Hacker News Reader

Comment by eks391 | Hacker News Reader

Do you know what an 'assault' rifle is? I only heard that term used by people who want them banned, who usually think this means automatic weapons, like the other commonly misused term machine gun.

The correct term that 'assault' has become an umbrella for is semi-automatic. That means 1 bullet shot for every 1 time the trigger is pulled. There are technically other guns, like pump-action, that require literal pumping of bullets into the chamber between each shot, or even powder guns which are extremely dangerous due to their inaccuracy and jamming (read jamming as: higher probability to explode during use)

'Assault' is used to try to demonify 'bad' guns but really at that point you might as well ban all guns, because the few remaining are useless.

Just be anti-gun instead of anti 'assault' rifle so you aren't pretending to support 'good' guns

View on HN

Not the person you're replying to, but I fully support repealing the 2nd amendment and strictly regulating gun ownership, up to and including total bans on certain classes of firearms, magazines, and ammunition. I would also personally have no problem with a total ban on any kind of firearm ownership, but I don't think the evidence supports that a total ban would make us meaningfully safer than more targeted restrictions and regulations. But for the guns we might allow in my fantasy of a US with sane gun laws, every gun owner should be required to take both a safety course and general training course, and complete a practical skills exam before being licensed (yes, licensed) to own a firearm. That training should have to be repeated (perhaps an abbreviated version) at some reasonable interval, such as every year or two.

Regarding your nitpicking of what "assault" means, that's irrelevant. But to discuss it anyway: "assault weapon" has not become an umbrella for any semi-auto weapon. Semi-auto pistols, for example, are not what people are talking about when they want "assault" weapons banned. For people who don't really know much about guns, "assault weapon" means "a type of gun that someone in the military on a TV show or movie might have slung across their chest". An imprecise definition, to be sure, but in general I'd agree that no random civilian has any need for such a weapon. And any civilian who believes they have an actual need for such a weapon probably should not be trusted with one.

I do know people who own some of these types of guns. They're responsible, train, and treat the weapons with the respect and care they are due. But I still don't think they should have them.

Assault rifles are rifles designed for killing humans (as opposed to hunting rifles). Sniper rifles require training. Shot guns have limited range and take long to reload. Handguns are hard to aim and not that lethal. Assault rifles are unique in that they allow an untrained teenager to shoot accurately and kill a lot of people very quickly. That’s why people want to restrict access to AR-15 type rifles.

I hesitate to wade into these kinds of conversations but a lot of what you wrote is inaccurate.

Shotguns have a limited range compared to rifles but it’s still at least 50 yards so it isn’t going to matter. People hunt deer with them, they aren’t like shotguns in video games. They can also use removable magazines and be as easy to reload as any other semi automatic firearm.

There is not a single difference between a “sniper rifle” and a hunting rifle.

Handguns are not meaningfully less lethal than rifles against unarmed targets at close range. The mass shooting at Virginia tech was one of the worst and was done with handguns.

> Assault rifles are rifles designed for killing humans (as opposed to hunting rifles)

Every type of firearm was designed for killing people. Today’s “hunting rifle” was the standard issue infantry weapon in WWI and WWII. Russia is still arming some soldiers with what you would call a hunting rifle in Ukraine right now.

Getting shot by a handgun is not like getting shot by AR-15. Even at the same caliber the muzzle velocity of a modern rifle makes the bullet that much deadlier.

Prime Minister Robert Fico got shot three (?) times with a handgun and it now looks like he'll survive. Of course he got the best medical care, but still, it serves to illustrate my point.

With an AK-47 I cannot hit anything at 50 yards. The combination of kickback, terrible sight, rough trigger make it pretty hard to use effectively. It's one of the most popular weapons in war zones (doesn't jam, easy to repair, etc) but in my hands it's useless.

I understand we're dealing with shades of gray here. It's about making a policy tradeoff between how many legitimate uses a weapon type has (for example home defense, farm use, hunting) and how many victims it claims.

> Getting shot by a handgun is not like getting shot by AR-15. Even at the same caliber the muzzle velocity of a modern rifle makes the bullet that much deadlier.

Yeah I should have been more clear about my thoughts on this, my apologies.

Rifle rounds are unquestionably more deadly from a ballistic standpoint but at close range (25 yards or less, just for the sake of hypotheticals), before handgun round velocity falls off enough that they are ineffective, shot placement and how fast you can stop any bleeding matter much more than ballistics.

There aren’t many mass shooting events I can think off where it would have made a big difference if a pistol caliber had been used instead of a rifle caliber - it definitely would in cases like the Las Vegas concert though. That wasn’t an untrained teenager though so it might be outside of the scope of discussion anyways.

> I understand we're dealing with shades of gray here. It's about making a policy tradeoff between how many legitimate uses a weapon type has (for example home defense, farm use, hunting) and how many victims it claims.

Agreed and thank you for your very reasonable response.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com