Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

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"He was firing a gun at cops!" seems like such a lame defence to me. This is the US we're talking about, where someone can unload an assault rifle inside a school or a church and render the entire nation powerless, lest the issue be politicised. You don't see the cops rolling a tank through the school cafeteria to try and smoke the gunman out. Just imagining that is utterly absurd!

But this though... oh no.

A single guy with a pistol, in an area they could have evacuated, who would have inevitably tired himself out after standing off for the best part of a day, daring to face off against the almighty police force? Nah, you gotta go full Michael Bay on that shit. Bring out the armoured cars, explosives, tear gas...

There's literally no rational justification for this. The actual soldiers out in the middle east know better restraint than to go nuclear at the first chance. And they're dealing with people packing a lot more heat than this guy with his belts and a pistol.

> The actual soldiers out in the middle east know better restraint than to go nuclear at the first chance. And they're dealing with people packing a lot more heat than this guy with his belts and a pistol.

this is the problem: police aren't soldiers but have military-grade equipment.

Actually, I think assault rifles cannot be legally owned by civilians in the US. I'm not from, or living there so corrections are welcome but I remember that the Texas gunman had a special setup that allowed his weapons to fire in automatic mode, or something close to.

No. That is incorrect. Even fully automatic long-guns (think AK47, AR-15 with a full-auto mod) can be owned legally after paying for the license with the ATF.

Paying for a $3k or so license, have the ATF, FBI and whatever other alphabet soup agencies turn your history inside out, and then buying one of hundred few, $10k+ fully automatic weapons.

People who buy them don't go on shooting sprees.

Thank you for the correction. Kind of shocked though.

It’s only half true. New transferable fully automatic weapons have been illegal since 1986.

The few that are out there are collectors items costing upwards of $20,000.

So while it’s tecnichally true that if you live in a state where they have not been banned outright you can legally buy a fully automatic assault rifle in the US, they are extremely rare and expensive.

They can be retained by people who had bought them before 1994 them but buying one is incredibly difficult in terms of money and paperwork.

No. There is no federal “assault weapons” laws, they expired in 2004.

In most states you can purchase one, some states (CA, NY,CT) have banned them.

"Assault weapons" is a purposely misleading term designed to generate the confusion with "assault rifles" that you're currently experiencing. Assault rifles are indeed illegal to purchase without extensive paperwork and fees, and then only if the weapon itself was registered and grandfathered in before 1986. These weapons are heavily regulated and cost tens of thousands of dollars, despite being effectively never used in crime even at the time they were banned.

I originally wrote "assault weapons" in my comment then changed that to "assault rifles" because I'm fairly certain what the latter, is but not so much the former. Maybe the OP was responding to that earlier version? If so, apologies for the confusion.

Correct, but the National Firearms Act of 1934 which actually bans the sale of machine guns and other automatic rifles is still alive and well.

"Assault weapons" is a meaningless phrase.

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