Agreed. A 9 MM rifle vs a 9 MM pistol both semiautomatic the main difference is accuracy and thats due to barrel length. You wont magically get bullets out faster.

I feel like anybody wanting to pass gun laws in congress should take basic firearms courses. It takes a lot for me to be in the range as a newcomer and just shoot. I am convinced the issue isnt guns its the culture / mental state of the person with the gun.

Worse yet you are disarming people who had a better chance against criminals who have access to worse weapons and will likely go for those.

This is literally untrue. 9mm ammo comes out of a longer barrel at higher velocity than out of a shorter.

http://www.ballisticsbytheinch.com/9luger.html

Velocity isn't really what you care about though. I understand the point you're trying to make, but that table really points out that the type of the round you're using has a greater effect on velocity than the barrel length itself. The linked muzzle energy plot, which is what you really care about, shows this quite well, where we stay fairly stable for all tested rounds and fall off significantly at barrel lengths shorter than 7".

Muzzle energy is defined as the bullet's kinetic energy upon exit, which is proportional to the square of velocity, which means barrel length necessarily affects muzzle energy more than muzzle velocity.

From quick Google searches, 9mm pistol barrels are around 4-5 inches long, 9mm rifles around 16". This has a major impact on muzzle velocity, and an even greater impact on muzzle energy.

But it's still reliant on trigger pull. How quickly you shoot rounds is roughly similar, depending on the reset trigger of the gun. In some cases you get more rounds out quicker from a pistol, they might not have the same velocity or accuracy however.

Edit: In other words I'm talking about rate of bullets fired per second, and not how fast they leave the clip / magazine which is what you're talking about.

It’s a common contention of the gun advocacy community that it’s ignorance that drives awb, but that flies in the face of the evidence that veterans are disproportionately represented in elected officials, police officers are consulted when drafting the legislation & its a subject that is easily researchable.

I think it’s more likely that the people who are politically motivated around this issue represent the extremes and that leads to weird compromises.

I'm not sure what this has to do with my point. Veterans generally don't support more gun control (I am one), but you're right that political motivations can cause weird bedfellows. Anyway, I wasn't really talking about politicians as it were ... more the general public.

Right. The point that gets missed is that the contention is often less about the nuances of any particular firearm's capabilities and more about the common intentions of their use. EVERY gun is violent in the hands of someone trying to commit violence. Yet, mass shooters (who kill people in a particularly cruel manner, randomly, and that which is difficult for the average person to guard against) gravitate to assault rifles, for whatever reason. So people want them banned. Will that stop mass killings, from a functional perspective? Probably not. But it does remove a step in the psychic progression from normalcy to a massacre. Since the whole problem is a dysfunction of our collective processing of the lives we face, maybe the disruption to that flow a ban would represent is enough. Some say we're afraid of the big scary rifle; I say, sure, and a mass shooter feels empowered by it.

As an addendum, I have to imagine that GRAs enjoy this debate, because as long as we're stuck on it, we don't have to talk about how access to handguns increases the successful suicide attempt rate.

  mass shooters... gravitate to assault rifles

Absolutely false. The vast majority of "mass shootings" are with handguns.

We have different definitions of mass shooters. I assume you advocate strongly, with great investments of time, energy, and money, to alleviate the ones I would say you're including erroneously, yes?

Slick reply, but a mocking, obsequious attempt to brush the definitions aside changes nothing: the parent comment is correct.

> We have different definitions of mass shooters.

You're almost certainly talking about high profile shooting incidents with broad media coverage, that drive what is essentially a moral panic.

Parent comment is referring to incidents where 3+ people get shot, which often do not make the national and international media, and are predominately carried out with handguns.

The shootings last August that got a lot of attention are a great example. Couple of back-to-back mass shooting incidents in TX and Ohio got a lot of press... even though just the week before something like 34 people got shot in Chicago over the course of 2 days; hardly a word in the press outside of Chi-town.

You're mistaken, as I was simply trying to draw attention to the fact that the motivations, and therefore salves, for a) a mass shooter who enters a soft target and kills strangers indiscriminately, and b) a "mass shooter" who knows his target and catches innocents in the crossfire, differ substantially.

You group the two in order to dilute the focus of anti-gun violence advocacy, but you're given away by how little you care about instances of the latter definition otherwise. If "mental healthcare" is your panacea, it won't help non-suicide handgun violence. You know that, and I know that, and it's then perplexing why you would think we wouldn't notice.

when "police officers are consulted when drafting the legislation" - they could have their own protection interest in mind more than yours.

When they choose to carry 'high capacity magazines', SBRs (real pia to get for non-leo) - and other weaponry, it is understood these things help them be safer...

If grandma is not allowed to be safer because random bad guy - you have to wonder, or should maybe.

> SBRs (real pia to get for non-leo)

It's not that bad.

