[blue039]

> like a 4800 piece Lego star destroyer,

This, funny enough, is all you needed to say to completely delineate your entire political view.

> So was I punished when my previous right to buy a semi-auto centre-fire was removed? Or was my society made somewhat safer because it's now very hard to obtain guns that were designed as weapons for use against other humans first and foremost?

Fallacy, making guns harder to acquire does not stop crime. Turns out, criminals don't follow laws. Shucks. Want evidence? Everything south of the border. The entire state of Illinois. Los Angeles. Italy. The list goes on. Oh, are you going to cite Australia? They collected a laughably small amount of guns from the population during their gun ban. So small in fact the number is never quoted because it is actually evidence gun bans don't and will never work (< 20%). The only reason they were even that successful (that is to say, not at all) is because they are literally surrounded on all sides by water and their only natural enemies are themselves.

Let me introduce a counter argument:

Why is it that when we talk about hard drugs, abortion, etc "banning it doesn't work" but when we talk about guns the only solution is to ban them with prejudice? Is it because "those things don't kill people"? Because, current there's a literal war going on in Mexico. You know, the place where all the fentanyl murdering US citizens comes from. Leave my rights alone.

> At the intersection between the right to bear arms, and the right to not be shot at school or the mosque or the gay nightclub, which right should win?

The right to bear arms, which when properly executed protects the mosque and the night club. But yeah, use a false dichotomy to further dig yourself deeper into a hole you'll never surface from.

[defrost]

> Oh, are you going to cite Australia? They collected a laughably small amount of guns from the population during their gun ban.

Gun ban?

In Australia?

That's news to me and I've lived here since 1960 and currently live next door to my father who's been here since 1935.

I'm guessing you're referring to the time when Australian Gun Laws were made uniform across the entire country .. and Queensland and Tasmania were pulled into line with other states.

Now, as before, 12 year olds can join gun clubs in Australia, and they can buy their own guns when they reach maturity - the onerous requirements to own a gun here are not dissimilar to those required for a drivers licence or to handle poisionous or explosive materials.

Regulation works, you see from the number of mass shootings in Australia since we introduced uniform regulation, in twenty+ years we've had fewer than you can count on one hand .. somewhat less than the 50+ the USofA has had in January 2023.

I agree that making guns harder to acquire doesn't stop crime - that's a foolish notion. But it absolutely reduces gun crime by a significant degree.

For your entertainment, here's my actual real life neighbour in the West Australian wheatbelt doing his annual 5,000 yard shooting exercise.

It's worth a look for the flight path drone footage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE

[EdwardDiego]

> This, funny enough, is all you needed to say to completely delineate your entire political view.

I'm intrigued as to your reasoning when I was simply giving an a comparative example to a semi-auto 7.62mm - fun to play with, but unnecessary. If I ever need the ability to fire multiple .308 rounds at a deer, I have failed to stalk my prey properly, or failed to sight my shot correctly.

Anyway, have you ever tried keeping the crosshairs on the target with a semi-auto 7.62mm? Unless you've whacked a rather heavy suppressor (ironically enough, legal in my country, unlike the USA) on the end, recoil is going to make accurate semi-auto shooting impossible.

But, please do expand on how a Lego star destroyer totally explains everything about my political views, I'm genuinely curious how you could infer everything about me from that statement.

> Fallacy, making guns harder to acquire does not stop crime.

I never said that it "stopped crime", and I'm not sure how you parsed that from what I said.

> they are literally surrounded on all sides by water and their only natural enemies are themselves.

Oh, cool, yeah, the whole "if we banned assault rifles, they'd just come from Mexico" thing, when in reality, Mexican criminals get their assault rifles from the US. Weird, that.

> when we talk about guns the only solution is to ban them with prejudice?

Did I say that? Please quote me saying "ban all the guns". I own firearms myself, albeit for hunting as my country does not have a culture of owning guns to shoot other citizens. But admittedly, that does require having a Police force that people trust to protect them.

So I'm always very clear to state in these discussions that I don't think that "just ban all the guns, duh" would solve anything in the US, because the desire to own firearms for self-defence is merely the high level symptom of a very complex systematic problem.

> The right to bear arms, which when properly executed protects the mosque and the night club.

