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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

You used to call out that flaw in that logic yourself. We're not generally motivated by routine gun homicides, but by mass shootings, because, as you say, "the activity threatens social stability vastly out of proportion with the probability of any given person being victim to it." It can be rational for policy to target tactical rifles, which can be used to stand off police forces (as they have in several mass shootings) and to rain death down onto a crowded street from a high-rise window, while not addressing the more-common handgun fatalities, just like gun policy doesn't need address the still-more-common traffic fatalities.

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I initially thought that a ban on 'assault weapons' might make sense, but after learning more about firearms technology, I've come to the conclusion that 'assault weapons' just doesn't make sense as a legal classification. It's mostly about minor cosmetic and ergonomic features (such as having a pistol grip) that look scary to large segments of the population. A Mini-14 Ranch Rifle is nearly as capable as an AR-15, yet nobody is trying to ban it because it looks like a traditional hunting rifle. And there isn't really a clear-cut meaningful distinction between rifles and pistols; a so-called 'AR-15 pistol' is legally a pistol even though it can be easily converted to a rifle by replacing the arm brace with a stock (but to do so legally requires a $200 tax stamp if the barrel under 16 inches long).

I don't want to recapitulate the whole very long argument here, but I believe this meme about "assault weapons" being incoherent and cosmetic is essentially propaganda. The original FAWB proposals targeted all semi-automatic rifles with detachable clips. Like you, I took the time to learn more about firearms technology and I came to the opposite conclusion you did. See this thread for my reasoning (somewhere in there, there's a back-and-forth about the Mini-14, which is a favorite Facebook meme subject).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21021388

>The original FAWB proposals targeted all semi-automatic rifles with detachable clips.

OK, I agree with you that such a proposal makes sense conceptually. (But I would still oppose it on the grounds that it offends the Second Amendment.) My complaint about conceptual incoherence is limited to bans that focus on things like pistol grips.

>The original FAWB proposals targeted all semi-automatic rifles with detachable clips

Yet that was not the definition used in the law.

The original FAWB (for rifles) itself defined an assault weapon as a semi-auto rifle with 2 of - folding or telescoping stock - pistol grip - bayonet mount - flash hider - grenade launcher.

This was such a ridiculous list, with about zero to do with lethality, that it was trivial to work around. No one was killing people with grenade launchers or bayonets, for example.

Targeting only detachable clips only leads to fast loaders like those used for 6-shooters, i.e., it's not much of a deterrent to quickly reloading weapons.

In practice and history, these bans seem more based on scary looking features than empirical lethality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban

"The law" was the result of intensive lobbying by groups like the NRA and represents a capitulation from the original position of gun reformers. I don't accept that we're bound by the definitions in that law when we're discussing potential new policy. In fact, rejecting that definition of "assault weapon" is the point of my comment.

> I don't accept that we're bound by the definitions in that law when we're discussing potential new policy

Here's a recent Assault Weapons Ban by Diane Feinstein, 2020, not the result of political lobbying.

It takes your statement to heart. Do you see any holes in this one being effective? I do.

>the result of intensive lobbying by groups like the NRA and represents a capitulation from the original position of gun reformers

Every bill will be the result of lobbying and ideas from competing groups, and will result in compromise. That's not such a bad thing. Not every American wants either extreme that political parties can concoct.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/66

And last time you brought this up, I pointed out you mischaracterized the proposal in question. I'd correct your statement to say "The original FAWB proposals targeted all semi-automatic rifles with detachable [magazines that a future Attorney General wanted to ban]."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21811186

As the thread shows, the intent of the original FAWB proposals was not to focus on scary-looking cosmetic features. I think my description in this thread is fair, you'd like to qualify it further, and that's fine, but I don't think we should pretend like we don't understand each other, or that there aren't sources that refute the idea that the original intention of assault weapons regulation was just stuff like barrel shrouds.

The problem is that neither the proposal you linked nor the 1994 FAWB make a rational distinction between banned semi-automatic rifles with a capacity to accept a detachable magazine ("assault weapons") and ones that shouldn't be banned, with the exception of a few specific carveouts. In the proposal you link, instead of feature tests, we get the attorney general judging which guns are ok and which ones aren't.

AWBs are incoherent and irrational. The feature tests are a manifestation of that. But the lack of them doesn't fix the irrationality of the whole idea.

I think the bill I cited is has a pretty clear and coherent definition of assault weapons: they're semi-automatic rifles that accept detachable clips of more than 10 rounds. You're fixated on the fact that the AG/SecT can designed some semi-automatic rifles with clips as "not" assault weapons, at their discretion. So what?

I don't think mandatory licensure of tactical rifles is an irrational idea at all.

The ban you linked works the other way around: Such rifles are legal until the AG/SecT specifically bans them. It's the functional definition + irrelevant stuff formula I object to as irrational. If the ban you linked worked as you describe, I'd object to it as bad public policy, but I'd be hard-pressed to call it irrational.

And I'm not sure how licensure comes into this. Neither the 1994 FAWB nor the proposal you linked license the possession of "tactical rifles." They ban them with grandfathering. And for what it's worth, I don't think licensure regimes necessarily are irrational.

The AG/SecT has the authority under this proposal to simply classify all of them as assault weapons. Not all firearms, period; there is a technical definition that carves out weapons that can't be, and, again, it's not based on cosmetic features.

