| > There hasn’t been an “assault rifle” used in a school shooting for decades. “Assault rifles” are highly regulated— it’s nearly impossible to own one. Respectfully, aren't these definitions just semantics about firing capability? My understanding is the mass-shooter weapon of choice, the AR-15 is semi-automatic-only (ie not an assault rifle [0]) as they do not have select-fire capability, meaning the capability of a weapon to be adjusted to fire in semi-automatic, multi-short burst, and/or automatic firing mode. Semi-automatic fire means that one shot is fired upon each depression of the trigger. [1] Regardless of firing capability, there is "overwhelming evidence that the AR-15 could bring more firepower to bear than the M14" [2] battle rifle [3]. This evidence is borne out in our schools [4] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle [1] http://www.weaponslaw.org/glossary/selective-fire [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle#M16 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_rifle [4] https://archive.ph/IJKT6 |
Statements like "ban all assault rifles" require semantics, and the entire discussion around "which weapons to ban" is entirely semantics. If this person genuinely means "assault rifle", then you already can't own these as a civilian (generally, unless it was made before 1986 and you pay a ton of money for it). If this person means "assault weapon", then we're talking about a poorly defined class of weapons, which are largely based on cosmetic features.
> My understanding is the mass-shooter weapon of choice, the AR-15
The AR-15 is the most common rifle in the country. It's a popular rifle because it can do everything. It's cheap, you can hunt with it if you want (larger magazines are popular for hunting feral hogs, which are infesting the south), you can shoot sporting competitions with it. If you want to shoot a different caliber, for example to change to .22 for cheap target shooting, you can pop two pins, swap to a second upper, and go ahead and plink away at your soda cans. With it being the most popular platform of rifle in the US, of course it pops up in mass shootings. Wanting to ban the AR-15 is like wanting to ban RAM 2500s because they're the "truck of choice for drunk drivers" [1].
> "overwhelming evidence that the AR-15 could bring more firepower to bear than the M14" [2]
A potential, but never materialized, military AR-15 that they're talking about here, would have been select-fire. Then that military AR-15 would be an assault rifle. This has no bearing on semi-automatic AR-15s not being an assault rifle.
This is the third uninformed comment from you that I've needed to respond to today, loaded with more sources but lacking comprehension.
[1] https://insurify.com/insights/car-models-most-duis-2020/