We need encryption to do peaceful things like economic transactions on the internet and private conversation. We don't need assault rifles for anything but murder. So no it's not the same.
We don't need encryption for anything but hiding illegal activities. You have nothing to fear if you're not a criminal.
See what I did there? Neither argument is good.
Just like the overwhelming majority of people that own so-called Assault Rifles never use them for anything except peaceful recreation - the overwhelming majority of people that use encryption never use it for anything except peaceful online activities.
Why would we ban one and not the other? Both are used by criminals to commit acts which are already illegal. Making them doubly-illegal accomplishes nothing.
Recreational ones are not "needs". Your analogy seems flawed.
I think it is obvious that country B is the better choice than country A. A lot of people (including myself) have zero interest in the hobby of recreational assault rifle ownership. But banning encryption has the potential to cause massive harm, both economic, and in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of thought. If the government wants to control what you say and think, taking away your freedom to communicate out of the government's hearing is a great first step. By contrast, taking away the freedom to own assault rifles has far less impact – I don't have that freedom in the country in which I live, and I don't even notice it, because I have no interest in owning one. But I definitely would notice if the government tried to ban encryption.
Firearms rights (at least in the US) were intended as protection from tyrannical governments more so than even self protection. Though I acknowledge that today the US government is too powerful for citizens with firearms to prevent any tyranny.
The same argument could also apply to encryption. That is, it can offer you protection from a tyrannical government in addition to protecting your information from criminals.
Encryption directly protects your freedom of thought by making it possible to communicate your thoughts to others without the government being aware of them, hence making it difficult for the government to punish you for sharing those thoughts if it disapproves of them.
Owning a gun doesn't directly protect your freedom of thought. Maybe you could argue that a gun can indirectly protect your freedom of thought, since if the government tries to restrict your freedom of thought, you can respond by violently overthrowing the government using your gun. However, in practice, that is very unlikely to work – an attempt to use your gun to violently overthrow the government is far more likely to result in your own death (or spending the rest of your life in prison) than in any actual change in the government or its behaviour. Even if you had a million fellow citizens with their own guns supporting you, you'd still struggle to win against the tanks, fighter jets, bombers, drones, missiles, etc, of a modern military.
There is no such thing as "recreational assault rifle ownership". I posted in detail about this in another comment [1], but "assault rifles" are machine guns and are highly regulated in the United States. You can't buy or own one without a special federal permit from the ATF which has a high bar to get. You also can't buy any gun under normal circumstances without an FBI background check.
What everybody is talking about when they say "assault rifle" are actually just "rifles", which function the same way as other hunting rifles and handguns, merely having a different form-factor. AR-15s (ArmaLite Rifles) for example are just normal rifles, not assault rifles. There are many variants, but plenty of AR-15s will fire the same 9mm ammunition that handguns fire. (Caliber has nothing to do with the classification; that's just an example.)
I'm not even sure that individual people can legally possess machine guns in the US. From what I recall you essentially need to form a corporation and apply for it to become a firearms dealer, and get approved; and then the corporation may buy and possess them. The ATF probably tracks every legally sold and owned machine gun in the US. There is very limited "recreational" use of machine guns: you can go to Las Vegas and pay to fire a machine gun that's mounted to the ground, and whose firing angle is limited. That's about the extent to which any normal person (civilian) will ever legally interact with a machine gun or assault rifle in the USA.
For those who want to use informed language to have a precise discussion, please use the term "rifle" if that's what you mean, and avoid using the FUD term "assault rifle" (unless that's what you mean), usage of which has been polluted by poor journalists and opinion-providers that use sloppy language (and an expired law that skissane points out below).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban
But that law is expired, as you note, and semi-automatic rifles are no longer legally or by militaries to be considered assault rifles. Selective fire is the supposed to be the distinguishing feature of that term and concept.
That was an unfortunate way to name the law, messing up technical language. Should have just called it the "Excessively Dangerous Firearms" ban or something.
I'm surprised the law withstood constitutional scrutiny. Any idea if any challenges of it went to SCOTUS?
FAWB challenges never went to SCOTUS, as far as they got was Circuit Court of Appeals where they failed. Note the ban expired before DC v Heller, when SCOTUS switched from treating the 2nd Amendment as essentially a dead letter to treating it as a live provision; so it is not very clear how current jurisprudence would treat it.
I think some conservatives on SCOTUS would want to overturn a renewed FAWB, but they'll struggle to come up with logic to allow them to do that without threatening the federal (near-)ban on automatic weapons, which is something they probably don't want to overturn. I think in the end they'd uphold Congress and the States banning particular categories of weapons, so long as the categories are not so broad as to constitute an effective ban on owning weapons for self-defence.
There is apparently debate about the etymology of the term. In English it may be fairly recent; others attribute the concept to the German military in World War 2. From the Wikipedia page on Assault Rifle:
> Conservative writer Rich Lowry said that assault weapon is a "manufactured term". Joseph P. Tartaro of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) wrote in 1994: "One of the key elements of the anti-gun strategy to gull the public into supporting bans on the so-called 'assault weapons' is to foster confusion. As stated previously, the public does not know the difference between a full automatic and a semi-automatic firearm."
