I can go out back, set up target(s) and plink away basically anytime I want. Might even do it this evening if the ammo I ordered finally gets delivered today. There's a safe direction to aim in and the distant neighbors don't mind, they do the same!
For longer range, there's various outdoor ranges around, both formal and informal (you may shoot on nearly all large tracts of public land and private land that isn't posted against it, provided you're an appropriate distance from structures and all that).
The occasional sound of gunfire here doesn't alarm anyone. One or two is someone killing a pest or hunting, lots is some target shooting.
If I put my trash outside without it being in something fully bear-proof, it will have a bear into it within a few days. Cook something nice, leave a door/window open to just the screen, and you might have a bear, moose, or something else in your kitchen one day. Police response time is 30 minutes on a good day.
The topography up here has granted plenty of appropriate natural backstops, however. (And some not so natural, the various old gravel pits and quarries are popular for that purpose as well).
For most practical shooting, at a target that's roughly chest level, ranges aren't going to exceed ~500 yards, and are often a moot point with a decent backstop.
From wikipedia: "The acre is related to the square mile, with 640 acres making up one square mile. One mile is 5280 feet (1760 yards)"
Back to your comment, though, I grew up in the San Francisco suburbs. I have pretty much lived in either metropolitan suburbs or urban center of medium sized cities. I never even shot a gun until my 30's. I guess my feeling on guns was that I was neutral until I moved to the Southern US and some coworkers took me shooting. After actually using them, and being taught safety protocols, I saw guns as what they were - hunks of metal. I didn't feel attaching emotion to inanimate objects was particularly constructive.
Also around that time, I had a few friends that were victims of violent crimes. Two of them were in supposed "safe" areas in the NYC suburbs. Pretty much changed my views on police and personal safety completely.
I'm a little confused, aren't those positions a bit contradictory? I would be interested in reading a bit more of your views here.
> With the equipment a modern military has at it's disposal, I fail to see how the right to own small arms is going to help keep our government in check.
After seeing various militaries (is that the right word?) fight for the last 19 years in Afghanistan (and spending some time there myself), it seems to me that availability of superior weapons and equipment isn't the only factor.
The 2nd amendment is not a right to own a gun. Here is it's text:
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
so what I'm arguing is that "small arms" are now basically ineffective arms.
If for some reason the USA Military became Americas enemy there's no way a credible opposition could rise without another military backing it. The point of the 2nd amendment is impossible today, so I think we should either fix it, or abolish it.
Are you sure? Half of the grunts in an US infantry platoon carry only weapons (specifically the M-4) available to civilians.
Civilians' having small arms greatly increases the number of soldiers needed to repress them, and the more soldiers needed, the more likely soldiers will revolt against the repression.
What does the other half of the platoon carry?
The argument here seems to be that civilians do not have an effective counter for an F-35. Or a B-52. Or an M1 Abrams.
For all intents and purposes, they are the same. An M4 has a barrel that is 1.5" shorter than most civilian AR15s and it has a 3-round burst setting that is almost never used because it's worthless.
I've spent a considerable amount of time behind both of them and I assure you they are functionally identical in basically every real-world use case.
M249 light machine guns and M240 medium machine guns, neither of which are available to US civilians.
But to wage war against its citizens into submission without destroying the productive value that makes them useful to the powers that be? No way.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-illi...
There was a police station less than a mile away and it took them 45 minutes to arrive. No doubt they intended to let events play out however they may and then roll in and take statements, which is their only actual legal obligation.
That incident really drove home for me exactly what I'm not getting for my tax dollars.
It's kind of a mark of white privilege to believe that the police will arrive in time to protect you, and that when they arrive they won't harm you.
Even for de-escalating domestic disputes and dealing with petty vandalism and neighbourly feuds they are likely a worse tool than social workers and such.
This is a gross overstated political narrative.
A) Most police response times are well after most conflicts.
B) Poor and targeted neighborhoods often have better response times because of the larger constant police presence.
C) Socioeconomic signals predict treatment better than the color of your skin.
E) The police responses in poor and targeted neighbourhoods often involve harming residents and criminalizing the impoverished and racialized.
F) 911 is a Joke
I confronted them at the stairs and the whole thing de-escalated very quickly. Nobody got hurt. As far as someone sneaking into your house while you sleep, it was pretty much a best case scenario.
