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Comment by ryanmarsh | Hacker News Reader

For a time I was paid by the US gov't to use the AR-15 for its original purpose. I was well trained and used it very effectively. Later I was trained to smith it as well.

It fucking terrifies me that so many of you people have one.

It's a tough position for me to be in. I support the 2nd amendment but I don't think you folks should have access to this sort of weapon of war.

There are plenty of options that provide the utility of home defense, plinking, target practice, and hunting without having a 30 ROUND FUCKING MAG.

In a military context we wouldn't call the AR-15 a "mass casualty producing weapon" because there are relatively higher caliber, faster cycling, higher capacity, man portable weapons. However in the civilian context the AR-15 is most definitely a "mass casualty producing weapon" and should not be easily obtained.

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When I was in Fallujah we let each household keep one AK (which was almost always full-auto). Why did we do this? Because it is immoral to strip an individual of all means for self defense, especially when we knew that we couldn't protect everybody. So while the US is not a war zone, when does such a moral principle kick in?

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.

Brother you know why they were allowed an AK. I did the same cordon and searches too. They faced a different threat model.

Again: "So while the US is not a war zone, when does such a moral principle kick in?"

Concerns over moral principles might be totally irrelevant to you though, if you are a utilitarian/end-justifies-the-means sort of guy.

Self defense doesn't require a 30 round mag.

Bullshit it doesn't. Ever get in a firefight with a bolt-action and win? Didn't fucking think so. Fuck, a 15 minute firefight could have me expend 240+ rounds easy! (especially if our 249's were down or for suppressive reasons, but still)

Do you still suffer from PTSD or something? We're back home. You aren't going to find yourself in an L shaped ambush in the shopping mall.

So utilitarian... you know that "self defense" covers scenarios that involve more than one aggressor right? Are you proposing a more democratic form of self defense, where the mob is effectively always right? That is ignoring the moral dimension of the problem; from a purely practical perspective you can be outvoted in your self defense.

See that's what you guys (assault weapon supporters) are really all about. Some kind of military style combat engagement where you'll have to defend your family from a full breakdown of society or the zombie apocalypse or something.

That's not a likely enough occurence to justify my neighbors arsenal of mass casualty producing weapons.

An even bigger fantasy: some of you guys dream of standing up to the US gov't. IIRC that rarely works out well. Sorry but in the US you're already at a disadvantage because you're digitally tracked here. Over there they don't have to use digital devices to conduct daily life.

You already live in a police state.

> That's not a likely enough occurence to justify...

Neither is the "mass shooting" likely enough to occur to justify a major curtailment of the second amendment. You are more likely to drown in a paint bucket. You aren't thinking, you've fallen under the spell of bloody shirt waving - which is fine if it ended there, but you want to impose your hysteria on others.

First, I'm not a firearm owner, but a libertarian, in favor of less government and more personal liberty all around type...

As to the police state, that's the point... there's no partial ban that shouldn't apply to the police as the police have no reason to use a firearm that shouldn't apply to someone in their own home.

It gets even more interesting: these people support that individuals should be able to defend themselves against a zombie apocalypse with the argument (I assume) that "even though that is a very unlikely event, the consequences would be catastrophic, so we should be ready for that". Basically:

probability * consequences > pain-threshold

The same people are viscerally opposed to the fight against global warming, because it is an "unlikely event", even though the consequences would be vastly more catastrophic for humankind, if it turns out to be true.

I don't understand their logic.

I'm going to call BS on your background, especially after calling an AR-15 an "assault weapon."

Google me bruh

I wish my fellow warriors would learn to remember their oath to the constitution (and therefore the second amendment) in discussions like this. The fact that you don't seem to is sad but indicative of the general disregard for the importance of oaths these days.

That's a pretty serious accusation there buddy. How specifically am I disregarding my oath?

Your casual and flippant disregard for the need to arms oneself with more than a single shot pea shooter is in direct contradiction with the second amendment. Do you disagree? (and keep it on point) Also, my verbiage left room for you to correct, eg. " don't seem to", so it's not an accusation... yet. Also, the real discussion is in my other comment in this suspiciously flagged thread.

Your comments in this thread crossed repeatedly into being uncivil. That breaks the HN guidelines. Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all, from now on.

Really? I am assuming you are speaking about "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity. "

First of all. I think that was a bad rule to be introduced in the first place. I don't think there was proper user input on that change, and the backlash was mostly ignored. That being said though...

While I can understand my comments were not put in the nicest of terms and verbiage, I in no way became uncivil. Please indicate precisely to me where I became "uncivil", and please make clear your definition of "uncivil".

Sure, I cussed a couple of times, but last I checked HN wasn't against cussing. As a matter of fact, reviewing my comments in this thread, I see nothing you could take as violating the negativity rule at all, unless you are applying an excessively broad scope to the rule that would set a precedent that would harm HN as a whole.

I do think perhaps this part might be in violation: "Also, the real discussion is in my other comment in this suspiciously flagged thread." That though, is not being uncivil, and would be a violation of another issue, and I shouldn't have said that. It's too late to edit now though.

In short, dang, you don't seem to have provided very clear reasoning for your comment, so I would like you to please clarify. I admit in retrospect this is probably why the article got flagged, perhaps rightly so, because it is a contentious subject that was/is bound to create charged debate. My comments were heated but not uncivil, and your insinuation that they were is concerning to me, especially when the other commenter at one point was making attacks on me based on my PTSD. If anything I would expect you to be saying this to him for that comment.

Dan, I eagerly await your reply, as I have always tried to be a good commenter on HN, and I am open to correction if my errors are pointed out properly.

