Worldwide gun control disscussion

[MKSheppard]

A uesful thought experiment is would anyone support the outlawing of guns, but the legalising of carrying up to three grenades?

Grenades are actually legal in the US.

To all the nay sayers - I now have a frag grenade

To those of you familiar with my efforts, I wanted to find out if I would be able to build a fully-functional anti-personnel hand grenade. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by folks saying that there was no way the ATF would approve the construction of this explosive destructive device. I even went so far as to document the proposed building of the grenade. That thread was locked and my documentation moved to another forum.

But, thanks to an anonymous benefactor that ponied up the money for the tax stamp and a long wait, my Form 1 for an XM-67A1 fragmentation hand grenade has been approved.

I will post a scan of the approved form 1 as soon as I get it in my hands.

ETA: I won't be discussing the technical aspects of this project. This is just more of a gloating "I told you so" type thread. I'll end up posting pictures of the finished product when I'm done with it.

Link 2

Cost breakdown:

Tax Stamp $200 (This step included a number of letters back and forth with ATF, and coordination with both the explosives and NFA branch to show that I wouldn't be in violation of any laws.)

Fuze ~$25 (if you can find one- some are classed with UN numbers that make them explosives regulated on their own, though there have been some manufactured as "articles pyrotechnic" and exempted from you needing an FEL to get one), or if you are incredibly stupid OR very confident, reload your own.

Proper filler ~$20 (which I store separately from the grenade, or I would need to meet federal storage requirements and need an FEL), in this case EC Blank Powder as was used in WWII MkII Defensive Grenades (the "pineapple" grenade)

NFA marking engraving $25

Make a mold out of a trainer or dummy and cast your own body $10

So...$285+/-.

ETA I need to give props where it is due, Wingnut116ACW inspired me to do this build. He was the first guy I know of that did I form 1 for a frag.

Meme pic, just because

[madd0ct0r]

Shep, I am lost for words.

[Borgholio]

I would like to bring up a critical flaw in the 2nd Amendment that makes me support removing it from the Constitution, or at least revising it heavily. The 2nd Amendment was a product of it's time, and that time has long since past.

In 1789, the United States did not have a standing army. Most people were wary of standing armies due to the British occupation and felt that militias (citizen armies) were the way to go. As such, the 2nd Amendment was put into place to ensure that the government would not have the right to disarm the citizen armies in an attempt to gain power over them. The people would (in theory) rise up and put the government back in it's place. Well that's all fine and dandy, because back then it was possible to do so. Any professional army would have single-shot muskets or early rifles, flintlock pistols, and canons. Civilians would have much the same kind of gear (including canons which would be stored in community armories). So the idea of a citizen militia standing up against a hostile army (foreign or domestic) was not without merit.

<SNIP>

This is JV anti-gun whackery at its finest.

1.) If there is any message to be drawn from modern warfare since WWII, its that most weapons maintained for nation state warfare are inappropriate or down right counter productive when used in non-nation state warfare. This is a combiation of not being able to identify force concentrations that justify the cost of the weapons used and that most states are not willing to create the collateral damage such weapons caused couped with the effect that collateral damage has on enemy resistance.

2.) If there is a foreign invader inside the continental US, its safe to assume our standing military has already been defeated or at least severly degraded. If we still want to resist at that point for whatever reason, irregular forces are what we will have to do it with.

3.) In a civil war, most of the US military war machine will not work. Weapons like the F-22 have parts made in all lower 48 states. An Aegis weapons system needs near 24/7 technical and part support. Our military bases are spread throughout the US and the support needed from them is very interconnected and thus vunerable. Our military is operating on a technolgy level that requires an economy operating near uninterupted and on the highest level. It will move for a bit on inertia and depleting ready spares, and somewhat less through cannibalization, but it there is any major disruption of the delicate high tech industrial and operational support base a good portion of our arsenal will be useless. Nuclear wars last days if not hours. Non nuclear nation state conflicts weeks, if not days. Insurgencies? years, if not decades. Our military is not designed to fight that sort effort in a country anywhere near the scale of the US, and thats without considering the complications of fighting an insurgency HERE vice in Anywerehelsistan.

4.) Name me a civil war where the military remained 100% loyal to the government side. Even in places like Libya and Syria the military, which was the private reserve of a despot with zero limits on its use and specifically recruited from select demographics, had major defections and mutinies. Or they just holed up in their barracks to see which way the wind blows as in Libya. Now apply this to the army of a democracy made up of a pretty accurate cross section of the populous (that includes the rebellion portion) and is required by oath to disobey illegal orders. One that, not being used to acting as a brutal oppressive police force over its own people, isn't going to be to hot on fighting a local insurgencey. Yeah, its not looking good as far as having your high order conventional military function well against its own populous. As a military officer myself, of all the historical reasons for the government to wage war on its own people I can think of very few relative to the scenarios possible where I would in good concious do anything but ingore such orders or even actively resist them. This is a very good thing for our democracy.

Of course we can probably both think of scenarios where the issue at had will keep the military more coherent than not, but then the intent of the 2nd is to protect the people from any government oppression scenario not just the pet ones we like to come up with. If we are talking about one where even one percent of the popuation is onboard for thats three plus million people. Good luck with that.

You basically just agreed with my entire post. Welcome to the whack club.

I already pointed out that the only viable tactics that citizen milita could use are irregular (guerilla / terrorist), and I never stated that the military would back an unlawful coup by a potential dictator-in-chief. My point was in fact that since it's so highly unlikely that our standing army would support such a thing, the need for a heavily armed citizen militia to do the same thing is redundant and needless.

[Channel72]

^
Also, why are we optimizing for the hilariously unlikely scenario where a civilian militia will actually be the only available option to save the Union? When political order has deteriorated to that level, who even knows what sort of political entity will emerge once a hypothetically victorious civilian militia fends off the oppressors via asymmetrical warfare?

To me this is like writing a computer program that has built-in subroutines designed to keep things running when the computer is on fire. It's completely silly, and is addressing the problem at the entirely wrong level.

Look, can we just admit that at this point the only reason for the 2nd Amendment is (1) personal safety and (2) because shooting things is awesome. It's basically a legacy Amendment designed to protect a fledgling Union from potential power-grabs from a standing army.

[Wild Zontargs]

Some counterpoints from Alyrium's proposals

2. No collapsible stocks on civilian guns. That way, said Sig MCX is harder to conceal in a large coat. A telescoping section in order to provide size-adjustment so you can brace against the shoulder comfortably would be fine, but nothing fully collapsible or removable.

