If you're seeing this topic then another mass shooting hap…

On August 05 2019 11:28 Ben... wrote:
That person's gonna nitpick that an AR-15 isn't automatic, which is true though they can be converted to be essentially automatic.

But that's entirely beside the point. What reason is there for someone to own a rifle like an AR-15? They're too powerful for hunting.

They're impractical for self-defense compared to something like a pistol

(also, if Big Evil Government is coming for you chances are your AR-15 isn't gonna save you against well-trained military people with better equipment).

On August 05 2019 10:43 Alejandrisha wrote:

ok how about i replace 'assault weapons' with ar-15s and other automatic rifles? why the need to nitpick this?

On August 05 2019 10:36 Sermokala wrote:

There is no such thing as an assault weapon. It has no specific definition and only serves to confuse and obfuscate the conversation. The gun lobby didn't invent the term. I'll leave you to make the obvious arguments.

On August 05 2019 07:34 Wombat_NI wrote:

They are a great physical equaliser though.

I don’t fancy the chances of an elderly person or an average woman vs your average young man in any kind of home invasion scenario.

I’m not making a pro gun argument in particular here, I think people underestimate quite how insurmountable that physical advantage us young males have over other people.

We get a lot (or at least they’re publicised a lot) of burglaries and pretty brutal beatings with the occasional murder of the rural elderly over here, and there’s not much they can do if that scenario happens.

On August 05 2019 13:52 L1ghtning wrote:

Like others pointed out (thankfully), the AR-15, many school shooters weapon of choice is a semi-automatic rifle. Huge difference! Automatic sprays bullets. I believe semi-automatic just means that it reloads automatically, as opposed to many hunting rifles, where you have to reload manually. But you only fire one bullet per click. There are bump stocks that can kind of circumvent this, which increases the firing rate a bit, but didn't Trump ban them? And you could do the same thing to a handgun btw.

There is hardly any advantages to using a civilian semi-automatic AR-15 over a handgun even in a mass shooting spree. They just look cooler and have larger mags, although because so many magazine restrictions have been put in place, that is not necessarily true anymore. They also weigh a lot more and require more effort to aim with.

Removing the AR-15 and all equivalent rifles from the market would force these idiots to rely exclusively on handguns, the less cool, but more efficient weapon, which would probably lead to them causing more casualties. A handgun is easier to replace in the middle of a killing spree if it malfunctions, and you just put the jammed one in your holster or backpack.
A jammed rifle on the other hand would be a huge liability. You can't really leave a rifle behind if it jams, because someone could pick it up and maybe fix it and use it against you. And it's pretty tough to carry a spare rifle as a replacement.

The advantage of rifles would be for more long range shooting. The Las Vegas shooter probably wouldn't have caused as many casualties if he had used a handgun instead. But your average school shooter would have probably caused more harm if they had left their rifle or rifles at home.

I believe that the long range advantages of the rifle is the primary reason why they are favored by those who wants to be able to protect themselves in the case of a civil war or rogue government. Rifles are more effective than handguns at protecting the perimeter around your property from intruders.

Anyway, if enough ppl resist and have the guns to protect themselves, it would certainly make it a lot harder for a rogue government to take them out. They could bomb them and kill them with chemical weapons, but at what cost? There would be a backlash and they would lose allies both from within the country and abroad.
In a country where the civilians can't protect themselves, they have to rely entirely on the state for protection, so if they get on the governments bad side, they're screwed, which happened to the jews in Nazi Germany. The government cracked down very hard on jewish gun ownership before they started deporting them to the concentration camps.
Unarmed civilians also can't protect themselves against an invading army. A lot of civilian casualties and rapes in wartime, committed by the invaders could have been prevented if the civilians had better means to protect themselves.

On August 05 2019 17:42 Simberto wrote:
Can we please not have the fucking stupid terminology discussion again. It is beyond pointless and distracts from the actual problems.

On August 05 2019 11:28 Ben... wrote:
That person's gonna nitpick that an AR-15 isn't automatic, which is true though they can be converted to be essentially automatic.

