Court Ruling on Machinegun Possession

[HansMustermann]

This is a conversational trope I wish would die in a fire. It was never funny. It was never producing the rhetorical advantage people imagined.

If you don't agree on a human right to possess and use lethal force, just say so. If you believe in such a right, and want to have a good faith discussion about where to draw the line, then do that. It's past time these conversations moved beyond this bad faith, childish nonsense.

Or maybe we're thinking more finely grained than the idiocy you wish we were saying instead. Like, that there's a difference between defending yourself with a semi-auto, and mag-dumping a 45 round RPK mag (which, incidentally will work in an AK too), or a 100 round M60 belt, at far less accuracy and increased risk to nail some kid two houses away with a miss.

As in both per shot, and in number of bullets flying that way. That works multiplicatively.

And maybe illustrating the difference between "arms", and why they're not all the same, in a hopefully more funny way, BUT...

If that's not idiotically oversimplified enough into either supporting any weapon or being against everything, for you to address it... oh well... nobody owes you to oversimplify it to whatever your brain can deal with. It's not our problem, it's yours. And again, nobody owes it to you to reduce every argument to whatever strawman you're able to address

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

I go back to teaching next week.

Know what I will not have to do? And never hope to have to do?
Shooter drills.
Know what we do not have at any school?
(armed) security and/or metal detectors.

I'm very very glad I live in a country where there is no right to have firearms.
If you like shooting you can get the privilege to do so here, but it costs money and comes with a lot of safeguards to protect the rest of society.

 

[Stacyhs]

I go back to teaching next week.

Know what I will not have to do? And never hope to have to do?
Shooter drills.
Know what we do not have at any school?
(armed) security and/or metal detectors.

I'm very very glad I live in a country where there is no right to have firearms.
If you like shooting you can get the privilege to do so here, but it costs money and comes with a lot of safeguards to protect the rest of society.

That's because you live in a country where your FREEEDUUMMS aren't being taken away from you by a deep state cabal run gubmint!

 

[The Atheist]

I'm very very glad I live in a country where there is no right to have firearms.
If you like shooting you can get the privilege to do so here, but it costs money and comes with a lot of safeguards to protect the rest of society.

Same here.

My kids have done lots of earthquake drills and fire drills, no shooter drills.

There was a school shooting once in New Zealand.

In 1923.

 

[Andy_Ross]

As I was saying, for military use, a short burst absolutely does increase the chances of hitting the target you're aiming at.

That's in fact the WHOLE idea (past WW1 and Maxim machineguns.) RL isn't a video game where you need to put enough bullets into a target to deplete it hp. If you just wanted to do more damage, you'd use a higher calibre. And people no longer just march slowly om large groups against machineguns like in WW1. What the situation has been since WW2 or so, at least for assault rifles, is that some guy that just popped up at 300m away, want at least one round to hit that barstard.

Essentially what the use-case for a SMG or assault rifle was for the last 60 years or so, was being a shotgun with a very tight grouping, so it actually works at 300m or so.

(Or at least that's the oversimplified version. There are also factors like suppression, cover fire, etc, but we'll skip that for now.)

Assault rifles were developed because actual combat ranges were much less than 300m even as far back as WW1

 

[Ranb]

The lack of mass shootings generally. The rate of mass shootings has increased more than 10 fold since the turn of the century. For the entire time we’ve had a real epidemic of mass shootings, machine guns have either been difficult to acquire or it’s taken a long time to do so.

As far as I know, if the Hughes Amendment is overturned, machine guns will be as "difficult" to acquire as any other NFA firearms today and as they were prior to May 1986.

Are you arguing that if machine guns become as easy to acquire as AR15s or handguns the numbers of injured and killed in mass shootings will not increase?

I am not saying that. I am also not suggesting that NFA firearms will ever be as easy to acquire as non-NFA firearms.

Relevance?

I was disagreeing with your claim that, " bump stocks were logically and reasonably illegal until the current crop of crazies on the SCOTUS overturned the ban". Bump stocks were legal prior to the Bush and Trump bans.

Bump stocks have been legally available for little more than a single decade, yet their use in a single instance accounts for more victims than all the mass shootings combined before that one use.

Data to support this claim?

