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The problem is that the AR-15 isn't practically different from a smaller hunting rifle, too small for larger game like deer or elk... more useful for the likes of coyote or mountain lion threats.

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.

>So my question is, to gun owners that support existing laws regarding semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15- would limiting its sale really be really as devastatingly harmful to society at large?

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 feel safer without the gun than I would with one.

If you have one, you're the first target for everybody else with a gun. Kill you before you can start shooting back.

I on the other hand, feel safer with a gun than I would without one.

So the question becomes, who is right? You? Or Me?

This is why everyone who does carry a gun carries it concealed.

> These people do not want to inconvenience their hobby to make society safer.

I am one of "these people", and your perception is not true for me. Guns are not a hobby for me, nor are they for many gun owners. Rather, we view ownership and carry as civil rights.

These things aren't mutually exclusive. Blogging is both a hobby and a civil right.

You're right that's probably most gun owners too, I don't think hunting or target shooting is the driving reason.

I think that civil rights should be more general than that -- like you should have a right to a level of personal safety, and then we design laws to protect that right. I just think that gun ownership endangers rather than protects that right.

>However, I don't think the impact would be nearly as severe for gun owners that might need to pass a few ID checks and own several weapons if needed for different uses.

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.

Author here: I consider responses like this a win, because if we're going to talk blanket bans then the discussion should really be about whether or not anyone needs a semi-auto weapon. If we moved the gun ban debate from "AR-15" or "assault rifle" to "semi-auto weapon of any kind", that would represent a step in the direction of sanity.

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

It is surprising that nobody in this thread has mentioned what I thought was the most widely-acknowledged argument in favor of firearms ownership in the United States.

In my (rural, libertarian-leaning) home state, firearms owners often explicitly cite some variant of "capacity to resist totalitarianism" or "to defend the American people's liberty against the government" as reasons for having guns.

If, like me, you regard the encroachment of an unconstitutional American surveillance/police state as the primary threat to the way of life and values of the American people, this is a strong argument indeed. In fact I would like to see heavier, more military-flavored weapons proliferate for just this reason, especially since there are diminishing marginal returns for some types of arms escalation. E.g. armor piercing anti-tank weapons or surface-to-air weapons designed for hunting helicopters are not any more useful for shooting up a school than light guns chambered for NATO 7.62. But they have vastly different deterrent effects for a state actor contemplating violence against the populace.

You might argue that this is stupid because if the situation ever devolves to the point of violent oppression, they will just drone strike dissidents' houses invisibly from the sky. But I like to think the main effect of an armed, freedom-loving population is to deter the country's leadership from instituting that level of violent oppression in the first place.

> In my (rural, libertarian-leaning) home state, firearms owners often explicitly cite some variant of "capacity to resist totalitarianism" or "to defend the American people's liberty against the government" as reasons for having guns.

That's because the individuals who wrote the US constitution gave exactly that justification—though people (of course) argue whether or not it is still relevant.

From my perspective, the 1st amendment had a similar justification, so if you really don't buy that _guns_ can keep the gov't in check in any kind of realistic way, clinging to "free speech" as something we absolutely need—for the exact same reason—rings hollow; it doesn't seem like a principled position to me to reject one and embrace the other.

I definitely do not agree that the first and second amendment have similar functions. In practice it is the restriction on free speech that is a much more effective and pernicious way of controlling a population. If you have a heavily armed population, that does not dissuade a repressive government from attacking you, it just gets more and more people killed- see Syria.

> If you have a heavily armed population, that does not dissuade a repressive government from attacking you, it just gets more and more people killed- see Syria.

Syria is a great example—for the exact opposite belief that a lack of guns is a terrible way to deal with a repressive regime, and will get you and your family killed.

Syrians are NOT "heavily armed", not even close. Syria is ranked 110th out of all countries in terms of "number of guns per capita".[0] USA has 28.8x (!) as many guns per person as Syria.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c...

>> In my (rural, libertarian-leaning) home state, firearms owners often explicitly cite some variant of "capacity to resist totalitarianism" or "to defend the American people's liberty against the government" as reasons for having guns.

> That's because the individuals who wrote the US constitution gave exactly that justification

The only explanation they gave was "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State". It's a bit ambiguous, despite attempts to insist otherwise.

But you only need to look at the first militia act to see that by "militia" they mean every able bodied man of age, and they should have a firearm of their own.

"Well regulated"

Misconstruing the phrasing of the amendment is a weak way to argue against it. At the time it was written, "well regulated" was commonly used to describe something that worked well, was in good repair, etc.

A militia being "well regulated" (in modern English) by the government that it might need to fight is the opposite of that.

http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

Militia Act, not the article... if you look at the militia act, it specifically states that every able bodied male of age is part of said militia, and to provide their own arms.

