Ars Technica founder on the AR-15

The core of this issue, like so many political issues, is fear and selfishness versus hope and love. These people do not want to inconvenience their hobby to make society safer.

I would feel safer if I carried a gun everywhere. I think that I am more responsible than most people, and that I would never use it in anger. But I know that most people think that they are smarter and more responsible than they really are, and that if everyone carried a gun communities would not be safer. Choosing to be unarmed for the benefit of society is true bravery.

I personally would prefer to forget about the "what" and focus entirely on the "who", but more on that another day.

At the same time, the same encryption technology can be used for criminal images, terrorism and other criminal communications. The same goes for firearms being used for homicide, terrorism and other crimes. To prevent all of these, or at the very least reduce their occurrence, crippling the ability of the average citizens to protect themselves is necessary.

You also cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Encryption has been made widely available, as have firearms. If we try to remove them now, they will both still be available to individuals, but only ones willing to break the law.

To work with your simile(?), banning the AR-15 (and similar black rifles) would be more like banning AES than encryption at large. Other ones would take its place, and be no less lethal or capable of criminal use. For example, here in Canada, we restricted the AR-15 and variants but other just as deadly weapons simply took its prominence as a non-restricted weapon. For the uninitiated, restricted weapons may only be used at a range, require a permit to transit (down to the route you may use, these are only approved for transit to a range or when you are moving), must be entered in a registry, and require greater RCMP clearance to possess.

I'm not sure what side of this debate I sit on. It's a very difficult one and I doubt we will ever come to a consensus.

How do you imagine that is even technically possible? A venn diagram of those gun classes would nearly fully overlap. Sure you could outlaw the bayo lug and the grenade launcher notch - and that would have prevented exactly 0 deaths.

Or how about mass genocide that has occurred in the past in several countries shortly after disarming the population in relatively recent history? The argument against that is always "Not in modern (post-Y2K) times/first world countries, just look at Australia and/or U.K!" and I don't find that argument very convincing.

I'm not scared of the U.S government going tyrannical/genocidal. But what about people who are refugees of countries where that happened? What would they think? I see no reason to disarm a population other than the ruling class fearing an armed population or a paranoid/ignorant population thinking "guns" are the problem. (Hint: People are the problem, not guns.)

Bad guys don't need laws to buy guns and murderers have no problem selecting other weapons when there is a lack of guns.

Homicide rates per capita are very similar before and after the gun buyback in Australia. "Murders with firearms" decreased though, so I guess they can pat themselves on the back for being just as murderous but with different weapons? Same trend with the U.K. Banning guns gave an "ease of mind" but didn't actually do anything. Similar to the TSA: security theater.

I do not find gun control arguments to be compelling and firmly believe in the right for every individual to protect themselves.

FWIW I do not own and likely will never own a gun.

In the end, the background checks people are asking for wouldn't have stopped the Orlando shooting, and short of a total ban including the police, government, govt security contractors, and even off-base military with tight armory controls would have likely stopped this, even then it would have probably been a bomb instead.

There is no reason that a cop needs a gun that doesn't apply to someone in their own home. Guns are lethal force. The end, we can go on about specifics but murder is already illegal, so are a lot of other things that people do. Maybe we should also ban all criminals (not just felons) from voting? Would that be sane? Not really.

In the end, you can't have any hope of stopping crazy short of China-like lock down, spying and personal invasion of privacy. Not to mention deleting the past from society.

I'd much rather have the personal freedom and liberties that the constitution ensures. It isn't about what I need... in the end, I'm against most gov't restrictions. Banning guns makes about as much sense as banning marijuana... It takes away personal freedom and choice for the illusion of safety.

BTW, I don't own a gun... my father worked for the police for about two decades, and my mother still does. I have friends and relatives that have guns, hunt, etc.

The AR-15 isn't an assault rifle... it's just scary looking.

if that level of reliability was needed, non military grade guns would have it.

I was also uncomfortably aware of the transparent appeals to the engineer's sensibility ("open source", modularity, geeking out on youtube, using adverbs like "exquisitely", "lego-blocks" etc). I found it somewhat sneaky, and in no way whatsoever did it translate to need.

