On July 23 2012 03:47 101toss wrote: Pretty sure lee and mosin are not assault rifles, considering they're bolt-action. You can't effectively massacre a movie theater with a bolt-action rifle (in fact, you could probably only kill one person before you get taken down), which is why they aren't so politically charged (plus that a bolt-action has a clear hunting purpose).
Yes you can. You have a firearm. Your targets do not, because it was a supposedly 'gun free zone.' There were no police on hand because they only arrive after people have killed each other. But this is a discussion about the event.
Bolt-action rifles carry a cartridge that laughs at level IIIA and even military level IV armor. that they arent considered 'assault' rifles is essentially a concession that 'assault' rifle is based on scary-factor and not actual capability.
You have a firearm that let's you get tackled every time you're rechambering a round, there's no way you can deal with multiple people charging you. Not to mention these rifles are subpar in CQC. The armor penetration doesn't offer much against unarmored civilians as it is, only offering higher penetration through objects like chairs (though it will help if you were to fight the police).
You assume multiple people will charge you. Recent events suggest otherwise: see Norway when the lone gunman proceeded to kill just about everyone on that island even though he was vastly outnumbered.
On July 23 2012 03:47 101toss wrote: Pretty sure lee and mosin are not assault rifles, considering they're bolt-action. You can't effectively massacre a movie theater with a bolt-action rifle (in fact, you could probably only kill one person before you get taken down), which is why they aren't so politically charged (plus that a bolt-action has a clear hunting purpose).
Yes you can. You have a firearm. Your targets do not, because it was a supposedly 'gun free zone.' There were no police on hand because they only arrive after people have killed each other. But this is a discussion about the event.
Bolt-action rifles carry a cartridge that laughs at level IIIA and even military level IV armor. that they arent considered 'assault' rifles is essentially a concession that 'assault' rifle is based on scary-factor and not actual capability.
You have a firearm that let's you get tackled every time you're rechambering a round, there's no way you can deal with multiple people charging you. Not to mention these rifles are subpar in CQC. The armor penetration doesn't offer much against unarmored civilians as it is, only offering higher penetration through objects like chairs (though it will help if you were to fight the police).
You assume multiple people will charge you. Recent events suggest otherwise: see Norway when the lone gunman proceeded to kill just about everyone on that island even though he was vastly outnumbered.
Pretty sure he was using semi-automatic weapons though. It's much easier (and safer) to charge someone you know has to take a second to rechamber a round then reacquire a target as opposed to someone who is constantly shooting and only breaks in between magazines (Note this doesn't account for sidearms).
Also, a case of ar-15 for self-defense: Keep in mind I personally believe an ar-15 is terrible for self-defense given it's overpenetration (if it is using 5.56 ammo) while still suffering a lack of relative stopping power (5.56mm doesn't stop someone dead in their tracks compared to a shotgun blast). However, it's good to see the self-defensive side of it, and I'm pretty sure the ar-15 used didn't have a 100 round drum as well.
On July 23 2012 03:47 101toss wrote: Pretty sure lee and mosin are not assault rifles, considering they're bolt-action. You can't effectively massacre a movie theater with a bolt-action rifle (in fact, you could probably only kill one person before you get taken down), which is why they aren't so politically charged (plus that a bolt-action has a clear hunting purpose).
Yes you can. You have a firearm. Your targets do not, because it was a supposedly 'gun free zone.' There were no police on hand because they only arrive after people have killed each other. But this is a discussion about the event.
Bolt-action rifles carry a cartridge that laughs at level IIIA and even military level IV armor. that they arent considered 'assault' rifles is essentially a concession that 'assault' rifle is based on scary-factor and not actual capability.
You have a firearm that let's you get tackled every time you're rechambering a round, there's no way you can deal with multiple people charging you. Not to mention these rifles are subpar in CQC. The armor penetration doesn't offer much against unarmored civilians as it is, only offering higher penetration through objects like chairs (though it will help if you were to fight the police).
You assume multiple people will charge you. Recent events suggest otherwise: see Norway when the lone gunman proceeded to kill just about everyone on that island even though he was vastly outnumbered.
