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In reply to the discussion: An Ohio School District Is Arming Its School Custodians With Handguns [View all]Recursion
(56,582 posts)Time to get Aristotelian...
Lanza had two 30 mags strapped together, and used an AR-15. I'm not sure how you can say that wasn't an assault weapon.
Well, Connecticut said it wasn't an assault weapon, because it didn't have a bayonet lug.
What "matters" from the point of view of a mass shooter is that you don't have to cock it every time you shoot, and you can replace its magazine with an already full magazine.
That may well be what you mean when you say "assault weapon", but no assault weapons ban, not even the proposed new one, comes even close to extending the definition that far. Every AWB to date is based on how a weapon looks, not what it is capable of. I know I sound like a broken record here, but I think there's a lot of wool being pulled over a lot of good Democrats' eyes on this issue. If we want to ban the capability of firing semi-automatically and taking detachable magazines, even a "gun person" like me would support that, but that's not related to any AWB to date.
Holmes did have a 100 round drum that jammed. He was also a certified absolute batshit crazy nut that had every intention of taking out as many people as possible. Had there been tracking of people buying 100 round drums, maybe he wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to go over the edge in the first place.
No argument there. My gun-happy ex-roommate from VA (he makes his own AR-15s) thinks high-capacity ammunition devices should be banned. If he's sold on that, I think that's a doable thing and I'm 100% for it.
This idea that we can't keep the more deadly configurations out of the hands of nutjobs
OK, here comes the nerd moment again, as a warning. There really aren't "more deadly configurations". Semi-auto is semi-auto is semi-auto. Guns are no faster or deadlier now than they were 100 years ago, and the gun that looks like an M-16 isn't deadlier than the one that looks like a traditional hunting rifle if both are semi-automatic and accept detachable magazines.
I'm not saying this to make you throw up your hands and give up, I'm saying this because it's important we all understand that this capability isn't in some fringe of "extreme" guns that only crazy people buy, this capability exists in basically every firearm designed in the past 100 years and just about every firearm sold today.
Now, maybe the macho factor argument has a point; like I said I'm still thinking about it. Maybe a crazy/evil person is less likely to use a gun with the same capabilities as an AR-15 but with a more traditional shape and a wood finish. I guess by definition these aren't rational people.