I wouldn't say it's often because car break-ins and empty house burglaries are much more common, but it does happen. Attackers pushing their way in as you open the door, attackers posing as some kind of official or salesperson. When the pandemic started, we had guys going around in lab coats saying they were with the CDC.
Police response times are generally very good where I live, but guns are still very common and so is concealed carry. The thought behind it for many people is sort of the same as keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. You're not the fire department, but you want to be able to control an emergency until they get there or avoid having an emergency become a catastrophe.
Most common burglars only break into empty houses.
The concept of liberty is relatively new, most of the world has lived under monarchs, dictators, etc until relatively recently in the grand scheme of things. The ideas and mechanisms of freedom are still being learned.
Most countries require masks and seatbelts, so what? It doesn't make it the right choice.
Most countries don't allow to eat dogs, so what? It doesn't make it the right choice.
Most countries don't allow to kill man, so what? It doesn't make it the right choice.
I'm just giving a taste of your own medicine.
There are plenty of good arguments to be made for all of those things, but "everyone else does it" is not one of them.
Look, if every other country legalizes murder tomorrow, does that mean we should, too? No? Then whether everyone else is doing it is clearly irrelevant.
Somebody will probably sic dang on me for saying this, but it is mind boggling to me that I have to explain this.
low effort post.
Also, psychology and theology have nothing to do with any of this, and you clearly have no idea what "woke" and "meta" mean. You can call my post "low effort" but at least it isn't a word salad.
I regret wasting my time talking to you. Have a good night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation
Often that final say is a rubber stamp.
Hell, even Japan allows private ownership; with a marksmanship test and licensing restrictions.
Also, carrying a gun all the time is extremely uncommon if not forbidden in most European countries if you don't have the proper permits. For example in France, IIRC, you can only get such permit if your professional activity justifies it (Police, Security Guards, etc).
Even for recreational/hunting uses you need to be registered, and maybe have a permit, depending on the type of gun. And that's just for ownership, it doesn't grant you the right to carry the weapon loaded and ready to fire.
Hunting rifles are almost always bolt actions.
On the other hand, having an AR-15 in NYC would be a nightmare for obvious reasons.
I think folks on both sides of gun debate forget this - that there are dramatically different living situations across America. In this respect, it really doesn't make sense to talk about gun laws at the federal level (I know, 2nd Amendment), because what makes good sense in New York is ridiculous to someone living in rural Texas and vice-versa. It's not purely political, there's a very real practical element that doesn't often get discussed.
It's not nearly that sensible and straighforward. Drive south of DC to the point where subdivisions give way to farms and you can shoot all day without being bothered.
Drive the same distance outside of Boston or NYC and you've got the same low population density but if you shoot anything in your back yard you'll get a visit from the SWAT team.
This kind of stuff really should depend on population density but we've gutted all legislative capacity at the county level and pushed it to the state level so you get a dumb situation where a state has to go entirely one way or the other which is not very efficient when it comes to making people live under sensible laws for their living situation.
There's really no fundamental reason the cities and rural areas shouldn't be able to just do their own thing on this issue. It's just that people insist on having this legislation be at the state level.
The North American headquarters for Sig Sauer is only an hour from Boston.
Do you live in New England? It's not a big deal at all. Not just in NH, but in MA too.
NH is a different state and much more friendly to shooting. Also having a corporate HQ doesn't really mean much.
>It's not a big deal at all. Not just in NH, but in MA too.
There's probably a couple pockets in MA further east but for the most part you need to get to the Western edge of Worcester county (which is definitely more than an hour from Boston) before you can be pretty assured none of your neighbors will call the cops. Even then it's kind of iffy because of the laws. You really don't want to have the cops called on you even if you're just target shooting (unlike in NH where getting the cops called wouldn't be a big deal).
>Do you live in New England?
The crappy half. But I've lived all over the east coast.
Why do American people put up with the authorities breaking the law instead of simply having the law changed? The constitution is not a bible, it can be updated. (Or, perhaps, it is indeed a "bible", in a sense?)
And, incidentally, the constitution says nothing about hunting, sporting, or even self-defense as the "legal" justification for gun ownership.