Pretty sure he was using semi-automatic weapons though. It's much easier (and safer) to charge someone you know has to take a second to rechamber a round then reacquire a target as opposed to someone who is constantly shooting and only breaks in between magazines (Note this doesn't account for sidearms).
This is internet theorycrafting for a situation that probably neither of us have been in and it is starting to derail this thread. I have provided an empirical example, however, disproving what is essentially your hero theory.
Bottom line is, because of the situation, regardless of the kind of gun it was or how scary it looked, a lot of people were going to die in that theater.
On July 23 2012 01:19 micronesia wrote: An AR-15 is not an assault rifle. The military version, an M-16 is. Rarely do these high-profile shootings in the USA or elsewhere involve assault rifles as they are actually quite difficult to obtain. The key difference between an AR-15 and an M-16 is that the M-16 allows the operator to switch between different shooting modes, including fully-automatic mode (like a machine gun). The AR-15 is purely semi-automatic (only one bullet will fire at a time with a squeeze of the trigger).
Not all M-16s have fully automatic capabilities. When I was in the military we used the a2 model which only allowed semi-automatic and burst firing (3 shots).
All I know is no human on Earth NEEDS anything more powerful than a simple handgun or rifle that fires a single shot (not even close to semi auto, thinking about hunting rifles here).
NO OTHER GUN WILL EVER BE NEEDED.
Honestly, why the fuck are ANY guns made with the explicit purpose of killing humans be sold to the public? I'm actually curious as to WHY anybody would ever "need" an AR-15 or something of that caliber.
You're splitting hairs. It's the same rifle without automatic fire included. Although I do not know the details of the massacre that inspired the blog, I do know that it's not prohibitively difficult to modify an AR-15
Simple search of youtube
Interestingly, and further to your point, some variants of the AR-15 were not prohibited by the Assault Rifle Ban of 1994-5. Only versions with military oriented accessories (bayonet, suppressor, muzzle flash reducer docks) were prohibited.
But I still feel, morally, that you're just splitting hairs. You don't need a semi auto to hunt animals. The express purpose of a fully automatic or semi automatic weapon is to hunt man.
Edit: Again, I'll reiterate that you are technically correct. However I cannot imagine a scenario where you would need a hundred round drum magazine or the AR-15s for self defense or hunting.You can find evidence of casual gun owners firing at 60 rounds per minute, semi auto. I dare say that is enough to cause mass casualties.
It's impossible for me to say anything of substance without touching on gun laws or the recent massacre.
On July 23 2012 04:54 Probe1 wrote: You're splitting hairs. It's the same rifle without automatic fire included.
This is not splitting hairs, full automatic is not semi-automatic. In addition, conversion to full automatic is already illegal according to national firearms act of 1934.
In the United States, constitutional law and jurisprudence have made it so that issues of 'need,' 'want' don't apply because it is 'can' according to the law. Morally, the question should be guns or no guns period. Assigning tiers based on scary-looks and qualities is moot. This thread isn't about gun control though, its about misconceptions about what is or isnt an 'assault' rifle. Looks like a select-fire gun doesn't make it a select-fire gun.
On July 23 2012 05:10 Probe1 wrote: Not really. You're just putting it in black and white again.
Your argument is that it looks like another rifle that is different entirely. Semi-automatic: requires trigger pull for each round fired. Fully-automatic: requires only one trigger pull, weapon will continue firing. Even single-shot guns are 'semi-automatic,' they just have a magazine size of one and arent self-loading.
The preoccupation with the way a gun looks and the expectations people have based on those looks is at the heart of what the thread's OP is about.
does it look like the traditional 'assault' rifle shown in narrative in news and movies? Keep in mind that even in California law, which is the most strict in the country, the rifle depicted in that image is not legally an 'assault' rifle.
On July 23 2012 04:54 Probe1 wrote: Edit: Again, I'll reiterate that you are technically correct. However I cannot imagine a scenario where you would need a hundred round drum magazine or the AR-15s for self defense or hunting.You can find evidence of casual gun owners firing at 60 rounds per minute, semi auto. I dare say that is enough to cause mass casualties.
