IMO, the most important innovations around guns have mostly been because of changes in bullet technology.

The modern day bullets are the things that have caused the massive increase in accuracy, energy, and range.

And I guess, also decreasing prices, and reliability.

It is perhaps possible to make a reasoned argument around THAT, but the arguments around guns rarely reach the point beyond "ban the guns that look scary".

I don't think it has much to do with "looking scary", rather it has to do with raw power. Very few ardent gun activists would argue that citizens should have access to fully armed m-1 tanks or nuclear weapons because they're too powerful. There's an implicit understanding that certain kinds of arms are too powerful, so the right to bear them can be infringed.

I'd argue that the same kind of logic should apply to weapons like the AR-15. An accessible, reliable, fully dangerous weapon like the AR-15 is so far beyond the 'arms' of the 1790s that the right to bear it could be infringed.

A gun in the hands of a qualified, reasonable person is a legitimate means of self defence, but I can't think of why that should apply to something like an AR-15, which is built to kill as many people as quickly as possible. Qualified, reasonable people have many, better options to protect themselves from the threats they'd reasonably face that can't so easily be perverted by deranged fucks.

> A gun in the hands of a qualified, reasonable person is a legitimate means of self defence, but I can't think of why that should apply to something like an AR-15, which is built to kill as many people as quickly as possible.

If AR-15 style weapons, which use .223 cartridges, were banned, that would still leave sporting rifles, which use the larger and more powerful .308 cartridge. That cartridge was the size used in the battle rifles of the WWI / WWII era that were standard before the evolution of the assault rifle. (Assault rifles have smaller cartridges because the range and power of the standard battle rifle cartridge was found to be unnecessary and the smaller cartridges allowed soldiers to carry a larger quantity.)

Given that, it's hard to see how an AR-15 ban is anything other than a cosmetic ban.

The round of an AR-15 is very much smaller and with much less power than those used for hunting medium or large game. In fact they're so much less powerful that it is generally considered unethical to hunt deer with them.