The AR has become a political symbol because it happened to be used in mass shootings, but there's nothing about it that makes it unique in terms of it's ability to do harm. Even if you live in a state that's banned the AR-15, you can get a gun that's virtually identical that's not an AR. This speaks to the fact that Democrats talking about guns are like Republicans talking about tech. They're trying to control an industry and have made zero effort to understand anything about it.
This clause is untrue. The most common chamberings of .223 Remington or 5.56x45mm NATO are not "high-powered". That is an intermediate-power cartridge. More power than a plinking/training round like .22 or .17 HMR, or common handgun rounds, but still less power than a traditional full-size rifle round. Furthermore, the action and magazine well of an AR-15 are too short to even physically accommodate full-size rifle rounds like .308 Winchster / 7.62x51mm NATO, .270, .30-06, etc, to say nothing of rounds that would actually be justifiably called "high-power", like .300 Winchester Magnum or .338 Laupa.
The rest of your post is spot-on, but the meme that the AR-15 is "high-powered" is factually wrong and needs to die.
30-06 was introduced in 1906 (the -06 bit) to fix the 30-03 (making it a hair shorter and a lighter 150 grain spitzer "pointy" bullet instead of the 220 grain round nose). The result was faster, lighter, and a flatter trajectory at a weight of around 27 grams per cartridge (I don't know the weight of the 30-30, but I think around 30 grams is probably accurate).
The 7.62x51 went down a little to 147 grain, but shaved almost a half inch off the length reducing weight to around 24 grams at a somewhat minor expense of velocity, range, and impact strength (very few people could make use of the extra range and power in combat).
The first 5.56x45 was all about reducing size. 55 grain bullet was a fraction of the size while the overall length dropped by almost 3/4 of an inch resulting in around an 11.5 gram cartridge (the 62 grain version adds another half gram or so). The effective range dropped dramatically and kinetic energy was cut in half, but once again, very few people can shoot that far in combat and the kinetic energy was deemed sufficient (though that's debated by some soldiers today). Double the ammo for the same weight is a much more important metric for the army.
It's a good cartridge for a lot of things, but it's the weakest rifle cartridge the US army has ever used and probably the weakest intermediate cartridge used in any army in the world.
Unless you mean the real "ArmaLite AR-15", or a clone, which shoots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Remington. Now that round will absolutely wreck things. But even then, it's not really a high-powered round...
- The AR-15 is semiautomatic, compared to hunting rifles which are often bolt-action, and thus less convenient/ergonomic to operate
- Plethora of aftermarket parts and accessories. Extreme customizability.
- Cheap ammo
- AR barrels are usually shorter than what would come with a hunting rifle, resulting in a gun that is less cumbersome and requires less space
I'll address the latter first. The wildlife that tends to be classified as varmints, prairie dogs, rabbits, possums, raccoons, coyotes, wild hogs etc, all tend to have less body mass than humans. Any intermediate cartridge is sufficient. Any common handgun cartridge would probably also be sufficient, though there are at least two problems with the that: 1. A handgun cartridge may not have enough power to quickly drop larger varmints like coyotes or hogs. 2. And even out of something like a pistol-caliber carbine (think an AR or similar compact rifle chambered for pistol rounds) handgun rounds tend to be limited in their practical effective range compared intermediate cartridges. This forces one to get closer to the varmint in question to take the shot. For smaller varmints, like prairie dogs or rabbits, this means that they bolt away and you won't be able to take the shot. For larger varmints, like raccoons, coyotes, or hogs, this means that the critter might decide it's sick of your shit and attack. You might not think it, given the relative size between raccoons and humans, but raccoons can punch well above their weight and absolutely can cause significant injuries to a human.
All of the critters above tend to top-out at body masses less than a human. Compare bears, which can equal the body mass of a human as juveniles, and tend to top out at body masses well in excess thereof. If you shot a bear with an intermediate cartridge and didn't have the luck to have your first shot be a lethal one, you have now wounded, and angered, the bear. You thought raccoons or hogs were dangerous when pissed off.
