Four more years!

Given this definition I would restrict assault weapons as machine guns under the ban of private ownership of weapons of mass destruction. Even the most rabid Gun nut would not want to live next to a suicidally depressed neighbor with a thermonuclear weapon, a stash of nerve gas, ect. and agree with bans of personal ownership of weapons of mass destruction. Semi automatics I have no problem with.

The problem is the politicians who classify certain "Military" appearing semiautomatics as assault weapons, then there is a great debate. By the by going through lot of hoops, paying large transfer taxes it is possible in some locals of the United States to own a machine gun. Even muzzle-loading canons are legal, solid shot only as explosive shells are weapons of mass destruction. Other weirdness in the law, you cannot own short barreled shot gun.

I can only shake my head at the can of worms. What makes those who commit suicide want to take others with them, often innocents who did them no harm. Our answer is unfortunately just, they are crazy.

Poker

@ Donnachaidh any competent gunsmith can make a machine gun from scratch, or a not so competent one can convert a semiautomatic to an automatic weapon, it's just against the law. Any insane driver can drive his car through a crowd killing children, more people are killed by cars than fire arms yet no one talks bout banning cars, why? Could it be that a disarmed citizenry is easier to control and heard into the gas chambers, Hitler agreed and baned private gun ownership.

Spacekiwi wrote:Forgot to ask this before, but for the purposes of clarity, should we just agree on 4 groupings for guns for this argurement?

Pistols: all pistols and revolvers here.

Machine guns: guns which have full auto mode as the only fire mode.

Rifles: bolt and semi auto, single shot only, shotguns to be included in here as they simply fire a unique round.

Assualt rifles: rifles with selective fire, so can fire semi auto, burst, or full auto.

these groupings are fully distinct from each other, and easy enough for a layman to catergorize.

Donnachaidh wrote:Those seem like reasonable groups. Unless you're grouping weapons that can be modified to be automatic as machine guns. If you are then I would disagree because then most semi-automatic weapons would fall under the machine gun group (eg a Glock 17 can be modified to be fully automatic as can a Ruger 10/22 or just about any AR15 style weapon)

Spacekiwi wrote: And although Assualt rifles are apparently hard to get according to you, they are still used in ~50% of the gun massacres in the Usa according to the link i posted upstream.

That right there is precisely why there's such a huge distrust among firearms advocates against 'gun grabbers'. The article you reference uses the term 'assault weapon'. That is, a firearm that looks scary and may fulfill certain other criteria depending on local laws.

You used the term 'assault rifle'. That's a burst or automatic fire rifle or carbine with a detachable magazine firing a mid-sized cartridge. I won't vouch for complete accuracy, but I've heard the number "Two" thrown around for the actual number of assault rifles used in murders in the last few decades. I'd be highly surprised if it was off by an order of magnitude.

Those two terms are not interchangeable.

So 50% of the firearms used in gun massacres look scary. Well, okay, I won't disagree with that. Should this be used to determine which firearms should be strictly controlled or even outlawed? Of course not. 100% of guns look scary when they're pointed in your direction! Outlawing 100% of guns would probably be a bad place to start when considering gun control laws.

Spacekiwi wrote: And apparently in the conneticut shooting, most of the kills Lanza used the AR-15 for, which as you say, is a civilianised version of the M16, which according to wikipedia has full auto potential, making it an assualt rifle. and while the civilian version is semi auto, in 30 seconds i have just learnt how to turn it full auto while writing this. so is an assualt rifle scary? yes. is it effective? considering the deaths caused by it in americas gun rampages, yes, it is effective.

I can make a .22 pistol, one of the smallest cartridges in existence, very effective at anything under 25 yards, since that's about where I can make constant headshots. If a law to make .22's illegal gets started, you might just see that redneck revolution get off the ground.

There are a lot of weapons out there with the potential to be modified into something with a higher firing rate. Heck, a skilled shooter can 'bump fire' many weapons to create effectively automatic weapons from something that is mechanically incapable of firing that way.

The thing about automatic weapons is that they blow through ammunition like you wouldn't believe, and they tend to be terribly inaccurate. The way automatic weapons manufacturers get around this is by making the weapons bigger, heavier, and with places to grab them and hold them in place. Otherwise, you tend to shoot a lot of sky very quickly and run out of ammo.