 

[ZiprHead]

I don't know why you both can't have your nukes, chemical and biological weapons. As long as you are responsible citizens, it shouldn't be a problem.....

Everyone is a responsible civilian, until they aren't.

 

[dudalb]

Some people have very strange priorities. Owning a machine gun is one of the strangest.

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).

 

[Dr.Sid]

Collectors who paid tens an hundreds of thousands for transferable machine guns will cry a lot. Ammo manufacturers would rejoice. Ammo price would double.
But guns are mainly used for suicide in US. Full auto wouldn't help in that.
Kids on the block use the Glock switch from Aliexpress already, so that wouldn't change either. Lunatic against outdoor event, that's the danger.
And yeah, Trump wouldn't be so lucky ..

 

[sarge]

As far as I know, if the Hughes Amendment is overturned, machine guns will be as "difficult" to acquire as any other NFA firearms today and as they were prior to May 1986.

If the Hughes Amendment is overturned, machine guns will be easier to aquire than machine guns are today. That is the relevant point.

I am not saying that. I am also not suggesting that NFA firearms will ever be as easy to acquire as non-NFA firearms.

NFA restrictions are not sufficiently strict for guns capable of being easily carried by an individual and firing in automatic mode.

I was disagreeing with your claim that, " bump stocks were logically and reasonably illegal until the current crop of crazies on the SCOTUS overturned the ban". Bump stocks were legal prior to the Bush and Trump bans.

Bump stocks were illegal. That prohibition was logical and reasonable. Then the SCOTUS decided the prohibition ran afoul of the 2nd. That’s what I wrote, and it is correct.

Data to support this claim?

https://www.statista.com/statistics...the-united-states-by-fatalities-and-injuries/

This chart shows mass shootings between 1980-present. Prior to the 80s, mass shootings (as they are now generally defined) occurred at a rate about 1/12th of the current rate. That spike? It’s the 800 casualties of a single use of bump stokes.

 

[Ranb]

Bump stocks were legal for a period of time prior to Bush and Trump banning them.

 

[sarge]

Bump stocks were legal for a period of time prior to Bush and Trump banning them.

Hey, I like a non-sequiter as much as the next guy.

 

[3point14]

I specifically didn't discount the right and need for firearms in defense of self and others, although for clarity I should have specifically included it. Absolutely, 100% we have the right to fight back (importantly, not just "defend") with lethal force, including firearms.



Agreed. My quibble zone is modified/military weapons, designed to +/- indiscriminately take out large amounts of people in front of you quickly. The odds of an ordinary citizen being in battlefield conditions facing an onslaught of Huns are not realistic enough to balance against the very real corpses in Sandy Hook and Vegas.

Are you suggesting that there's no self-defence application for suppressive fire???

 

[3point14]

This is a conversational trope I wish would die in a fire. It was never funny. It was never producing the rhetorical advantage people imagined.

I think it illustrates part of the problem rather well.

Horses for courses and all that.

 

[HansMustermann]

Assault rifles were developed because actual combat ranges were much less than 300m even as far back as WW1

In as much as the intermediate cartridge goes, yes. But it doesn't explain why they're still automatic -- or why SMGs were ever even useful -- if the burst mode doesn't give you more chances that at least one round will nail the guy.

 

[Thermal]

Are you suggesting that there's no self-defence application for suppressive fire???

I don't recall saying anything about suppressive fire. I recall saying you not only have the right to defend yourself, but to counterattack.

 

[theprestige]

I think it illustrates part of the problem rather well.

In a vacuum, sure. As a rhetorical gambit, it's a bad faith dead end introduced by people who like the problem, don't want to solve it, and are trying to shut down the discussion.

If you don't believe there's a human right to possess and use deadly force in self defense, just say so.

If you do believe in such a right, then move on to solving the problem, since you have a legitimate interest in seeing it solved.

 

[3point14]

In a vacuum, sure. As a rhetorical gambit, it's a bad faith dead end introduced by people who like the problem, don't want to solve it, and are trying to shut down the discussion.

Oh, I don't think so.

If you don't believe there's a human right to possess and use deadly force in self defense, just say so.

I think there's probably more nuance to the argument than that. As illustrated by the questions you so easily dismiss as pointless.

If you do believe in such a right, then move on to solving the problem, since you have a legitimate interest in seeing it solved.

