Should assault weapons be banned to reduce gang violence?

[Oltz]

In an earlier post I said automatic weapon, which should have been assault weapon, which isn't really a good word. I apologize for that.

I've live fired Bolt Action rifles, pistols and an AK-47 (though it was a Chinese copy of one). I can say that first of all, I think I'd want the AK in a crowd situation, and second of all, I've been shown how to McGyver a semiautomatic weapon to become an automatic weapon, it's not difficult (In some cases at least).

I think one of perfect examples of why gun control should be tighter is the U.K. Restrictions on all types of guns are tight, but restrictions on pistols and semi-automatic 'assault-type weapons' (what's a better word for your stereotypical AR-15/AK?) are particularly harsh.

In 2005/2006 only .1 homicides by firearm were committed for every 100,000 people in the U.K (not including Northern Ireland I believe).
(http://webarchive.nationalarchives....rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207.pdf)

This is compared to about 2.97 homicides by firearm per 100,000 people in the U.S.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list)
Note: I had a better source for this, I'll update with it if I can find it: but the statistic is good.

I think this is a pretty astounding difference.

So your best comparison is to a country where the police do not even carry guns and the population 20% of the US population living in the equivalent of Oregon?

I think there was a thread a week or 2 ago from a UK perspective about gun rights read it and perhaps the misstep of this comparison will become clear.

As far as I know no other "western" nation has the proportion of gun ownership and number of guns as the US the only comparison nations would be third world and middle eastern nations.

 

[Oltz]

http://theacru.org/acru/harvard_study_gun_control_is_counterproductive/

Apparently the correlation between murder rate and Gun ownership is negative.

 

[Skrew]

So when bad things happen ones first action as policy maker should be to restrict the freedoms of responsible people?

We should solve the problem with gangs by banning firearms and not actually dealing with the gangs?

And in general, why do you focus on firearms instead of the multitude of other ways to prevent deaths and prevent criminal behavior?

 

[Vorde]

So when bad things happen ones first action as policy maker should be to restrict the freedoms of responsible people?

We should solve the problem with gangs by banning firearms and not actually dealing with the gangs?

And in general, why do you focus on firearms instead of the multitude of other ways to prevent deaths and prevent criminal behavior?

To me the Second Amendment question is a question about how far do individual's freedoms get to extend. I think everyone will agree that making guns considerably harder to get (as in England) will absolutely reduce crime and homicides. Whether this would lower those rates by a percent large enough to make a major difference or not is an open question (or at least to me).
But the way I see it, I'd gladly reduce the freedoms of a few hundred thousand individuals by a small amount if it means less innocent people die every year.

In situations like organized crime, taking guns off the street won't do anything because most of the time the individuals are getting their weapons illegally to being with, so this has to be dealt with at a more fundamental level.

In situations like the Aurora massacre or the shooting at Virginia Tech a couple years back, I think it's really hard to deny the fact the reducing the availability of guns will lower the number of these occurrences.

 

[Skrew]

To me the Second Amendment question is a question about how far do individual's freedoms get to extend. I think everyone will agree that making guns considerably harder to get (as in England) will absolutely reduce crime and homicides. Whether this would lower those rates by a percent large enough to make a major difference or not is an open question (or at least to me).
But the way I see it, I'd gladly reduce the freedoms of a few hundred thousand individuals by a small amount if it means less innocent people die every year.

In situations like organized crime, taking guns off the street won't do anything because most of the time the individuals are getting their weapons illegally to being with, so this has to be dealt with at a more fundamental level.

In situations like the Aurora massacre or the shooting at Virginia Tech a couple years back, I think it's really hard to deny the fact the reducing the availability of guns will lower the number of these occurrences.

So you dislike guns and support restricting access to them because they don't have value to you. You support banning "assault weapons" while not showing any data they are used often in murders(I suspect the vast majority of murders involve pistols). Firearms in the US will always be relatively easy to get, even if you banned the sale of new firearms there are vast quantities in circulation.

I always get this feeling that the people who are pro gun bans are more interested in the fact that a firearm is used in a murder instead of the murder itself. Firearm deaths are considered unacceptable but deaths from other causes are OK. For example you never hear people wanting to ban alcohol because of drunk drivers.

With freedom comes ones acceptance that people will abuse it, that people will make bad decisions and sometimes people will die. The US was founded with an understanding of this fact and it is against the spirit of the constitution to impose the restrictions you want. There are many things I would restrict if safety was my top priority but guns would not be one of them.

