Comments on: Just what is an assault weapon, anyway?

By: TB

TB — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:50:05 +0000

There’s certainly been more than one.

But there aren’t thousands, and as far as I’ve seen, there aren’t any that didn’t involve criminals breaking numerous existing gun laws. Adding fifty new gun laws won’t change that.

By: RobVG

RobVG — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 18:05:06 +0000

1997 North Hollywood

By: bowser

bowser — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:18:48 +0000

And Conservatives will try to cloud that issue beyond meaning.

It is to a rifle as a cluster bomb is to a grenade. Look to purpose. If in doubt, it’s an assault weapon and of no legitimate use.

By: ER

ER — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:56:55 +0000

The market is selling lethality. It has no incentive to cut back on it.

It’s not that hard Tom. Most of the countries in the world have done this without collapsing into brutal police states. There’s no reason we can’t.

By: TB

TB — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:53:11 +0000

Hiring experts, simple rules…

Good ideas. But that’s not what happened last time, and it’s not what would happen now. Most politicians firmly believe that they’re the only experts the country needs, on multiple issues, and that’s how they usually do things.

When the first response to a problem is “give more power and control to idiots,” it’s no wonder people are skeptical.

I suspect the other industry standards you’re talking about have their own share of politically-inspired kludges and contributor-demanded exceptions.

By: ER

ER — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:46:48 +0000

Just because many politicians are ignorant about firearms types and nomenclature doesn’t mean there is no way to tell them apart, or that there is no good reason to control or restrict them. You could always hire an expert to make these distinctions, in fact, that would be a way to get the NRA involved in the process. There are lots of ways of regulating what is “street legal” on automobiles, aircraft have performance classes, sailboats have industry standards that indicate different levels of seaworthiness offshore, it wouldn’t be any harder with guns. Just the few simple requirements I listed here; length restriction, magazine capacity limits, a sear design which could not be modified to “full auto”, would get a lot of these weapons off the market. By far the greatest factor is magazine capacity. The “full auto” mode isn’t very useful, even on the battlefield. It is great for killing a man in a phone booth, but in a gun battle you would be better off staying in single shot mode. Your ammo would last a lot longer.

Maybe liberal politicians can’t tell the difference, but gun consumers are smart enough to not buy a weapon that only looks like an assault rifle but can’t do the job.

Remember, the idea is not to make accident or murder impossible, that is totally unrealistic. The idea is to make them less likely and less lethal. If you’re determined to dismiss the concept outright, you can always conceive of a situation where it would not apply. We don’t sell people bazookas because you can also kill with a knife.

By: TB

TB — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:11:32 +0000

It's like "fair share."

The second you get specific, the concept stops being politically useful. Most of the politicians discussing this aren't even clear on "automatic" and "semi-automatic." As I understand it, the original "assault weapon" ban was selected mostly by appearance of the weapon by people who had no idea what they were looking at. I didn't find the Federal ban flowchart, but there's a California version here. Automatic weapons are already very tightly restricted, and figure in none of these mass killings. In fact, legally-registered ones have accounted for two deaths since 1936. Obviously, illegal ones are another story. The process of owning one legally (it is possible) is described here.