3. Limit magazine size. Yeah, criminals can get around this (black markets etc), but a spree shooter is operating from their arsenal, or their grandfathers arsenal, and likely wont know the first thing about accessing the black market. It is not like they have signs and newspaper ads. This means shooters have to reload more frequently, which will reduce their body count, and increase logistics costs for them. It evens the playing field with police etc who might just have a pistol at close range.

5. No Gun Zones. Any secure area (many of these are already covered, but lets list them). Government buildings (post-offices, courts), transit terminals (Air, bus, train), bars (because guns and booze dont mix, exception will be for non-drinking employees like bouncers who may carry a secured concealed weapon), schools (with the exception of accredited security personnel like campus cops), universities (because guns and booze, and guns and high-stress dont mix)

from a CCW-trainer and ex gun store owner [only the relevant points from a MUCH longer article]

Gun Free Zones

Gun Free Zones are hunting preserves for innocent people. Period.

Think about it. You are a violent, homicidal madman, looking to make a statement and hoping to go from disaffected loser to most famous person in the world. The best way to accomplish your goals is to kill a whole bunch of people. So where’s the best place to go shoot all these people? Obviously, it is someplace where nobody can shoot back.

In all honesty I have no respect for anybody who believes Gun Free Zones actually work. You are going to commit several hundred felonies, up to and including mass murder, and you are going to refrain because there is a sign? That No Guns Allowed sign is not a cross that wards off vampires. It is wishful thinking, and really pathetic wishful thinking at that.

The only people who obey No Guns signs are people who obey the law. People who obey the law aren’t going on rampages.

I testified before the Utah State Legislature about the University of Utah’s gun ban the day after the Trolley Square shooting in Salt Lake City. Another disaffected loser scumbag started shooting up this mall. He killed several innocent people before he was engaged by an off duty police officer who just happened to be there shopping. The off duty Ogden cop pinned down the shooter until two officers from the SLCPD came up from behind and killed the shooter. (turned out one of them was a customer of mine) I sent one of my employees down to Trolley Square to take a picture of the shopping center’s front doors. I then showed the picture to the legislators. One of the rules was NO GUNS ALLOWED.

The man that attacked the midnight showing of Batman didn’t attack just any theater. There were like ten to choose from. He didn’t attack the closest. It wasn’t about biggest or smallest. He attacked the one that was posted NO GUNS ALLOWED.

There were four mass killing attempts this week. Only one made the news because it helped the agreed upon media narrative.

Oregon. NOT a gun free zone. Shooter confronted by permit holder. Shooter commits suicide. Only a few casualties.
Texas. NOT a gun free zone. Shooter killed immediately by off duty cop. Only a few casualties.
Connecticut. GUN FREE ZONE. Shooters kills until the police arrive. Suicide. 26 dead.
China. GUN FREE COUNTRY. A guy with a KNIFE stabs 22 children.
And here is the nail in the coffin for Gun Free Zones. Over the last fifty years, with only one single exception (Gabby Giffords), every single mass shooting event with more than four casualties has taken place in a place where guns were supposedly not allowed.




We should ban Assault Rifles! [This covers the collapsible stocks]

Define “assault rifle”…

Uh…

Yeah. That’s the problem. The term assault rifle gets bandied around a lot. Politically, the term is a loaded nonsense one that was created back during the Clinton years. It was one of those tricks where you name legislation something catchy, like PATRIOT Act. (another law rammed through while emotions were high and nobody was thinking, go figure).

To gun experts, an assault rifle is a very specific type of weapon which originated (for the most part) in the 1940s. It is a magazine fed, select fire (meaning capable of full auto), intermediate cartridge (as in, actually not that powerful, but I’ll come back to that later) infantry weapon.

The thing is, real assault rifles in the US have been heavily regulated since before they were invented. The thing that the media and politicians like to refer to as assault rifles is basically a catch all term for any gun which looks scary.

I had somebody get all mad at me for pointing this out, because they said that the term had entered common usage. Okay… If you’re going to legislate it, DEFINE IT.

And then comes up that pesky problem. The US banned assault rifles once before for a decade and the law did absolutely nothing. I mean, it was totally, literally pointless. The special commission to study it said that it accomplished absolutely nothing. (except tick a bunch of Americans off, and as a result we bought a TON more guns) And the reason was that since assault weapon is a nonsense term, they just came up with a list of arbitrary features which made a gun into an assault weapon.

Problem was, none of these features actually made the gun functionally any different or somehow more lethal or better from any other run of the mill firearm. Most of the criteria were so silly that they became a huge joke to gun owners, except of course, for that part where many law abiding citizens accidentally became instant felons because one of their guns had some cosmetic feature which was now illegal.

One of the criteria was that it was semi-automatic. See above. Hard to ban the single most common and readily available type of gun in the world. (unless you believe in confiscation, but I’ll get to that). Then what if it takes a detachable magazine! That’s got to be an Evil Feature. And yes, we really did call the Evil Features. I’ll talk about magazines below, but once again, it is pretty hard to ban something that common unless you want to go on a confiscatory national suicide mission.

For example, flash hiders sound dangerous. Let’s say having a flash hider makes a gun an assault weapon. So flash hiders became an evil feature. Problem is flash hiders don’t do much. They screw onto the end of your muzzle and divert the flash off to the side instead of straight up so it isn’t as annoying when you shoot. It doesn’t actually hide the flash from anybody else. EVIL.

Barrel shrouds were listed. Barrel shrouds are basically useless, cosmetic pieces of metal that go over the barrel so you don’t accidentally touch it and burn your hand. But they became an instantaneous felony too. Collapsible stocks make it so you can adjust your rifle to different size shooters, that way a tall guy and his short wife can shoot the same gun. Nope. EVIL FEATURE!

It has been a running joke in the gun community ever since the ban passed. When Carolyn McCarthy was asked by a reporter what a barrel shroud was, she replied “I think it is the shoulder thing which goes up.” Oh good. I’m glad that thousands of law abiding Americans unwittingly committed felonies because they had a cosmetic piece of sheet metal on their barrel, which has no bearing whatsoever on crime, but could possibly be a shoulder thing which goes up.

Now are you starting to see why “assault weapons” is a pointless term? They aren’t functionally any more powerful or deadly than any normal gun. In fact the cartridges they normally fire are far less powerful than your average deer hunting rifle. Don’t worry though, because the same people who fling around the term assault weapons also think of scoped deer rifles as “high powered sniper guns”.

Basically, what you are thinking of as assault weapons aren’t special.