Also CDC article on gun control laws stating it's unknown if further restrictions would have any impact.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwR/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

 

[edward]

McGyver a semiautomatic or bump fire is the same thing.

Everything changed with the development of the slide stock. The weapon below is actually a semi-automatic AR 15. The trigger finger doesn't move the weapon does, yet it fires like an automatic or a bit slower depending on skill level.




The slide stock also works on semi-automatic shotguns.

To save a little time I will quote myself along with the links.

As I see it we are headed for a problem with the shear magnitude and diversity of weapons available. Some can be seen in the links above.

The weapons industry is going a bit the same way as the electronics industry. We have more and more gadgets which in reality have nothing to do with self defence. The military doesn't use slide stocks or flame throwing shotgun shells so are they really a second amendment item?

Some of these weapons are extremely dangerous yet can be purchased over the counter. By looking at a number of videos on YouTube IMO they appear to be used primarily for entertainment.

There is no challenge to using them. For me a challenge was hunting squirrel with a single shot rifle not a flame throwing shotgun.

There are incendiary rounds and rounds that explode on impact. Fun? probably, but we also have a country full of heavily armed fruit cake militias all with a different idea of what they think they might accomplish on their faux patriotic missions. These are the people we don't see on YouTube and there is nothing well regulated about them.

 

[Vorde]

Firearm deaths are considered unacceptable but deaths from other causes are OK. For example you never hear people wanting to ban alcohol because of drunk drivers.

No.

Alcohol has been banned from cars, public areas (like parks) and streets (at least where I am) because of the danger it causes. Alcohol is legal in certain places (bars, homes) because it is managed there.

Alcohol has many purposes, but all of them involve taking advantage of it's intoxicating effect. Alcohols which cause damage above and beyond what they are required for are usually made illegal (I'm thinking of absinthe, blindness-inducing wood alcohol).

There are some areas, like in gun clubs or hunting ranges, where the possession of certain guns (like hunting rifles or shotguns) make perfect sense and should be completely legal. Likewise, in home defense scenarios, certain guns should be allowed to be kept around the home (though I'd advocate for the ownership of non-lethal weapons like tasers instead - but that is tangential).

However, the risk and worry involved in introducing guns to public places is high enough that they should be banned from being carried around (at least in loaded capacity). Likewise, guns whose ability goes beyond the home defense/hunting situations that they are meant for should not be at all legal, as they are simply introducing additional risk that have no real purpose (like slide-stocks).

 

[CAC1001]

In an earlier post I said automatic weapon, which should have been assault weapon, which isn't really a good word. I apologize for that.

I've live fired Bolt Action rifles, pistols and an AK-47 (though it was a Chinese copy of one). I can say that first of all, I think I'd want the AK in a crowd situation, and second of all, I've been shown how to McGyver a semiautomatic weapon to become an automatic weapon, it's not difficult (In some cases at least).

I think one of perfect examples of why gun control should be tighter is the U.K. Restrictions on all types of guns are tight, but restrictions on pistols and semi-automatic 'assault-type weapons' (what's a better word for your stereotypical AR-15/AK?) are particularly harsh.

In 2005/2006 only .1 homicides by firearm were committed for every 100,000 people in the U.K (not including Northern Ireland I believe).
(http://webarchive.nationalarchives....rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207.pdf)

This is compared to about 2.97 homicides by firearm per 100,000 people in the U.S.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list)
Note: I had a better source for this, I'll update with it if I can find it: but the statistic is good.

I think this is a pretty astounding difference.

Yes, but it isn't cut-and-dried. Gun homicides are lower in the UK than the U.S., but crime overall is higher in the UK than the US:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_vic-crime-total-victims
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rob_vic-crime-robbery-victims
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_***_vic-crime-assault-victims
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_vic-crime-rape-victims

It has also been found that the UK Home Office under-reports gun incidents that the police deal with: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...-crime-60pc-higher-than-official-figures.html

 

[Skrew]

No.

Alcohol has been banned from cars, public areas (like parks) and streets (at least where I am) because of the danger it causes. Alcohol is legal in certain places (bars, homes) because it is managed there.

Alcohol has many purposes, but all of them involve taking advantage of it's intoxicating effect. Alcohols which cause damage above and beyond what they are required for are usually made illegal (I'm thinking of absinthe, blindness-inducing wood alcohol).

There are some areas, like in gun clubs or hunting ranges, where the possession of certain guns (like hunting rifles or shotguns) make perfect sense and should be completely legal. Likewise, in home defense scenarios, certain guns should be allowed to be kept around the home (though I'd advocate for the ownership of non-lethal weapons like tasers instead - but that is tangential).

However, the risk and worry involved in introducing guns to public places is high enough that they should be banned from being carried around (at least in loaded capacity). Likewise, guns whose ability goes beyond the home defense/hunting situations that they are meant for should not be at all legal, as they are simply introducing additional risk that have no real purpose (like slide-stocks).

Alcohol is banned from cars, yet people keep driving drunk and killing other people. Clearly the restrictions are insufficient yet you aren't in support of further alcohol regulation(which should be far further regulated since it allows people to make extremely poor decisions). You aren't in support of it because as I wrote before, deaths involving alcohol are acceptable to you.

Concealed Carry permits are growing at an incredible rate and guess what - nothing has happened beyond giving those who want to legally protect themselves the ability to do so. If I was going to use my guns in an illegal fashion I wouldn't bother getting a concealed carry permit beforehand nor would I need to in order to carry my guns illegally.

My AR's are for my own wellbeing, that is their purpose. It's not up to you to decide what guns I get to use or how they are applied.

Also I LOLd at the taser comment.

 

[Vorde]

Alcohol is banned from cars, yet people keep driving drunk and killing other people. Clearly the restrictions are insufficient yet you aren't in support of further alcohol regulation(which should be far further regulated since it allows people to make extremely poor decisions). You aren't in support of it because as I wrote before, deaths involving alcohol are acceptable to you. (Seriously?)

Concealed Carry permits are growing at an incredible rate and guess what - nothing has happened beyond giving those who want to legally protect themselves the ability to do so. If I was going to use my guns in an illegal fashion I wouldn't bother getting a concealed carry permit beforehand] nor would I need to in order to carry my guns illegally.
(I think concealed carry is a bit of a different issue, so I won't respond)

My AR's are for my own wellbeing, that is their purpose. It's not up to you to decide what guns I get to use or how they are applied.

Also I LOLd at the taser comment. (I did too as I was typing it, I still agree with my idea, but let's forget about it for now as it sounds quite silly)

The massacre at Virginia Tech was committed with two weapons that were bought legally.

Cho was able to purchase guns and ammunition
from two registered gun dealers with no
problem, despite his mental history.
Cho was able to kill 31 people including himself
at Norris Hall in about 10 minutes with the
semiautomatic handguns at his disposal. Having
the ammunition in large capacity magazines
facilitated his killing spree.

http://www.governor.virginia.gov/TempContent/techPanelReport-docs/10%20CHAPTER%20VI%20GUN%20PURCHASE%20AND%20CAMPUS%20GUN%20POLICIES.pdf

The shooting in Aurora earlier this year was done with all weapons he had purchased and were carrying legally, and in fact up until he fired his first shot, he was in the realm of the law.

“All the weapons that he possessed, he possessed legally,” Oates said at the Friday evening press conference. “And all the clips that he possessed, he possessed legally. And all the ammunition that he possessed, he possessed legally.”

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/21/colorado-theater-shooter-carried-4-guns-all-obtained-legally/

I have no doubt that you and thousands like you own guns for purely good reasons. But to me you're saying "it's okay if one in a million goes on a murderous rampage as long as the other 999,999 get to have guns safely".
And I think that is wrong.

 

[Oltz]

Vorde just to be clear the shootings you are referencing were not "Assault Rifle" style weapons so you are talking about banning all guns now or are you using bad examples?

I just want to make sure we are all on the same page.

I still want to know if you think the lack of ability to get guns would cause these people to simply use a different means to "go on a killing rampage" i.e. pipe bombs thrown into a movie theater from the exit door or parking a rented van full of explosives on a college campus.

 

[Oltz]

Tasers have a maximum duration they can keep a person down and then they are essentially back to full capacity instantly. In addition they in general only have 1 shot and it is easy to miss or what if there are 2 people breaking into your home?

They are not as effective as in the movies again I have been hit by several different style devices and I would not trust it as my primary defense.

In law enforcement they typically want to have 2 officers with tasers ready for each target they plan to subdue in addition they can always pull the firearm if they miss and if they do not miss can cuff the target while he is stunned.

 

[CAC1001]

I have no doubt that you and thousands like you own guns for purely good reasons. But to me you're saying "it's okay if one in a million goes on a murderous rampage as long as the other 999,999 get to have guns safely".
And I think that is wrong.

The problem is that to stop the one in a million who goes on a rampage from using legally-acquired guns, you would essentially have to strip the other 999,999 of their guns which would make them vulnerable to criminals.

 

[Vorde]

The problem is that to stop the one in a million who goes on a rampage from using legally-acquired guns, you would essentially have to strip the other 999,999 of their guns which would make them vulnerable to criminals.

You are absolutely right, which is why eliminating the underlying causes of criminality is just as important.

 

[Jasongreat]

Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. Either an assault weapon IS effective at killing or it isn't. Why would it work on the populace and not a deer? Second, who follows the laws of society? Criminals or the rest of us? Do you think gangs won't have guns just because they are illegal? And thirdly, there are lot more deadly rounds than the ar-15, or in military garb, the m-16, I think the lack of killing power is the biggest complaint among troops. As far as your concern about three round bursts and fully automatic, those are already illegal, without the proper permits.


Edit: sorry this was a reply to angrycitizen a couple of pages back.

 

[turbo]

The M-15 and its fully-automatic M-16 counterpart left our troops badly outgunned in many conflicts. Nobody around here hunts deer with a .223 - the round is ineffective, and wounds more than it kills. My prime hunting rifle is a single-shot Ruger Model One chambered for .45-70. No deer has ever needed a follow-up shot.

To get back on the policy track, confiscation is not the way to go. Within a mile of here, every single household (to my knowledge) with the exception of a widow who moved here about a year ago has at least one shotgun, one deer-rifle, and one pistol. Most of us have multiples of at least some of these. Maine is in the midst of an epidemic of poverty, meth use, and oxycodone (and related) addiction. As a result, home invasions and burglaries are quite common. This section of town is not a soft target, even though we are ~20 minutes at best from a police response from a 911 call.

Edited to add: I do not support disarming citizens selectively. Take away all assault rifles (however tenuously defined), take away semi-automatic hunting rifles, take away semiautomatic pistols, etc. Those "solutions" are fake, and do not address why people in rural areas (who hunt anyway) might want not to have all their guns confiscated bit-by-bit. It is nice to know that if some addict tries breaking into your house for valuables that you can turn the tables and not end up as the victim.

 

[turbo]

I should mention that many of us have reverted to more primitive rifles at times, since Maine offers an extended deer-hunting season for hunters using muzzle-loading black-powder rifles.

My particular BP rifle looks fairly modern, but it's essentially a cap-and-ball rifle that seemed to die out over 100 years ago. Most of these modern clones are quite accurate, so lots of folks are learning to hunt properly and get that one good shot. These rifles load mighty slow, so home-defense is not a good purpose for them.

 

[D H]

Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. Either an assault weapon IS effective at killing or it isn't. Why would it work on the populace and not a deer?

You don't want a deer full of lead. Ideally, one shot = one kill. That's the problem a sniper rifle is designed to solve. Assault weapons are designed to solve to a different problem.

The reason there are so many different kinds of guns (shotguns, sniper rifles, assault weapons, hand guns) is because each kind of gun addresses a different problem. The problem that assault weapons are designed to solve is "how best to kill a whole bunch of people with a gun at mid-range". And that in a nutshell is the problem with making assault weapons available for public consumption.

 

[Oltz]

You don't want a deer full of lead. Ideally, one shot = one kill. That's the problem a sniper rifle is designed to solve. Assault weapons are designed to solve to a different problem.

The reason there are so many different kinds of guns (shotguns, sniper rifles, assault weapons, hand guns) is because each kind of gun addresses a different problem. The problem that assault weapons are designed to solve is "how best to kill a whole bunch of people with a gun at mid-range". And that in a nutshell is the problem with making assault weapons available for public consumption.

D H that is not accurate it is designed to accurately fire aimed shots with limited down time between firing for the purpose of sustained suppressive fire or elimination of single targets. In fact the US military uses the 5.56 mm round because it is lighter and a soldier carrying the same weight of 7.62 mm rounds would have ~40 less rounds and reloads more often. It was designed and chosen so that our military could out last opposing forces using AK series weapons thus winning the engagement or lasting until superior force can be brought on target. The trade off in stopping and killing power is for extending the fight it is actually not really designed to kill multiple targets efficiently at all.

The 7.62 rounds are designed for greater penetration and being able to hopefully hit targets behind cover still not a weapon made for "how best to kill a whole bunch of people" at any range.

 

[Evo]

By popular demand, thread closed.

 

[IMP]

Evo, it appears you didn't actually close the thread...

 

[Evo]

Evo, it appears you didn't actually close the thread...

Ooops, see this is what happens when I attempt to mentorate before I've had my coffee.

Thank you!