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Comment by nokcha | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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 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.

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