Now, the reason that semi-automatic, magazine fed, intermediate caliber rifles are the single most popular type of gun in America is because they are excellent for many uses, but I’m not talking about fun, or hunting, or sports, today I’m talking business. And in this case they are excellent for shooting bad people who are trying to hurt you, in order to make them stop trying to hurt you. These types of guns are superb for defending your home. Now some of you may think that’s extreme. That’s because everything you’ve learned about gun fights comes from TV. Just read the link where I expound on why.

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2007/ ... e-defense/

I had one individual tell me that these types of guns are designed to slaughter the maximum number of people possible as quickly as possible… Uh huh… Which is why every single police department in America uses them, because of all that slaughtering cops do daily. Cops use them for the same reason we do, they are handy, versatile, and can stop an attacker quickly in a variety of circumstances.

When I said “stop an attacker quickly” somebody on Twitter thought that he’d gotten me and said “Stop. That’s just a euphemism for kill!” Nope. I am perfectly happy if the attacker surrenders or passes out from blood loss too. Tactically and legally, all I care about is making them stop doing whatever it is that they are doing which caused me to shoot them to begin with.

The guns that many of you think of as assault rifle are common and popular because they are excellent for fighting, and I’ll talk about what my side really thinks about the 2nd Amendment below.




We should ban magazines over X number of shots!

I’ve seen this one pop up a lot. It sounds good to the ear and really satisfies that we’ve got to do something need. It sounds simple. Bad guys shoot a lot of people in a mass shooting. So if he has magazines that hold fewer rounds, ergo then he’ll not be able to shoot as many people.

Wrong. And I’ll break it down, first why my side wants more rounds in our gun, second why tactically it doesn’t really stop the problem, and third, why stopping them is a logistical impossibility.

First off, why do gun owners want magazines that hold more rounds? Because sometimes you miss. Because usually—contrary to the movies—you have to hit an opponent multiple times in order to make them stop. Because sometimes you may have multiple assailants. We don’t have more rounds in the magazine so we can shoot more, we have more rounds in the magazine so we are forced to manipulate our gun less if we have to shoot more.

The last assault weapons ban capped capacities at ten rounds. You quickly realize ten rounds sucks when you take a wound ballistics class like I have and go over case after case after case after case of enraged, drug addled, prison hardened, perpetrators who soaked up five, seven, nine, even fifteen bullets and still walked under their own power to the ambulance. That isn’t uncommon at all. Legally, you can shoot them until they cease to be a threat, and keep in mind that what normally causes a person to stop is loss of blood pressure, so I used to tell my students that anybody worth shooting once was worth shooting five or seven times. You shoot them until they leave you alone.

Also, you’re going to miss. It is going to happen. If you can shoot pretty little groups at the range, those groups are going to expand dramatically under the stress and adrenalin. The more you train, the better you will do, but you can still may miss, or the bad guy may end up hiding behind something which your bullets don’t penetrate. Nobody has ever survived a gunfight and then said afterwards, “Darn, I wish I hadn’t brought all that extra ammo.”

So having more rounds in the gun is a good thing for self-defense use.

Now tactically, let’s say a mass shooter is on a rampage in a school. Unless his brain has turned to mush and he’s a complete idiot, he’s not going to walk up right next to you while he reloads anyway. Unlike the CCW holder who gets attacked and has to defend himself in whatever crappy situation he finds himself in, the mass shooter is the aggressor. He’s picked the engagement range. They are cowards who are murdering running and hiding children, but don’t for a second make the mistake of thinking they are dumb. Many of these scumbags are actually very intelligent. They’re just broken and evil.

In the cases that I’m aware of where the shooter had guns that held fewer rounds they just positioned themselves back a bit while firing or they brought more guns, and simply switched guns and kept on shooting, and then reloaded before they moved to the next planned firing position. Unless you are a fumble fingered idiot, anybody who practices in front of a mirror a few dozen times can get to where they can insert a new magazine into a gun in a few seconds.

A good friend of mine (who happens to be a very reasonable democrat) was very hung up on this, sure that he would be able to take advantage of the time in which it took for the bad guy to reload his gun. That’s a bad assumption, and here’s yet another article that addresses that sort of misconception that I wrote several years ago which has sort of made the rounds on firearm’s forums. http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulle ... r-Box-quot So that’s awesome if it happens, but good luck with that.

Finally, let’s look at the logistical ramifications of another magazine ban. The AWB banned the production of all magazines over ten rounds except those marked for military or law enforcement use, and it was a felony to possess those.

Over the ten years of the ban, we never ran out. Not even close. Magazines are cheap and basic. Most of them are pieces of sheet metal with some wire. That’s it. Magazines are considered disposable so most gun people accumulate a ton of them. All it did was make magazines more expensive, ticked off law abiding citizens, and didn’t so much as inconvenience a single criminal.

Meanwhile, bad guys didn’t run out either. And if they did, like I said, they are cheap and basic, so you just get or make more. If you can cook meth, you can make a functioning magazine. My old company designed a rifle magazine once, and I’m no engineer. I paid a CAD guy, spent $20,000 and churned out several thousand 20 round Saiga .308 mags. This could’ve been done out of my garage.

Ten years. No difference. Meanwhile, we had bad guys turning up all the time committing crimes, and guess what was marked on the mags found in their guns? MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY. Because once again, if you’re already breaking a bunch of laws, they can only hang you once. Criminals simply don’t care.

Once the AWB timed out, because every politician involved looked at the mess which had been passed in the heat of the moment, the fact it did nothing, and the fact that every single one of them from a red state would lose their job if they voted for a new one, it expired and went away. Immediately every single gun person in America went out and bought a couple guns which had been banned and a bucket of new magazines, because nothing makes an American want to do something more than telling them they can’t. We’ve been stocking up ever since. If the last ban did literally nothing at all over a decade, and since then we’ve purchased another hundred million magazines since then, another ban will do even less. (except just make the law abiding that much angrier, and I’ll get to that below).

I bought $600 worth of magazines for my competition pistol this morning. I’ve already got a shelf full for my rifles. Gun and magazine sales skyrocket every time a democrat politician starts to vulture in on a tragedy. I don’t know if many of you realize this, but Barack Obama is personally responsible for more gun sales, and especially first time gun purchases, than anyone in history. When I owned my gun store, we had a picture of him on the wall and a caption beneath it which said SALESMAN OF THE YEAR.

So you can ban this stuff, but it won’t actually do anything to the crimes you want to stop. Unless you think you can confiscate them all, but I’ll talk about confiscation later.