I think in the 1980s an outright ban on tactical rifles could have worked. That's the context of the bill. Since then, the black rifle has become a de facto standard platform for hunting and sporting, the market has followed, also somehow a feral hog explosion, and so an outright ban would be very disruptive. My point is that bans aren't the only option, and, in 2020 (but not in the 1980s) the cost of a ban would outweigh the benefit.

I think reasonable people can have all sorts of opinions on what kind of regulations there should be around firearms, and my confidence in my own beliefs is not all that high. But I am fairly certain that thought-stopping appeals to the definitions in the FAWB (or, for that matter, to the Sturmgewehr) don't make good arguments, and can be quickly disposed of.

Form follows function.

The addition of a pistol grip does lend increased tactical maneuverability to a rifle. It doesn't just look scary. The tactical ability of a semi/fully-automatic rifle does not exclusively come from its ability to rapidly chamber rounds, it also comes from its tactical maneuverability, especially when firing multiple rounds in a short period of time.

This is why the military uses rifles that look like the M4 platform, and not rifles that look like the M14 platform anymore. This is why the AK-47 doesn't look like the SKS. The addition of a pistol grip to a semi or fully-automatic rifle represents an advance in military technology.

The 2015 San Bernardino Shooting, the Sandy Hook shooting, and the Orlando nightclub shooting all involved light, tactical rifles with pistol-grips. Stephen Paddock had 21 pistol-grip rifles, and not a single Mini-14.

There is a meaningful advantage in the ability to kill people in in-close, rapid-fire situations with a light, semi-automatic rifle featuring a pistol grip. This is why people whose job descriptions involve killing people at relatively close-ranges (military, SWAT) use this style of weapon, and not a weapon that looks like a Mini-14.

The stock Mini-14 looks like a traditional hunting rifle, because it is engineered for hunting. Its design is not optimized for controllability when rapidly firing multiple rounds in multiple directions in a tactical setting. A good hunter shouldn't need to discharge much more than two rounds, and they have one single target. They're not controlling for recoil over the course of an entire 30-round magazine, while pivoting in multiple directions.

In that context, the legal classification of an assault weapon does make pretty good sense.

Pistol grips do not inherently make a weapon system more maneuverable, as they do not change any of your leverage on the firarm, nor its centre of mass or mass distribution. Making a weapon more comfortable does not make it more deadly since you can always fire more rounds if you miss. Pistol grips are simply easier to manufacture than weird shapes of wood or plastic.

Why wouldn't a pistol-grip impact leverage? It's literally a lever attached to the bottom of the rifle.

> does not make it more deadly since you can always fire more rounds if you miss

More rounds on-target is the definition of more deadly.

> Pistol grips are simply easier to manufacture than weird shapes of wood or plastic.

I don't follow. A hollow pistol-grip is not only more plastic, it also requires a much more complicated mold.

There's a reason every modern, light, self-chambering rifle system uses a pistol grip. If it were simply a matter of ease of manufacture, or of comfort with zero tactical advantage, nobody would care if AR-15s were banned because they'd be perfectly happy with their Mini-14.

Look at rifles like the SV98 or AW series. They don't have pistol grips but have the same ergonomic layout as a pistol grip. In fact, you can evade pistol grip laws by making butt stocks with holes that provide the same effective hand positioning. Learning to shoot a classic rifle grip is only a matter of training - after all, everyone from precision sports shooters to special forces utilised them to their full extent.

>More rounds on-target

You only need one .223 centre mass or in the intestines to require immediate surgery.

>hollow pistol-grip

Attatch two stamped pieces of metal or molded plastic.

>they'd be perfectly happy

One major reason not to ban pistol grips is that there is no major reason to ban pistol grips. I haven't been a witness to any statistical analysis regarding its positive effects. If anything, you want to motivate people to like the guns they own, so they shoot more often and are more disciplined. The fact that some commit heinous crimes is mentall illness, not the fault of the gun or even more so the fault of legal gun ownership.

Plus, the AR-15 platform has versatile configurations like the short-stroke piston operation of an HK416 or picatinny rails for attachments. After all, mounting a good infrared scope on a hunting rifle helps hunters place humane one-shot-stops rather than blindly causing suffering.

> Look at rifles like the SV98 or AW series.

These are both bolt-action rifles.

The purpose of assault-weapons bans are to reduce the likelihood of a single, mentally-unstable person from killing large numbers of people with a semi-automatic rifle.

> you can evade pistol grip laws by making butt stocks with holes that provide the same effective hand positioning

Not in California. That grip is considered a 'feature' and is not allowed in conjunction with detachable magazines on a semi-automatic rifle.

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/california-legal-ar-15/

> You only need one .223 centre mass or in the intestines to require immediate surgery.

Center-mass is on-target. For an inexperienced person working their way through a school or office-building, they are trying to increase the number of on-target shots, and reduce the number of magazine reloads.

> The fact that some commit heinous crimes is mentall illness, not the fault of the gun or even more so the fault of legal gun ownership.

We can't ban mental illness, so the purpose of the laws is to reduce the likelihood of certain weapons systems from falling into the hands of people with mental illness, or those with an ideological grudge and the motivation to carry out an attack. This has worked out pretty well in the state of California so-far.

> mounting a good infrared scope on a hunting rifle helps hunters place humane one-shot-stops rather than blindly causing suffering.

