But their continued popularity among the nuts and domestic terrorists who want to kill as many people as they can is really the issue, isn’t it?
Lanza had a variety of guns to choose from, but he walked into Sandy Hook Elementary with a .223 Bushmaster semi-automatic assault rifle and it performed as he hoped. In under five minutes, 26 dead.
James Holmes also had several guns at his disposal, but his choice to bring into a darkened theater was a Smith & Wesson M&P15 semi-automatic rifle with a 100-round drum magazine. 12 dead, 70 injured.
In Paris, the terrorists also had many weapons, but the ones that did the most damage were the assault rifles M-70s and Kalashnikovs, used to spray bullets at concertgoers in the Bataclan and cafe goers outside. More than 100 dead, hundreds more injured. (89 at the Bataclan, 19 at La Belle Equipe, 15 at Le Carillon and Le Petit Cambodge, 5 at Cafe Bonne Biere and La Casa.
And again, in San Bernardino, we see the popularity of assault rifles — two AR-15s—a California compliant DPMS and a Smith and Wesson M&P 15 (popular choice for mass killers I guess). They fired between 65 and 75 bullets in less than four minutes, resulting in 14 dead and 21 injured.
It’s time to take these weapons off the retail market.
You have a constitutional right to buy firearms…you don’t have a right to own every deadly weapon ever invented.
All high capacity automatic weapons should be illegal, except to law enforcement and the military, under certain conditions. You can take the idea of your gun “enthusiast” and “collector” and bury that idea 6 feet deep with all the dead bodies.
It’s not just that it’s dangerous, like bacon, or scary, like cleavers, it’s that they are machines designed to kill as many humans as quickly and easily as possible. If you’re an “enthusiastic collector” of killing machines, perhaps you can rent one from the Army on special days when the public are allowed to play with these dangerous toys. Maybe they’ll let you play with bombs too.
Why? I mean that seriously, why? If they all liked to dress in red, would we ban red clothes? The fact that they chose these weapons does not prove that (a) they cannot be owned and used responsibly or that (b) they would have been less effective in their assaults with different weapons or that (c) the weapons themselves instigated their crimes. You have shown correlation, but nothing even resembling causation.
And? Does that number impress you? Do you think that this fire rate was made possible only, or even predominantly, by the weapon choice? That fire rate is predominantly a result of how carefully you want to place your shots. A relatively unskilled shooter can accomplish that with any semi-auto easily, and getting rid of semi-autos won’t slow even amateurs as much as you might think when they don’t really care who or what they hit.
You just described firearms in general. And swords. And a lot of martial arts. And Justin Bieber*.
Where is the line between “acceptable machine designed to kill humans” and “unacceptable machine designed to kill humans”, and who makes that decision and using what criteria? What special expertise or knowledge do you bring to the table that makes your opinion valid and mine invalid?
*: Assuming that killing someone’s soul counts as killing them.
Great! Show me the proof. All you’ve shown so far is supposition, and you haven’t provided anything to support it. I’ve been shooting guns and driving cars for a long time, and the idea that “scary guns” contribute to crime makes as much sense to me as the idea that red cars are more dangerous… something long ago disregarded as silly.
How about this: Let’s get rid of all the bans on studying this sort of thing, pass national laws that mandate the collection of relevant data (such as the types of firearms used in crimes, suicides, accidents, and crime prevention, as well as the legal and medical status of the users), and genuinely look into whether or not your blind supposition has any basis in reality?
The people who spout these sorts of things rarely provide details. But the purpose is “to keep non-Muslims (specifically Americans!) safe.” It is an idiotic and offensive purpose, but it is a purpose.
Call me a skeptic, but unless I missed this suggestion by a presidential candidate, my antennae went up when I read the word “all.” Sounds like standard CC hyperbole to me, maybe I missed something, but I have not head that.
I do recall a presidential candidate suggesting than instead of bringing Syrian refugees here to the US that we build and provide safe haven camps in neighboring countries, which would then allow them to easily return home after that war and crisis are over. And this is an idea that actually makes sense since over 70% of Syrian refugees have said they would want to return home to Syria.
On CC, I can easily see how that position would get extrapolated to “all Muslims” leading to a false picture of what was actually said.
Those who assert that a Presidential candidate suggested internment camps for Muslims may be misremembering. A politician did recently make such a suggestion, bit he was a mayor, and not a member of the party you might have guessed.
I’m sure the victims in San Bernardino, or anywhere, would rather face a terrorist armed with a sword or martial arts skills rather than an assault rifle. You really need reams of research to make that clear? I’m sure there’s a reason Farook and Malik choose the long guns rather than the handguns at their disposal when they walked into the conference room. They wanted to kill as many as quickly as easily as they could…and because assault rifles are pretty cheap and legal here, they had them at the ready and that’s what they chose. I don’t think we need a research study to show why they shouldn’t have had that choice.
None at all, although it would be interesting research to see and might surprise me. But since it is irrelevant, why do I need research at all?
Great! What is that reason? And is it a meaningful reason? “Because they are scary and make me feel cool” might be the reasons they chose them, are they adequate reasons to make them illegal?
And yet handguns are cheaper, more legal, at hand, and probably more effective in that space.
Why the heck not? This is important, why not study it to heck and back again??? In what world is “having more information” not a good idea?
Well, the line is where the laws we pass say it is, but those laws include existing laws including but not limited to the Constitution. And passing any law (especially one related to a Constitutional right) requires convincing the middle to shift one way or the other - the stalwarts on each side won’t shift. And saying “this is my view, I don’t need a study or reasons, this is just what I want” is not a great way to shift the middle, in my opinion.
Fair enough. I admit there is a lot of stuff out there; hard to remember everything exactly. Thanks.
There is also a former presidential candidate from some 12 years ago who just recently suggested internment camps for “radical Muslims.” But that too is still different than “all Muslims.”
By the by, I am going to suggest that we stop discussing “guns” in this thread, as it is a general topic not inherently tied to the original topic. If we want to discuss it, let’s start a new thread. Until someone does so, I will try to stop talking about that topic on this thread except where it specifically and narrowly relates to the CA attack.