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.

If the answer is simply "Those deadly forces from which gun and ammo manufacturers make profit" then that raises some further interesting arguments.

 

[HansMustermann]

In a vacuum, sure. As a rhetorical gambit, it's a bad faith dead end introduced by people who like the problem, don't want to solve it, and are trying to shut down the discussion.

If you don't believe there's a human right to possess and use deadly force in self defence, just say so.

If you do believe in such a right, then move on to solving the problem, since you have a legitimate interest in seeing it solved.

Again, sorry if the actual argument and analogy isn't as oversimplified as what you seem to wish it was.

The point it's actually countering is the pretence that all deadly force or "arms" are the same, and the gummint shouldn't restrict you from ANY of that, lest that "right" becomes a "privilege" or some such nonsense.

The point we're making is that arms or deadly force range all the way from grabbing my grandfather's old WW2 Wehrmacht bayonet, to the Tsar Bomba I mentioned or the VX nerve gas I suggested to my esteemed colleague Disbelief for his squirrel infestation problem. So you have to draw SOME line as to where that's no longer acceptable, including, yes, based on things such as potential for collateral damage, possible misuse, etc.

(E.g., as possible hypothetical misuse, maybe I won't use that nuke in "self" defence, but pull a Sideshow Bob and rig it underground to kill one guy I really don't like. (E.g., Trump.) I mean, why even risk my life taking a snipershot at him, and maybe just giving him an ear piercing, when I could turn half the state into a radioactive crater, while I'm not even anywhere near. I mean, these days, you don't even have to rely on timers, which may be defeated by the flight being delayed. I can watch the live broadcast and trigger it via Starlink internet from all the way over in the marshes between Elbonia and West Bumscrewistan? )

So you have to draw SOME line there on that spectrum between me late grandpa's WW2 bayonet and that nuke or VX nerve gas canister, in terms of what's actually reasonable use of deadly force and what's clearly both overkill and an unacceptable risk to innocents. It maybe above the level of full machine-guns like an old WW2 MG-42. Maybe even above the level of a Soviet KPV 14.5×114mm-caliber heavy machine gun. It might be even above the level of a Davy Crockett tactical nuke. (After all, what better way to defend against those dastardly McCoys than turning their whole farm into a radioactive crater?)

But you have to draw that line SOMEWHERE.

You can't just hide behind some variant or another of 'but the founding fathers said arms' over-generalization.

THAT is the point.

You may address it, or not. Up to you. Nobody's forcing you.

But kindly do stop pretending it's the false dichotomy strawman that you either allow deadly force, without any further restrictions, or you don't allow any. KTHXBYE

 

[Ziggurat]

So you have to draw SOME line there on that spectrum between me late grandpa's WW2 bayonet and that nuke or VX nerve gas canister, in terms of what's actually reasonable use of deadly force and what's clearly both overkill and an unacceptable risk to innocents.

Sure, but there are already some pretty thick lines which make those distinctions.

The law regarding deadly force in self defense actually has little to say about tools used in self defense, and mostly speaks about actions. Irrespective of the tools used, you still have to satisfy certain criteria in order to use deadly force, and it's what you do that really matters. The tool only matters in regards to what actions you take with it (ie, you cannot take the same actions with a squirt gun that you can take with a real gun). There is such a thing as excessive force even in the context of deadly force. A nuclear weapon (be it Tsar Bomba or just Davey Crockett) cannot be used in a plausible personal self defense scenario in a manner which satisfies the legal limits on permissible actions. So outlawing nuclear weapons poses no risk to the right of self defense, because even if you were allowed to have one, there's no possible way that you could use it legally. So we can outlaw weapons that you cannot legally use for self defense without threatening the right to self defense.

I'm a big fan of the concept of limiting principles, ie, that you have some boundary that you won't go past, so that even if you're moving in some direction, you won't move in that direction without limits. And I think that's what you're getting at here: what's the limiting principle for the right to arms? I think the above describes at least one limiting principle to that right, under which machine guns could be permissible but atomic weapons would not be. I also think it's a limit that almost everyone can agree on, and quite likely everyone in this thread. That's not going to be the end of the story, of course, because a lot of people are going to want more limits than just this. But it is a limit which satisfies at least part of your question.