> Two scholars have written: "One problem inherent in the study of [assault weapons (AW)] is that the classifications of AW are based on cosmetic features of firearms... For instance, the Colt AR-15 series of semi-automatic rifles—the civilian version of the fully automatic M-16 rifle issued to U.S. soldiers—was subject to the 1994 AW restrictions, but the Ruger Mini-14 rifle was not banned. Yet, the Mini-14 is the same caliber, has a similar barrel length, the same semi-automatic action, and can use magazines that hold 30 rounds of ammunition. The only real meaningful difference between the two firearms is cosmetic: The AR-15 rifle looks more dangerous." (citations omitted)
I'm fairly sure such a ban would not survive a challenge with the current SCOTUS, but I'm curious whether any cases made it to SCOTUS challenging the ban while it was active, with the court as it was then. (Any constitutional lawyers on the thread want to pop in?)
Surely it'd just get in the way massively in any kind of home invasion scenario and if you end up firing it the bullet will go through 3 houses and hit someone's dog
Besides all that, it very much is a hobby for people. Much less a need than encryption, which is required to keep simple things like ordering something online secure.
I am okay with being an absolutist about civilians not needing assault rifles. If we're talking about self defense and hand guns, maybe we can have a conversation, but omg what is anyone doing with an AR-15? You can say "having fun" but pretty sure anyone who's being fair would admit that's way past what anyone needs for self defense. Having one very specific sort of fun is not a need or a good justification for the damage these things do to the net safety of our society.
If people could trust each other, then we wouldn't need crypto in the first place. Just like if we could trust others not to attack us, we wouldn't need weapons for self defense.
Guns do NOT help level the playing field. Your government is way more powerful than any number of automatic weapons you might possess. Your government could simply freeze your bank accounts. They could take away your passport. They don't even need guns to hurt you.
Narrator: we were In Country, 1972....
* Crypto has not killed people, guns cause mass shootings at schools, malls, and movie theaters.
* Crypto makes certain classes of theft impossible. Guns make revenge possible, and threats possible. Guns do not make any classes of theft impossible.
* Crypto increases our civil liberties (freedom of assembly, speech), and overall safety (bank website is trustworthy). Guns decrease our confidence that our kids won't be shot at school, that we won't be attacked at a movie theater or a bar.
* If everyone has crypto we truly are safe. If you let everyone have a gun, would you feel safe? The best you can hope when that one crazy person shoots your family member is that you shoot them back, but you don't get your family member back do you? Guns don't _prevent_ crime effectively but crypto sure does. They can deter, they can administer payback, but they are generally a destructive force vs a preventative one.
If freedom of speech exists, freedom to speak what sounds like nonsense to a bystander also exists.
The "scary black painted rifles" (e.g. AR-15s) that most civilians own are not "assault rifles". (Note that the acronym in AR-15 is ArmaLite Rifle and does not mean assault rifle: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArmaLite_AR-15 ) Civilian AR-15s and generic versions are not assault rifles.
The distinction is that rifles like AR-15s fire one bullet per trigger pull–they are semi-automatic, just other rifles, functionally the same as many hunting rifles and handgun, just larger than handguns and more accurate at longer ranges. (Some hunting rifles may be bolt-action rather than semi-automatic)
Actual "assault rifles" are distinguished by having a feature called "selective fire" which switches between being firing like a semi-automatic rifle, and firing continuously like a fully-automatic "machine gun". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
Actual "machine guns" with fully automatic firing are highly regulated in the US and it's not easy for a regular person to obtain one. (For example, the Las Vegas shooter modified a regular rifle with a "bump stock" to transform a regular rifle into something that behaved like a machine gun–something that has subsequently been banned.)
Examples of actual assault rifles are the US military's M16 and the AK-47. You won't see a typical civilian possess these, unless they go through a special process of obtaining a federal permit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). Because you are correct that the purpose of such weapons is military warfare; and even in the military, fully automatic fire in modern combat is used in specific circumstances (typically as suppressive fire against a large enemy force; whereas the vast majority of shots taken by soldiers would be in single-shot mode).
However there are plenty of justifiable reasons for people to possess firearms, whether rifles or handguns, such as hunting, sport shooting at a range, or personal protection (self-defense, assuming the attacker dies, is not murder).
An additional reason is that firearm ownership is protected by the US Constitution in its 2nd Amendment; and one of the reasons for its protection by the constitution is to ensure that the population can defend itself against tyranny by its own government.
(Read about the history of why it was added as an amendment; or read the US Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the text of which is very readable – once you get past its analysis of the language and grammar of the amendment to ascertain its precise meaning – and provides a history of the rationale of the text and the historical reasons for its protection as a right. It analyzes the language used in the Constitution and other legal documents, carefully deconstructs the grammar in the sentence, and concludes:
> (...) We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans. (...)
There's a lot of detailed analysis that goes into the definition of "arms" as being non-military weapons that individuals might use for hunting or self-defense; the historical protection of that right; and why it's an individual right for all Americans.)
Read the text of the court opinion here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html
I can respect people's opinion who wish that firearm ownership was not permissible–it's an understandable perspective, especially for those who have been affected as victims by gun violence; however, the respectable path to "solve" that problem is for the United States to amend its constitution and modify or remove the 2nd Amendment. If that's the wish of the people I can respect it. However, it's hard for me to respect the "tricks" that states or municipalities try to pull, such as banning guns on public property (which Seattle tried to do, which was overruled by the courts–helped by the Washington State Constitution's pre-emption clause, which protects firearm ownership and forbids municipalities from limiting that right); or states like California that require a permit and make getting it burdensome.