This point is moot. Any gun, 'assault' rifle or not, used by a person against unarmed civilians is enough to cause mass casualties. Even this hello kitty rifle above. Even a bolt action gun with 10-12 rounds per minute; I seem to recall 12 people died in that theater. If the man had barred the doors, even a break action survival single shot gun in the hands of that man would have enabled him to kill everyone in that theater.
On July 23 2012 01:19 micronesia wrote: 2) The purpose of assault rifles (as well as civilian models like the AR-15) is to kill.
What the original/design purpose of a type of gun is doesn't really seem relevant to me in any type of a gun-control debate, but I'm not here to argue that. Assault rifles were actually designed with the specific intention of stopping/wounding. In war, when two armies were shooting at each other, killing an enemy soldier instantly wouldn't stop his friends from shooting at you. However, if your weapons wounded enemy soldiers, their friends would stop shooting at you to tend to his wounds. So the goal was to A) stop him from fighting and B) get the attention of other soldiers in the process. There has been debate about how much to focus on stopping VS how much to focus on not killing, but assault rifles were not developed for the purpose of killing. As I said earlier, the original intention doesn't matter much to me when discussing modern use of gun models, but people are often making statement #2 so I felt it should be addressed anyway.
To get this thread back on topic, there is good literature on why the switch to 'assault' rifles (meaning intermediate calibers) isn't about stopping power (or rather an intentional lack of stopping power), but rather about economy and discipline. Militaries began to see an alarming rounds-required-for-confirmed-kill ratio in the second world war, korea, and Vietnam, and attributed it to the ubiquity of fully-automatic firearms and larger calibers in the hands of soldiers.
There's actually a growing backlash against the intermediate caliber in US military circles due to experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the battle rifle is making a return.
While I appreciate the distinctions being made, frankly, after 4.5 years as a grunt who literally only used full auto on full machine guns, and only used burst fire when instructed to at the range... yes, it's technically not an assault rifle, and it's technically not designed to kill.
But the military, who have access to the literal assault rifle version, use the mode available to the public. Saves ammo, easier to control, and (in the case of the shitty cheap ones the army buys) less jams.
So yes, I agree with the points made, but they have little relevance to actual effectiveness, as semi is the most combat effective mode of fire, even in a target rich environment. Even .223 is a pain in the ass to control without something at least the size of an M249, and those are preferable off a bipod or vehicle mount, rather than the shoulder.
As for the political aspects, I can't imagine the value of getting into a debate about them online, where almost everybody is set on their opinion already.
What? I've always thought that to be classified as an assault rifle the gun had to have an automatic firing mode, as the first assault rifle the Sterngaver was...therefore an AR-15 is not an assault rifle.
Fast Fact: Hitler coined the term 'assault rifle' after seeing a demonstration of the Sterngaver.
I have no idea why any of those points would even be important, but at least the second is an urban myth from all I know. The assault rifle was introduced for a number of reasons, and none of it were to wound soldiers over killing them. See the Background section here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44
In fact giving that assault rifles had the same caliber than classic bolt action rifles until the 60s I don't see how it would be less likely to kill someone with an assault rifle over a more conventional one anyway. Add to that that you would have to be an expert marksman to instantly kill with a single shot. Wounding was always more likely than a straight kill. Adding burst fire made it more likely that the enemy was killed, not less.
I have heard the same urban legend about the 5.56 caliber. That it was designed to wound, not kill Soviet soldiers. A way more likely explanation even here though is that it allowed an infantryman to carry (and spend) way more ammunition than with the old 7.62 standard.
If the wounding thing is an urban legend, it made it to my Drill Sergeants. That's not to say it's true, they're not generally picked for their gentle wisdom.