One last thing to share about the magazine ban from the AWB, and this is something all gun people know, but most anti-gunners do not. When you put an artificial cap on a weapon, and tell us that we can only have a limited number of rounds in that weapon, we’re going to make sure they are the most potent rounds possible. Before the ban, everybody bought 9mms which held an average of 15 rounds. After the ban, if I can only have ten rounds, they’re going to be bigger, so we all started buying 10 shot .45s instead.

For the "well, confiscate the larger magazines / folding stocks, then" argument, refer to the full article in the link. TL;DR: you've got a conservative count of 800k rabid gun-nut owners who are willing to shoot it out with the 700k cops in the US when they come to get the guns and/or magazines, and that assumes that none of the latter are members of the former (hint: many are). Welcome to Afghanistan 2: American Boogaloo.

[Channel72]

I had one individual tell me that these types of guns are designed to slaughter the maximum number of people possible as quickly as possible… Uh huh… Which is why every single police department in America uses them, because of all that slaughtering cops do daily. Cops use them for the same reason we do, they are handy, versatile, and can stop an attacker quickly in a variety of circumstances.

Most police officers don't carry rifles. At least, most in the NYPD don't, which is the police department I'm most familiar with. Most carry glocks or other handguns. Yes, some elite units or officers at high-profile targets like Grand Central Station or whatever carry M4 Carbines - but the average cop just has a handgun.

So is this guy arguing that random civilian homeowners need to carry weapons with more accuracy and firepower than the police?

Let me ask you - would it be possible to easily pull off an Orlando-style massacre with a Glock-19?

[MKSheppard]

Most police officers don't carry rifles. At least, most in the NYPD don't, which is the police department I'm most familiar with. Most carry glocks or other handguns. Yes, some elite units or officers at high-profile targets like Grand Central Station or whatever carry M4 Carbines - but the average cop just has a handgun.

Most cops in my area carry "patrol rifles", which have largely replaced the trunk shotgun in police cruisers.


While patrolling on Thursday, January 24, 2013, Officer Brian Newvahner stops to display his weapons that come standard in every Ohio University Police Vehicle. He points to his M-4 Patrol Rifle and shotgun they carry and are extensively trained with, so that they may be prepared for the worst.



Cops are chosing the ARMALYTE pattern rifle for the same reasons it's become the most popular rifle in America -- it's cheap, simple to operate, accurate, and reliable (enough).

[MKSheppard]

This is why a lot of gun people roll their eyes when the term "assault rifle" is mentioned.



Did this myself based upon a meme I saw elsewhere.

Top is a Wyndham Weaponry "Government Model" 20 inch rifle on the A2 pattern. It's basically as close to the M-16 as you can get in a semi automatic weapon.

Bottom is a Colt MT6601 HBAR rifle in "post-ban" configuration.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Gun Free Zones are hunting preserves for innocent people. Period.

Think about it. You are a violent, homicidal madman, looking to make a statement and hoping to go from disaffected loser to most famous person in the world. The best way to accomplish your goals is to kill a whole bunch of people. So where’s the best place to go shoot all these people? Obviously, it is someplace where nobody can shoot back.

In all honesty I have no respect for anybody who believes Gun Free Zones actually work. You are going to commit several hundred felonies, up to and including mass murder, and you are going to refrain because there is a sign? That No Guns Allowed sign is not a cross that wards off vampires. It is wishful thinking, and really pathetic wishful thinking at that.

The only people who obey No Guns signs are people who obey the law. People who obey the law aren’t going on rampages.<SNIP REST>

Problem: This is strawman if why gun free zones are a good idea. They wont stop a spree shooter. Not even other armed people stop spree shooters, because most of the time the other armed people retreat rather than fire back. Plus, in many of these areas, they are crowded. Someone who "fights back" is likely to hit bystanders, and when the police do show up, they have a hard time figuring who the hostile shooter is.

Also, many of those areas listed have armed security anyway.

The reason is two-fold.

1) Threat ID. Say we are at a university campus in a state that still prohibits firearms. If someone is armed, they are ipso facto a threat. We can lock down the campus. Call police, get the big heavy fire-doors in the lecture halls closed, graduate students can shelter inside their offices surrounded by brick, large heavy desks etc. If firearms are allowed, someone walking around with a gun is Tuesday. Even with concealed carry, they are often not THAT concealed. This is more important in secure areas.

2) De-escalation. The overwhelming majority of shootings are not caused by spree shooters. The largest plurality of murder types are basically arguments that get escalated to murder. Most people are law-abiding, but if they get pissed off fights can happen and if a fight happens and someone has a gun someone can easily be shot. Research has also shown repeatedly that the presence of a gun all by itself tends to escalate the conflict. If you dont allow weapons in areas where arguments or other disputes are likely to occur (high school seniors on campus, high-stakes grade disputes on college campuses, drunk people etc) the people involved in them are not armed, they are less likely to escalate the conflict to violence, and are thus less likely to escalate from a fist to the face to a bullet in the face.

If someone is mad enough to go and get their gun from their apartment (or wherever), they have enough time to cool down and maybe not be mad enough to kill.

I have to run, so I will deal with magazine size in a bit.

[Formless]

Aren't full metal jacket rounds illegal for civilian use pretty everywhere in the western world though?

...

Why would you think that? FMJ ammo is extremely basic (if modern) technology, and naked lead actually does more damage on impact than an FMJ bullet. People who know a lot about guns actually tend to get confused by the fact that a movie named itself "Full Metal Jacket" to sound badass-- hollowpoints are badass, FMJ is for the range. I mean, sure, it'll make a hole, and criminals often do use them because they're cheap, but it makes a long and narrow hole. The Hague convention actually bans the use of hollowpoints and soft point bullets from being used in war in an antipersonnel role (as well as any other design that expands, explodes, fragments or contains poison). Hunting laws actually require them in most places, because they ensure a quick and humane death for the animal.

Of course, I don't know the laws in most countries, but I'm sure that in most places where you can get a gun you can get FMJ ammo. Military surplus might be prohibited in some countries, though, because of caliber restrictions. You also can't get your hands on steel core bullets even in most of the US because those are made for armor penetration.

[MKSheppard]

Joun_Lord; Maryland DNR regulations for rifle hunting state:

• Rifles used for deer and bear hunting must use ammunition developing a muzzle energy of at least 1,200 foot pounds

• It is unlawful to hunt with an automatic firearm capable of firing a series of shots with one continuous pull of the trigger

• Firearms used for deer and bear hunting may not have an ammunition clip loaded with more than 8 cartridges or bullets. If a clip has the capacity to hold more than 8 rounds, the clip does not have to be physically blocked, but no more than 8 cartridges or bullets may be loaded.