We are not talking about a car or a musical instrument, we are talking about an instrument of death. Necessary for certain tasks? yes. Something all civilians should have access to? no.

As a musician, "gear-head"ism always struck me as kind of sad, a rabbit hole that has almost nothing to do with where music comes from. Ultimately harmless, though. This kind of fetishization, on the other hand, frankly disgusts me.

I live on 17 acres, so: coyotes, hogs, nutria (and other destructive varmints), recreational shooting.

https://t.co/o0eSUusHXI

The many sizes of ammo and rounds are the nature of having many weapons from many manufacturers in many cultures, mostly around war times.

Some people are just avid collectors... Nobody needs to have 2+ cars per household, and teenage deaths from auto accidents are significant.

For me, it's about extending personal freedom and accepting that you can never be completely safe. In the case of this shooting, it probably would have been a bomb otherwise, and would have killed/injured about as many people.

That's got to be a play on memes from the current presidential campaign, right? It might be more an appeal to people who consider themselves anti-Clinton or anti-democratic-party than an appeal to guys who want to feel more masculine.

I don't know, though.

Thanks in advance for sharing.

Is it a capacity issue? caliber? detachable magazine? or a combination?

I am opposed to banning 'assault rifles' because an assault rift is a category with a list of things - I can make something just as deadly (and practical) without that list of things. Because of that, banning a gun with specific features (most of which are not known to enhance rate of fire or deadliness of aim) amounts to bad law.

I think that this is actually the most significant difference between guns. To rationalize having such a large magazine, you must believe either that A) you are going to be attacked by a large group of armed people, or B) are going to attack a large group of people.

It's the same rationale for not allowing fully-automatic weapons to be owned by ordinary citizens, and it's a good starting place for new legislation (and hopefully not the only legislation).

I don't trust everybody with a rifle, hell - I especially don't trust you given your expressed view, but I accept the fact that the police can't protect everybody - and it is immoral to insist that they depend on protection that isn't there.

He also, if I understand correctly (there's a lot of bs posts flying around) that he had passed gov't background checks that would have allowed him firearm access even if most of the population was banned from owning.

But anyway, before this gets derailed, the point of the post was really about laying out the rationales for the AR-15, while openly acknowledging that many people will still find them insufficient. What I really wanted to do, though, is move the discussion away from the "rednecks with small penises" rut that it seems to be stuck in. The "need" phrasing was the framing I chose in order to hook into the "nobody needs an assault rifle" phrase that's repeated over and over again.

At any rate, again, I acknowledged up front that I wouldn't be able to convince everybody, or even most people, and that I was ok with that as long as people on the other side of the "assault weapon" debate could gain some new information about these firearms and their appeal to non-crazy, non-penis-size-compensating, non-military-fetishist normal people.

He mentions specifically a hunting scenario and the need to use a powerful weapon and also the ability to quickly issue a follow-up shot if the animal is only wounded, which is a humane action.

Just clarifying the point of the author, please don't project his views on me and mob me.

But I still don't get why you would need a gun. For the most part, we don't need to hunt for our food. We don't need to shoot targets either. Home defense, maybe, but there are other ways to be secure at home without weapons.

I do agree with his point that if you're going to argue against guns, you shouldn't pick and choose categories that are "ok". It's either we ban guns or we continue to live with them in our society.

In fact, children under 15 are about 40 times more likely to die by swimming pool than by an accidental firearms discharge [0].

I still have a pool. There are reasonable laws about having auto-closing gates and a fenced-in yard. I don't see anyone clambering to tighten restrictions on assault swimming pools.

Likewise, semi-automatic, detachable-magazine-fed rifles are responsible for something like 2% of shootings. The only real place they have significance is in mass shootings. The only refute I have to, "but if we ban these rifles we won't have shootings" is that it would just happen through a different means. The Happy Land Fire killed 87 people, not a shot fired. Timothy McVeigh killed 189 people with fertilizer... and that was in 1995 -- under the "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994.

