[Retric]

Banning only the scary-looking guns has no productive effect.

That's rather disingenuous, I am all for banning people buying howitzers and other artillery even if there just big guns. Yes, you can make them with a decent machine shop, but just because some nutjobs are highly capable does not mean they all are.

[monocasa]

I think he's talking about "assault weapon" bans. I don't think whether or not a rifle has a pistol grip is going to b the determining factor in preventing a mass shooting.

[Retric]

<Playing devil’s advocate or in this case Angel’s advocate?>

It is easier to carry out a door to door mass shooting with a pistol grip. This is why assault weapons have them in the first place. Sure, it might only save a few lives, but that would be meaningful for those who lived. ;0

</enough derailing>

IMO, none of that stuff was going to get passed, it's all about the political football. I am starting to think encryption may be the same game as it's a great way to drum up donations.

[Grishnakh]

You have a point there: pistol grips do have a small but useful function.

Now, change it to "bayonet mounts", which is another feature that was listed on the "Assault Weapons Ban" law. How does having a bayonet aid someone in a mass shooting? In fact, when has a mass shooter ever had a bayonet mounted on his rifle? I'm not even sure why they bother with them any more; I've never seen any pictures with US military servicemen in combat in the last 20 years with bayonets mounted in their M-16s or M-4s.

Another thing was flash suppressors. How is banning those going to prevent mass shootings? The whole point of a flash suppressor is so the enemy on a battlefield can't tell where gunfire is coming from exactly. Someone walking into a movie theater isn't all that worried about return fire, and in a room that size when he enters through the emergency-exit door, it's not like he's going to be well-hidden.

But seriously, the whole thing is pretty dumb IMO. They tried to ban very, very minor features (pistol grips, flash suppressors, barrel shrouds, etc.), but ignored the things that really made these weapons good at shooting lots of people, namely semiautomatic operation and easily-swapped magazines. If you want to make mass shootings hard, ban magazine-fed ammunition and semiautomatic operation. Of course, that'll bring you right back to Old West 6-shooters (well, modern .357 Magnum revolvers would still be legal too, but you could also ban that style of revolver where the cylinder is easily opened and reloaded with a speedloader; the Old West revolvers didn't have that, you had to reload them one at a time, very slowly). But of course they know that'll never work since people have had semiauto guns for a century or more now and aren't going to turn them all in, so they go for a feel-good measure that'll make ignorant anti-gun voters happy without actually changing anything substantive.

[15charlimit]

"Assault weapons" are a fictional category consisting of "scary looking" cosmetic features on guns that are mechanically identical in every way to the oft-mentioned "normal hunting firearm" that politicians are always careful to claim they have no interest in banning.

[Retric]

Historically, "Assault weapons" is a useful category. They where designed for close combat where shooter mobility was more important than holding a lower prone position.

Granted, it's like banning the ergonomic snow shovel. Sure, it's slightly better, but it's generally not a huge difference.