My Case Against Assault Weapons

[Shamash]

95. I fail to see the overall logic of the post

So assault weapons have only one practical purpose, killing multiple people in a very short period of time. Why in the world would we want just about anyone in the general public to have access to such powerful weapons.

Here is my simple challenge to the OP and everyone else. What is the acceptable number of people that can be killed in a "very short period of time" by a civilian-owned weapon? Not "gun", but "weapon". And why did you choose that number? Remember that you will have to rationally defend this value against anyone who chose a higher or lower number. After all, if someone chooses a lower number than you, they think your number is criminally high. If they choose a number higher than you, you have to explain why their number is criminally lax. Picking an arbitrary number like 5 or 10 simply shows that you are good at picking arbitrary numbers...

If you think that "zero" is the only acceptable number, then you have a far bigger problem than guns to worry about, since there are plenty of non-gun items that are used as murder weapons. If you think that any number above zero is an acceptable number, then we have to ask a question about the value you place on human life.

We (well, most of us) don't want anyone to get murdered, but laws don't arrest people before the fact for this unless someone is out hiring a hit man or making overt threats.

To me, there are three problems of perception. The first is assuming the object is the problem rather than the person using the object. I think there are vanishingly few people in this country who "need" an alcoholic beverage, and abuse of same kills and injures lots of people, but we blame these on irresponsible users, not on alcohol itself. People are still allowed to buy "assault vodka" or beer in "high-capacity kegs" even though these have in the OP's terms "no practical purpose" . It is kind of hard to say that becoming stupid, uncoordinated and emotionally volatile serves any public good, otherwise we'd have all switched to being Republicans.

The second is assuming that weapons like the AR-15 are a serious part of the gun violence problem rather than the most publicized one. To put that into stark terms, if every "assault rifle" in the United States were to vanish overnight, the change in the firearm murder rate would be so small it would be lost in the statistical noise. It is literally the least likely type of firearm to be used in a murder in the United States. Would lives be saved? Of course. They'd be also saved by banning alcohol or reducing the speed limit to 35mph or requiring everyone to wear transparent clothing so the police could see if we were carrying weapons. But I don't think any of us would accept that, so there are clearly issues that we consider more important than we do "saving lives".

I would like to think that the issue of what we want to ban, restrict or regulate is more sophisticated than "the ban will not affect me, so go ahead", but that is the way it seems sometimes.

The third is related to the second, and is not being able to understand big numbers. There are over 300,000,000 people in the United States. That means that something with a one in one hundred million chance of a person doing it on a given day...happens three times each day. Something with a one in ten billion chance of a person doing it still happens ten times a year. If your "news horizon" only extends over a group of a million people, this one in ten billion chance only happens in your million-person world once every couple of decades and is a rare tragedy (or miracle if it is a good thing that happened). If it is an internet-connected world where everything, everywhere is news beamed into your smartphone, this one in ten billion chance becomes "OMFG it happened again!" or "yet another potato chip that looks like the Virgin Mary, it's a sign!".

Is it worth passing a preventive law that affects everyone to reduce a one in ten billion chance that one of them will do it? I guess a rational decision on that principle depends on the harm caused by that event compared to its likelihood. For instance, if we stop and frisk every young black male in NYC, is the harm done to civil rights outweighed by the harm prevented by catching criminals? I think we decided that the harm done to civil rights by deciding to treat all these people like potential criminals was not worth the benefit.

Just remember that because you hear about it on the news does not make it common, it just makes it newsworthy. And bad news sells better than good news, so you hear that more often.

CajunBlazer, I'm guessing you don't actually do much hunting? Hunters don't want bullets that leave exit wounds. They want bullets that do massive localized tissue damage to kill the animal as instantly as possible. A bullet that goes through a deer is a bullet that did not efficiently do this and this is more a function of bullet design than rifle design. I use a .308 Winchester (bolt-action, FYI) with more than twice the energy of an AR-15, and my bullets stop in the deer every time. I don't use an AR-15 for hunting because I want something more powerful and I do not need a huge magazine. If you have to shoot twice you shouldn't have shot once.

But just because I do not use something and have no need for it does not mean I think it should be banned. And Cajun, if you are that worried about losing meat, be good enough to take head shots.

P.S:

And no sane person would defend the right a civilian to possess a tactical nuclear weapon.

The CiC of the US armed forces is a civilian. Whether we like it or not, we trust a civilian with sole control of this nation's nuclear arsenal each and every day (the difference between possessing and controlling is negligible if your finger is on the button/trigger). From 2001-2008 there were plenty of non-government civilians I would have rather given that trust to than the one we were required to give that trust to. Even more so if a miscarriage of voting and fate had left us with a President Palin in any part of 2009-2012.