Now for motivation -- that the real reason to own an AR-pattern rifle is to have something very suitable for killing people. Um, I don't know how to break this to you, but just about any common handgun cartridge bigger than .32 ACP is very suitable for killing people, this is not something unique or special about an AR-15. But I won't pretend that it isn't quite capable of such -- it absolutely is. Were I to find myself in a home defense situation, I would reach for an AR over a handgun or shotgun -- more power than the former, and more precise than the latter. I'm not going to pretend that such is any more likely a scenario than a global plague disrupting food supply chains. But, I suppose keeping a few weeks of water, food and batteries on hand also makes me an irrational weirdo.
Finally, you may have heard the phrase, "all interesting behavior is overdetermined". With regards to the large market for AR-pattern rifles, this means that for any one AR owner, they will have one or more of a myriad of reasons to own an AR -- including as a raised middle finger to those who would wring their hands about the AR's unique suitability for murder and that its ownership should be banned or restricted. For good or for ill, open defiance of overbearing busybodies has been a part of the American psyche for a long time.
You cant hunt deer or bigger with them....because of the lack of power. Its considered inhumane.
They are great for varmit/small game (ie: coyote and pigs) though.
Are like the people who are saying the Casio F91W is a "terrorist watch" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23971045
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/a-georgia-man-shot-and-...
You're saying "why wouldn't some other firearm suffice", while we just buy ARs unless that default is somehow unsuitable.
I have grown up around firearms but with reason. I have spent the majority of my life living in rural areas, as a kid/teen I lived far out of town with acres of woodlands, swamps, forest, interspersed with occasional pastures for miles in every discretion. I have had multiple encounters with apex predictors in my backyard. I have had mountain lion in my woodshed, a bear wander into my yard, and other smaller predators such as coyotes bobcat, and feral dogs try to eat my pets/animals. I also enjoy many outdoor activities such as fishing camping and hiking in the backwoods, and have encountered more predators there (the above but also various venomous snakes and wolves). I started carrying .22 loaded with snake shot as defense against rattle snakes when fishing around age 12. But before I was allowed near my fathers guns he took me out to the range for safety training. The lesson I learned that day have stuck with me.
He placed a watermelon out on the range. He then shot the melon. Next he walked out with me to its pieces and told me to put it back together. I stared at him like he was insane, He then got down at eye level with me and told me that it would do that same to a person and to never point it at anyone, that it would kill them, that guns were deadly weapons not toys. We spent the rest of the day going over gun use and safety.
While today I don't live out in the country I still own firearms mostly used for sport shooting and defense when in the wilderness. But I take gun safety very seriously. My firearms are kept in a locked gunsafe bolted to the floor, inside the case they are all kept unloaded and all have a trigger lock of are kept in a locked case inside the safe.
The problem is that these people are missing a lot of information about the world outside and they have opinions and vote missing relevant and sometimes essential information. They are most of the time nice and well intentioned people supporting or voting for what can be very bad things.
For example my country has the largest bear population in EU, but we are not allowed to hunt them even if they come in villages and attack people. Why? Because urban "nature-lovers" are against shooting bears: bears don't come in their large cities, they don't ever meet a bear bare-handed (this is the quotes for), so for them bears are not a problem. For the people with damages ffrom bears, they are not enough to make their voice heard and over-vote the urban people.
No more than a foreigner will brandish a knife at someone or have a knife brandished at them.
The media/Hollywood helps augment fears by misrepresenting the lethality of guns and also by cherry picking gun death statistics. Watch a movie and you'd think it was the easiest thing in the world to kill a dozen people with an AK-47 in seconds or take out a helicopter with a handgun. Actually go to a shooting range and you'll see what reality is like.
The chances of getting killed in a school shooting by an AR-15 for example are infintesimal compared to dying by suicide via a handgun.
Which, in turn, is small compared with dying in a car accident (wherever you live and whether you drive a car or not).
My experience here and having travelled much of this country is that I've never felt at risk of violent crime whilst in remote areas and rairly in urban areas when in an area near a pub or "drug" area.
I would think that, beyond waking up to find you have an intruder, that having a gun in your house is not going to to you much good if you have a voilent intruder. If somebody decides to bash down your door in a violent range, you are not likely to have the instant access to a weapon that would be required to deal with the situation.