• It is only lawful to hunt with ammunition of soft point (expanding) construction. All military, full metal jacketed, incendiary or tracer bullets are prohibited.

Essentially, the 1200 ft lbs (1626 J) cutoff means you can hunt with the following rifle rounds in Maryland:

5.56x45 (.223) 1,753 J (Colt Match Ammo)
7.62x39 (AK-47) -- 2,108 J (Wolf HP ammo)

But it eliminates BEST KALASHINKOV:

5.45x39 (AK-74) 1,556 J (Wolf HP Ammo)



But some people have hunted deer successfully in other states with 5.45 where the regulations aren't as strict.

(though rarely will anyone have large ones to go hunting for the simple fact a large 30 round magazine makes shooting prone a bitch)

More like the local Fish cops will mess their shit up for being a poacher (you're assumed to be a poacher if you have certain things here in Maryland, like loaded blackpowder weapons in a vehicle etc)

[Highlord Laan]

I had one individual tell me that these types of guns are designed to slaughter the maximum number of people possible as quickly as possible… Uh huh… Which is why every single police department in America uses them, because of all that slaughtering cops do daily. Cops use them for the same reason we do, they are handy, versatile, and can stop an attacker quickly in a variety of circumstances.

Most police officers don't carry rifles. At least, most in the NYPD don't, which is the police department I'm most familiar with. Most carry glocks or other handguns. Yes, some elite units or officers at high-profile targets like Grand Central Station or whatever carry M4 Carbines - but the average cop just has a handgun.

So is this guy arguing that random civilian homeowners need to carry weapons with more accuracy and firepower than the police?

Let me ask you - would it be possible to easily pull off an Orlando-style massacre with a Glock-19?

Yes. Just cover the door and carry enough double-stack magazines to feed one pistol, or, since the attacker intended to die anyway, blow all available cash on multiple pistols and go for New York Reloads.

But some people have hunted deer successfully in other states with 5.45 where the regulations aren't as strict.

While 5.45 and 5.56 are good enough to hunt deer with, I and many others really, really dislike it. It's far too easy to not hit the target dead perfect and cause a quick kill. I won't tell someone how to shoot, but I just feel that .223 is too light for deer. I prefer .308 or larger, and personally use my .45-70, both because it's just fun to shoot and because it's practically a guaranteed kill. It also forces me to get closer, and therefore safer. Only once did I see some fuck take a deer at 200 yards with his scoped .308, and it pissed everyone off.

[Wild Zontargs]

Pulling responses to these points from TFA linked above:

1) Threat ID. Say we are at a university campus in a state that still prohibits firearms. If someone is armed, they are ipso facto a threat. We can lock down the campus. Call police, get the big heavy fire-doors in the lecture halls closed, graduate students can shelter inside their offices surrounded by brick, large heavy desks etc. If firearms are allowed, someone walking around with a gun is Tuesday. Even with concealed carry, they are often not THAT concealed. This is more important in secure areas.

Armed Teachers

So now that there is a new tragedy the president wants to have a “national conversation on guns”. Here’s the thing. Until this national conversation is willing to entertain allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons, then it isn’t a conversation at all, it is a lecture.

Now when I say teachers carrying concealed weapons on Facebook I immediately get a bunch of emotional freak out responses. You can’t mandate teachers be armed! Guns in every classroom! Emotional response! Blood in the streets!

No. Hear me out. The single best way to respond to a mass shooter is with an immediate, violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble. Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over again.

Police are awesome. I love working with cops. However any honest cop will tell you that when seconds count they are only minutes away. After Colombine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for overwhelming force before going in. Now usually as soon as you have two officers on scene you go in to confront the shooter (often one in rural areas or if help is going to take another minute, because there are a lot of very sound tactical reasons for using two, mostly because your success/survival rates jump dramatically when you put two guys through a door at once. The shooter’s brain takes a moment to decide between targets). The reason they go fast is because they know that every second counts. The longer the shooter has to operate, the more innocents die.

However, cops can’t be everywhere. There are at best only a couple hundred thousand on duty at any given time patrolling the entire country. Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range. We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is far worse. They simply can’t teleport. So in some cases that means the bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible things with nobody effectively fighting back.

So if we can’t have cops there, what can we do?

The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.

The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already. Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve as your immediate violent response. Best case scenario, they engage and stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction, and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more children.

But teachers aren’t as trained as police officers! True, yet totally irrelevant. The teacher doesn’t need to be a SWAT cop or Navy SEAL. They need to be speed bumps.

But this leads to the inevitable shrieking and straw man arguments about guns in the classroom, and then the pacifistic minded who simply can’t comprehend themselves being mandated to carry a gun, or those that believe teachers are all too incompetent and can’t be trusted. Let me address both at one time.

Don’t make it mandatory. In my experience, the only people who are worth a darn with a gun are the ones who wish to take responsibility and carry a gun. Make it voluntary. It is rather simple. Just make it so that your state’s concealed weapons laws trump the Federal Gun Free School Zones act. All that means is that teachers who voluntarily decide to get a concealed weapons permit are capable of carrying their guns at work. Easy. Simple. Cheap. Available now.

Then they’ll say that this is impossible, and give me all sorts of terrible worst case scenarios about all of the horrors that will happen with a gun in the classroom… No problem, because this has happened before. In fact, my state laws allow for somebody with a concealed weapons permit to carry a gun in a school right now. Yes. Utah has armed teachers. We have for several years now.

When I was a CCW instructor, I decided that I wanted more teachers with skin in the game, so I started a program where I would teach anybody who worked at a school for free. No charge. Zip. They still had to pay the state for their background check and fingerprints, but all the instruction was free. I wanted more armed teachers in my state.

I personally taught several hundred teachers. I quickly discovered that pretty much every single school in my state had at least one competent, capable, smart, willing individual. Some schools had more. I had one high school where the principal, three teachers, and a janitor showed up for class. They had just had an event where there had been a threat against the school and their resource officer had turned up AWOL. This had been a wake up call for this principal that they were on their own, and he had taken it upon himself to talk to his teachers to find the willing and capable. Good for them.

After Virginia Tech, I started teaching college students for free as well. They were 21 year old adults who could pass a background check. Why should they have to be defenseless? None of these students ever needed to stop a mass shooting, but I’m happy to say that a couple of rapists and muggers weren’t so lucky, so I consider my time well spent.

