"Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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The assault weapons ban is one of the top policy proposals from March for Our Lives and other gun control advocates. But it’s also one of the gun control measures with the least supportive evidence behind it. The typical argument for the ban: Weapons of war have no place in American communities. These high-velocity, high-capacity weapons are particularly deadly, even more so than other semiautomatic firearms such as handguns. They have also been used disproportionately in mass shootings. And they aren’t needed for hunting or self-defense. So they should be banned altogether. All these claims have a certain intuitive sense behind them. What they don’t have, however, is a whole lot of empirical evidence, based on my discussions with gun policy experts and researchers. Studies on assault weapons bans have generally ranged from inconclusive to unfavorable toward a ban.

That doesn’t mean an assault weapons ban would have absolutely no effect. Consider the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. In that case, the gunman parked himself on the 32nd floor of a hotel near a country music concert and fired indiscriminately into the crowd with assault weapons — which were also retooled with bump stocks to mimic the firepower of machine guns. He killed 58 people and injured hundreds. Bump stock or not, it stands to reason that the shooting would have been much less lethal if the shooter didn’t use an assault weapon and used, say, a more conventional handgun instead. The bullets would have had shorter range, and those that hit would have had lower velocity and therefore caused less damage. In a shooting with such a high casualty count, that could’ve translated to potentially hundreds of injuries averted — although the shooter also could have changed his approach without access to assault weapons. Still, it’s worth putting this in context: This kind of violence is already relatively infrequent. Mass shooting deaths make up less than 4 percent of gun homicides in the US, while shootings with rifles, including assault weapons, make up less than 3 percent. So pushing assault weapons out of circulation wouldn’t have a big impact on overall gun violence in America, even if it has an outsize impact on some particularly awful tragedies.

These are just some of the complications that limit an assault weapons ban’s effectiveness. So while the policy may seem intuitive, there isn’t much evidence to support it — and in a world with limited political capital for gun reforms, those gaps in the research need to be taken seriously. The most cited review of the evidence is a 2013 analysis by researcher Christopher Koper on the effect of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which lawmakers let expire in 2004. The analysis concluded, “The ban did not appear to affect gun crime during the time it was in effect, but some evidence suggests it may have modestly reduced gunshot victimizations had it remained in place for a longer period.” That was partially, Koper wrote, because the 1994 ban was riddled with loopholes. To understand why, consider a surprisingly tricky question in this discussion: What is an assault weapon, and how do you define it? For lawmakers, these questions have posed a challenge over the years. People might have a vision of an assault weapon in their heads — say, a semiautomatic rifle like an AR-15 — but defining what makes that an assault weapon can be difficult. Is it that it’s semiautomatic? Well, there are semiautomatic handguns and hunting rifles too. Is it the high velocity and long range? Traditional hunting rifles can also have those features. Is it the pistol grip? That offers an easy way around the law then — if someone could just remove a pistol grip, then it’s no longer an illegal assault weapon.

Ultimately, the 1994 ban settled on a definition of assault weapons that included, among other features, “pistol grips on rifles, flash hiders, folding rifle stocks, threaded barrels for attaching silencers, and the ability to accept ammunition magazines holding large numbers of bullets,” as well as some specific guns by name and “copies or duplicates” of them, Koper wrote. That captured some handguns, on top of the rifles that people might typically think of as assault weapons. But the ban was still easily bypassed, Koper noted: “Relatively cosmetic changes, such as removing a flash hider or bayonet mount, were thus sufficient to transform a banned weapon into a legal substitute. In this sense, the law is perhaps best understood not as a gun ban but as a law that restricted weapon accessories.” Gun manufacturers took advantage of this, producing modified versions of previous weapons to make them legal — blowing a big hole in the law. Plus, guns made and owned prior to the ban were grandfathered in, making them legal to own and transfer. That comprised at least 1.5 million assault weapons in the US at the start of the ban, according to Koper. This gets into another tricky aspect of banning assault weapons: Do past guns get to stay around, or are there efforts to take those out of circulation through, for instance, a buyback program or a mandatory registration-and-tax scheme (similar to current laws for automatic weapons)? The 1994 ban took the former approach, but March for Our Lives has called for the latter with a new ban.