The nearest police station is 15 minutes away if I drive 100mph but writing this post is the first time I've thought about that fact. The bigger problem is animals: we've never once been able to reach our area's animal control or get a call back from them, no matter when we call. Most situations we can handle ourselves like dealing with rattlesnakes but last year a mountain lion ate our neighbor's goat and the only way to get rid of it was to shoot at it (or over it, as I found most people here won't kill rare animals unless absolutely forced to).
We've got several pets and feral cat decided to make herself home in our shed, giving birth to a full litter right before a large group of giant raccoons migrated to our area. If the raccoons in NYC are anything like the ones here, they're huge with the mammalian equivalent of alligator hide. Scaring them doesn't really work without a gun and nothing but a proper firearm will do more than piss it off and wound it, which will just make it more dangerous. The options are a) put your pets at risk every time you let them out at night, b) weapons that will only cause inhumane damage to the animal, or c) a real gun. If you're the kind of individual that values life as an inherent good but prioritizes the safety of family and pets, guns become the only realistic humane option.
Now, the ironic part is that most people I know here should absolutely not be allowed to own a gun if they lived in the city. Some of them have really warped views of human civilization that led them to live further out (rapists and murderers around every corner) and seem to relish the idea of "defending themselves" with a gun. However, the very idea of them getting enough warning to get to their gun fast enough to actually manage to load it and shoot an assailant is just laughable. Most people here use their guns so infrequently outside of LARPing at a shooting range that when it comes time to use the workhorse gun instead of their assault rifle props, they spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to use it while the animal just stands there, confused.
As far as I know, most countries with strict gun control still leave a loophole for rural residents big enough to drive a train through. However, most of those countries have sane gun cultures where they treat them as dangerous tools and not as religious idols. Now having experienced the damage guns do in inner cities and their necessity further out from civilization, I'm torn on the issue and I don't see a way out.
It's unfortunate how true that statement is. Every time I've attended a class for a concealed carry permit it seems to be filled with wanna-be vigilantes. Which is ironic because almost every CCP class is a gun advocate instructor saying "do not shoot people! even if you're in the right you'll go bankrupt defending yourself in civil court". And everytime they get asked "But what if...?" "You'll still get sued..." "but what.." repeat ad nausea
A sibling comment mentioned the value of an AR15 for shooting at coyotes near a chicken coup without collateral damage which I hadn't even considered so I think this also depends on the geography and community. I'm in a mountainous part of the county with mostly 2-10 acre properties that often butt up against each other with buildings clustered on the largest available pieces of continuous flat land. Shooting a high powered rifle in this environment would be extremely dangerous because we've got half a dozen neighbors' houses well within the range of a rifle, all at weird angles above and below the horizon on one side of the property. Someone who hasn't had proper training in fire arm use - as in training under pressure, not just gun range safety - could easily fire off a shot that kills a neighbor. Everyone here who shoots rifles does it into an unpopulated distant mountain side or into a big hill on their property.
> The concentration on scary black rifles is misguided unless you only focus on mass shootings, which make up a tiny fraction of firearm homicides.
I disagree. The key to understanding the different sides gun control issue is exactly what I've been talking about - understanding different perspectives. The suburban white mom who worries about her child accidentally shooting themselves at a friend's house, the young adult who is worried about getting shot at the mall, and the urban black mom who is mostly worried about her child catching a stray bullet from a street or gang dispute are only ostensibly fighting for the same thing. Those are really three separate issues with their own really complex interactions with constitutional law, mental health, social justice, and community. The three groups are forced under one banner largely because of our two party system, but their views should be analyzed independently.
That the media focuses on the group with the most disposable income and the most visceral imagery shouldn't surprise anyone
The primary loophole being the ability and willingness of countries other than the rich ones to enforce laws like that in their rural areas. People having guns (or anything really) they shouldn't per the letter of the law is like bottom of the priority list. The local police in rural South America, Asia and Eastern Europe have much bigger fish to fry.
Having lived in large cities all my life I cannot conceive of owning a gun, or of other nearby city dwellers owning guns, or even being allowed to in a non law enforcement capacity. There are apartments in NYC with working fireplaces- seems almost equally insane to me, though gun more so because of the active harm it can induce.
Please- no disrepect intended, and not interested in starting argument/debate. Know all the arguments and the history and not advocating any position. Just sharing experience, my own lack of slots for this very large component of american life. Cheers folks.