[saiya-jin]

Disclaimer - never owned a gun, in fact never shot a proper one. The problem, among others, is definition what is assault rifle and what not. Military laughs at this definition coming from politicians, you can perform deadly assault with pencil, bow or a brick.

Is it ammo type? (ie 5.56 or .308 - but these are also common hunting calibers). Is it magazine capacity? - this can be cheated around super easily, especially if you prepare something nefarious. Full automats aren't sold anyway. Is it shape of the weapon? Now we left the land of facts and walking in the emotional wonderland. We can do better.

It's like some voices here in Switzerland stating military home-held guns should be banned because some people commit suicide with them. Yeah, let's forget the core suicidal issue and remove the tool, that will surely stop them, right?

Guns don't kill people (and don't get sentenced for that), people pull triggers and kill other people. But that's much harder to fix, so let's find some easy scapegoat, right?

[presidentender]

'Assault rifle' is a clearly defined concept: it refers to a select-fire rifle chambered for an intermediate cartridge (the ur-examples being 7.62x39 in the first AKs and 5.56x45 in the M16) and fed from a detachable box magazine.

'Assault weapon' is a term with no military definition, but which might have a legal definition, depending on jurisdiction. In my home state, there's no such thing as an 'assault weapon,' because we have no statute defining such a thing.

Select-fire rifles are almost impossible to come by due to the '86 ban, but intermediate cartridges and detachable box magazines are common.

An earnest legislator might try saying that an assault weapon is one that's fed by a detachable box magazine and chambered in an intermediate cartridge. Then one of their constituents will see me at the range with my FAL, which is fed from a detachable box magazine, but chambered for a full-power cartridge. Why isn't that rifle - which based on its appearance is clearly the same sort of beast as an AR or AK - banned?

So the definition expands, based on cosmetic features, or naming specific models. Both of those solutions leave loopholes by their very nature; bans on pistol grips and barrel shrouds and folding stocks and bayonet lugs are solved by manufacturing functionally-identical rifles missing those features.

So perhaps we say that any rifle fed from a detachable box magazine is an assault weapon. Then the manufacturer makes a rifle with a fixed magazine, loaded with stripper clips. So we say that any rifle with a magazine capacity greater than some arbitrary number is an assault weapon - and I'll sell you a 'magazine repair kit' to increase that capacity.

Finally, the legislator says "all autoloading rifles are assault weapons," and then the Australians buy pump-action ARs instead: https://enoughgun.com/forum/download/file.php?id=1251

I don't favor legislation restricting the purchase of firearms, but I certainly see how frustrating it must be for those who do. They earnestly want to eliminate this one evil totem of violence while leaving your grandpa in possession of his deer rifle (well, most of 'em), and we always dress up things that are allowed back into those same totems.

[Thimothy]

Come on, you don't go to a mall with a pencil, a brick or a bow and kill 50+ people. The point of assault weapons ownership laws is to introduce friction, so getting a weapon that can go through kevlar is hard, and if you get caught, hell rains upon you.

The line must be set at some point, and of course people are going to tip toe around it, but that's not the point. And don't go Switzerland, if everybody in the US had proper training in how to use and (more important) store their weapons, and the government had an exhaustive control of every shell... Well, it would be different.

[wtbob]

> Come on, you don't go to a mall with a pencil, a brick or a bow and kill 50+ people.

Neither do folks with 'assault weapons.' More people are killed with knives than with all long guns; approximately as many are killed with fists & feet[1]. 'Assault weapons' bans are just feel-good measures.

Oh, and shells are artillery ammunition …

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

[jackmaney]

Not to mention that knives can stab right through kevlar...

[wan23]

Shells are also the common term for the ammunition used in shotguns.

[corey_moncure]

What about the mass murder weapon you drive to the mall in? We gonna ban cars the next time someone plows through the waiting line for the new shiny at 100 MPH??

[nickpsecurity]

People are already doing it on occasion, too. It's usually directed at specific people so far. Then there's people who kick it up a notch:

https://www.damninteresting.com/the-wrath-of-the-killdozer/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbG9i1oGPA

[anonnyj]

Time to ban assault trucks.

[ythl]

> Come on, you don't go to a mall with a pencil, a brick or a bow and kill 50+ people

Has this ever happened in the history of any 1st world country? The closest we've ever come is the Orlando shooting at 49, but... the events with the highest body counts are vehicular mass murder or bombs, not guns (9/11, Nice France, Oklahoma bombing, etc.)

[JustSomeNobody]

> ... you can perform deadly assault with pencil, bow or a brick.