The 1994 ban was also attached to a ban on high-capacity magazines that carried more than 10 rounds, which Koper suggested was arguably the law’s “most important provision.” That’s in part because this ban also affected the firearms that weren’t covered by the assault weapons ban, so it could affect a much broader level of gun violence. Indeed, a study from February by Koper suggested that high-capacity magazines may be involved more often in typical shooting deaths than previously thought.

But at the end of the day, Koper found that the 1994 ban had no significant effect on gun crime — although it may have had some modest effects if it had been allowed to stay around for longer and over time pushed more assault weapons and high-capacity magazines out of circulation. Koper’s analysis had two big gaps: It didn’t look at the 1994 ban’s effect on mass shootings, and it didn’t analyze state laws. For that, the best review of the evidence is an extensive report by the RAND Corporation released in March, which looked at US studies on gun control, including assault weapons bans at the state level. Here, too, the news is not good for an assault weapons ban. RAND found that the available studies were often contradictory. Focusing specifically on the most rigorous studies, RAND found the evidence for bans’ effects on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines on mass shootings and violent crime in general to be “inconclusive.” “None of [the studies] provided what we considered to be any kind of conclusive evidence,” Andrew Morral, the head of RAND’s gun policy initiative, told me.

“The studies are pretty weak,” Morral said. “Also, a lot of these bans have been pretty weak” — noting many of the same loopholes that the Koper analysis did. But what if an assault weapons ban wasn’t weak — and really took these guns out of circulation? The US could, for example, follow Australia’s lead and ban a much broader category of semiautomatic rifles and institute a mandatory buyback program — basically, a firearm confiscation scheme. Would that have a significant effect? Experts said that even a more effective ban on assault weapons likely wouldn’t have much of an impact on overall gun violence in the US. That’s because only a small percentage of overall gun violence involves assault weapons, with the great majority of firearm homicides involving more conventional handguns. And Morral said there’s no reason to believe an assault weapons ban would have any effect on suicides, which have in recent years made up around 60 percent of all gun deaths. In a country with so many gun deaths, cutting even a percentage point or two of overall gun deaths could still save hundreds of lives a year. But in terms of addressing America’s overall gun problem, it just wouldn’t have a big impact.

Still, experts said that an assault weapons ban may have a significant effect on the lethality of mass shootings. Assault weapons’ “functionality is really most relevant in the context of a public mass shooting,” Daniel Webster, the director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, told me. The research still isn’t good in this area, in large part because there is no single accepted database for tracking mass shootings and what weapons they involve. But there are some analyses that can be drawn on. Previous research by criminologist James Alan Fox [Northeastern University] suggests that the 1994 ban did not have an appreciable effect on the number of mass shootings. But Webster argued that although the ban’s end in 2004 may not have resulted in more mass shootings, it might have resulted in more mass shooting deaths. He also pointed out that since the 1994 ban left so many guns in circulation and therefore could only phase out assault weapons over time, it should be expected that the ban could only have a gradual effect.

Webster cited an unpublished analysis of Mother Jones’s public mass shootings database: “When you fit a statistical model that fits a gradual impact [and looks at a counterfactual in which a ban isn’t in place] … the number of people who are shot in public mass shootings goes down roughly by 10 percent every year that the law was in place.” He cautioned that this is preliminary data, but it suggests that the federal assault weapons ban really did cut the lethality of mass shootings. Morral, meanwhile, pointed to a 2017 analysis from the gun control advocacy group Everytown, which suggested that assault weapons weren’t used in a majority of mass shootings but did make these events deadlier. RAND summarized the findings: “Another analysis that focused on mass shooting events involving four or more fatalities between 2009 and 2016 reported that 15 of these incidents (11 percent) involved an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine, resulting in 155 percent more injuries and 47 percent more fatalities compared with other incidents.” “That’s probably the case: You would get fewer deaths in mass shootings,” Morral said, clarifying that this is based on inference, not the results of specific studies. “That’s not nothing, but it’s a small proportion of total firearm homicides.”