After reading this, i have a few questions ( i don't really have any knowledge on the subject ) :
1 : Isn't the M16 either semiauto or burst fire ( 3 shots ) ? I thought only the M4 had full auto 2 : isn't it relatively easy, for someone who has the knowledge, to add full auto capabilities on an AR15 variant ? ( modifying the lower receiver ? ) 3 : It was to my understanding that an experienced shooter can shoot pretty fast and more eifficient ( straight up hitting more targets with less ammos wasted ) on semi auto than on full auto 4 : I've heard somewhere that the 5.56 nato was designed to do more damage by "tilting" upon entering the target, don't knwo where exactly but i remember some kind of video demonstration where a soldier was shooting at a "Concrete masonry unit" wall and it seemed like it was " shredding " the wall a bit instead of making clean holes in it ( hence the " wounding myth " ? )
A rifle that qualifies as a "assault rifle" must have select fire capabilties, the civilian AR-15 is just semi-automatic so different nomenclature. Its widely avaliable as with the Remington shotgun he had and the Glocks are relatively affordable too.
edit: And civilian variant rifles have much smaller magazines. And judging from what happened he went happy trigger, I'm sure that semi-automatic feature didn't make much of a difference.
On July 23 2012 08:56 Marti wrote: After reading this, i have a few questions ( i don't really have any knowledge on the subject ) :
1 : Isn't the M16 either semiauto or burst fire ( 3 shots ) ? I thought only the M4 had full auto 2 : isn't it relatively easy, for someone who has the knowledge, to add full auto capabilities on an AR15 variant ? ( modifying the lower receiver ? ) 3 : It was to my understanding that an experienced shooter can shoot pretty fast and more eifficient ( straight up hitting more targets with less ammos wasted ) on semi auto than on full auto 4 : I've heard somewhere that the 5.56 nato was designed to do more damage by "tilting" upon entering the target, don't knwo where exactly but i remember some kind of video demonstration where a soldier was shooting at a "Concrete masonry unit" wall and it seemed like it was " shredding " the wall a bit instead of making clean holes in it ( hence the " wounding myth " ? )
1: Earlier incarnations of the M16 and M4 had full auto, new versions feature single/burst. Full auto is grossly inefficient in an assault rifle/carbine, and even crew served weapons and light machine guns, you generally fire 4-7 round bursts for better control of aim, ammo use, and barrel heat.
2: There's several somewhat iffy ways to do it with varying degrees of success, from what I understand, or you can replace the lower or a few parts inside the lower, assuming you can get the appropriate controlled parts.
3: Yes, semi is absolutely better for the majority of uses in anything that isn't at least mounted on a bipod.
4: That shit can tumble a bit, because it's light, but I can't be sure about the veracity of any of that stuff, because some of it has the ring of myth, regardless of how widespread they are. Plenty of people in the military buy into the wounding thing, though.
m16 are rarely used in full auto anyways. It's even scarier for me to imagine the gunman shooting a 100 round drum 1 bullet at a time giving him more time to selectively and purposely aim at his victim rather than spraying at the audience randomly. If he could shoot 70 people in 1 go then there's really little purpose in arguing over the definition of an assault rifle. This gun has no place in society.
On July 23 2012 08:56 Marti wrote: After reading this, i have a few questions ( i don't really have any knowledge on the subject ) :
1 : Isn't the M16 either semiauto or burst fire ( 3 shots ) ? I thought only the M4 had full auto 2 : isn't it relatively easy, for someone who has the knowledge, to add full auto capabilities on an AR15 variant ? ( modifying the lower receiver ? ) 3 : It was to my understanding that an experienced shooter can shoot pretty fast and more eifficient ( straight up hitting more targets with less ammos wasted ) on semi auto than on full auto 4 : I've heard somewhere that the 5.56 nato was designed to do more damage by "tilting" upon entering the target, don't knwo where exactly but i remember some kind of video demonstration where a soldier was shooting at a "Concrete masonry unit" wall and it seemed like it was " shredding " the wall a bit instead of making clean holes in it ( hence the " wounding myth " ? )
1: Earlier incarnations of the M16 and M4 had full auto, new versions feature single/burst. Full auto is grossly inefficient in an assault rifle/carbine, and even crew served weapons and light machine guns, you generally fire 4-7 round bursts for better control of aim, ammo use, and barrel heat.
2: There's several somewhat iffy ways to do it with varying degrees of success, from what I understand, or you can replace the lower or a few parts inside the lower, assuming you can get the appropriate controlled parts.