You used phrases ("bullshit it doesn't", "didn't fucking think so", "your casual and flippant disregard", "Do you disagree? (and keep it on point)") that made your comments aggressive and personal. No one who's trying to be respectful would address the person they're talking to that way. HN threads are for respectful conversation, so please edit that kind of thing out of your comments when posting here. As a side effect, you may be surprised how much more substantive and credible they become when you do so. (You're right, btw, that cussing isn't the issue.)

More importantly, you insinuated that a fellow user had violated an oath. That's way out of line. Casually slinging such a serious charge is the kind of thing that turns internet forums into a circle of hell, so please don't do anything like that here.

I gather that you didn't mean to break any rules when posting, and probably were just expressing yourself forcefully about a topic you feel strongly about. That's natural, but if HN is going to reach the standard of civility that we strive for, we all have to exercise self-control re the 'forcefully' part. Other people doubtless feel as strongly as you do, have had different experiences that led them to different views, and—given how little information online discussions convey—may not even be understanding you correctly (or vice versa). That's a lot of opportunities for conflict, so interesting discussion depends on all of us restraining our impulses.

Dan, thanks for taking the time to type that response. I am going to take your correction to heart and try to adjust my tone in future conversations, as after having time to cool off I think you are correct that I could have expressed more self control, which would have in turn created a better discussion and debate. I'm not jealous of your job of moderation, but I'm impressed with this interaction so I tip my hat to you.

What a nice reply to come back and find here. Thank you!

Agreed; it was always surprising to me that advocating for the violation of the constitution, allegedly the "highest law of the land", is not considered treason. Doubly so from someone who, as you said, swore to defend that constitution.

But would a glock 10 with a 15 round magazine in the Orlando context really have resulted in that much of a difference? You can always swap out magazines as one empties, and he could have just carried twice as many in with him.

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.

>30 ROUND FUCKING MAG.

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).

This mag limit obsession /fascinates/ me. Here is why. The people who push this are generally people who also believe that what we really need in the gun debate is hard data. Like, actual data from studies and such.

There are no studies indicating that mag limit would save lives in a mass shooting situation. None.

I understand that the mag capacity/body count link seems intuitively to be true, but I've read a number of accounts from actual weapon experts (I think the last time I saw this was on Sofrep.com, from some former SF guys) that indicate that this is not actually the case. And ultimately, wouldn't it be best to base a mag capacity ban on, y'know, actual hard data, and not what we sort of think is probably true?

I read someone who did the math (i.e. 2 seconds per mag change, rate of fire, mag capacity... I don't recall the details and Google isn't cooperating at the moment) and he determined that mag capacity has pretty much no effect on the amount of fire you can lay down in 5-minute engagement, which is about how long these shootings last.

The one thing you can say about mag changes is that they introduce an opportunity for operator error (dropped mag etc.). So over the course of some number of mass shootings, if you know the odds of operator error during a mag change and the impact of that error on the rate of fire, you could probably calculate some number of rounds saved.

Anyway, for reference, here is some random Meal Team Six commando on YouTube that I found demonstrating a mag change:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkLCc7H-oSI

That guy took two seconds to change mags, and doesn't even look like he knows what he's doing. You can find plenty of sub-second mag changes on YouTube from random airsoft guys.

I'm pretty confident that the mag capacity/body count link would not hold up to even cursory scientific scrutiny.

Thanks for the data and thanks for proving my point. Seems like we should only allow 5 round mags that have complicated release mechanisms.

I can see why you might want to say that I proved your point, but I don't think I did. If mag capacity has no effect on round count (and hence body count), then enacting a ban on a commonly available accessory and legislating some elaborate (and as yet unspecified) set of design changes to a few million existing weapons seems like a pretty silly proposal.

Any complications to usage actually make guns more dangerous, not less. There's a reason the glock is as popular with police and military personnel as it is.

This guy would seem to agree with you: https://youtu.be/MCSySuemiHU

I'm perfectly OK with a 10 round magazine limit, I have trouble justifying more, even in a militia situation, no one has made a convincing argument that a greater magazine size would save lives - it just means that you'd be carrying less weight.

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.

If you're willing and it's not too personal, would you share more about your experiences using the AR-15? My father was in the military and I only ever saw his service weapon once. If it was present in our home growing up, I never knew. I mention this because I find that getting the perspective of people who have actually had to employ weapons for their original purpose adds a lot of richness to these discussions.

Thanks in advance for sharing.

Just out of curiosity, where would you draw the line? Mini-14? Shotgun? SKS?

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

Mass casualty producing weapons.

The problem with this argument is that in the timeframe the Orlando shooter was given (3 hours), a shotgun could have easily been a mass casualty producing weapon.

LOL at carrying around a few hundred 12 GA shells and stopping to reload in a room full of people that could over power you.

You don't have to stop to reload at empty, you can just keep feeding the magazine after every shot or two. 50 (2 3/4) shells isn't an unrealistic loadout.

In video games.

You can watch 3-gun matches on YouTube right now that fire 40 shells while running and gunning.

A foolish remark.

The shooter spent his time in different rooms, each full of people, many of whom could have overpowered him. At many times he was within arms' length of people. There are no reports whatsoever of anyone trying to "over power"[sic] him. They were likely frozen by fear, alcohol, drugs and wounds. I'm not blaming them, simply noting that they were unable to react. He had free reign.

Under such circumstances a serious shooter with a 12 gauge would generate far _more_ casualties. LOL all you want, the 12 gauge is way more destructive than an AR, especially at the short ranges involved.

Google me dude.

With an elitist attitude and terms like 'you people' you are sounding like someone who would fit that profile. There are 8 million+ ar15s in civilian hands and how many people have been killed by them?

> With an elitist attitude and terms like 'you people'

I apologize if I offended you.

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