If a hunter needs an infrared scope to place a humane shot, then they need to go to the range and get better before they go outside and shoot an animal.

> If anything, you want to motivate people to like the guns they own, so they shoot more often and are more disciplined.

I understand this perspective, as I am a shooting enthusiast as well. However, this perspective is simply not in-line with the opinions of most voters, who don't really care how much anyone enjoys these weapons. They simply don't want to have to worry about themselves or their children getting shot by some lunatic with a gun. When they hear 'more disciplined,' they hear 'more skilled at killing my kids.' Since firearms for the vast majority of gun owners are little more than a hobby, it's really hard not to see the logic in their perspective.

>bolt-action

The fact they're bolt-action is irrelevant to their grip. I'm still not convinced banning semi-automatic rifles will lead to (or has lead to) mentaly unstable people bieng unable to commit crimes. There's still a large selection of pistols (especially rifle-looking pistols) and lever-action rifles. You can still shoot them as quick as you can aim.

>inexperienced person

It's very inadequate to target a small minority of people with laws that are based on wishful thinking, sacrificing the vast majority. Do you not find it easier to simply take action with mental healthcare for the weeks, months, and years prior to the shooting?

>We can't ban mental illness.

Of course. Because it's an obviously failed concept. When you ban weapons you can always cherrypick statistics to show loose correlation (not sure by which criteria it's worked out well in California when Chicago's gun laws don't repeat the results). It seems like the banning attitude is the wrong approach, and the issues at hand are far greater than a single handwave of the senate or similar.

And let's not forget how easy it is to make DIY pipe bombs, flash bangs, stinger grenades, molotovs, poison gas grenades. I'm certain pipe bombs are more dangerous in close quarters than guns because of their spread. If you've barricaded the classroom door, all you need to do is stay outside the deadly funnel and there is no way the firearm will hurt you. But explosives have no such limitation if you can fit it in.

>go to the range and get better

This isn't about skill but visibility in low-light conditions, easier target acquisition, and actually having a guarantee of what you're looking at. Any benefit you gain from training will be increased with an infrared scope.

>They simply don't want to have to worry about themselves or their children getting shot by some lunatic with a gun.

Mental illness is a major cause of worry right now for America's youth. The easy and naive handwave solutions of banning mentall illness and guns are, at best, tangent to the goal of reducing violence, and at worst rob people of the right to defend themselves or use tools they are well trained in. It is the easy short-term way out to use non-combative and 'safe' gun owners as scape goats. It is the easy way out to tell someone what his use case, goal, and constraints are, and back it up with strongarm authority.

It is not the easy way out to admit a complete failure of the federal government to implement mental health care. It is not the easy way out to push changes that will span several presidents. It's not the easy way out to cooperate with all sides of the community. It's not easy - that's why we trust politicians with our taxes, so they work it out the best way, the most rational, informed, and difficult way. Isn't that the point of politics - to abstract away the angry mob seeking retribution?

By the way, I'm not American. I live in the EU but have had the privilege to spend hundreds of euros on trips to countries to shoot some guns. Thanks to EU gun laws, the best defense against getting robbed or home invaded is to know civilian-safe, ethical tai chi.

You raise some really good points, and I appreciate the thought behind your response.

I wanted to kind of try to maybe unpack the point you made as best as I can:

> Do you not find it easier to simply take action with mental healthcare for the weeks, months, and years prior to the shooting?

We have zero mental health infrastructure in the United States, and it would take decades to build a working system (there's not even the political will to try at the moment).

In the case of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting where 17 people died, the police were well aware that the suspect was a threat, they had received multiple tips that he was going to shoot up the school, and they knew he had guns. But there isn't framework in the United States to do anything about it because we have such strong free-speech and civil liberties protections. It's also perfectly legal for someone who hasn't been convicted of anything or put on an emergency mental health hold to own a semi-automatic rifle. As a result, the guy who told everyone exactly what he was about to do took his gun, walked into his high school, and murdered almost 20 people.

People are looking for pragmatic solutions to prevent these types of mass shootings.

1. We could enable the police to arrest or detain people who haven't committed a crime, but that would conflict with constitutional free-speech protections, and would set a stronger precedent for police arresting people for things they haven't actually done yet (slippery slope).

2. We could build an entire mental health system from scratch (decades of work assuming at some point in the next ten years this would be a priority for the president and congress).

3. We could increase restrictions on certain types of guns to prevent them from falling into the hands of a disturbed 19 year-old (incredibly easy to do, there's widespread popular support, and all Congress would have to do is pass a single bill). The only people negatively impacted would be a minority of people who would be slightly inconvenienced, but still be able to pursue their hobby. The majority of people would gain the ability to send their kids to school without wondering if they're going to get murdered.

Only one of these options (#3) seems to be within the realm of actually being achievable. We're just not going to build a mental health system from scratch anytime soon, and people aren't thrilled about giving the police more ability to arrest people who haven't actually committed a crime. We're left with more weapons restrictions as the only pragmatic solution (what Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico, etc. have done).

Only a minority of Americans own guns, and there's consistent support among the majority of voters for increased restrictions on firearms.