Over the course of a couple years I taught well over $20,000 worth of free CCW classes. I met hundreds and hundreds of teachers, students, and staff. All of them were responsible adults who understood that they were stuck in target rich environments filled with defenseless innocents. Whether they liked it or not, they were the first line of defense. It was the least I could do.

Permit holders are not cops. The mistake many people make is that they think permit holders are supposed to be cops or junior danger rangers. Not at all. Their only responsibility is simple. If someone is threatening to cause them or a third person serious bodily harm, and that someone has the ability, opportunity, and is acting in a manner which suggest they are a legitimate threat, then that permit holder is allowed to use lethal force against them.

As of today the state legislatures of Texas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma are looking at revamping their existing laws so that there can be legal guns in school. For those that are worried these teachers will be unprepared, I’m sure there would be no lack of instructors in those states who’d be willing to teach them for free.

For everyone, if you are sincere in your wish to protect our children, I would suggest you call your state representative today and demand that they allow concealed carry in schools.

TL;DR: Larry says more armed civvies at a mass shooting = fewer dead civvies

2) De-escalation. The overwhelming majority of shootings are not caused by spree shooters. The largest plurality of murder types are basically arguments that get escalated to murder. Most people are law-abiding, but if they get pissed off fights can happen and if a fight happens and someone has a gun someone can easily be shot. Research has also shown repeatedly that the presence of a gun all by itself tends to escalate the conflict. If you dont allow weapons in areas where arguments or other disputes are likely to occur (high school seniors on campus, high-stakes grade disputes on college campuses, drunk people etc) the people involved in them are not armed, they are less likely to escalate the conflict to violence, and are thus less likely to escalate from a fist to the face to a bullet in the face.

If someone is mad enough to go and get their gun from their apartment (or wherever), they have enough time to cool down and maybe not be mad enough to kill.

Well we should just ban ALL guns then! You only need them to murder people!

It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually banning effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more to stop crime than to cause crime.

I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time when a gun is produced in a legal self-defense situation no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop.

Clint Smith once said if you look like food, you will be eaten. Criminals are looking for prey. They are looking for easy victims. If they wanted to work hard for a living they’d get a job. So when you pull a gun, you are no longer prey, you are work, so they are going to go find somebody else to pick on.

So many defensive gun uses never get tracked as such. From personal experience, I have pulled a gun exactly one time in my entire life. I was legally justified and the bad guy stopped, put his gun away, and left. (15 years later the same son of a bitch would end up murdering a local sheriff’s deputy). My defensive gun use was never recorded anywhere as far as I know. My wife has pulled a gun twice in her life. Once on somebody who was acting very rapey who suddenly found a better place to be when she stuck a Ruger in his face, and again many years later on a German Shepherd which was attacking my one year old son. (amazingly enough a dog can recognize a 9mm coming out of a fanny pack and run for its life, go figure) No police report at all on the second one, and I don’t believe the first one ever turned up as any sort of defensive use statistic, all because no shots were fired.

So how often are guns actually used in self-defense in America? http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

On the high side the estimate runs around 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year, which dwarfs our approximately 16,000 homicides in any recent year, only 10k of which are with guns. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm Of those with guns, only a couple hundred are with rifles. So basically, the guns that the anti-gunners are the most spun up about only account for a tiny fraction of all our murders.

But let’s not go with the high estimate. Let’s go with some smaller ones instead. Let’s use the far more conservative 800,000 number which is arrived at in multiple studies. That still dwarfs the number of illegal shootings. Heck, let’s even run with the number once put out by the people who want to ban guns, the Brady Center, which was still around 108,000, which still is an awesome ratio of good vs. bad.

So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. Or to put it another way, the Brady Center hates guns so much that they are totally cool with the population of a decent sized city getting raped and murdered every year as collateral damage in order to get what they want.


Doesn’t matter. I don’t like them. We should ban them and take them all away like a civilized country.

Well, I suppose if your need to do something overrides all reason and logic, then by all means let’s ban guns.

Australia had a mass shooting and instituted a massive gun ban and confiscation (a program which would not work here, which I’ll get to, but let’s run with it anyway.). As was pointed out to me on Facebook, they haven’t had any mass shootings since. However, they fail to realize that they didn’t really have any mass shootings before either. You need to keep in mind that mass shooting are horrific headline grabbing statistical anomalies. You are far more likely to get your head caved in by a local thug while he’s trying to steal your wallet, and that probably won’t even make the evening news.

And violent crime is up in Australia. A cursory Google search will show articles about the increase in violent crime and theft, but then other articles pooh-pooing these stats as being insignificant and totally not related to the guns.

So then we’ve got England, where they reacted swiftly after a mass shooting, banned and confiscated guns, and their violent crime has since skyrocketed. Their stats are far worse than Australia, and they are now one of the more dangerous countries to live in the EU. Once again, cursory Google search will show articles with the stats, and other articles saying that those rises like totally have nothing to do with regular folks no longer being able to defend themselves… Sensing a trend yet?

And then we’ve got South Africa, which instituted some really hard core gun bans and some extremely strict controls, and their crime is now so high that it is basically either no longer tracked or simply not countable. But obviously, the totally unbiased news says that has absolutely nothing to do with people no longer being able to legally defend themselves.

Then you’ve got countries like Norway, with extremely strict gun control. Their gun control laws are simply incomprehensible to half of Americans. Not only that, they are an ethnically and socially homogenous, tiny population, well off country, without our gang violence or drug problems. Their gun control laws are draconian by our standards. They make Chicago look like Boise. Surely that level of gun control will stop school shootings! Except of course for 2011 when a maniac killed 77 and injured 242 people, a body count which is absurdly high compared to anything which has happened America.

Because once again, repeat it with me, criminals simply do not give a crap.

That mass killer used a gun and homemade explosives. Make guns harder to get, and explosives become the weapon of choice. Please do keep in mind that the largest and most advanced military coalition in human history was basically stymied for a decade by a small group using high school level chemistry and the Afghani equivalent to Radio Shack.

The biggest mass killings in US history have used bombs (like Bath, Michigan), fire (like Happyland Nightclub) or airliners. There is no law you can pass, nothing you can say or do, which will make some not be evil.

TL;DR: Larry says more armed civvies during attempted crimes = fewer dead civvies and fewer completed crimes.

[Joun_Lord]

TL;DR: you've got a conservative count of 800k rabid gun-nut owners who are willing to shoot it out with the 700k cops in the US when they come to get the guns and/or magazines, and that assumes that none of the latter are members of the former (hint: many are). Welcome to Afghanistan 2: American Boogaloo.