3: Yes, semi is absolutely better for the majority of uses in anything that isn't at least mounted on a bipod.
4: That shit can tumble a bit, because it's light, but I can't be sure about the veracity of any of that stuff, because some of it has the ring of myth, regardless of how widespread they are. Plenty of people in the military buy into the wounding thing, though.
Okay thanks, and while i'm at it : is 1) the reason why the military uses man portable machineguns ( M249 ) ? Like they need a machinegun because assault rifles can't lay down supressive fire as eifficiently ?
Edit : and also why is it that full automatic weapons are prohibited ? Since semiauto is more eifficient on an assault rifle anyway, why is auto forbidden ? Is it the result of hollywood movies ? Full auto looks scary so we'll ban it ?
On July 23 2012 08:56 Marti wrote: After reading this, i have a few questions ( i don't really have any knowledge on the subject ) :
1 : Isn't the M16 either semiauto or burst fire ( 3 shots ) ? I thought only the M4 had full auto 2 : isn't it relatively easy, for someone who has the knowledge, to add full auto capabilities on an AR15 variant ? ( modifying the lower receiver ? ) 3 : It was to my understanding that an experienced shooter can shoot pretty fast and more eifficient ( straight up hitting more targets with less ammos wasted ) on semi auto than on full auto 4 : I've heard somewhere that the 5.56 nato was designed to do more damage by "tilting" upon entering the target, don't knwo where exactly but i remember some kind of video demonstration where a soldier was shooting at a "Concrete masonry unit" wall and it seemed like it was " shredding " the wall a bit instead of making clean holes in it ( hence the " wounding myth " ? )
1: Earlier incarnations of the M16 and M4 had full auto, new versions feature single/burst. Full auto is grossly inefficient in an assault rifle/carbine, and even crew served weapons and light machine guns, you generally fire 4-7 round bursts for better control of aim, ammo use, and barrel heat.
2: There's several somewhat iffy ways to do it with varying degrees of success, from what I understand, or you can replace the lower or a few parts inside the lower, assuming you can get the appropriate controlled parts.
3: Yes, semi is absolutely better for the majority of uses in anything that isn't at least mounted on a bipod.
4: That shit can tumble a bit, because it's light, but I can't be sure about the veracity of any of that stuff, because some of it has the ring of myth, regardless of how widespread they are. Plenty of people in the military buy into the wounding thing, though.
Okay thanks, and while i'm at it : is 1) the reason why the military uses man portable machineguns ( M249 ) ? Like they need a machinegun because assault rifles can't lay down supressive fire as eifficiently ?
Edit : and also why is it that full automatic weapons are prohibited ? Since semiauto is more eifficient on an assault rifle anyway, why is auto forbidden ? Is it the result of hollywood movies ? Full auto looks scary so we'll ban it ?
1: Pretty much. Heavier barrel, belt feed, open bolt firing, and a pisston more reliable, unless you use the optional magazine well with a standard M16/M4 mag (you have to add a second spring to prevent it from jamming due to the higher cyclical rate of fire). All around better for volume of fire, but still conveniently man portable. Once you get up to the heavier 240B, (descendant of the M60), you're dealing with needing 2 men, what with the weight of ammo and spare barrels, on top of the additional weight of the weapon itself. It starts hitting the crew served range at that point.
2: No. We don't use full auto on assault rifles any more because it blows balls, burst is available, but it's generally just inefficient, so why use it? Just learn to hit the damn target. If they're wearing armor, you need to avoid it with that small of a round anyways, so firing more of them less accurately is useless. It's an effectiveness thing. If you miss with the first round, you're probably not going to hit with the second and third ones either, so it's three wasted instead of one. In a short enough span of time that a single shot would have had similar effect as far as suppressing a target.
Or were you asking why it's illegal for civilians without a Class 3 license? If you were asking that, I think it's mostly because automatic weapons CAN be better in certain scenarios where discipline goes out the window. Plus, they tend to be larger capacity, and if you have them set up properly, they can be brutal on a crowd.
EPT
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