Spacekiwi wrote:Forgot to ask this before, but for the purposes of clarity, should we just agree on 4 groupings for guns for this argurement?

Pistols: all pistols and revolvers here.

Machine guns: guns which have full auto mode as the only fire mode.

Rifles: bolt and semi auto, single shot only, shotguns to be included in here as they simply fire a unique round.

Assualt rifles: rifles with selective fire, so can fire semi auto, burst, or full auto.

these groupings are fully distinct from each other, and easy enough for a layman to catergorize.

I'm fairly comfortably with the definitions as they stand. You have interesting little categories like 'submachine gun', 'machine pistol', 'target pistol', 'sniper rifle of mass destruction capable of blowing up huge four-engine airliners with a single shot' (sorry, I couldn't resist) and so on.

For the purpose of a layman-level discussion though, I'm good with the above.

Given Spacewiki's definitions, let's look at how they're already regulated:

Machine guns & assault rifles: Damn near impossible to get, requires extensive background check, highly restricted, expensive tax stamps, and almost always illegal to manufacture unless it's for government use.

Rifles: Laws vary by locality, ranging from Wal-Mart checkout to 30 day waiting periods and background checks. Note that Connecticut has one of the most restrictive set of laws in the country regarding these.

Pistols: Laws vary by locality, ranging from outright prohibited and you're not allowed to own one (prior to 2011), to Wal-Mart checkout.

@randomgraysuit, looking at the definition of 'assualt weapons' on wikipedia, a few things stand out to me. first off, the term is used in such a way as to include machine pistols like the traditional 'uzi'used in movies, so an assualt rifle would still fit in this catergory.

looking at the wikipedia image of an ar15, as used in the conneticut shooting, and the batman shooting, it seems to fit some of the definitions of an assualt weapon.

according to the wikipedia page on an ar15:
it has a detachable magazine.
it has 20 and 30 round mags.
its semi auto.
pistol style grip.
designed to have store bought mods for flash suppresors.

this fits almost every definition of an assault weapon, so for the ar15, the terms would seem to be interchanggeable. so a assault rifle or assault weapon has been used in two mass murders this year alone.

regarding the .22, im sure you can. its all a matter of training. but would you agree that it would be harder to commit a rampage if you were limited to bolt action rifles or normal rifles as per my definitions, and pistols, as opposed to a gun that is designed from the start for the purpose of killing other humans in a comabt situation as quickly as possible, and is designed for military use?


@pokermind, under these definitions they probably would, but there will always the side who wants less regulation nad a side who wants more, so to pass a bill, compromises must be made, so assault weapons will probably never be classed as military only weapons or machine guns.

pokermind wrote:Any insane driver can drive his car through a crowd killing children, more people are killed by cars than fire arms yet no one talks bout banning cars, why? Could it be that a disarmed citizenry is easier to control and heard into the gas chambers, Hitler agreed and baned private gun ownership.

AFAIK, the ban on firearms in Germany was instituted by the Weimar republic, well before Hitler came to power.

As for cars, that's not a valid comparison. The primary purposeof guns is to serve as weapons. while for cars killing is a side-effect (of misuse, usually).

For every acivity which poses a threat to others, there's a trade-off between how important that activity is against the danger posed. Banning cars would bring the US's (or any other modern country's) economy and lifestyle to a crashing halt. Banning guns might or might not have a beneficial effect (not going to comment on that at the moment), but it'll have nowhere near the drawbacks banning cars would. Therefore, comparing gun bans to car bans is at best a red herring.

Spacekiwi wrote:@randomgraysuit, looking at the definition of 'assualt weapons' on wikipedia, a few things stand out to me. first off, the term is used in such a way as to include machine pistols like the traditional 'uzi'used in movies, so an assualt rifle would still fit in this catergory.

looking at the wikipedia image of an ar15, as used in the conneticut shooting, and the batman shooting, it seems to fit some of the definitions of an assualt weapon.

according to the wikipedia page on an ar15:
it has a detachable magazine.
it has 20 and 30 round mags.
its semi auto.
pistol style grip.
designed to have store bought mods for flash suppresors.

this fits almost every definition of an assault weapon, so for the ar15, the terms would seem to be interchanggeable. so a assault rifle or assault weapon has been used in two mass murders this year alone.

regarding the .22, im sure you can. its all a matter of training. but would you agree that it would be harder to commit a rampage if you were limited to bolt action rifles or normal rifles as per my definitions, and pistols, as opposed to a gun that is designed from the start for the purpose of killing other humans in a comabt situation as quickly as possible, and is designed for military use?


