My Case Against Assault Weapons
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by petronius (a host of the General Discussion forum).
One of my responsibilities when I was Air Force Aircraft Maintenance Officer in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) was be ready to deploy to a forward operating base in the event of a nuclear war to turn around B-52 bombers when they returned from their bombing missions over the USSR. To be ready to perform that duty, my men and I had to stay proficient on our personal weapons. Officers were assigned a 0.38 caliper pistol called the Colt Combat Masterpiece, but I manage to also get certified on the AR-15 (the semiautomatic version of the M16 assault rifle).
I originally thought that an AR-15 would make a good deer rifle, it is short, light and relative accurate over long distances. I changed my mind when I saw a demonstration of the weapon's firepower one day. The target on this occasion was a 55 gallon steel drum filled with water which was use to demonstrate the stopping power the AR-15. When the drum was hit from fifty yards, the bullet made a small hole at the entry point, but on exit it made a hole in the back of the steel drum much bigger than the size of my fist. The original ammunition of the AR-15 had a 5.56mm (0.223 caliber -slightly larger than a 22) bullet propelled by a massive amount of gun powder. It makes a small hole on entry, but the projectile is unstable so it tumbles when it enters flesh and is designed to make a massive exit wound.
Thus I determined that the AR-15 was totally useless as a hunting rifle because it would destroy much of the meat of a targeted animal. It was designed for one thing, killing people. With magazines capable of storing 60 and even 100 rounds, the AR-15 is capable of killing people as quickly the shooter can pull the trigger and making sure when a person is hit just about anywhere on his body, he will go down and he will not get back up. Can you imagine the damage this weapon did to the little children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre?
I shudder every time I am reminded that military assault weapons such as the AR-15 can be bought by just about anyone in our country and can thus easily fall in the hands of a homicidal maniacs or home grown terrorists whose objectives are to kill the maximum number of people before they are themselves shot.
Whenever there efforts to ban assault weapons, there is always talk about 2nd Amendments rights. However, there are few defenders of the 2nd Amendment who would defend the right of ordinary Americans to own fully functional M1A tanks, or bazookas, or anti-aircraft rockets. And no sane person would defend the right a civilian to possess a tactical nuclear weapon.
So nearly everyone concedes that even 2nd Amendments rights have their limits. The only thing that is at issue here is where do you draw the line between which weapons are allowed and which not allowed.
In my humble opinion that line should be drawn to ban assault weapons from our streets. They are not practical for hunting and offer no more protection than a standard hand gun, rifle or shotgun. Some would argue that assault weapons allow relatively unskilled shooters to defend their homes and/or lives more effectively because of their multiple shot capability. Well, first of all I don't want unskilled people handling any kind of firearms and if someone wants a ideal defensive weapon they need to buy a shotgun. It is difficult to miss with shotgun at relatively close range.
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. If you want to discuss your 2nd Amendment rights, we can also make that discussion about your right own an 68 ton M1A tank equipped a 120mm tank gun, a 50 caliber machine gun and two and second 7.62 mm machine guns. You see the 2nd Amendment isn't about providing access to any and all weapons, it's about where we draw the line.
= new reply since forum marked as read
If it proves politically impossible to band assault weapons, we should at least ban high capacity magazines and clips should limited to only 11 to 13 rounds - the number carried by many handguns. Their have already been proposed laws calling for a period or maybe 6 months where the government would buy back all high capacity magazines from gun owners. After that period of time it would be a crime punishable by a year in jail to possess unlawful magazines with nice little reward for anyone responsible for turning in law breakers.
Since we been told repeatedly for years that responsible gun owners are all law abiding Americans, surely they will turn in their oversize magazines without problems, because as conservatives are found of saying, we are a country of laws, even if we don't like all of them. Magazines with over 11 to 13 clips certainly aren't needed for hunting. Clip sizes used for hunting are already regulated in many state to even fewer rounds. Experienced gun owners replying to my post have testified that a clip containing 11 rounds should be more than adequate to defend one's home and family from intruders or the gun owners should spend more time on the range.
So were is the deprivation - I can think of only one for law abiding abiding citizens - the expensive thrill of blowing though through thirty or more rounds of ammunition at a gun range in a few seconds or less. 
On the positive side the law might not get all of the high capacity magazines off of the streets, but it will drastically reduce the number that could fall into the hands of lunatics and and home grown terrorists. Had such a law been in place, Adam Lanza would have probably been able to kill fewer children in Sandy Hook Elementary. If you don't think that is important, consider if the child saved was your own.
(That's a joke)
(reposted from a previous discussion, not for your edification because I know you don't care, but for everyone else's.)
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A 55 gallon drum is 22.5 in. across with steel sides. A milk jug is ~6 in. with plastic sides. The .223 barely penetrates 2 milk jugs. No way will it pass through the drum and leave a fist sized exit hole.
Also the .223 is used by many hunters across the US. In some areas it cannot be used to hunt deer because it is considered too weak to insure a clean kill of the animal.
Oh and you can own a tank, - though I don't believe any M1s are available yet
But few lawsuits have been like the one filed on the billionaire's behalf Wednesday in San Mateo County Superior Court. That legal action, complete with a temporary restraining order, is not about software, but rather concerns the hardest of hardware — a 70-year-old German tank known as the Panzer IV that weighs 27.6 tons.
Allen owns a lot of things. The Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers. A chunk of the Seattle Sounders soccer franchise. He founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science. He has given away more than $1.8 billion. And there's a lot more left over.
Now, he says, he spent $2.5 million on the Panzer IV, a choice bit of history that he bought in July to add to his museum of military memorabilia housed in his Flying Heritage Collection in Everett, Wash.
Interesting trivia- Mr. Allan also donated $500,000 to gun control.
I frankly can't imagine the heights of arrogance it takes to imagine even a trio of armed, comptetent people coming after you.
That said, a gang of seven quotidian burglars? If I invoke castle doctrine and fire at will? Yeah, I'll get out alive.
Mall ninja, says the guy who envisions thirty rifle shots in home defense 
Got your PSG-1 and NVG handy, too?
various gun Groups, instead of General Discussion. Practically a textbook example, actually. With the old and tired insults, and off-topic tangents and sub-threads about technicalities, they just keep on floating back to the top of GD's page 1 like a turd that's hard to flush. Then eventually a host locks it.
See you in GCRA 
is there for them.
If someone *doesn't* want fight club while they discuss various gun related issues (etc. see: SOP) they are welcome in GCRA
If they don't agree with the GCRA Group SOP, then they aren't welcome there anymore. It's not that difficult a concept.
Last edited Sun Jun 28, 2015, 12:01 PM - Edit history (1)
Troublesome facts that a Controller can't deal with are "technicalities" to dismiss.
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:
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.