I enjoy shooting guns myself as a hobby, and I live in California which has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country. The laws really aren't such a big deal. It just means an assault rifle has a 10-round mag restriction, and it's a little slower to change mags since they require a few additional steps to swap out. I don't find that to be a particularly big deal, especially since it helps my friends, family, and neighbors not have to worry about the safety of their children. I still get to pursue my hobby, and there's no way I need more than 10 rounds for home defense. Even if they outright banned assault rifles, I could have fun for the rest of my life target shooting with bolt-action rifles.

At the end of the day, it's just a hobby.

I'd like to add it's not a hobby, one of the greatest concerns in buying a firearm is self defense from people who don't care about the laws and can indeed access weapons of different types. It also seems like the government isn't following #3 in what you would consider productive ways. I don't see how 10-round magazines, armbraces instead of stocks, and pistol grips are going to offer other than a minor inconvenience.

For me it's a hobby since I am not allowed to defend my home. My rights are already gone. As far as the EU is concerned, if you are afraid of getting hurt, get life insurance. If you are afraid of getting robbed, get house insurance. It would be sad for America to fall like that mostly due to corrupt and/or lazy politicians.

>The 2015 San Bernardino Shooting, the Sandy Hook shooting, and the Orlando nightclub shooting all involved light, tactical rifles with pistol-grips. Stephen Paddock had 21 pistol-grip rifles, and not a single Mini-14.

The Mini-14 has also been used in mass shootings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruger_Mini-14#Criminal_use

>Its design is not optimized for controllability when rapidly firing multiple rounds

Yes, that is a real disadvantage of the Mini-14 compared to the AR-15. And for military use, when engaging targets over 50 yards away, it is important. My understanding, though, is that most mass shootings happen at fairly close range, where the AR-15's reduced muzzle rise isn't as much of an advantage.

>This is why people whose job descriptions involve killing people at relatively close-ranges (military, SWAT) use this style of weapon, and not a weapon that looks like a Mini-14.

The military didn't choose the AR-15 for its performance at close range (like under 25 yards). At that range, the AR-15's greater difference between bore axis and line-of-sight becomes a disadvantage compared to the Mini-14.

>The addition of a pistol grip does lend increased tactical maneuverability to a rifle.

Do you have a source for that? Personally, I haven't found a pistol grip to make much of a difference in maneuverability. The overall length of the rifle certainly makes a big difference, though.

> The Mini-14 has also been used in mass shootings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruger_Mini-14#Criminal_use

Not in the United States since 1986 according to that list.

Tactical maneuverability when discharging rounds at a rapid rate can come from maintaining the stock in-line with the bore of the rifle as-with a pistol grip, which allows for better control of rapid fire. It is also easier to pull the rifle into the shoulder quickly, which allows you to re-sight more quickly when firing rapidly, and transitioning from running to a shooting position. If you look at a standard, factory wood or synthetic-stock Mini-14 (not a side-folder), the bore is elevated over the stock. The fractions of a second needed to re-sight the rifle would create a disadvantage when rapidly discharging a weapon in close quarters. This is especially important for someone who has not received extensive training in handling weapons in these situations, such as the people who go postal in schools and nightclubs and such.

> At that range, the AR-15's greater difference between bore axis and line-of-sight becomes a disadvantage compared to the Mini-14.

This seems like a weird example, since I don't believe any modern, well-funded urban combat operations team uses the factory Mini-14, or any similarly-configured rifle with a more horizontal-grip stock. The prototypical close-combat rifle, the MP5, most definitely uses a pistol-grip, and SWAT teams in the United States seem rather fond of the AR-15-style platform.

Although I do not have evidence to support this, I would also make the argument that a pistol-grip offers advantages in quickly swapping mags in a high-pressure situation, as the mag release button is nicely situated with the wrist in a neutral position, and the ability to bring the rifle back-up to shoulder using the pistol-grip as a lever following a mag swap would be easier, especially for someone who is inexperienced, moving quickly, and prone to fumbling.

Plus, people are tired of seeing mass shootings on TV, and just don't want to have to worry about lunatics running around with these types of weapons. The definition of 'these types of weapons' will evolve, and typically correlate with what people see being used in mass shootings on the news.

I don't know that people's negative reaction to these weapons is particularly unreasonable in this context.

The pistol grip really isn't the big advance it's pitched to be, and lets be honest; banning it does nothing in the case of someone who has cracked enough to decide a large number of people are going to die today. It happened to be a feature of a design that won a military contract, therefore the tooling to produce that design was developed, therefore that tooling was put to work to make more due to economies of scale therefore people take the opportunity to post-rationalize tge ubiquity of the pistol grip as being some artificial killing power multiplier rather than just " hey, we can already make these so why not lecerage tge feature to make cheaper guns?" It's more an economic efficiency than anything else.

I'd agree with you in the sense that it isn't a magical force-multiplier or anything.

Pistol grips are a common interface, they don't have a significant tactical improvement on their own. It is massively beneficial to have all/most weapons a soldier might be called upon to use to have the same basic setup though.

Why wouldn't they have a tactical improvement?

It's a lever attached to the bottom of the rifle.

It allows:

1. The stock to remain in-line with the bore of the rifle.

2. Additional leverage to control recoil.

3. Quicker and more intuitive return of the weapon to-shoulder after running or changing magazines.

4. The wrist to remain in a neutral position when depressing the magazine release button.

The Sten, BAR, and the PPSH were pretty much the last generations of fully-automatic rifles to use a horizontal grip configuration, and in both cases, (Soviet and Western) weapons designers converged on the pistol-grip for subsequent designs of the autoloading light rifle, despite substantial differences in design between the M16 and the AK-47.

