy way for people who are unfamiliar with firearms to differentiate a "allowable sporting rifle" from an "evil assault weapon".

The inclusion of the barrel shroud is particularly odd. A wood or plastic fore-end, which allows for grasping the weapon ahead of the receiver is part of the stock, and is Ok. A perforated metal shroud that does the same thing is not allowed. The difference is purely superficial.
 
Craig4 said:
This thread is why it's better to go after magazine size. With an assault weapons ban, you just end up playing whack-a-mole with loopholes.
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That's mainly because "assault weapon" is a political term with no practical meaning. They created the term and then started tacking on any "scary" gun feature and function they could think of. The whole thing is political theater, pandering to people who don't know and don't care how guns actually work, and who just want to feel like something is being done.

Hence, bayonet lugs are included in the ban on "assault weapons".

If they were serious, they'd use a well-defined industry standard term like "assault rifle". But even then they'd still have to figure out what set of features the military requires in an assault rifle, and then ban that set of features in other rifles as well.

Those features being basically: Detachable magazine, semi-automatic action, and barrel shroud or forestock/grip.

Right now, California's "assault weapon" ban covers AR-15s, which are semi-automatic variants of the AR-pattern assault rifles used by the US military. But the ban does not cover the Ruger Mini-14, which is the exact same rifle in every functional way. The main difference between the two is the minor ergonomic variation between pistol grip (AR-15) and the more 'traditional' buttstock grip (Mini-14). Which is a very minor difference.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Indeed .. is there even clearly stated reason why barrel shroud, collapsible stock, flash hider etc. are regulated ? Or even study they play any effect ?
Mags sure are far from perfect, as they are cheap and easy to stockpile, but it's something.
Click to expand...
Back in the 1990's it was an attempt at increasing regulations on certain semi-auto firearms without affecting them all. It also revealed how little the sponsors of the new law understood American gun owners, gun culture or gun related crime.

The AWB of 1994 was called a ban when it was largely not a ban at all. The only real ban was on importation of a small list of guns. Everything else was grandfathered in. The rest of the domestic production made small modifications to remain legal; something that should have been obvious to anyone in Congress on on this forum. But I still see from time to time about how "those guys got around the law" by just eliminating the restricted features mentioned in the new law.

Another example of how naive the bill sponsors were is that they went after what was then the guns least used (other than NFA guns) in crime. The guns most often associated with violent crime if I remember correctly were the small handguns. The AWB94 regulated large handguns and semi-auto rifles that looked like military weapons as well as some shotguns.

What part of "nothing sells like something banned" did they not understand? They need to try it with books again to see how it works.

The only ones surprised at the ineffectiveness of AWB94 were those who supported it. Anyone who read the bill or understood how guns worked were for the most part not surprised. Unless the AWB supporters eventually wanted to work their way to cover virtually all guns in the USA, the AWB94 made no sense at all.

Here is an AR-15 stripped of all offending (now and in the future) features.


The only feature left to ban is the lower receiver which is the main element of the gun. This model will still sell in the USA. Various jurisdictions have banned the semi-auto feature, the detachable magazine feature and even the gas system as a whole. But this did not stop people from legally buying them. One country even says "it looks wrong" so the guns were confiscated.

The only thing that makes any sense is the slippery slope fallacy; and that doesn't hold water very well either. The AWB's I've seen only make sense if they're eventually going after all of the guns. And this is the one thing that most gun grabbers deny they support.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Why does having a recoil spring intended originally to be in a stock vs moving it to somewhere else make such a big deal in this class of handguns?
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Turning a rifle into a handgun usually results in something that is very difficult to handle. Imagine this thing in the link below with sights or a red dot scope.
http://emptormaven.com/img/AR-15_Pistol.jpg

Eliminating the buffer tube and locating the operating rod above the action instead of to the rear makes it easier to shoot. But if the AR-15 pistol rates a 2 out of 10 for ease of operation, the models without the buffer tube are only a 3/10 in my opinion.

I would feel better armed with a P-22 in 22lr than with an ar-15 pistol in 223 Remington.
 
theprestige said:
....Right now, California's "assault weapon" ban covers AR-15s, which are semi-automatic variants of the AR-pattern assault rifles used by the US military. But the ban does not cover the Ruger Mini-14, which is the exact same rifle in every functional way. The main difference between the two is the minor ergonomic variation between pistol grip (AR-15) and the more 'traditional' buttstock grip (Mini-14). Which is a very minor difference.
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The AWB of 2019 is taking care of that for us.



The top two photos show that the angle of the pistol grip area has changed little on various guns since WWI. The Thordsen type pistol grip stock increases the grip area angle by about 10%. So is it the change in grip angle that offends some people so much or is it that it can be used on a rifle they want to ban?
 
