My point, then, is that the argument that a weapon is or isn't "military" ("tactical" is the right term) based on fully-automatic fire capability simply fails. It's just not true. Not historically, and not in modern practice. Rather, it's something that civilian firearm advocates want to be true so they can avoid serious debates; it's one of a small collection of "mic drop" arguments like "Heller" or "3D printing" or "sporting rifles" that exist to cut off discussion rather than furthering it.
The "gun violence done with hand guns" argument is another of the same species. Clearly, hand guns kill more people in the US than tactical rifles. Cars kill more people than either, and opioids more than cars, and heart disease more than opioids. There are particularized reasons we care about each of these things, and public policy debates aren't serialized so that we must first dispense with the opioid epidemic before we deal with the problem of military weapons that enable people to barricade themselves in high-rise hotels to kill dozens of people attending an outdoor concert, and that allow mass shooters on foot to stand off beat officers and force them to wait for reinforcements before confronting someone killing schoolchildren at random.
If RPGs were regulated the way tactical rifles are now, you'd have the same argument; no doubt fewer people would die by portable artillery than by handguns as well! Your argument proves too much; that's a strong sign that it isn't valid.
My arguments, just mean we agree more than we disagree. We just disagree how it should be handled. Again, I argue there's nothing about a M-16 set with the switch spot welded to single fire mode that is any different from a hunting rifle when it comes to features and capability, which is what an AR-15 kind of is. So you can't make just an AR-15 illegal without doing any significant progress towards removing the actual danger posed by them, or just converting mass shooters to using pistols (as a few mass shooters have done so anyway) or another semi-automatic hunting rifle. My point is when it comes to legal policy, what are you saying can't be sold to civilians exactly? Someone will just buy a different brand, or they'll modify the patent slightly so its no longer "an AR-15".
I updated my last post to include the law I would write more or less if I did have to say, take AR-15's off the table as an option for anyone to just buy whenever they wanted. But it includes all semi-automatic rifles, not just "military rifles".
I think we agree on the facts of an AR-15, but disagree fundamentally on what to do with those facts. I think banning AR-15's would be one of those laws that buy political points but don't actually address the problem in a way that doesn't punish or hamper law abiding citizens and more importantly actually make us safer in any practical sense, so its a purely negative tradeoff. And if you're going to go through the time and effort, find away to address the biggest problems first (gun violence in general which is hand guns, and addressing the underlying causes of violence) then hyper focusing on one gun. It's like banning plastic straws, when most of the plastic waste in the ocean is being dumped overseas and plastic straws are at least recyclable where as the case with McD's who recycled their plastic straw waste their recycler wasn't equipped to recycle the paper ones. Its a law that does more to make people feel/look good then address the very serious issue in any significant way.
You haven't seen me anywhere advocate that we ban anything, let alone a particular semi-automatic weapon by name; in fact, the root of this long subthread is a comment from me saying the exact opposite thing, that wood-stock ranch rifles pose exactly the same problems as black rifles.
What I have a problem with is the faux superiority gun maximalists dress their arguments in, along with a culture that elevates a simple machine designed to be serviced by teenagers outdoors in the rain into a solemn, secret brotherhood, as if being able to remove the fire group from an AR-15 meant these putzes had the mechanical aptitude to swap out a car transmission or even replace a hot water heater. The technical details behind assault weapons are far more learnable than almost any other technical issue we regulate without issue.
I stated my policy preference elsewhere on the thread: give up on national firearms policy, back down on the maximalist Heller interpretation that says MSRs are off the table for state regulation, and allow states to license (on a presumption of must-issue basis) all semi-automatic long guns if that's what their citizens decide they want to do.
> I stated my policy preference elsewhere on the thread: give up on national firearms policy, back down on the maximalist Heller interpretation that says MSRs are off the table for state regulation, and allow states to license (on a presumption of must-issue basis) all semi-automatic long guns if that's what their citizens decide they want to do.
From the perspective of many, that's "allow guns to be banned". It'd be sort of like saying "back down from the maximalist Roe v. Wade position" or "back down from the maximalist Brown v. Board of Education position", and then getting mad when people accuse you of being anti-abortion or pro-segregation.
If you're serious about hunting, you'd get a bolt action, for the reasons described, because you want your first shot to be your only shot.
I agree on the weekend warrior thing. But that's why I honestly think while guns are a right, because history teaches that eventually people need to defend themselves. But they're also a responsibility, and places like Switzerland or people who are trained in the responsibility aspect of gun ownership are what you want.
When you access risk, likelihood is a factor, you mitigate for risks that have a higher likelihood. If I'm worried about protection from being killed I'm more worried about a drunk driver than a meteorite even tho the meteor has a higher lethality. Handguns are lethal enough you get shot by one, the survival rate isn't significantly higher than a rifle especially considering you're statistically more likely to be shot by one. Stabbings tend to be more lethal than either, but and there are more people stabbed then shot by rifle (~1500-3000 in US per year), certainly more the case overseas. Missing forest for the trees.
Are we just being pedantic here? What are you arguing or is the point of argument if you don't want to ban guns or ban the AR-15 or military style weapons specifically? If you're arguing it just to argue I honestly don't see how that's constructive. I'm discussing this in the context of gun violence, in the context of the media hyper focusing on military style rifles when they're not the major cause of deaths, even in mass shootings (which are just as often or more often pistols).
But again, what are you going to make illegal about the AR-15 that doesn't also apply to hunting rifles, specifically much big game hunting rifles that are far deadlier (higher velocity rounds, higher caliber).
You're demonizing because of its history and it looks the same but its feature set is identical to that of any other legal civilian use rifle, other than maybe clip size (which clips are probably the easiest part to make yourself), there isn't much about it that you could write a law for that wouldn't apply to every other rifle society finds acceptable or give the "mass shooter" the same advantage. Hence the Humvee vs SUV argument. Its the same as arguing Humvees are made for the military, so the civilian models should be banned even though they removed every feature (like the armor and turrets) that don't exist in any other civilian model SUV that is legal. It's the same rational, if you wanted to ban Humvees cause someone did bad things with them under the argument its a military style vehicle, any thing you "banned" would also lump in the other civilian SUVs with the same features. If you banned the AR-15 someone would just make another rifle tomorrow, that was just different enough with a different model number, the danger would still be there, and as discussed that danger isn't even significant compared the gun violence done with hand guns so people's obsession with it irrational on all fronts because they're hung up on the "looks like a military gun" aspect of it.
We're talking about writing a law here, and setting policy. What's the policy you're going to write that takes away a killer's ability to do anything they couldn't do with another rifle?
If were me, and I don't think it matters, but lets say I had to write a law tomorrow "gun to my head", pun intended. I would make only bolt action rifles available to civilians for the purposes of hunting without any special license, it doesn't do much, but it does create a higher barrier without much practice and training to be effective at harming a high number of individuals in a short window. Then I would make semi-automatic weapons available to civilians who got a permit similar to CCW training, where you have to go through a day or two's worth of safety and legal use training, get a full background check, etc, but once you're licensed you can buy as many semi automatic rifles you desire, you'd be required to secure the weapons under lock when in storage, anyone can fire your rifle as long as they're in the presence of a licensed individual who owns the weapon (so if a friend wants to fire it at the range, that's fine) and the training needs to be affordable and accessible (similar to CCW) so that we're not creating a class of haves and have nots where only the very privileged can own one, simply the ones wanting to put in the time and training. And I don't try to single out an AR-15 as anything silly like a "military style assault weapons" that's not any different from any other semi-automatic rifle available on the market.