Why did they make the change? All three of those weapons (Sten, BAR, PPSH) were in widespread combat usage at the time, as were horizontal-grip semiautomatic rifles like the SKS, M14, and M1 Garand/Carbine (as well as a variety of horizontal-grip bolt-action rifles). Why not keep the same configuration for the next generation of rifles so that soldiers would be using the same basic setup that they had originally been trained on? Why did the StG 44, AK-47, Thompson, and later the M-16 all make the switch? Even the Swedes started adding pistol-grips to the BAR in the twenties.

Horizontal-grip rifles just don't seem to be as well-suited for controllability of fully-automatic, or rapid semi-automatic fire.

I’m not denying there’s a rational reason for an assault weapons ban, apart from a ban on handguns. (I might even support it, for the reasons you mention, if I didn’t believe that assault weapons—arms you could use in a militia capacity if necessary—are actually more protected under the second amendment than self-defense weapons like handguns).

But insofar as gun control advocates cite “gun violence” as a problem to be solved, lumping together both homicides and suicides, well handguns are the thing driving that and support for banning those, like in the UK or some other countries, is at historic lows.

Well, you disagree with Scalia in Heller then, who drew a sharp distinction between military weapons and arms carried for self defense, over like 8 paragraphs, and concludes with a distinction between the kinds of weapons civilians carry and the kind soldiers carry, the latter not necessarily being protected.

I agree that we're not likely to get a handgun ban any time in the next 50 years.

California is heading towards a de-facto handgun ban as we speak.

Specifically, California requires any handgun sold new in California (with exceptions for law enforcement) to be on a "safe handgun roster" maintained by the state. A handgun must meet certain standards to be placed on this roster. That started out with safety testing, like the requirement that a handgun not fire when dropped, but was later expanded to require features like an indicator that there's a bullet in the chamber.

In 2008, the law was amended to require that semi-automatic handguns stamp identifying marks on shell casings in certain ways that researchers later determined to be more or less impossible. This provision of the law, however, was not to go into effect until the Attorney General of California certified that the technology was commercially available. In 2013, Kamala Harris falsely made that certification and no new model handguns have been added to the roster since. As manufacturers improve their designs, older versions have gone out of production. As a result, the roster has shrunk significantly since.

I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a handgun ban. I think Glock, for example, is perfectly happy to continue to manufacture their Gen3 models as long as the California market exists. But it does lead to a situation where the selection for enthusiasts is extremely limited and will become even more so over time.

All new commonly available handguns introduced since 2013 are completely banned from sale in California, including all of the safest and most popular handguns in the country.

A recent bill passed, requiring that for every new gun added to the roster, 3 must be removed.

This is a slow moving handgun ban.

Yes, I do. Second amendment scholarship has changed a lot over the past few decades. It was in the past much more hospitable to gun control than today. Scalia is a product of that. Scalia was also, presumably, trying to build the 5-4 part of the majority. And in any event, the case itself was directed to a self-defense context. But post-Heller scholarship has acknowledged that the case didn’t go as far as it could have.

The DC Circuit opinion, by contrast, was simpler and blunter: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/478...

> The premise that private arms would be used for self-defense accords with Blackstone's observation, which had influenced thinking in the American colonies, that the people's right to arms was auxiliary to the natural right of self-preservation. See WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, 1 COMMENTARIES 136, 139; see also Silveira, 328 F.3d at 583-85 (Kleinfeld, J.); Kasler v. Lockyer, 23 Cal. 4th 472, 97 Cal. Rptr. 2d 334, 2 P.3d 581, 602 (2000) (Brown, J., concurring). The right of self-preservation, in turn, was understood as the right to defend oneself against attacks by lawless individuals, or, if absolutely necessary, to resist and throw off a tyrannical government.

I obviously don't agree with you here (I'd vote for basically any firearms restriction anyone came up with, though) but this is super interesting.

You can carry an AR-15 for self defense in your truck. The question is do you require the ballistics of an AR-15's .223 round over a 9x19? In many cases yes, if your intent is to neutralise a threat, then the .223 is a vastly superior round to a 9x19. An ar-15 is more accurate than any pistol, so you will have no misses or at least not as many. And you need fewer bullets to achieve your goal.

There is only one major distinction between military weapons and civilian self-defense weapons. For self defense, you have a clear target and you take a few shots. In the military, you provide a base of fire and often don't see what you shoot at. Everything else is commentary.

Oh hell no.

In the military you are accountable for every round you fire, and you better not shoot something you don't see.

You shoot where and how you are commanded to, it is not your job to think about the rules of engagement when you are given clear orders to, for instance, fire bursts ar a bunch of rocks someone's hiding behind. The average civilian involved in a shooting bears more responsiblity and is scrutinized much heavier than any policeman and certainly any military personnel.

I'm guessing you have no military experience carrying a weapon.

I do.

It is absolutely the duty of everyone carrying a weapon to employ that weapon in accordance with the rules of engagement and the law of war.

I have no active military experience but I have been trained in small arms and tactics. There is sufficient video evidence of US troops shooting to suppress an enemy when given an order to do so. I'm not rejecting RoE but I am referencing such scenarios.

You simply don't know what you're talking about.

Let it go.