And you also miss the phrase "In order to" as in for example... it was only one of the reasons why the right to bear arms should not be infringed, not the only one. The bill of rights was at the time argued as superfluous as some felt that most people understood that those were inalienable rights and didn't need to be spelled out. Others felt otherwise (with foresight) and wanted stronger provisions, many of which were in the original Articles of Confederation the country was founded under before the Constitution.

First, you must know that many people have may opinions on this; yours is not the only legitimate one. Welcome to democracy!

Also, the militia act isn't the law, the Constitution is.

The Constitution isn't scripture, written by gods and prophets for whom citizens should try to guess their superior, divine wisdom and intent. It's a political document, written by people as human as we are - well-meaning and flawed; earnest, careless, and horribly corrupt; etc. - just like current politicians. The wording is a compromise among those people, who certainly had many intents. (What is the "intent" of a law passed Congress? To find semi-ambiguous wording that can get a majority of votes.)

Most fundamentally, the U.S. is a democracy (and if you care for the founders' intent, that's clearly a big one), not a secular theological state ruled by the will of dead philosopher-kings. Current U.S. citizens decide the law and what the words mean, majority rules.

The militia act was the law[1] enacted under the constitution, and given the timeframe, I'd say it accurately represents the intent. I'm not saying that the constituion is scripture, or anything of the sort, I only said you only need to look at the militia act to see what was meant by the 2nd amendment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Acts_of_1792

You may say so but, with due respect, that's not evidence any more than my subjective claims. The U.S. government enacts many laws, often within the same day or hour, with vastly different intents and authored and supported by people with vastly different interests.

The Constitution defines 4 types of powers.

Powers that are granted by the Constitution to the government (for example, Congress ability to pass law).

Powers that are implied to be given to the government (for example, the President's cabinet).

Powers that are left out and to be decided by the states and the people at a later time (for example, any new laws that are not in conflict with the Constitution).

And finally, powers that are DENIED to the government (these are powers the government must NEVER have).

Now, let's read the 2nd Amendment: ...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

>shall not be infringed

In other words, the Constitution specifically DENIED the government the power to regulate arms. The government does not have that power. The government was NOT given that power.

If it seems that cut and dry, the argument is missing many things.

One thing to consider is that nothing is a literal absolute in the law; it's not an algorithm. For example, nobody denies the government's right to regulate arms as far as background checks, denying them to criminals, and until very recent history, much more stringent bans on possession - until recently, centuries of American jurists interpreted the law differently, and many still do; were/are they all illiterate? So easily dismissed by online amateurs? Also, government can outlaw advanced arms such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, and fully automatic weapons.

The government also can't regulate speech according to the text - except that it can: Dangerous speech (shouting fire in a crowded, dark movie theater where there is none, or inciting someone to murder), false commercial speech (lying in your ads), slander, etc. are all illegal.

By the same note, I don't see a handgun as being particularly less destructive in this instance... non-hollowpoint ammo fired into a crowd is more dangerous than full-jacket bullets... more deadly to those hit, but less to the people behind them.

For me it's all about personal freedom. And since most people think the police and military are the only ones that should be allowed guns... I can't think of a reason, outside military training, that anyone in the police or military should have a gun that doesn't apply to someone being attacked in their own home.

One of the problems with weapons in the AR 15 class is that they are very commonly converted to fully automatic. I cannot say if any recent mass shooting has featured such a gun, but a few of the Bundy militants in NV/OR were cited for possession of them, or bragged about possessing them on social media and forums.

Perhaps I just live in an unfortunate part of Texas, but I know a number of people who have performed the mod on theirs… and frankly, among the people I know, these were already there people I was last comfortable knowing owned any firearms at all...

Is this a real issue? I can't think of any mass shootings where a rifle was illegally modified to be full auto.

You are correct. Nobody is getting gunned down by full auto here in the US. Now, some terrorist yahoo may yet change that before I'm done typing this reply, but as of now the number of people who've been killed by civilian full auto fire since the NFA ban is in the low single digits last I checked.

Even then, they could just as easily be brought in through mexico or other means as conversion of other arms here.

> One of the problems with weapons in the AR 15 class is that they are very commonly converted to fully automatic.

Citation, please?

I'm not aware of ANY AR-15 being converted to automatic and being used in a mass shooting. In fact, outside of a handful of "militia types", I can't think of any at all. The closest thing off the top of my head would be the West Hollywood Shootout back in the 90s, but I believe they used illegally-converted AKs, not ARs.

> Perhaps I just live in an unfortunate part of Texas, but I know a number of people who have performed the mod on theirs… and frankly, among the people I know, these were already there people I was last comfortable knowing owned any firearms at all...

You know a number of people who have committed a federal felony? I'm a huge gun nut and have literally hundreds of friends with large gun collections and know of no one who has manufactured an illegal machinegun.

I guess you run with a rougher crowd...

Wait what? I created an account just to contest this. I've never ever met a single person who openly admitted to committing a felony my modifying their firearm into an illegal machine gun.

I would most certainly not call that common and I think either you're around the very small minority or full of it. That modification (illegally done) carries a penalty of 10 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. I seriously doubt you know people openly willing to share information that could invoke those kind of consequences.