I'm not saying we shouldn't ban certain guns, but I don't think people realize that if someone is hellbent on killing, they'll use a hatchet or a machete if they can't get a gun. We'll have fewer deaths, but much, much nastier ones.

[oblio]

> We'll have fewer deaths, but much, much nastier ones.

How do you quantify "nastier"? I couldn't really say.

Meanwhile, I can quantify "fewer deaths". And I'd try to achieve that first.

[JustSomeNobody]

I don't think getting hacked to death would be as clean a kill, generally, as being shot. I've never witnessed either happen, so I could be wrong.

[InitialLastName]

Dead is dead. I'll take a few nasty deaths in place of lots of "clean" ones.

[JustSomeNobody]

Dead is dead, you're correct.

Dying, however, is an altogether different thing.

[hnal943]

We don't have to use our imagination about what other weapons people might use to commit terror - Bombs and vehicles are already popular, and no less deadly.

[r00fus]

I completely disagree. A stab wound or deep cut is much less grisly/nasty than a bullet in the head, or large exit wound.

Stochastically speaking, a hatchet/machete is simply less efficient (which is good in this case).

The "nastiness" of the effort may also prevent some from going forward with their assault in the first place...

[scatters]

> Yeah, let's forget the core suicidal issue and remove the tool, that will surely stop them, right?

Making it more difficult to commit suicide reduces the incidence of suicide. People who experience suicidal impulses but recover without having had the opportunity to attempt suicide (or who recover from a failed suicide attempt) are likely to seek help with either preventing the impulse returning or addressing the underlying issue that made them vulnerable.

[fweespeech]

> Guns don't kill people (and don't get sentenced for that), people pull triggers and kill other people. But that's much harder to fix, so let's find some easy scapegoat, right?

http://www.factcheck.org/2013/02/did-the-1994-assault-weapon...

> Other studies, he said, have suggested attacks with semiautomatic guns – particularly those having large magazines – “result in more shots fired, persons hit and wounds inflicted than do attacks with other guns and magazines.” Another study of handgun attacks in Jersey City during the 1990s, he said, “estimated that incidents involving more than 10 shots fired accounted for between 4 and 5 percent of the total gunshot victims in the sample.”

> Koper, Jan. 14: So, using that as a very tentative guide, that’s high enough to suggest that eliminating or greatly reducing crimes with these magazines could produce a small reduction in shootings, likely something less than 5 percent. Now we should note that effects of this magnitude could be hard to ever measure in any very definitive way, but they nonetheless could have nontrivial, notable benefits for society. Consider, for example, at our current level of our gun violence, achieving a 1 percent reduction in fatal and non-fatal criminal shootings would prevent approximately 650 shootings annually … And, of course having these sorts of guns, and particularly magazines, less accessible to offenders could make it more difficult for them to commit the sorts of mass shootings that we’ve seen in recent years.”

It doesn't quite work that way. There is a reasonably consistent trend among studies that somewhere between 3% and 5% fewer gun deaths occur if magazines are smaller than 10 rounds. That is also more than the margin of error for such studies.

Similarly, even a 2% reduction saves ~1,300 people a year.

So pretending its a mere scapegoat is...stretching quite a bit. Now you can argue a thousand or two thousand people dying is an acceptable cost to maintaining the status quo but that isn't the argument you tried to make.

Smaller magazines provide a margin of safety of several seconds which you might actually be able to get clear and accuracy is frequently low, so that first shot after reloading is likely to miss.

[dsfyu404ed]

Read up on the pros and cons of infantry rifles chambered for a full power or intermediate rifle cartridge. The gist of it is that in any given contact a very, very very small minority of shots hit their target therefore infantry should be equipped with something that fires the smallest, lightest cartridge that does the job so that they can carry more of them.

Magazine capacity reductions are easy to circumvent (a $30 stamp set can put a "pre-ban" date on your magazines) and most of the people doing mag dumps are either not subject to those laws (cops) or have no intention of following them in the first place (criminals).

[fweespeech]

The problem with your argument is criminals get caught on "routine" violations all the time.

http://listverse.com/2013/07/15/10-criminals-caught-thanks-t...

The other problem is someone dressed and equipped like a fully armed infantryman showing up in a mall...gets noticed. You can't stealthily carry a ton of cartridges AND have them easily accessible. You'll have to put them in a backpack or the like, changing the equation.

Yes, if they play things perfectly, you will lose every time. The reality is, most of these guys are pretty average and make numerous mistakes. The guys who play it out perfectly never get caught regardless of the law. That isn't an argument we should make murder legal.

I'm not going to respond further.