Ah, the ol "good guy with a gun" theory. Doesn't seem to be working super-well though, does it.

> But yeah, use a false dichotomy to further dig yourself deeper into a hole you'll never surface from.

I'm very happy digging further into the hole I currently reside in where my children don't have to practice active shooter drills at school.

[stcroixx]

When a pack of coyotes enters the pasture where my sheep are, a semi-auto 7.62mm is one of the best tools for the job. Can also be used when foxes go after my poultry. These are fast moving predators and despite being a practiced marksman, they're easy to miss and not being forced to re-load at an inopportune time really helps.

[EdwardDiego]

Given the size of a coyote, wouldn't a semi-auto .223 be far more effective? Given that they're fast moving.

[stcroixx]

In my own experience I'd say it would be 'just as' effective, rather than 'far more'. Both solve the problem in a nearly identical way in the field. I'm not saving the hides so I don't mind if they end up in little pieces.

[roarcher]

> Anyway, have you ever tried keeping the crosshairs on the target with a semi-auto 7.62mm? Unless you've whacked a rather heavy suppressor (ironically enough, legal in my country, unlike the USA) on the end, recoil is going to make accurate semi-auto shooting impossible.

Militaries all over the world have employed semi-auto 7.62mm rifles for many years, including the L1A1 that you yourself brought up. You really should let them know that these weapons are impossible to shoot accurately. You would be doing a great public service by awakening them from their decades of folly.

[EdwardDiego]

So no-one uses 7.62mm chambered guns as their standard infantry weapon now because...?

Hint:

1) Weight of ammunition

2) Recoil during sustained fire

In other words, thanks for confirming my point. After all there's a reason that purchasing an L1A1 is a nostalgia buy.

[roarcher]

No, not "sustained" fire, whatever that means in this context, and not semi-automatic fire. Automatic fire [1].

> In 1954, the larger 7.62×51mm NATO rifle cartridge was selected as the first standard NATO rifle cartridge. At the time of selection there had been criticism that the recoil power of the 7.62×51mm NATO, when fired from a handheld lightweight modern service rifle, did not allow a sufficient automatic rate of fire for modern combat.

5.56mm NATO was explicitly introduced to make automatic fire from service rifles, which was thought to be useful during Vietnam, more practical, both in terms of recoil and in the number of rounds that an individual soldier could carry. That doctrine has more or less been abandoned, and the U.S. Army is moving back to a round that's much closer in size and energy to the 7.62mm NATO (.277 Fury/6.8x51mm) [2], [3].

Anecdotally, if you think a semi-auto 7.62 is uncontrollable, you haven't fired one. I have, and I promise it's not that bad. Here's a video of a guy shooting hammer pairs with a FAL: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_ov9Pm-qmNo

Does it look like he's having a hard time controlling it?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56%C3%9745mm_NATO#History

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM7_rifle

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.277_Fury

[EdwardDiego]

Rest assured, my opinion on the utility of a semi-auto .308 for hunting was very much obtained first hand across several guns. Hence my comment on the suppressor. That was on a friend's Norinco knock-off of an M14, the difference the extra weight on the end of the barrel made to recoil control was very noticeable.

But as much fun as it was chucking $40 of ammo downrange as fast as I could, it was obvious that semi-auto offered no advantage whatsoever over bolt action for hunting when trying to hit the hilar[0] of a red deer at 200 yards.

Oh, and I should've mentioned the heat issues that .308 being fired rapidly cause to a barrel.

[0]: https://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co.nz/f17/hilar-shot-55370/...

[roarcher]

In that case, I think your opinion of 7.62 recoil is colored more by the rifle than the round. The design of the M14 is...less than ideal for recoil control. The bore axis sits far above the point of contact with the shoulder, which creates an upward torque when recoil pushes backwards on it, resulting in excessive muzzle rise.

A large part of the reason AR-pattern rifles are so controllable is because the bore axis is in line with the shoulder. The FAL (and its clone, the L1A1) bore axis may not be quite in line with the shoulder, but it's much closer than an M14.

As far as the supposed heat issues...I think the goal posts are being moved quite a lot. I'm talking about controllability during semi-auto fire, that's all.