This, then, is where one should expect the effect of a stringent assault weapons ban to fall. And certainly, that would matter to groups like March for Our Lives — which formed after a school shooting in which the gunman used an assault weapon. But if March for Our Lives wants to address broader gun violence — as it suggested it did during its big Washington, DC, event — then the research suggests that it’s going to have to think about other policies too. March for Our Lives has put forward other proposals. Its official five-point plan calls for more gun violence research, strengthening the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and universal background checks, on top of its demand for an assault weapons ban and a ban on high-capacity magazines. Based on the empirical research into assault weapons bans, it might be more prudent to focus on the other policies. In a world with limited political capital, the assault weapons ban’s limitations are an important part of the discussion. And while bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines (which, again, typically go hand in hand) do have 65-plus percent support in Pew surveys, they face far more opposition from Republicans than other measures — and therefore would struggle to get through a Senate process that would likely require bipartisan support.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... arch-study
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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This reminds me of the discussion I had with my wife the other night. She was talking about the idea of an assault weapon ban. I was explaining the weapons in question are not assault weapons, but lookalikes. I showed her pictures of a Ruger Mini Thrity and my AK47 underfolder. Which is an assault weapon. She pointed at my AK47 i then pointed out they are both semiautomatic rifles that use the same ammo. They just look different but have the same function. They don’t have the full automatic or burst fire capability. I said it is lik in the 1970s when you could get the kit cars and make you VW Bug look like a Lotus Europa. IT may look like a duck but it doesn’t quack like one.

The other point I brought up is the number of assault style weapons in the hands of law abiding Americans the Goverment doesn’t even know about. If the Goverment tried to ban guns or limit the type of guns people could own, they would have no idea where to start. How many guns were brought back from just WWII and Korea by somebodiy’s Grandpa. Same with early Vietnam era before customs cracked down on it. Just as how many guns were bought before the 1968 firearms act that require records of sales.

Any law passed will just be a feel good effort to pacify the liberal gun control crowd. It will create a slight hardship on those wanting to have look at what I got gun. It will put a bigger kink in the wannabes right wing militia and mall ninjas types.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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TrueTexan wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:04 pm This reminds me of the discussion I had with my wife the other night. She was talking about the idea of an assault weapon ban. I was explaining the weapons in question are not assault weapons, but lookalikes. I showed her pictures of a Ruger Mini Thrity and my AK47 underfolder. Which is an assault weapon. She pointed at my AK47 i then pointed out they are both semiautomatic rifles that use the same ammo. They just look different but have the same function. They don’t have the full automatic or burst fire capability. I said it is lik in the 1970s when you could get the kit cars and make you VW Bug look like a Lotus Europa. IT may look like a duck but it doesn’t quack like one.

The other point I brought up is the number of assault style weapons in the hands of law abiding Americans the Goverment doesn’t even know about. If the Goverment tried to ban guns or limit the type of guns people could own, they would have no idea where to start. How many guns were brought back from just WWII and Korea by somebodiy’s Grandpa. Same with early Vietnam era before customs cracked down on it. Just as how many guns were bought before the 1968 firearms act that require records of sales.

Any law passed will just be a feel good effort to pacify the liberal gun control crowd. It will create a slight hardship on those wanting to have look at what I got gun. It will put a bigger kink in the wannabes right wing militia and mall ninjas types.
Great, but it sounds as if you confused the technical term assault rifle with the political catch-all term "assault weapon." The meanings of words matter. Giving people bad information is not conducive to educating them about firearms.

Also, do you have pics of this "AK47 underfolder"?

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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DougMasters wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:36 pm I think it highlights the ignorance of the political term assault weapon, rather than confusing the two.
That could be the case, and if so I'll stand corrected.
TrueTexan wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:04 pmI showed her pictures of a Ruger Mini Thrity and my AK47 underfolder. Which is an assault weapon.
I just can't get used to seeing "assault weapon" legitimized on gun forums.

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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I zeroed in on this sentence:
they aren’t needed for hunting or self-defense.
In reality the 5.56 is an excellent home defense round, particularly for those living in modern environments.

The 5.56 loses nearly all of its energy when going through a barrier as common, and simple, as a wall made of dry-wall building materiel. This is a feature of the projectiles light weight. Other, commonly recommended, home defense weapons use significantly heavier projectiles and are not significantly slowed by dry-wall.

If a person were developing a round, for home defense, that did not present an extreme risk to the entire neighborhood, they would come up with something similar to the performance of the 5.56 round, using lite 40gr bullets.
"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matt. 25:40

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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Hasaf wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:59 pm I zeroed in on this sentence:
they aren’t needed for hunting or self-defense.
In reality the 5.56 is an excellent home defense round, particularly for those living in modern environments.

The 5.56 loses nearly all of its energy when going through a barrier as common, and simple, as a wall made of dry-wall building materiel. This is a feature of the projectiles light weight. Other, commonly recommended, home defense weapons use significantly heavier projectiles and are not significantly slowed by dry-wall.

If a person were developing a round, for home defense, that did not present an extreme risk to the entire neighborhood, they would come up with something similar to the performance of the 5.56 round, using lite 40gr bullets.
And with the quote most likely being in reference to semi-automatic carbines, those rifles most certainly are used for hunting.

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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DispositionMatrix wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:58 pm
DougMasters wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:36 pm I think it highlights the ignorance of the political term assault weapon, rather than confusing the two.
That could be the case, and if so I'll stand corrected.
TrueTexan wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:04 pmI showed her pictures of a Ruger Mini Thrity and my AK47 underfolder. Which is an assault weapon.
I just can't get used to seeing "assault weapon" legitimized on gun forums.
You might as well try and get used to it, then, because the definitions of words are determined by common usage, not by diktat. As an example, consider the word "privacy". Ever wonder why the Constitution doesn't explicitly define a right to privacy? Surprise, but it does!
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[2]
The right to "be secure in [our] persons, house, papers, and effects" is the very definition of privacy, so what gives? Why didn't they use the word itself? It's because at the time asking for a moment of privacy meant you needed to use the toilet. Over time the word's meaning changed into our modern notion of privacy. Was that wrong? Are we today using the word incorrectly? Of course not! Meanings change and that's simply a fact that has to be accepted.

The vast majority of people do not have a formal definition of "assault weapon". While it can cause confusion among those arguing about guns, the anti's are not "wrong" when they use their loose and informal definition of the term.
106+ recreational uses of firearms
1 defensive use
0 people injured
0 people killed

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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Eris wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:12 pm
The vast majority of people do not have a formal definition of "assault weapon". While it can cause confusion among those arguing about guns, the anti's are not "wrong" when they use their loose and informal definition of the term.
See... when you take the wind out of my nitpicking sails with reason and logic it becomes way less fun to argue.

Joking aside. Definitions for many things requires a context not present in basic definitions of words. Defining things based on usage and not the actual thing that they are seems to me more befitting of urban dictionary and not... a real dictionary.

Wiktionary does a good job framing it a lot better. Listing the words but acknowledging they very based on legalities and noting no commonly accepted form

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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DispositionMatrix wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:35 pm Great, but it sounds as if you confused the technical term assault rifle with the political catch-all term "assault weapon." The meanings of words matter. Giving people bad information is not conducive to educating them about firearms.

Also, do you have pics of this "AK47 underfolder"?
I used that term when talking to my wife as the news was using it as in "Assault Weapons Ban".

Here is a picture of my Yugo AK47 underfolder
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,
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Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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Hasaf wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:59 pm I zeroed in on this sentence:
they aren’t needed for hunting or self-defense.
In reality the 5.56 is an excellent home defense round, particularly for those living in modern environments.

The 5.56 loses nearly all of its energy when going through a barrier as common, and simple, as a wall made of dry-wall building materiel. This is a feature of the projectiles light weight. Other, commonly recommended, home defense weapons use significantly heavier projectiles and are not significantly slowed by dry-wall.

If a person were developing a round, for home defense, that did not present an extreme risk to the entire neighborhood, they would come up with something similar to the performance of the 5.56 round, using lite 40gr bullets.
Why develop one, I already have a real good one for home defense. It is the Aguila 12 ga minishell Slug. A 70 caliber 382 gr. slug at 1250 ft/sec from my Mossy Shockwave.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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Eris wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:12 pm
DispositionMatrix wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:58 pm
DougMasters wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:36 pm I think it highlights the ignorance of the political term assault weapon, rather than confusing the two.
That could be the case, and if so I'll stand corrected.
TrueTexan wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:04 pmI showed her pictures of a Ruger Mini Thrity and my AK47 underfolder. Which is an assault weapon.
I just can't get used to seeing "assault weapon" legitimized on gun forums.
You might as well try and get used to it, then, because the definitions of words are determined by common usage, not by diktat.
In this particular case the definition is being determined by groups pushing an agenda, and I'm not going to bend the knee and serve their interests. So, no thanks.
Eris wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:12 pmThe vast majority of people do not have a formal definition of "assault weapon".
Given how nebulous the term is, it would be impossible for it to have a "formal definition."
Eris wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:12 pmWhile it can cause confusion among those arguing about guns, the anti's are not "wrong" when they use their loose and informal definition of the term.
They're wrong when they try to equate or conflate "assault weapon" with assault rifle, a valid technical term. Sowing confusion about how semi-automatic carbines are defined comes right from the VPC playbook. Also, a "loose and informal definition" of "assault weapon" is all anyone is going to get since it has no real meaning.

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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TrueTexan wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:57 pm
Hasaf wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:59 pm I zeroed in on this sentence:
they aren’t needed for hunting or self-defense.
In reality the 5.56 is an excellent home defense round, particularly for those living in modern environments.

The 5.56 loses nearly all of its energy when going through a barrier as common, and simple, as a wall made of dry-wall building materiel. This is a feature of the projectiles light weight. Other, commonly recommended, home defense weapons use significantly heavier projectiles and are not significantly slowed by dry-wall.

If a person were developing a round, for home defense, that did not present an extreme risk to the entire neighborhood, they would come up with something similar to the performance of the 5.56 round, using lite 40gr bullets.
Why develop one, I already have a real good one for home defense. It is the Aguila 12 ga minishell Slug. A 70 caliber 382 gr. slug at 1250 ft/sec from my Mossy Shockwave.
Umm. . . because it won't do what the 5.56 will. Or better put, it will do what the 5.56 (with properly selected loads) won't. What it will do is pass through walls like there is nothing there. In an apartment or condo that is not a, "good thing;" in fact, it could safely be called a "bad thing." Based in this article I have been purchasing some 40gr 5.56.

I have also been giving a lot of consideration to the .22tcm. I have two concerns there, one is noise, it may discourage me from practice. The other is ending up with an orphan cartridge. However, this is taking us far afield and threatening to become an all out thread-jack.
Last edited by Hasaf on Tue Apr 03, 2018 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matt. 25:40

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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Hasaf wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 2:19 pm
TrueTexan wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:57 pm
Hasaf wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:59 pm I zeroed in on this sentence:
they aren’t needed for hunting or self-defense.
In reality the 5.56 is an excellent home defense round, particularly for those living in modern environments.

The 5.56 loses nearly all of its energy when going through a barrier as common, and simple, as a wall made of dry-wall building materiel. This is a feature of the projectiles light weight. Other, commonly recommended, home defense weapons use significantly heavier projectiles and are not significantly slowed by dry-wall.

If a person were developing a round, for home defense, that did not present an extreme risk to the entire neighborhood, they would come up with something similar to the performance of the 5.56 round, using lite 40gr bullets.
Why develop one, I already have a real good one for home defense. It is the Aguila 12 ga minishell Slug. A 70 caliber 382 gr. slug at 1250 ft/sec from my Mossy Shockwave.
Umm. . . because it won't do what the 5.56 will. Or better put, it will do what the 5.56 (with properly selected loads) won't. What it will do is pass through walls like there is nothing there. In an apartment or condo that is not a, "good thing;" in fact, it could safely be called a "bad thing." Based in this article I have been purchasing some 40gr 5.56.
I don't live in the Roach hives, but in a brick veneer house that has brick on the outside with sheathing under that then 2X4 framing with backed insulation and the drywall. It is almost a foot thick out wall. Don't thin a slug will have much oomph after hitting that wall. With the Aguila I can vary what is shot. First shot in #7.5 just to ward them off. Then If that does do any good next up is the Buckshot #7 and #4 Buck. If they continue to be determined after that then the slugs. With the minisells I can load nine in the Mossy.

I remember what my Sergeant Commandant in ROTC said about the M16 and the5.56 round. He had just served a tour in Vietnam. He said the 5.56 round was the most useless round ever devised for use in jungle warfare. It was to light and to high a velocity. When it hit foliage in heavy jungle it just flew off or disintegrated. The jungle patrols preferred the M-14, M3A1 grease gun or even the AK47 for the effective use in close jungle combat.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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TrueTexan wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 2:49 pm I remember what my Sergeant Commandant in ROTC said about the M16 and the5.56 round. He had just served a tour in Vietnam. He said the 5.56 round was the most useless round ever devised for use in jungle warfare. It was to light and to high a velocity. When it hit foliage in heavy jungle it just flew off or disintegrated. The jungle patrols preferred the M-14, M3A1 grease gun or even the AK47 for the effective use in close jungle combat.
I do get what you are saying; however, there are features that are desirable in a dense housing environment. My father also stated a preference for the M3A1 grease gun, but he was clearing towns and villages. His house boy carried his issued rifle for him (Korea). He has some pictures of his house boy with the M1 and it really is almost as tall as the kid was. Yes, this was well after the retreat. His war included the classic story of an officer showing up, asking who was in charge and the other survivors pointing at him and saying "he's regular army, we're draftees" which instantly got him his sergeant stripes. At the same time, I have only seen his pictures, I do suspect that him, at 19, with a grease gun in one hand and a machete in the other would have been able to inspire fear.

Clearing towns and villages, or advancing through dense jungle, is different that home defense. He once mentioned the worst "fight" involved fighting with a shovel; he is still here, I assume it worked. Again, very different than home defense. I would never extrapolate that to say that a shovel is the go-to thing for home defense.
"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matt. 25:40

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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The article is well-thought out and well-written. It's interesting that magazine limits seem far more effective than "assault weapon" bans. Of course, a blackjack or brass knuckles is CLEARLY a weapon used for assault.

Still, in a state like NJ, which already has a 15 round magazine limit, I find it hard to believe that dropping the limit to 10 rounds will make ANY significant difference at all.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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YankeeTarheel wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 4:59 pm The article is well-thought out and well-written. It's interesting that magazine limits seem far more effective than "assault weapon" bans. Of course, a blackjack or brass knuckles is CLEARLY a weapon used for assault.

Still, in a state like NJ, which already has a 15 round magazine limit, I find it hard to believe that dropping the limit to 10 rounds will make ANY significant difference at all.
Thanks for steering us back on course, and yes, I can see magazine limits sooner than flat out bans. I suspect that it is hard to ban the AR because of the number, and popularity, of 80% kits and jigs.
"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matt. 25:40

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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TrueTexan wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:04 pm Any law passed will just be a feel good effort to pacify the liberal gun control crowd.
Yeah - the push to revive a federal AWB shows how focused on useless feel good measures so much of the gun control movement is. Everyday handgun homicides don't stop when news coverage and activist attention wanes, but the actual rarity of large semiauto rifle mass shootings makes it hard to stay focused for a movement that only really cares about those types of shootings. Most anti-gun people can't name mass shootings from the last few years that have 8 or fewer dead victims, like Rancho Tehama, Fiamma Inc., Tres Piedras, etc., and these only get perhaps a day or two of backpage news coverage. From the beginning of 2012 to Parkland, the eight mass shootings committed with semiauto rifles resulting in 9 or more dead victims - the ones that get all the gun control focus - have had 211 victims, out of about 58,800 gun homicides during that time. In other words, large mass shootings committed with rifles represent just 0.36% of the gun homicides in that period.

This gets at what really disgusts me most about the gun control movement's obsession with "assault weapons" and large mass shootings: out of those 211 victims, only 16 were black. Put another way, the last 6 years of highly-publicized AR-15 mass shootings have had fewer black victims than were killed just yesterday in normal everyday gun crimes. And the day before that, and the day before that, and so on... but we don't see pictures of those victims, usually adolescents and young men, or hear about how most were killed with low-capacity pocket handguns. Their families and friends, who also usually live in dangerous areas, get token treatment in protests and news coverage. When people with connections to those communities - like Killer Mike - talk about nuanced views of gun ownership and self defense, they are shouted down. Anti-gun advocates imply that people of color in high-crime areas should just call (and always trust) the police - just like the AWB obsession, another clear example of how suburban white privilege drives the gun control movement.
Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

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YankeeTarheel wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 4:59 pm The article is well-thought out and well-written. It's interesting that magazine limits seem far more effective than "assault weapon" bans. Of course, a blackjack or brass knuckles is CLEARLY a weapon used for assault.

Still, in a state like NJ, which already has a 15 round magazine limit, I find it hard to believe that dropping the limit to 10 rounds will make ANY significant difference at all.
I was surprised too when I read it - he actually looks at research, asks some experts and knows a little about guns. The writer is German Lopez
I have written for Vox since it launched in 2014, with a focus on drugs, guns, criminal justice, race, and LGBTQ issues. Previously, I worked at CityBeat, a local newspaper in Cincinnati, covering politics and policy at the local and state level
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

22
The Parkland shooter only used 10 round magazines in his high capacity death ray machine so I'm not sure who's feeding the high capacity magazine language to the kids.

My issue with banning high capacity magazines is the same with banning ARs or other guns. It unduly disadvantages the law-abiding while doing nothing to reduce the criminal use of them. California has had a high capacity magazine ban since 1999. Amazingly, it failed to stop the San Bernardino terrorists in 2015. Similarly, California's assault weapon ban (bullet button loophole notwithstanding) did not stop them from acquiring standard configuration ARs.

Re: "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem"

24
In July the US Secret service released a document ways to prevent school shootings. From the brief, the key considerations are on are:
Image

sorry about bringing it in as an image, the document is password protected.

Weapons access is only mentioned as a bullet under the main text on step 5 while School Culture is a complete step.

In the full document it is clear that the Secret Service consider Depression, Despair, and Bullying to be much more important than any weapons related issues.

Here is the summary of the key findings from the full document:
Overview of Safe School Initiative Findings
The findings of the Safe School Initiative suggest that there are productive actions
that educators, law enforcement officials, and others can pursue in response to the
problem of targeted school violence. Specifically, Initiative findings suggest that
these officials may wish to consider focusing their efforts to formulate strategies for
preventing these attacks in two principal areas:
• developing the capacity to pick up on and evaluate available or knowable
information that might indicate that there is a risk of a targeted school attack;
and,
• employing the results of these risk evaluations or "threat assessments" in
developing strategies to prevent potential school attacks from occurring.
Support for these suggestions is found in 10 key findings of the Safe School Initiative
study. These findings are as follows:
• Incidents of targeted violence at school rarely were sudden, impulsive acts.
• Prior to most incidents, other people knew about the attacker’s idea and/or
plan to attack.
• Most attackers did not threaten their targets directly prior to advancing the
attack.
• There is no accurate or useful "profile" of students who engaged in targeted
school violence.13
• Most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused
others concern or indicated a need for help.
• Most attackers had difficulty coping with significant losses or personal
failures. Moreover, many had considered or attempted suicide.
• Many attackers felt bullied, persecuted, or injured by others prior to the
attack.
• Most attackers had access to and had used weapons prior to the attack.
• In many cases, other students were involved in some capacity.
• Despite prompt law enforcement responses, most shooting incidents were
stopped by means other than law enforcement intervention.
"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matt. 25:40

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