But that's entirely beside the point. What reason is there for someone to own a rifle like an AR-15? They're too powerful for hunting. They're impractical for self-defense compared to something like a pistol (also, if Big Evil Government is coming for you chances are your AR-15 isn't gonna save you against well-trained military people with better equipment). They seem to purely exist for insecure people to buy to show off so they can claim they're tough. Same deal with extended magazines and all sorts of other accessories. It's purely for show and seemingly for people to use while killing other people. There's no reason for that type of stuff to be available.

We have guns here in Canada. A lot of them. But with strict regulation on what guns can be bought and how you can buy them, it's much more manageable. You can get guns like pistols here but you have to have training and meet requirements like having a gun safe to lock the pistol in along with a background check. This all seems reasonable, and I don't see why the US doesn't have a similar system, but I guess that would get in the way of gun manufactures making money.

On August 05 2019 18:26 deacon.frost wrote:

At the same time we have guns in Cze, lot of them, easier to get than a driving license(not kidding). And we don't shoot each other that often as in US. So maybe, just maybe, there's another issue than just guns. And I dare to say we have here easier access than half of the US states.

BTW AR-15 isn't too powerful for hunting, for example hogs are harder to kill with .223, there's a reason why so many foresters in Cze have .308. So yeah nah yeah.

While I think that some states in the US have the control, uh, don't have any control , we need to address the fact that there are other issues in US which need to be solved.

e.g. Why are media informing about the kill count? It's one of the things that motivates the next shooter, this information is old AF and was mentioned multipl times, this is way easier to fix than implement gun control yet nobody cares.

e.g. Why are media informing about the shooter so much? Why do I need to know his parents, his hobbies, his former classmates, his last meal, his next meal...? This motivates the next shooter, instead of trying to beat the record - to get famous. This seems to be easier to fix than implement the gun control.

But maybe the media would start about the first ammendment and how they need to report everything like this. Similar to something?

It's a complex issue and I just touched two things, the biggest thing that needs to be implemented is to allow CDC to research the medical and social background of the attacks, because IIRC they're not allowed to do that as you can't use the goverment money to do such research(my info is old and as I am not the US citizen I may be wrong)

On August 05 2019 13:52 L1ghtning wrote:

Like others pointed out (thankfully), the AR-15, many school shooters weapon of choice is a semi-automatic rifle. Huge difference! Automatic sprays bullets. I believe semi-automatic just means that it reloads automatically, as opposed to many hunting rifles, where you have to reload manually. But you only fire one bullet per click. There are bump stocks that can kind of circumvent this, which increases the firing rate a bit, but didn't Trump ban them? And you could do the same thing to a handgun btw.

There is hardly any advantages to using a civilian semi-automatic AR-15 over a handgun even in a mass shooting spree. They just look cooler and have larger mags, although because so many magazine restrictions have been put in place, that is not necessarily true anymore. They also weigh a lot more and require more effort to aim with.

Removing the AR-15 and all equivalent rifles from the market would force these idiots to rely exclusively on handguns, the less cool, but more efficient weapon, which would probably lead to them causing more casualties. A handgun is easier to replace in the middle of a killing spree if it malfunctions, and you just put the jammed one in your holster or backpack.
A jammed rifle on the other hand would be a huge liability. You can't really leave a rifle behind if it jams, because someone could pick it up and maybe fix it and use it against you. And it's pretty tough to carry a spare rifle as a replacement.

The advantage of rifles would be for more long range shooting. The Las Vegas shooter probably wouldn't have caused as many casualties if he had used a handgun instead. But your average school shooter would have probably caused more harm if they had left their rifle or rifles at home.

I believe that the long range advantages of the rifle is the primary reason why they are favored by those who wants to be able to protect themselves in the case of a civil war or rogue government. Rifles are more effective than handguns at protecting the perimeter around your property from intruders.