[0] http://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/gun-safety/firearms-versus-sw...

Or my need to be safe (through the protection of people who carries)? If someone walk into a theater and starts shooting, though I don't carry, I prefer that the guy next to me is the type to carry, and that at least half the theater carry too, so they can all drop that killer with 100 bullets at the door.

Maybe two weeks ago, it might have been a "better" story. Today, it's not unreasonable to read it as someone's reaction to the events in Orlando and to judge a love song to the firearm used there in poor taste. Even if that was not the author's intention.

"The Henry rifle thing. During the Civil War period and up until WW2, military rifles and hunting rifles were basically designed with the same goal: shooting and hitting things at range. During WW2 people noticed that most person to person combat was actually at close range, and rifles were mostly used for suppression fire. Rifles like the AR-15 were designed for this close range combat scenario - which is exactly like most mass shootings. Yes, you can use an AR-15 for hunting - they are pretty good at killing things, but that doesn't make it a hunting rifle."

And you're right: by focusing on shooters—not weapons—the quote-unquote problem of rifles like that AR-15 being available to the general public becomes a lot more tractable.

I assume it's because it's a) in the Bill of Rights, and thus "not up for discussion—period", and b) historically, governments have disarmed their populace as a prelude to mass murder of dissidents.

"Assault weapon" (as used here, there are other uses) is a blanket term (adopted specifically in efforts to regulate the class) for a class of weapons that are primarily semiautomatic versions of fully automatic military assault rifles, assault carbines, submachine guns, machine pistols, and combat shotguns; while the exact definitions used in different laws vary they typically are semiautomatic weapons with detachable magazines, pistol grips (whether the weapon is a pistol or not), collapsible or folding stock, and mounting points for accessories like a bayonet, grenade launcher, suppressor, etc.

http://www.winchesterguns.com/products/rifles/model-94/model...

My impression is generally assault rifles tend to be lighter, shorter and generally less accurate than say a typical hunting rifle. (Rifles types tend to blend into each other the same way different types of hammers do)

However, some languages translate assault weapons into storming weapons, which I think describe this type of guns better. The storming weapons have the hint of the gun being used against a threat in an offensive way, whilst being able to inflict as much damage as conveniently and fast as possible. Therefore, by definition, it even sounds off on a linguistic level to use an storming weapon for hunting or for defense, since deers and whatnot are not real threats. Moreover, when the ammunition is manufactured to pierce kevlar, you can already figure out that you are using the gun for the wrong purpose.

As for having a storming weapon for collective purposes sounds to me just as sane as having a collection of bongs and marijuana seeds in a country where recreational marijuana is illegal. It just doesn't sound sane to collect something for the sole purpose of owning them so that you can rub them.

I gone to the army and I guess the rubbing effect is also the reason none of the officers let conscripts touch the guns outside of training, so that nobody would get charmed by the gun and it's deadly but rather simple working method. I guess they have figured out that some people get these kinds of mental conditions which make it seem justified to own one. However I do admit getting keen on my own storming weapon and its serial number as well, but at least the officers kept everyone on planet Earth by reminding that just how dangerous the thing is. Pointing an officer with assembled yet unloaded and safety locked gun would end up getting yourself beaten up and carrying the gun outside of training would end in criminal investigation.

Or just read this thread.

For some reason, anti-gun-rights people seem to love to talk about how to take people's guns, and then call gun owners paranoid for thinking that people want to take their guns.

What makes you think that offense seeks to destroy, or that defensive seeks to disable? If anything, defense needs more power, not less. The key difference is that the attacker can choose the time and place of the attack, and so can either find a time and place that works with whatever amount of power they have available (note the tendency for mass shootings to only happen in "gun free zones"), or call off the attack. Defenders do not know when they will be attacked, and so they need as much power as possible to compensate for possibly being outnumbered or caught in a disadvantageous place. That's why defenders need bigger magazines and more effective ammunition.

But both ultimately seek to control, not to destroy or disable. Once you have control, destruction is easy. And if the opponent has a firearm too, then there isn't much practical difference between disable and kill.