I guess they never taught you basic infantry tactics or you've never actually shot at someone if you deny a concept like suppressive fire.

Ironic coming from someone who has never carried a weapon.

A Soldier is responsible for every round they fire. Yes, suppressive fire is a thing, and it has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

You don't randomly "suppressive fire" on things you can't identify.

You don't randomly shoot at things someone "orders" you to shoot.

You don't get to say "oh but LT dumbfuck told me to shoot that civilian" when you shoot a non combatant. In fact, by law you MUST refuse that order as it violates the LOAC. Go google that because I know you don't know what it means.

You are responsible for every round you fire. There are plenty of former Soldiers in prison for not believing that.

That's some strawman for things I never said or implied. Let it go.

No, it's exactly what you said. I didn't make up any straw man, you believe that Soldiers on the battlefield run around randomly shooting wherever and whatever they want.

It simply isn't true. As a Soldier, you are responsible for every round you fire.

>you believe that Soldiers on the battlefield run around randomly shooting wherever and whatever they want.

That's ludicrous and exactly what I'm pointing out as strawman. I will not repeat myself. I especially did not mention soldiers are not responsible for their rounds.

The military is pretty good at managing context. Currently no one is really deployed in a traditional combat sense and rules of engagement are very strict and each shot would be evaluated. if The U.S. were to invade Canada or vice versa the rules would obviously change.

Scalia wrote certain things in dicta in Heller in order to get Justice Kennedy's vote, in a very narrow ruling in a case specifically about handguns.

I wouldn't read much into that on the constitutionality of "military weapon" bans -- keeping in mind of course that the things gun control advocates like to call "assault weapons" aren't actually military weapons at all, as manufacture of actual military weapons for civilian ownership has been heavily restricted since 1968 and absolutely banned since 1986.

I guess my counterargument would be that the modern sporting rifle was designed to be a military weapon. I'd be interested in learning more about the technicalities that designate something as an according-to-Hoyle military weapon, but I'm a little dubious that such a definition will cause me to forget the history of the AR-15.

Well, I suppose there really aren't any technicalities that designate a weapon as "military style" -- it's really a point that doesn't mean anything.

The military has used pump action shotguns similar to what you'd find in a duck blind, they've used Remington 700s (the most common hunting rifle and military sniper rifle), they've used air guns (all the way back to the revolutionary war -- the first semiautomatic rifles were air guns used in the Revolutionary War), they've used Ruger .22 handguns with suppressors on them...

The distinction that was made in 1986 was that anything fully automatic was banned. I think that's pretty silly, as I'm just as effective with a semi-automatic AR-15 as with a fully automatic M4A1. It makes no real difference, most military troops never flip the switch to automatic because the weapon isn't really even designed for it (machine guns need to have spare barrels, an assistant gunner, normally belt fed ammunition, etc -- they're ineffective otherwise). But that's the legal "definition" such as it is.

anyway, kind of all over the place, but the general point is this -- if you look the history of the time in which the 2nd amendment was written, civilians could -- and did -- own ships, cannon, artillery, etc at the time. Who cares about small arms if you can own a ship of the line with cannon? The concept of civilians being restricted in which types of weapons they could own based on whether or not the military could own them would have been considered ridiculous to the founding fathers. "military weapons" are the most effective weapons, if we have the right to own weapons, why would we be restricted to ineffective ones? Conversely, if you're going to ban weapons, why would banning the most effective weapons have any real impact, when a>there are still millions of them in circulation that are never going to come out of circulation, and b> even "ineffective" weapons can be just as effective as those "military style" weapons in a barely trained shooter's hands? I can literally teach someone in fifteen minutes how to be just as effective with a Glock 19 as with an M4A1 inside of a building. Even with 10 round magazines.

See, I strongly agree with you about the near equivalence of an AR-15 and an M4 carbine, and I'm glad to get further confirmation of the reading I've done suggesting that fully automatic rifle fire is highly overrated and rarely used professionally.

To me, that strongly suggests that the AR-15, even though it has become the "modern sporting rifle", is a weapon of war. It's clearly a military weapon (that's its origin and the intent behind its design). The thing that separates it from the weapon we all consider indisputably military, the selective fire M16, is a trivial amount of metal and additional machining --- and that tiny bit of extra stuff is rarely needed in the field anyways. My claim: the fact that Adolf Hitler chose to describe a rifle with a couple extra pieces of metal in the trigger assembly as a "bad-ass rifle" (my translation) has assumed an outsize role in our policy.

I think a rational target for our firearms policy should be all semi-automatic rifles with detachable (or high-capacity) magazines. Doesn't mean we should ban them or even seek to reduce the number of them in commerce today, just that those are the weapons I think we should be talking about.

All small arms are "weapons of war". Clubs and sticks are "weapons of war" in certain societies, and people kill other people with them all over the world. In some places they do so quite effectively.

That's really the fact of it.

The UK and Japan have banned pocket knives. I couldn't legally possess a Leatherman the entire six years I spent in Japan. We had metal detectors at the brow of the ships to ensure no one LEFT the ships with their every day tools they carried to do their jobs, because they would be arrested and thrown in a hole for carrying them off the ship (yes, this literally happened. 10+ days in a Japanese hole waiting on a charging decision for a junior LT on a ship there because he had a pocket knife in his backpack). The UK is now attempting to ban clubs. The logical extension of this "ban weapons of war" desire is to literally ban sticks. Everything has to be banned in order to have a perfectly "safe" society. But then people will kill each other with their fists. It's the human condition, unfortunately, and attempting to address a meatspace problem with technology bans has never proven to be effective in all of history.