@pokermind, under these definitions they probably would, but there will always the side who wants less regulation nad a side who wants more, so to pass a bill, compromises must be made, so assault weapons will probably never be classed as military only weapons or machine guns.

Well, damn. I guess we can't agree on a simple set of definitions, even for the sake of a layman-level discussion. 'Assault weapon' was nowhere in your list of acceptable terms, and once again it creeps in.

An assault rifle has a 'really fast mode.' It may be burst fire. It may be fully automatic. Whichever it is, you can do a 'spray and pray', 'rock and roll' or whatever you choose to call holding down the trigger and sending out lots of bullets. It's also a rifle, usually on the smaller side, that has a box magazine and a mid-size cartridge.

As a civilian, you effectively can't own one of those. It's possible, but it's so difficult as to be not worth the trouble unless you have a lot of money and patience.

An assault weapon is whatever the heck you want it to be. You could creatively re-define your average pistol as an assault weapon with the right law.

Since the two terms are so confusing that you're using them interchangably, and you'd like to come up with a standard set of definitions, why don't we say "scary assault weapon of OMG it's a gun so we'd better ban it" (Or SAWOOIAGSWBBI, prounounced 'saw-oo-ee-ags-wibbi') and "military-style gun"? That way we have one term that we know is really precise, and one term we know is meant to be scary and mean whatever you need it to mean.

As for which type of weapon to bring on a rampage, your own statistics that you helpfully linked to indicate what the preferred weapon is for a mass shooter. By a 2:1 margin over any other type of weapon, semi-automatic pistols are the clear favorite. Based on that, why are we discussing any other weapon type at all, given that the threat is so obvious and clear?

Hi all,

Note large lettering mine for emphasis in following:

Eyal wrote:

pokermind wrote:Any insane driver can drive his car through a crowd killing children, more people are killed by cars than fire arms yet no one talks bout banning cars, why? Could it be that a disarmed citizenry is easier to control and heard into the gas chambers, Hitler agreed and baned private gun ownership.

AFAIK, the ban on firearms in Germany was instituted by the Weimar republic, well before Hitler came to power.

As for cars, that's not a valid comparison. The primary purpose of guns is to serve as weapons. while for cars killing is a side-effect (of misuse, usually).

For every activity which poses a threat to others, there's a trade-off between how important that activity is against the danger posed. Banning cars would bring the US's (or any other modern country's) economy and lifestyle to a crashing halt. Banning guns might or might not have a beneficial effect (not going to comment on that at the moment), but it'll have nowhere near the drawbacks banning cars would. Therefore, comparing gun bans to car bans is at best a red herring.

And the use of 'assault weapons' to murder innocent school children is not misuse in your opinion.

The purpose of having military style semiautomatics is to prevent tyranny by an armed citizenry. What do you plan to use to deter Obama's jackbooted UN thugs when they come to get you to ship to the death camps? What impossible you say, ask an elderly Japanese American what happened in WW 2 when the Constitution was used as toilet paper. Obama has signed executive orders giving him the power to jail without trial American citizens,or use drones even murder them, now we know where the White House toilet papers is coming from, welcome to the left's Gulaug Tovarish!

Poker

Mange, <A tad Harsh thar Chief.>

"Sometimes you gota apply a two by four between the ears of a mule to get it's attention."

<Ah well back to The Honeymooners. Can you ancient two legs keep it down a bit?>

"Not bloody likely on this issue, you either have a Constitution or you don't.>

Mange

One of the things i find disturbing is that there is legislation that congress and senate voted into place and forced obama to sign by use of super majority is where protesters at a rally can be arrested just for protesting and also where said politicians can use a device that silences your vocal cords. Yes such a device exists and is relatively easy to build with the right equipment. BTW possessing such a instrument in private hands is a federal offense.

viciokie wrote:One of the things i find disturbing is that there is legislation that congress and senate voted into place and forced obama to sign by use of super majority is where protesters at a rally can be arrested just for protesting and also where said politicians can use a device that silences your vocal cords. Yes such a device exists and is relatively easy to build with the right equipment. BTW possessing such a instrument in private hands is a federal offense.

Republicans and Democrats working together with a supermajority? That's unique. Do you have more details on this?