Re:Bruce Schneier: Drawing the wrong lessons from horrific e...
by learc83 on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @07:36AM
(#4322300)
>What do you need an assault rifle for?
Very few people actually own assault rifles (you need a tax stamp and it has to have been registered before 1986). The weapon the shooter in Colorado used wasn't an assault rifle because it was semi-automatic.
Whether you agree with it our not our constitution gives us the right to bear arms as a check against government oppression.
The second amendment clearly wasn't written to protect hunter's rights.
That being said an AR-15 can be used for hunting, target shooting, or home defense. Its not fundamentally different from any semi-automatic hunting rifle.
Previous "Assault Weapons" restrictions in the US targeted guns based on how "scary" they looked (guns with barrel shrouds, collapsible stocks etc...). Since statically these kinds of guns are almost never used in crimes, regulating them would have almost no impact on overall death rate.
Very few people actually own assault rifles (you need a tax stamp and it has to have been registered before 1986). The weapon the shooter in Colorado used wasn't an assault rifle because it was semi-automatic.
Whether you agree with it our not our constitution gives us the right to bear arms as a check against government oppression.
The second amendment clearly wasn't written to protect hunter's rights.
That being said an AR-15 can be used for hunting, target shooting, or home defense. Its not fundamentally different from any semi-automatic hunting rifle.
Previous "Assault Weapons" restrictions in the US targeted guns based on how "scary" they looked (guns with barrel shrouds, collapsible stocks etc...). Since statically these kinds of guns are almost never used in crimes, regulating them would have almost no impact on overall death rate.