Targeting semi automatic rifles with detachable or "high capacity" (another meaningless term) magazines, isn't a useful thing to do. It doesn't make any difference, won't make any difference, and can't make any difference. They were banned from 1994-2004, and that led to literally almost fifteen years of destruction of that political party and made those banned weapons the most popular weapon that has ever been designed. Again -- it's the human condition.

The reason gun rights advocates are so set against this is that every time there's a "discussion" it's designed to make something we own illegal. We can talk about it all day, but that at the end is always the goal of gun control advocates. They don't want to talk, they want to make us criminals.

I don't think the facts bear that timeline out, but I'm certain we're just talking about different things. From the top of the thread: my concern is about mass casualty shooting events, particularly the kind in which the shooter can stand off first-responder police forces (or, in the most horrible cases, get a clear line of fire on a crowd of people from a fortified position).

I don't think an assault weapons ban is going to do anything about routine gun crime. But it doesn't have to. (I also think "bans" are dumb).

Which timeline? 1994-2004? They banned a bunch of scary looking guns to save the children for ten years. It wasn't successful. That was my entire point with that -- if I got a detail wrong I'm happy to be corrected.

The mass casualty shooting events aren't going to be affected by the technology solution. In Japan just a couple of years ago a guy walked into a home for disabled people with a sword and killed ten or so of them as I recall. Swords are banned in Japan, along with knives and guns.

In the Tokyo subway not too long ago a death cult released a bunch of poison gas and killed a bunch of people. Again, guns, swords, knives are all banned. We're not talking only certain types of guns are banned, Japan doesn't fuck around -- they banned EVERYTHING. Even pocket knives. Didn't stop people who wanted to kill people from killing people.

Columbine -- they messed up their explosives (fortunately!), but that was the plan on how they were going to hold off first responders and kill a bunch more people. Same thing in the Atlanta bombing as I recall. Information is out there, it's not hard. You can buy the ingredients to make common explosives at Walmart. You can kill a lot of people with a Remington 700 if you want to.

Another AWB (or regulation, or talking about it) isn't going to affect crime in any way. If we want to fix the problem in the US, we ought to be looking at what happened to cause people to think that murdering people was ok. Pieces of metal didn't do that, something went wrong in our culture that did that.

BTW sorry this is like a day after the conversation, every time I type more than two replies in a thread I get rate limited and can't post anymore. This site drives me nuts.

I agree that the original FAWB was performative and ineffective.

But it happened that way because interest groups lobbied the original proposals, which were far more coherent, down to an ineffective, face-saving stump. I don't accept the FAWB as a serious reference point in gun policy; it isn't. The right discussion to have is about regulating all detachable-magazine semi-automatic long guns.

I'm not sure where Aum Shinrikyu gets you in a discussion like this, because I'm confident our polity agrees roundly that random people can't possess Sarin.

You can kill a lot of people with all sorts of weapons. But tactical rifles and Sarin gas are examples of weapons that allow ordinary people to kill outsized numbers of victims while standing off first responders that would otherwise be able to cut spree killings short, and those kinds of killings would be the target of a new assault weapon ban.

The point is that you can ban things all day long, and it doesn't actually have any effect on the people who are going to break the law. It affects me, because I strictly follow the laws even though I believe they both violate the Constitution and my natural rights, because a society where laws are ignored is a society that cannot function -- but I digress and that's another discussion.

Someone who is going to commit mass murder isn't going to sit down and think "well, they made my favorite weapon illegal, so I guess I just can't do it anymore". It simply doesn't work that way -- it's not difficult at all to find a way, just like the tokyo death cult and just like the dude who chopped up a nursing home with a samurai sword in a country where possession of both is illegal, and just like people regularly murder each other with knives and baseball bats in the UK.

BTW, I try never to say the names of any of these people who commit mass murder. I really think a HUGE part of why people do this is because they want the attention the media gives mass murderers, and I think their names should be shut out of the history books.

The crime bill was slightly reduced in impact from the overall ban the left wanted, but it banned possession and manufacture of any semiautomatic weapon that had a scary feature and limited magazine capacity to ten rounds as I recall.

There's no data that even suggests it had any effect nor would have the overall ban they wanted. The only people who follow the law are by definition law abiding people. I don't think it's likely that there's some subset of people out there who just accidentally pick up an AR-15 because it happens to be around and go commit mass murder. We're not talking about crimes of passion here, we're talking about sociopaths who are generally above average IQ, quite capable of getting their hands on anything they want to get their hands on, whether it's legal or not. A person willing to murder a school isn't going to be stopped by some minor difficulty in obtaining the exact brand of weapon they want.

Another point - manufacturing fully automatic weapons is a remarkably easy task. There are people who have made a functional AK-47 out of a shovel. The Sten gun plans have been publicly available for 50+ years, and that's one of the simplest weapons there is to build. Banning an AR-15 doesn't make hundreds of years of knowledge in machining vanish. You don't even need a mill to make a Sten, but if you have a mill that costs a couple of thousand dollars you can pretty much make any weapon you want in your garage. Spend a few more dollars and you can just plug a thumb drive into the CNC controller and push a button and have a computer make it for you, very little skill required.