That is not a very good reason to not ban gun and clipazines, because people will be violent because of it. Just because people will resist something violently doesn't automatically mean doing the thing is a bad thing or not worth doing. Something like the Civil War proves that.

Now that doesn't mean the ban is a good thing either, clearly I don't feel that way. I feel like banning assault clips and shoulder things that go up and bayonet lugs is more along the lines of Prohibition. Something people want to do for noble reasons......some people atleast but ultimately will do more harm then good.

Joun_Lord; Maryland DNR regulations for rifle hunting state.....

I know its different in every state, probably different county by county. I'm relatively positive hunting deer with a .223 is legal in WV but I'm not 100 percent sure on that. Been forever since I've went hunting.

http://www.wvdnr.gov/hunting/Regs1516/Deer_Buck.pdf

More like the local Fish cops will mess their shit up for being a poacher (you're assumed to be a poacher if you have certain things here in Maryland, like loaded blackpowder weapons in a vehicle etc)

Another of those things that vary state by state. I don't think there is a magazine size restriction on WV but I know for certain there are in other states.

I have heard horror stories of game wardens and DNR cops being tools, harassing people for having certain "tactical" non-fudd weapons like AR-15s and AKs or giving people shit for wearing modern military style camo that is not consider "proper" hunting camo (I hate Real Tree camo with a passion) but have never had any problems myself with them back when I was hunting and more recently hiking while camo'd or armed.

Funny enough the only reason I carried a gun going hiking was not for bears, snakes, wild dogs or bobcats, nope I carried for wild turkeys. Evil fuckers. The only animal I've ever been attacked by in the woods was a swarm of wild turkeys.

[Imperial528]

Aren't full metal jacket rounds illegal for civilian use pretty everywhere in the western world though?

...

Why would you think that? FMJ ammo is extremely basic (if modern) technology, and naked lead actually does more damage on impact than an FMJ bullet. People who know a lot about guns actually tend to get confused by the fact that a movie named itself "Full Metal Jacket" to sound badass-- hollowpoints are badass, FMJ is for the range. I mean, sure, it'll make a hole, and criminals often do use them because they're cheap, but it makes a long and narrow hole. The Hague convention actually bans the use of hollowpoints and soft point bullets from being used in war in an antipersonnel role (as well as any other design that expands, explodes, fragments or contains poison). Hunting laws actually require them in most places, because they ensure a quick and humane death for the animal.

Of course, I don't know the laws in most countries, but I'm sure that in most places where you can get a gun you can get FMJ ammo. Military surplus might be prohibited in some countries, though, because of caliber restrictions. You also can't get your hands on steel core bullets even in most of the US because those are made for armor penetration.

I know that police departments often use soft or even hollow-point rounds in handguns because it prevents overpenetration of the target and reduces ricochet off of obstacles hit by missed shots, in addition to (depending on the bullet) generally higher stopping-power.

I would not be surprised if there are locales where FMJ is banned due to the overpenetration/ricochet risk, especially in urban/suburban environments.

[Formless]

No, in those situations the police use special frangible ammunition like Glaser Safety slugs. Whoever told you that hollow point ammo will not overpenetration in walls and barriers does not know much about hollow points. These tests show hollow point bullets of both jacketed lead and pure copper construction will pass through drywall, glass, wood, and more. All that happens is that, if the bullet is made of the normal jacketed lead construction, then the cavity will get clogged and it will actually behave exactly the same as an FMJ round!

Why is this? Because ammunition makers over the past 20+ years have been deliberately tweaking their designs to be "barrier blind." From the perspective of police, who actually carry hollowpoints as a rule and not only in specific situations, they occasionally need to shoot people who are behind glass, car doors, or wearing extra clothing that might have the same effect on the bullet's performance. So they want bullets that can do that and still have stopping power.

[Jaepheth]

Aren't full metal jacket rounds illegal for civilian use pretty everywhere in the western world though?

...

Why would you think that? FMJ ammo is extremely basic (if modern) technology, and naked lead actually does more damage on impact than an FMJ bullet. People who know a lot about guns actually tend to get confused by the fact that a movie named itself "Full Metal Jacket" to sound badass-- hollowpoints are badass, FMJ is for the range. I mean, sure, it'll make a hole, and criminals often do use them because they're cheap, but it makes a long and narrow hole. The Hague convention actually bans the use of hollowpoints and soft point bullets from being used in war in an antipersonnel role (as well as any other design that expands, explodes, fragments or contains poison). Hunting laws actually require them in most places, because they ensure a quick and humane death for the animal.

Of course, I don't know the laws in most countries, but I'm sure that in most places where you can get a gun you can get FMJ ammo. Military surplus might be prohibited in some countries, though, because of caliber restrictions. You also can't get your hands on steel core bullets even in most of the US because those are made for armor penetration.

I know that police departments often use soft or even hollow-point rounds in handguns because it prevents overpenetration of the target and reduces ricochet off of obstacles hit by missed shots, in addition to (depending on the bullet) generally higher stopping-power.

I would not be surprised if there are locales where FMJ is banned due to the overpenetration/ricochet risk, especially in urban/suburban environments.

It's not banned, but has very limited use.

Around here FMJ is not allowed on firing ranges for rifles. The two reasons I've heard are that it erodes the backstop faster, and is a higher ricochet risk (which the insurance doesn't like).

I bought a case of military surplus 7.62x54R back in college and still have most of it because there's pretty much no place to shoot it anywhere near the city. Pretty much only get to use it when on private land outside city limits.

[Beowulf]

It's not banned, but has very limited use.

Around here FMJ is not allowed on firing ranges for rifles. The two reasons I've heard are that it erodes the backstop faster, and is a higher ricochet risk (which the insurance doesn't like).

I bought a case of military surplus 7.62x54R back in college and still have most of it because there's pretty much no place to shoot it anywhere near the city. Pretty much only get to use it when on private land outside city limits.

That's bizarre, because nearly every rifle requires a jacketed projectile, and the cheapest is FMJ. Now, some FMJ has steel cores, and others are steel jacketed, both of which I can imagine may cause problems, but straight up lead and gilding metal projectiles are what's expected to be fired. Mil-surp 7.62x54R is probably steel jacketed. And the easy test is to use a magnet.