The easy way is to find an SBR you want to buy, file Form 4 for $200, wait for a few months, then take receipt of your NFA item.

Or if you want to do a conversion from an existing rifle, file Form 1 (also $200) and get short barrel. The disadvantage is that you've then created an NFA weapon, so you'd have to be more careful how you handle transfer and sale.

If you don't want an NFA SBR, well, AR-15s can be pistols. Pistols can be short. Pistols can't have buttstocks, but there are legal products that are not "intended" to be used as stocks. They happen to look just like a stock, but they're totally intended to be used as an arm brace. If you do use one as a buttstock, that's not how it was intended to be used, but it is legal to do so. This approach is so popular that ATF has issued letters saying it's not illegal.

Here's most of what you need to know: http://preparedgunowners.com/2017/04/27/atf-reverses-opinion...

It's not mentioned in the article, but pistols cannot have a forward grip, as that would make them "Any Other Weapon", which is NFA. If you have a forward grip but don't have the tax stamp, you'll go to prison. Keep in mind you can start down the AR-15 pistol route, then later get your Form 1 tax stamp to convert it into a rifle by attaching a stock.

This is all quite ridiculous, but that's the law.

> If you have a forward grip but don't have the tax stamp, you'll go to prison.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure this applies even if the grip isn't attached, or is attached to another gun. All depends on how friendly the ATF is feeling...

Yeah, sometimes. There's an ATF concept called "constructive possession" which means if you have all the parts, you're in a legal grey area. If the ATF thinks you have the intent to assemble an unlawful weapon, and you have constructive possession, then you might be a criminal.

I think it's unlikely (but possible) a case would be brought against you for just having the grip, and I'm not sure if that's ever actually happened. As opposed to if you had all the parts to make a machine gun, where there could only be one use for those parts.

Also interesting, drilling the extra hole in your AR-15 lower so that it could some day accept an auto-sear is a serious felony, even if you don't own the auto-sear.

I'm fascinated by how insane these rules are after I learned that I can't legally own or operate a firearm because I'm a medical marijuana user. If cannabis ever gets unscheduled, I'd like to build a little arsenal.

Twice now “grandma” has been employed as a reason assault rifles should be legal. Come on, this has nothing to do with a fictional grandmother with a scopes rifle. It’s like some talking point gone awry.

I mentioned large capacity magazines, forward grips, and a red dot sight. Not 'scopes' - which could mean many things, but I believe are more often referring to 4x,10, 16, etc magnified scopes that are more often used for long range hunting..

My point was that some of the 'assault rifle bans' are trying to stop simple things like a grip addon, a collapsible stock, an over 10rd magazine - any one of those things could make the whole thing illegal..

and I would want grandma to have access to those things, all of them. It would make her, and her neighbors safer.

This is not fictional in any way shape or form.

Not too long ago a grandma near me went to take the shooting class with a 38 revolver.. it hurt her wrists after a few shots and everyone quickly realized she would not be able to perform the amount of firing to do the practice and the test with one.

If she had been given a police issue SBR MP5 with muzzle break, forward grip, collapsible stock, laser and red dot - she would be able to plink accurately all day long.

These things they want to ban are actually safety features - but people can't see that.

I may have to make a few grandma videos to show this maybe.

I think we all personally want safety for grandmas in that way.

Unfortunately we can't all control that. When my neighbors moved here they chose safe neighborhoods that had little violence / crime. Over the years the demographics have changed immensely, and crime has soared. Many people here are stuck, they want to get out but housing from here to an hour outside of town has gotten so expensive it doesn't make sense.

No journal of anything that compares the USA to Japan and crime or shootings debunks anything.

No other country in the world has the same challenges that America does. I'd love to live in a place that has real social safety nets and does not have the Latin American countries a hop skip and train away ( https://www.businessinsider.com/latin-america-is-the-worlds-... )

but sometimes it's best for you and grandma to have a condom and not need it than to need one and not have it. Even if you want grandma to never have to worry about stds.. they actually happen a lot, want it or not.

> When my neighbors moved here they chose safe neighborhoods that had little violence / crime. Over the years the demographics have changed immensely, and crime has soared.

Where is this? My understanding is that violent crime has been reduced in a majority of America.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...

> I'd love to live in a place that has real social safety nets and does not have the Latin American countries a hop skip and train away

This doesn't make sense, the Latin countries were a hop skip and a train away 20 years ago, so this is a moot point.

> the US, with the most guns per head in the world, has the highest rate of deaths from firearms, while Japan, which has the lowest rate of gun ownership, has the least.

Well, duh. I bet more people die from falling down stairs in multi-level houses than in single level.

A scoped rifle? vs. assault rifle? I mean, sometimes these concepts are combined, but generally a modern military-style rifle has iron sights or at most a reflex sight.

I think your comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding.