The Big Gun Control Rant

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Martaug, how exactly is my second argument a change from the first one? Let's look at them again. Here's the first argument.

In this argument, I conceded that collapsible stocks weren't specifically designed to make it easier to inconspicuously transport a weapon, yet I maintained that they still allowed one to do that.

Here's the second argument.

In this argument, I again conceded that collapsible stocks weren't specifically designed to make it easier to inconspicuously transport a weapon, yet I again maintained that they still allowed one to do that. How exactly is this a change from my earlier position?

Don't insult my intelligence. There are plenty of easily converted weapons (especially circa 1986 and earlier) available on the market today. While making such a conversion has been illegal since 1986 (if I remember correctly), adding flash suppressors, heat shields and other accessories that would enable firing such weapons on full automatic for longer periods of time was perfectly legal until the 1994 ban was passed.

Actually, the most powerful rounds are going to be in rifles and shotguns. It's hardly a surprise that the average number of shots fired by criminals hasn't really changed since the assault weapons ban, since most gun crimes are committed against an unarmed victim who has neither the time to take cover, nor the capacity to shoot back. That said, are you seriously going to argue that the danger to a police officer dealing with an armed assailant doesn't increase when the assailant can pop off more shots, more accurately, and without reloading?

Or perhaps you merely need to learn the difference between conclusive and inconclusive. Failing to prove the positive (that the ban worked) does not, in any way, prove the negative. A study that finds that fails to prove the positive does not automatically prove the negative. Such a study is, by definition, inconclusive. I actually agree with the (woefully out of context) snippets plucked from larger findings that you posted, because if it can't be proven that the assault weapons ban lowered gun crimes, then we can't credit the ban with the nation's recent drop in gun violence. This doesn't mean, however, that the ban didn't help. It means that we can't know for sure. I thought I made perfectly clear that I'm not going to argue that the ban was an absolute, un-debatable, stellar success. I will, however, argue with your assertion that it was a failure. The truth is that such matters are unfathomably complex and, at least in this case, proving failure is even harder than proving success (and proving success is hard enough).

 

Because your first argument was this in context:

to which you replied

By adding the addendum about shooting the m-16 without a collapsible stock you were inferring that the primary purpose was NOT to allow for different draw lengths just to allow it to be concealed easier(At least that is how i interpreted it. If i was wrong OOPS)
Hell, if you want to ban things just because they are dangerous than please start with all cars, kitchen knives & baseball bats. All of these kill people every year in mass numbers.

Wow drew, you must be SO much more intelligent than everybody that the government had test weapons to see if the were "readily convertable", as ALL of their reports say they aren't.
It has been illegal since 1934 to convert a semi-auto to full auto without the proper class-3 forms & tax stamp.
All the ban did was make sure that the firearms only had 1 of the features instead of all of them. Adding these features has nothing to due with firing them on full-auto(which none of them can do)

Really drew? Inconclusive?
"We cannot credit the ban with ANY of the nation's recent drop in gun violence"
AND
"found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of ANY of the firearm laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes"
both sound pretty GD conclusive to any rational person.

Accurately? Criminals? shooting accurately??

are you F'n kidding me?
Have you ever studied any police reports about criminal shootings?
These guys couldn't hit the side of a barn while standing in it!!
Hell, look at the north hollywood shooters, who HAD fully automatic weapons(obtained illegally) they fired over 1,300 rds & managed to WOUND 17 people.
You know how many they killed ?
ZERO, NADA not ONE single person.
For the simple reason that crooks don't practice there illegally obtained guns at the range.
Heck, i wouldn't feel outgunned armed with a ruger 10-22(a .22 calber semi-auto with a 10rd clip) facing half a dozen urban types with fully auto Uzi's, AK's & Tec-9's because 1) They don't aim! just spray & pray & 2) they hold the darn guns sideways as they have seen on TV & the movies(holding them this way breaks the alignment of your wrist & arm, thus throwing your aim completely to crap)

HeHe heres a picture for y'all : http://gullyborg.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/homeboy_sights.JPG

 

Yeah, you got it wrong. My point was that while the purpose of a collapsible stock isn't to make a rifle more easy to transport unobtrusively, that they still make that easier to do. I further added my point about the M16 to point out that collapsible stocks aren't a necessity for everyone, and that we need to consider more than what a weapon is intended to do when passing legislation. We also need to consider what a weapon is capable of doing. To borrow your beloved car analogy, there's a reason race cars aren't street legal. What's more, I'm all for putting governors on sports cars. It it isn't legal to drive faster than 70 mph, I see no reason to sell people cars that can drive faster than, say, 80. That said, for those shooters that still want a collapsible stock, the assault weapons ban allows the feature as long as it isn't accompanied by one of the other features covered by the ban. On their own, collapsible stocks aren't illegal.

Weapons made prior to 1986 (hence my circa 1986 parenthetical) were fairly easily converted. As a self-professed gun nut, I'd think you already knew that.

Unless you are trying to argue that I am not a rational person, this is clearly untrue. Martaug, when a study fails to prove something, it is inconclusive. The studies conducted were done to assess whether the ban played a part in the decline in gun violence. It failed to prove that it did, which doesn't mean that it didn't. What's more, the purpose of the assault weapons ban wasn't to decrease gun violence. It was to decrease the availability of weapons that the government deemed too dangerous to be in the hands of civilians. The percentage of crimes committed that involved weapons covered by the ban went down by 60% during the 10 years in which the ban was active, so by that standard, the ban was a success. It is, however, unlikely that this caused gun violence as a whole to go down, since the criminals likely purchased guns that weren't banned instead, and it is pretty much impossible to prove one way or the other if any lives were saved by the ban.

I can pretty much guarantee you, though, that Seung-Hui Cho would have had a much harder time killing 32 people and injuring 23 more if he was armed with a pair of 6 round revolvers instead of a pair of semi-automatic pistols. Reloading takes time, especially with a revolver - and loading a cartridge still takes less time than using a quick loader. The weapons Cho used were perfectly legal, of course, but it is reasonable to extrapolate that he would have been able to kill or wound those people - and possibly many more - even more easily if his pistols chambered, say, 17 rounds instead of 10. Like I said before, reloading takes time.

Oswald managed to do quite well with just a bolt action rifle, so no, not all criminals have bad aim.

 

Well if thats the case we need to ban peanuts before anything as they are life-threataning to 6+ Million americans at all times.
By your reasoning it is ok to kill every mountain lion, bear, wolf & dog in the country as they are all capable of killing a person.

An AK-47 made before '86 is no more easily converted than an AK made in '07 drew.
The ban had absolutely nothing in it dealing with the actual internal workings of any of the banned-list weapons. The only changes were cosmetic & external.

I don't think you can but i can darn well promise you that if the students & teachers had been permitted to carry, they would have stopped the rampage early just as they did at the Appalachian Scholl of Law & at Pearl High School in mississippi.

People in this thread keep talking about you don't "need" this or that weapon.

Well, sorry folks but ours is a bill of RIGHTS, not a bill of NEEDS.

 

Then you should really look at your 'bill of rights' nobody has rhe right to take another persons life away and that is what seems to be happening more and more in the US.

 

Silvery, your point is well taken. However, the vast majority of gun owners are not killers. Gun owners have advocated for years that what needs to be done is to punish the actual killers, rather than blaming everyone else but the actual shooter. Kill him, lock him away, take away HIS ability to ever use a firearm but don't punish Peter for Paul's mistake (to brutalize the saying)

 

Less messy, and less pieces to pick up. Saves money.

 

The general reaction to guns here has been fear of possibilites. Drew fears collapsable stocks because they can make a weapon more concealible, but do you have any evidence that it actually is used for that (aside from one case a decade or more)? Silvery represents a fear of what guns are capable of. As has been pointed out, the vast majority of US gun owners are do not kill, not are they killed with guns (theirs or others), nor are they involved in violent crime of any kind, in any way. Yes, there are a few thugs that shoot people, but there are thugs in Britain that knife people, should you ban all knives in that case? Yes, there are a few people that shoot their spouses, but most can just as easily beat them with bats, should we ban all baseball bats?

There seems to be a common perception of the US as a violent, gun riddled free-for-all. That may be true, about the NY slums, inner-city Chicago, the gang areas of LA and San Fran, and the absolute worst areas of Norfolk (which I've been to, and it isn't). Even if all of the above are true, that represents somewhere around 0.0000001% of the land in the US, maybe 0.00005% of the population of the US, and probably around 0.005% of the guns in the US (all at a guess).

What would the logical thing to do be? Arrest those that kill, keep them in prison and away from guns, and maybe,maybe ban the guns they use most frequently, iff (if and only if) there is a distinct difference between their popularity among criminals and their popularity elsewhere. What did we do? Ban the biggest and nasties guns (that are rarely used in crimes) and make it harder for legitimate, law-abiding citizens to get guns (notice how this didn't do anything for how hard it was for criminials to get guns). Please tell me how that makes sense.

 

A person who is allergic to peanuts can simply choose not to eat them. We have very good labelling laws in place, so someone with a peanut allergy can easily avoid offending foods. If the person with a peanut allergy is worried about being exposed to peanut oil at a restaurant, he can choose not to eat there - or he can just ask. Restaurants (or, at least, the organizations that regulate them) take allergies seriously, and are willing to make arrangements if there is a problem. If they can't make arrangements, they are quick to tell you as much. As seriously as restaurants take allergies, they take lawsuits even more seriously. Can a person who doesn't want to be shot choose not to be shot? Quite frankly, this comparison is laughably stupid.

NOG, I'm not afraid of getting shot, and I'm not afraid of collapsible stocks. I merely don't think that such features are necessary. Most of the time police get involved in a shoot-out, the perpetrator has a legal weapon. If stronger weapons are legal, the danger to the officer is greater. Since most gun crimes are committed against unarmed victims, any gun is good enough to do the job, so we already know that except in extreme cases like VA Tech (where having less rounds in your pistols and needing to re-load more often would make you less dangerous and give the victims more time to flee or strike back), the purpose of the assault weapons ban isn't in most cases to protect civilians. It is there to protect police officers and others who work in law enforcement.

Mass shootings or shoot-outs involving police officers are definitely the exception rather than the rule, but I think that capping clip sizes and making other potentially dangerous less available* is a small price to pay.

* Note that the ban didn't make these features unavailable, but merely required gun owners to pick and choose which features they wanted. Gun buyers still have plenty of options. The features affected by the ban for rifles are folding stocks, conspicuous (whatever that means - I agree that this one's a bit silly) pistol grips, bayonet mounts, flash suppressors or threaded barrels designed to accommodate them, and Grenade Launchers. Muzzle Brakes are still legal, so there's no need to put a flash suppressor on a rifle, which leaves the pistol grip, folding stock, and the grenade launcher. A shooter dead-set on a folding stock can have one. A shooter dead-set on a conspicuous pistol grip can have one. A shooter dead set on a grenade launcher can have one. Most shooters don't need a pistol grip or a folding stock (since most guns aren't shared and the user can have a stock can custom set for him).

The pistol features affected are magazines that attach outside the pistol grip (banned because it is very, very easy to use much larger clips with these weapons), a threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or silencer (if a threaded barrel can attach a silencer, it should probably be illegal), Barrel shroud that can be used as a hand-hold (I agree that this one is kind of silly), an unloaded weight of 50 oz or more (this one seems kind of silly, too), and a semi-automatic version of an automatic firearm (which, again, I find silly). That said, pistol owners can have any one of these features without problem.

 

Sorry drew but muzzle brakes are considered flash suppressors by the BATF.
Also remember that the ban affected the gun industry in a different way.
Since they couldn't make the full capacity magazines for their full size pistols they started making smaller & more easily concealed pistols, instead of the full size less easily concealed models.
Actually, the outside the pistol grip magazine well ban has never made since to me, since having a large capacity mag in front of your hand is going to impair your aim as it pulls the front of the weapon groundward. Whereas the 72rd drum mag for my glock 17 being under the pistol grip helps steady the weapon.

The fear over silencers is just weird, it's a muffler! If all ranges mandated them on the pistol range we wouldn't need to wear those goofy earmuffs!

I'm gonna have to call you on this one. Please provide proof.

[Edit]
On the general issue of crime we had this the other day:
http://www.wbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9307510&nav=menu1434_2_7

Now isn't that just freakin' ridiculous.

 

Silvery: Moose, Deer and Bear meat is actually pretty good. You can grind the meat and use it as you would groung beef, and in some cases, you can't tell the difference. Bear meat should actually be grilled though as it is a little greasier.

T2: I'm not arguing that. Nothing beats a nice steak, but farmers get a little testy if you shoot one of their cattle without permission...

 

Drew, you don't legally ban something because it isn't necessary. By that logic, we should ban all video games, because they aren't necessary. Say goodbye to most high-speed internet, because it isn't necessary. You legally ban something because you fear it, because it represents a danger that you percieve to be both real and at least somewhat immediate (not necessarily to you personally). If you knew, 100% knew, that the features you listed would never be used in a crime, even if legal, I really don't think you would be arguing to ban them. I'm not criticizing you for fearing guns, I fear them. You'd have to be an idiot not to. I'm criticizing you for fearing the wrong part. You fear what seems to be the most dangerous, not what history shows is actually the most dangerous.

 

This statistic is not just isolated in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (wherever the hell that is). I've read reports here in Canada (for those who don't know where the hell THAT is, just look North of the Northernmost states in the US* on your maps and you'll see it!) that about 15% of the population is responsible for 70% of the violent crimes committed. But what do we do? We blame their mothers for not hugging them. We blame their teachers for not working some miracle. We blame the police for 'persecuting' them. We blame the alcohol companies for selling to them. We blame people who've been dead for over 150 frigging years for the bad choices of those living today, and we never really hold this criminal filth responsible. Oh, I missed one -- we blame guns -- inanimate, unthinking tools -- for the actions of the dirtbags who choose to use those guns to kill other people. So we take away the guns from people who've never committed a crime in the first place, release the killer with a slap on the wrist, pat ouselves on the backs for being so 'enlightened', and then blame guns again when the same damn criminal illegally gets a gun and kills someone else! Un-freaking-believable.

*Unless you're looking at Alaska -- then look South and East!

 

Sorry LKD, charlotte-mecklenburg is the city of Charlotte in the surrounding county of mecklenburg in North Carolina. Its the largest city in the state. Most of the county services operate out of Charlotte so they just started naming everything Char-Meck.
That 15% doing 70% of the crime is bad enough but here we are looking at 1/20th of 1% committing 80% of the crime. Thats beyond criminal(hah, no pun intended!), these guys should be locked up forever. Yeah i'm off-topic but i felt i needed to explain were it was.

 

It is funny that here it is the criminals themselves who are to blame for the bad choices they make but if a young man puts on a uniform and shoots someone he is blameless and doing his job and if it happens to be wrong it is not his fault as he just did what he was told and how was he to know that what they told him wasn't nice.

Oh and I have been in Charlotte-Mecklenburg! Wohoo! Nice place. It is a small percentage committing a vast majority of all crimes everywhere, that is why those people are called criminals.

 

Drew:

Utterly false. I can't believe that the above statement was allowed to slide. Sometimes when a study fails to prove something, it may be considered inconclusive due to particular experimental limitations (ie. sample size was not large enough to detect causality, experimental errors, lack of randomisation/blinding, experimental bias). But when a well designed experiment and accompanying statistical analysis fails to support ('prove') your hypothesis, then you ought to go back the drawing board and rethink it. Absence of evidence where said evidence ought to exist tends to be pretty damning.

I can just see it now. Big pharmaceutical companies screaming "Inconclusive!" when a study fails to prove the effectiveness of their newest drug, and trumpeting any study which shows positive (if spurious) results.

Oh wait, they already do that.

 

Joacqin, if the troops commit war crimes, they are held responsable. If you don't agree with the war they are prosecuting, you go ahead and blame them for not doing what you want. I'll respect them. If the plan of the war is bad, it's hardly the grunt's fault, and disobeying orders because he thinks he knows better is just going to get more people killed. Again, respect the soldier. You may not respect the commanders that made the plan, but respect the soldier.

I still don't understand how you can think all killing is equal. If there's a lunatic walking down the street with a gun and shooting everyone he sees, his killings are bad and evil. If I then shoot him to stop him, am I doing good or evil?

 

Who is the lunatic is rarely as clearcut as in your example. That is why I find it so difficult to understand how people can take it so lightly like others, being absolutely convinced that whatever side you are on is the good one and that you are then justified to kill.

 

Joacqin, are you speaking from a police perspective or a war one? From the police perspective it's pretty easy (though dangerous). Anyone that refuses to put a weapon down when commanded to by the police is a real danger, and anyone that tries to use it is taking his/her life into his/her own hands. In the case of war, it does get a little more spotty. Are the people rebelling because they are subject to unjust law, or is this an uprising of a particularly large and successful drug gang, or is it both? This army that just invaded, was it completely unexpected, or were they provoked? Are the reasons given for a war real, and even if so, are they acceptable?

 

A Soldier does what he's told by his superiors. The Superiors tell the soldiers what to hit, and they hit it or die trying. There is usually a reason for every war. Judge the reason and who started it, not the soldier that fights. Someone once said that War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left. Sometimes it happens that one side has to keep up the pressure until whoever's left doesn't want to fight and accept the their conditions. But when something like 9/11 can happen, you will not convince a nationt hat an army is not important...