Comment by nokcha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nokcha | Hacker News Reader

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>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.

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