"Also, yes, I’m sure your gun-penis is very large. Here’s a cookie…" ~Jon Stokes

Please don't discriminate against men with small penises. Men with small penises has every right to own guns as men with large penises too.

The argument for needing encryption is very similar to the argument for needing firearms (without getting into the veracity of that need), so you've made a great comparison here. One could argue that firearms for personal defense and encryption for personal privacy/security would be completely unnecessary if the state could prevent all crimes that necessitate their use, but they do not and never can.

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.

> ...would it really be an infringement on the author's rights ... he would need to have 3 separate guns for sporting, hunting, and use of force?

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.

You have to realize that banning AR-15 will be just a beginning. Next, they will ban all semi-automatic rifles that are capable of using high-capacity magazines. Then, they will ban all semi-automatic firearms, including pistols (which, incidentally, are easier to conceal), as well as any firearms with magazine capacity over 2 rounds. It is not hard to imagine where this will end. At the same time, in some European countries, where gun laws are rather liberal, the rate of crimes with the use of firearms is low.

> At the same time, in some European countries, where gun laws are rather liberal, the rate of crimes with the use of firearms is low.

Violent crime in the US among the sub-population with a culture comparable to The Netherlands supposedly occurs at the same (very low) rate as The Netherlands, despite massively more guns per capita in the US for that same sub-population.

It's almost as if the availability of guns doesn't cause violent crime, people do.

> the sub-population with a culture comparable to The Netherlands

You mean secular urban bike riding pot tolerant gay tolerant coastal residents? What makes you think this sub-population owns massively more guns in the US?

Or do you mean white people and you're just trying to spread racist garbage?

> What makes you think this sub-population owns massively more guns in the US?

Research. For instance, Holland has the lowest gun ownership in Western Europe (1.9%).[0]

In the US overall according to Pew, "blacks are only about half as likely as whites to have a firearm in their home (41% vs. 19%)".[1]

Among "secular urban bike riding pot tolerant gay tolerant coastal residents" in the US—let's call them "liberals"—23% of homes have at least one gun. According to the [Pew 2014] survey, "southerners are just about as likely as those living in the Midwest or the West to have a gun at home (38% vs. 35% and 34%, respectively)"[1], (with the exception of the NE, which is about 1/3 lower), so I think it's reasonable to assume that "coastal" liberals in, say, CA (where I live) are around that 20% mark. There's absolutely no way they are at 1.9% like Holland. Even if CA liberals owned guns just at 3.8%, that would still be twice what Holland has.

However, it's most likely that Holland-like people, culturally-speaking (liberal, pot/gay friendly, coastal, like bikes) in the US own guns at approx. a 7-10x greater rate than do people in Holland proper. There's also no dispute that the rate of violent crime is similar among these two populations. (As it turns out, Holland has a higher violent crime rate than other European countries with substantially higher gun ownership, suggesting that higher gun ownership in Europe might contribute to a reduction in violent crime.)

Regarding your suggestion that I'm a racist, I don't think violent crime is a white-black thing in the US (as you suggest), I think it's a cultural thing. Why? Well, if you treat blacks as one "race" from a stats perspective (i.e. if you're a racist), you get rather useless statistics. If instead you divide blacks up culturally—say, into "inner-city African Americans" and "recent immigrants from Africa" among others—you see very different crime statistics as well, i.e. it's not race—being black—that seems to be the controlling factor for violent crime, it's culture. That's why racism is so stupid: the stats just don't indicate that there even is such a thing as "the black race" that you can make meaningful aggregate statements like "violent crime" about.

So. If you treat the US with a broad brush when it comes to violent crime, it's very easy to come to the mistaken belief that "guns" are the problem, or even "a" problem—the stats indicate STRONGLY that guns are not a problem. Instead, cultural (not racial!) propensity towards violent crime is the problem.

That means that if we want to reduce violent crime, reducing gun ownership among "secular urban bike riding pot tolerant gay tolerant coastal residents" by 10x isn't going to make a difference—they're basically non-violent already.

[0] http://www.calgunlaws.com/myths-of-european-gun-laws/

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/the-demograp...

I guess I didn't make this point explicit but what I was getting at is that it's absurd to filter out a group of Americans and deem them "culturally similar" to another country and then start drawing sweeping conclusions from that. When you're cherry picking data you can reach any conclusion you want.

I'm also skeptical of arguments that some "cultures" within the US are more prone to violent crime. It's so hard to come up with firm numbers on something like that because culture is arbitrary and fluid. Socioeconomic status seems like a better predictor of criminality, it's quantitative and universal.

Also, Americas gun problem goes beyond "violent crime". http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/upshot/gun-deaths-are-most... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/us/guns-children-deaths.ht...

A ban on pistols would make a lot more sense. Statistically, you're more likely to have someone beat you to death with his fists than to be shot with a long gun. But these kinds of incidents make people emotional.