Ranb said:
The AWB of 2019 is taking care of that for us.

[qimg]https://i.postimg.cc/1n25bP7x/pistol-grip-stock.jpg[/qimg]

The top two photos show that the angle of the pistol grip area has changed little on various guns since WWI. The Thordsen type pistol grip stock increases the grip area angle by about 10%. So is it the change in grip angle that offends some people so much or is it that it can be used on a rifle they want to ban?
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I don't think even they know what it is that bothers them, exactly.

What I've always been curious about (but not very) is how big the ergonomic benefit actually is. Clearly the major militaries of the world see some value in having pistol-grip assault rifles rather than the older kind, but how much value, exactly?

Is it something that gives an individual spree shooter a major advantage? Or is it one of those economies-of-scale things? Like maybe it's cheaper/easier to indoctrinate hundreds of thousands of new recruits and gun amateurs if the rifle has a pistol grip, even though once they're sufficiently familiar with the weapon the exact style of grip doesn't make much difference to actual shooting performance?
 
Hm .. shower thought .. maybe the idea is some guys buy ARs just to look cool. That a) is true for sure, at least in some cases b) would give sense to regulation of cosmetic features.
 
theprestige said:
....What I've always been curious about (but not very) is how big the ergonomic benefit actually is. Clearly the major militaries of the world see some value in having pistol-grip assault rifles rather than the older kind, but how much value, exactly?
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Putting the pistol grip under the action instead of behind it makes the rifle a bit shorter. The bullpup style is much shorter still.

Is it something that gives an individual spree shooter a major advantage?....
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As far as I know it doesn't.
 
Ranb said:
Turning a rifle into a handgun usually results in something that is very difficult to handle. Imagine this thing in the link below with sights or a red dot scope.
http://emptormaven.com/img/AR-15_Pistol.jpg

Eliminating the buffer tube and locating the operating rod above the action instead of to the rear makes it easier to shoot. But if the AR-15 pistol rates a 2 out of 10 for ease of operation, the models without the buffer tube are only a 3/10 in my opinion.

I would feel better armed with a P-22 in 22lr than with an ar-15 pistol in 223 Remington.
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Oh 5.56mm is a poor choice for a pistol sure. It was just a weird focus on the location of the recoil spring, lots of assault rifles have recoil springs located in other areas, it lets them have fold out stocks instead of collapsing ones like the Ar15.
 
Ban everything except muzzle loaders. Original intent and all that, or is that not a thing on this issue, just all the others?
 
ponderingturtle said:
Oh 5.56mm is a poor choice for a pistol sure. It was just a weird focus on the location of the recoil spring, lots of assault rifles have recoil springs located in other areas, it lets them have fold out stocks instead of collapsing ones like the Ar15.
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Most ar-15 pistols are merely the receiver with a short barrel and the rest of the usual parts attached without the stock. It's just something different that sells for some reason.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
Ban everything except muzzle loaders. Original intent and all that, or is that not a thing on this issue, just all the others?
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Original intent of the 2nd amendment was to only protect muzzle loading arms when breech loading arms were already invented and in use? Where did you get the notion that only muzzle loading arms were in existence then?

Do you also think most kinds of communication/speech/press/religion/assembly are not protected by the 1st amendment other than those you like?
 
Hlafordlaes said:
Ban everything except muzzle loaders. Original intent and all that, or is that not a thing on this issue, just all the others?
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I wonder how the Founding Fathers would have written the Constitution and its amendments if they had thought about a future with more powerful guns and other issues such as TV, porn and women and black people eventually being able to vote.

I do not think we can use original intent, because they had no idea what was coming in the future in the next 250 plus years.
 
Ranb said:
Original intent of the 2nd amendment was to only protect muzzle loading arms when breech loading arms were already invented and in use? Where did you get the notion that only muzzle loading arms were in existence then?

Do you also think most kinds of communication/speech/press/religion/assembly are not protected by the 1st amendment other than those you like?
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We've had supreme court justices argue that the internet isn't protected like actual printed paper because it didn't exist back then. Scalia even said in an interview that women don't have equal rights because they didn't in the late 18th century. Constitutional literalism is stupid when either side does it.
 
lobosrul5 said:
We've had supreme court justices argue that the internet isn't protected like actual printed paper because it didn't exist back then. Scalia even said in an interview that women don't have equal rights because they didn't in the late 18th century. Constitutional literalism is stupid when either side does it.
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Pretty much. I mean, the other way to look at the original intent argument is that when the Constitution was written, it gave the people the right to the same arms the military carried.

So yeah, let's do that. I wanna get a Mark 19 mounted on my car. Let's see that jackwagon cut me off in rush hour again...

:D
 
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