[madd0ct0r]

Pulling responses to these points from TFA linked above:

1) Threat ID. Say we are at a university campus in a state that still prohibits firearms. If someone is armed, they are ipso facto a threat. We can lock down the campus. Call police, get the big heavy fire-doors in the lecture halls closed, graduate students can shelter inside their offices surrounded by brick, large heavy desks etc. If firearms are allowed, someone walking around with a gun is Tuesday. Even with concealed carry, they are often not THAT concealed. This is more important in secure areas.

Armed Teachers

No. Hear me out. The single best way to respond to a mass shooter is with an immediate, violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble. Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over again. (Citation needed)
. After Colombine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for overwhelming force before going in. Now usually as soon as you have two officers on scene you go in to confront (citation needed)

The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. (Source needed)

After Virginia Tech, I started teaching college students for free as well. They were 21 year old adults who could pass a background check. Why should they have to be defenseless? None of these students ever needed to stop a mass shooting, but I’m happy to say that a couple of rapists and muggers weren’t so lucky, so I consider my time well spent.(citation needed)
.

TL;DR: Larry says more armed civvies at a mass shooting = fewer dead civvies

2) De-escalation. The overwhelming majority of shootings are not caused by spree shooters. The largest plurality of murder types are basically arguments that get escalated to murder. Most people are law-abiding, but if they get pissed off fights can happen and if a fight happens and someone has a gun someone can easily be shot. Research has also shown repeatedly that the presence of a gun all by itself tends to escalate the conflict. If you dont allow weapons in areas where arguments or other disputes are likely to occur (high school seniors on campus, high-stakes grade disputes on college campuses, drunk people etc) the people involved in them are not armed, they are less likely to escalate the conflict to violence, and are thus less likely to escalate from a fist to the face to a bullet in the face.

If someone is mad enough to go and get their gun from their apartment (or wherever), they have enough time to cool down and maybe not be mad enough to kill.

Well we should just ban ALL guns then! You only need them to murder people!

It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually banning effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more to stop crime than to cause crime.

I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time when a gun is produced in a legal self-defense situation no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop. (I wonder how many situations are defused without the need for a gun?)

So how often are guns actually used in self-defense in America? http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

On the high side the estimate runs around 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year, which dwarfs our approximately 16,000 homicides in any recent year, only 10k of which are with guns. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

But let’s not go with the high estimate. Let’s go with some smaller ones instead. Let’s use the far more conservative 800,000 number which is arrived at in multiple studies. That still dwarfs the number of illegal shootings. Heck, let’s even run with the number once put out by the people who want to ban guns, the Brady Center, which was still around 108,000, which still is an awesome ratio of good vs. bad.

So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. (Assuming all those uses required the use of a gun)
l.

TL;DR: Larry says more armed civvies during attempted crimes = fewer dead civvies and fewer completed crimes.

Snipped the self aggradisment and the windmill tilting. Left a few comments im (brackets)

[K. A. Pital]

My solution to the issue: most advanced nations in the world don't have a gun problem. Just get out of America. Many have an almost-nonexistent violent crime rate - so just move there if afraid of a break-in, or move to a place where you have no bears if you need a rifle to protect yourself from one. But if you can't, well... I guess then you have to learn to love guns, eh.

[Broomstick]

The "move elsewhere" line is bullshit.

I have actually looked into emigrating to another country. The only one I have any chance of moving to at all is Canada - and they will not take my spouse so doing so means abandoning him since he can not follow.

Immigration is NOT easy in today's world. Not for anyone.

Most people are not able to move permanently to another country. If you can, bravo, but that means you're luckier than most people in the world. As a solution to gun violence it's a horseshit recommendation for the vast majority of people. Unless they want to live as criminals, which is how illegal aliens are treated everywhere. Not sure what the overall benefit is there.

[Elheru Aran]

The "move elsewhere" line is bullshit.

Perhaps Stas is making an argument from privilege?

I have actually looked into emigrating to another country. The only one I have any chance of moving to at all is Canada - and they will not take my spouse so doing so means abandoning him since he can not follow.

Immigration is NOT easy in today's world. Not for anyone.

You've probably said elsewhere but I'm curious why that would be the case. Sounds out of character for the Canadians.

My wife is a Costa Rican citizen (dual citizenship; she was born there), so as long as she keeps that current, legally she's able to move back there anytime she wants, along with our daughter and I. Strangely, in Costa Rica, she and I wouldn't legally be considered married (hence the name on her national ID is her maiden name). It would basically be a matter of saving up enough money for the interval between moving there and settling down, winding up any real assets we have here (we own a house, so we would have to either rent it out or sell it) and making arrangements for the transportation of any property we want to move. Not cheap, especially the latter.

[Thanas]

The point about Norway or other nations is a bit disingenious considering that there was only one such shooting and the occurrence of mass shootings is way lower.

Fact is that nations with strict gun control - nearly all of Europe - have much less people shot (much less people shot by the police too). Whether that is due to social factors or not is up for debate, but not the less number of people shot.

[Broomstick]

I have actually looked into emigrating to another country. The only one I have any chance of moving to at all is Canada - and they will not take my spouse so doing so means abandoning him since he can not follow.

Immigration is NOT easy in today's world. Not for anyone.

You've probably said elsewhere but I'm curious why that would be the case. Sounds out of character for the Canadians.

It is quite common for nations to ban the immigration of people with birth defects. My spouse was born with spina bifida.

It is quite common for nations to put age limits on immigrants - they want young people, not elderly. Another few years I'll be too old myself even if technically I still qualify right now.

Canada prefers you know some French - while he knows some Spanish he knows absolutely no French. Well, he knows escargot are snails, that's about it.

Of course, elite rare skills and/or great wealth can get you entry almost anywhere - alas, neither of us have those. At one point my spouse did have working papers for Britain and might have become a citizen there but that was 30 years ago. I think he's aged-out there, too, and a lot more people have the skills he had then so they're no longer rare. It's also possible there have been rule changes or that while he'd be allowed to live and work there he might never be allowed to be a citizen due to his medical problems, I'm not up on all the details of that.

So.... if we were fabulously wealthy of course the Canadians would allow us to buy property there and live there long term, but get authorization to work? Me, maybe, but not him. And they'd never let him on the national health system in Canada (that was explicitly said when I inquired) so we'd basically either have to buy US insurance for him and ship him back for any needed treatment or pay out of pocket. Nor could he qualify for citizenship so at any time the Canadian government could simply chuck him back across the border. Which is a bummer what with being married and all and wanting to stay together.

[Wild Zontargs]

(Citation needed)

Citations available in TFA linked upthread. Check the author's comments if not found in the article proper.