A gun ban would likely be just as effective as the cannabis ban has been. It would put thousands of law abiding citizens in jail for a made up crime, and it would probably accomplish exactly nothing in terms of public safety. And it would be mostly ignored by the citizenry. There are 300+ million black rifles in the hands of the public, how do you propose to take them away?

There's another issue, most of this gun ban talk comes from people who live in cities, and really don't understand why semi automatic rifles exist. If you've never needed to hunt coyotes that were destroying livestock or kill varmints that are digging up your pasture and destroying livestock, or defend your life in a situation where the nearest county sheriff is a hundred miles away and you probably can't even reach him by radio until the end of the day if you're lucky (there are some really nasty people that live on the fringes of society where there's nobody to bother them too much), you can't really appreciate why it pisses us off to hear city folk talking about how they need to take our guns away because they're scary and because criminals exist. There will always be criminals. If you made all guns vanish today, they'd use bombs. If you made all bombs vanish today, they'll just use swords. When you're banning sticks like the UK one has to wonder where the ridiculousness ends. VA is literally trying to ban pieces of metal that look like they could be turned into a gun right now.

And just for the record, if you ban long guns with detachable magazines you're banning this: https://ruger.com/products/1022Carbine/specSheets/1103.html

One of the most common target rifles, one of the most common rifles used for varmint control in flyover country...

You can search "ranch rifle author:tptacek" if you want to get a sense of my patience level with these mic-drop appeals to wooden-stock coyote hunting rifles.

As I've said repeatedly, and you don't seem to be acknowledging: the original gun control proposals were far more ambitious than what they got whittled down to. The original proposal, as I've said, was semi-automatic rifles writ large. Appeals to the performative "crime bill" restrictions are not interesting.

I'm also losing patience with the arguments about "bans". I don't think bans are a good idea either, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop demanding that I defend them.

that search comes back with nothing. Anyway, if the desire is to ban semiautomatic detachable magazine rifles, that's what is being banned. And most people don't even understand that, the proponents of the last AWB didn't.

>and those kinds of killings would be the target of a new assault weapon ban.

Maybe you slipped there? You're right, the original desire, and the always desire, from the left, is to ban everything. Not even just semi-autos, they want to go to the UK/Japan model where everything is banned. That's the desire. If you want something else, it's going to be step 1 in the incremental ban of everything. That's always how it is. It's an article of faith with the left that guns are bad and only bad people want guns.

We need to ban guns (maybe "some" guns that are scary enough or you or somebody has determined I shouldn't be able to own) for the children because guns kill people. That's the argument you are making, even if you couch it in other terms. If you're not, what argument are you actually making?

BTW, here's the current proposal.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/127/...

It's pretty much banning firearms unless you're rich. The training requirement alone would cost thousands of dollars, the licensing requirement costs 800 bucks a year, and it has an outright ban on magazines.

So, if we apply the same standard to voting or publication...

Handguns are involved in over 80 percent of mass shootings.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/476409/mass-shootings-in...

That would be more a mic drop if I hadn't also provided reasoning for heightened concern about tactical rifles, which your stat doesn't rebut.

Technically true, but extraordinarily misleading.

Most people think of ‘mass shootings’ as indiscriminate public events like Parkland or Las Vegas.

However the stats cover any event in which where 4 or more people died.

The vast majority of these are drug deals gone wrong, gang violence, and other forms of organized crime.

Almost none of what most people think of as mass shootings involve handguns.

Most people do not think of a drug deal done wrong, which is very likely to involve handguns, as a mass shooting.

So when used this way, the statistics are contributing to the spread of misleading bullshit.

What you just explained is that people are mislead from the start and nobody should show them real data.

> nobody should show them real data.

I’m not sure what you mean by this.

The guy posted some statistics on handguns and you asked him not to mislead people. The facts are very clear that shooting 4 dudes in your apartment is considered a mass shooting. Such is the law in this case. People who think mass shootings are sensational breaking-news events like a mad teenager shooting at innocent people, have been led to believe so. It is simply not the case, I'm afraid.

Shooting 4 dudes in your apartment is considered a mass shooting by almost nobody.

You are welcome to argue for the authority of those who have classified it this way.

I’d love it if more people realized that what they are being told are ‘mass shootings’ are not what they have been led to believe.

>I’d love it if more people realized that what they are being told are ‘mass shootings’ are not what they have been led to believe.

That's what OP's sources are showing, lol. Hey I don't like how the law differs from any technical dictionary, but such is life.

I think it's one of those "schrodinger's stats" where if you're using it to convince someone that america has an alarming number of mass shootings it is conveniently valid, but if you're using it to convince someone that rifles may not be the culprit it is conveniently invalid.

We should be able to agree here, at least, that commonly cited counts of Parkland-style mass shootings are overstated, and that the prevalence of tactical rifles in those kinds of mass shootings are not.

Of the 28 mass shootings of 10 or more victims in the last 50 years, 14 of them list the use of a semi automatic rifle or carbine, so while I agree that changes the numbers a bit, I don't think 50% is as conclusive as you're letting on.

This is from wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt if you'd like.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United...

The percentage goes up if you select more recent shootings (say, since 2000, inconveniently leaving Columbine behind), which makes sense, because semi-automatic rifles have become more prevalent since then. And 20 years is still a plenty long time ago.

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