Anyway, if enough ppl resist and have the guns to protect themselves, it would certainly make it a lot harder for a rogue government to take them out. They could bomb them and kill them with chemical weapons, but at what cost? There would be a backlash and they would lose allies both from within the country and abroad.
In a country where the civilians can't protect themselves, they have to rely entirely on the state for protection, so if they get on the governments bad side, they're screwed, which happened to the jews in Nazi Germany. The government cracked down very hard on jewish gun ownership before they started deporting them to the concentration camps.
Unarmed civilians also can't protect themselves against an invading army. A lot of civilian casualties and rapes in wartime, committed by the invaders could have been prevented if the civilians had better means to protect themselves.

On August 05 2019 18:36 Excludos wrote:


You mean the same Cze that several prominent mass murderers (including Anders Breivik) didn't manage to buy guns from? And if your driving licenses are anything like the rest of Europe, they actually take quite a bit of money and commitment to get. So claiming they are "easier to get than driving licenses" still makes them orders og magnitude more difficult to obtain than in the US.

Ar-15 isnt too powerful because of the bullet size, it's just too stupid of a layout to be useful for hunting. Its pistol grip makes it more difficult to precisely fire down a scope, and if you need to spray and pray through a 30 size mag to hit anything, then you need to find another hobby. An Ar-15 is only useful for putting loads of rounds on a target quickly, which incidentally is useless for hunting anything other than humans.

On August 05 2019 18:03 GreenHorizons wrote:


Wouldn't the way to do that be to learn it? It kinda feels like me railing against capitalism but not knowing the difference between revenue and profit.

On August 05 2019 19:34 micronesia wrote:
From the NY Post article:

"We know: That label doesn’t actually describe a clear class of guns. And that some studies show that the last ban, in effect from 1994 to 2004, had a limited impact. But that simply means the next ban should be better written, with a clear definition focused on factors like firepower — rate of fire, muzzle velocity, etc. — not on cosmetic features."

The definition of 'assault weapon' is analogous with the scope of a ban like the one the NY Post is talking about. It's true, it's easy for advocates of less restricted gun ownership to keep the argument about the definition of assault weapon rather than accepting that changes are needed. However, what should or should not be included in the ban is still very important. If you ban AR-15s but leave a similar gun unbanned, the ban is not effective at saving lives. If lots of guns are unnecessarily banned, many people think the law oversteps, rights are infringed, and you get a repeat of the Clinton assault weapons ban which is not around today.

On August 05 2019 15:16 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Because you think that grand’ma with her handgun is gonna stop a young male with a weapon too? She won’t. Grand ma is terrified, weak, unmotivated and has no training. She will get killed 100% of the time.

If you get violent burglaries very frequently, you need a better police force. And you need to make sure those burglars won’t be able to, you know, just buy a shotgun as if it was nothing. Because i promise you, a burglar with a shotgun is worse than a burglar unarmed.

On August 05 2019 20:13 Slydie wrote:
I can't believe people use the "defend yourself against x" argument! How many hero gunowner stories are there really compared to accidents, suicides, murders and terrorist attacks with those "beneficial" guns? It is illogical on a religious level.

Also, who said only the "right" people defend them self against the "wrong" government? These arguments essentially also justify mobster's rights to have the firepower to go toe-to-toe with the police and maybe also the military. Sorry, the arguments don't float.

On August 05 2019 17:42 Simberto wrote:
Can we please not have the fucking stupid terminology discussion again. It is beyond pointless and distracts from the actual problems. That is why gun nuts love this discussion. All the time you talk about the definition of assault weapons or whether or not that should be the term to use or whatever, you are not actually talking about gun control. Gun people like this. Always distract, always deflect.

They don't have to react to your argument when they can instead just say "assault weapon is a bad term" and get 5 pages of only talking about the stupid terminology. Then in the end they can still point at something minor which is unclear in your definition and feel like they have won, and after you are done they say that actually handguns kill a lot more people then whatever you just defined. At this point you are exhausted, and no one has talked about any real things or proposals, just stupid words. And then nothing ever gets done. Which is what the gun nuts want, which is why they love this discussion.