[mothballed]

That's not determined by the gun but rather the magazine. The 30 round magazine is popular largely because it's often the cheapest and most readily available as the tooling was scaled up for mass production for the military. You can buy a 5 round magazine to put in an AR style gun it's just harder to find and it's not clear you're gaining much beyond maybe a slight hair better ergonomics or mobility from certain shooting positions so most hunters don't buy them.

If you want to single-load cartridges or pin to a 3 round magazine or whatever, have at it. Most of the argument still applies and especially the cheapness and parts availability and intercompatibility with mass after market options. Plus you'll be able to use a larger mag when target shooting. Another plus even if you don't care about magazine size is you can easily swap the barrel (actually upper receiver) without having to legally buy a new gun, so you can train with very cheap .22 ammunition using all the same ergonomics / muscle memory for when you hunt deer.

[BobaFloutist]

You know what, I will accept that there's some decent arguments for why hunters would want access to ARs.

Do you think it makes sense that people that don't hunt would prefer for widely, easily accessible weapons to be largely less efficient at killing human beings? It feels like many gun owners and gun enthusiasts struggle to accept any compromise. And I won't say this is particular to them, I think most people have some pet regulatory peeve, but it sure makes it difficult to have conversations about it!

[mothballed]

What you're running to in the USA is not a conversation on hunting but rather the 2A considerations, under which a fundamental quality of the weapons is availability of efficiency at killing human beings.

[cmrdporcupine]

And this is what I'm trying to poke at. These conversations go nowhere with a certain milieux and a lot of it is driven by a values thing that emphasizes not just the 2A but a whole thing about "right to self-defense."

To which I would counterpoise -- self-defense from what? If your society is so degraded and broken that you need to be armed to the teeth you have much bigger problems than the government taking your handguns. That's a sign of a sick and broken society and individual firearms only make it worse. So "gun rights" is frankly the entirely wrong conversation.

Same with the whole thing of "well-armed militias" to defend from government. What? Do these people really think that a few sidearms and some ARs or whatever are going to deter an actual tyrannical regime by force?

That's simply not how any revolution has ever happened. They usually happen when governments lose legitimacy enough that the armed forces and police simply walk away from defending those in power. If you're in a shootout with the armed forces, you've already lost.

So, I also question the 2A people and what their actual motives are and who they intend to use the guns on.