MKSheppard wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:It's fair to say that while AR-15s are technically not 'high powered' in the sense of high muzzle energy per bullet, they are unusually dangerous rifles due to their high rate and volume of fire and the ease of carrying great masses of ammunition.
You realize you're making the case for banning tons of fudd sporterized hunting rifles due to their ease of being rapidly reloaded from stripper clips, and the rapid rate of fire that a Mauser-type action allows?
https://youtu.be/haf9QURxO4E
Or by the way, this is being used to talk about restricting
lever action guns in Australia due to the controversy over the Adler A110 lever action shotgun over there.
Basically, the argument "mass shooters are a threat, and we should restrict guns to reduce that threat" extends to whatever guns are most deadly. Exactly why or how those guns are most deadly is irrelevant.
You can engage with that argument and defeat it on its merits, I think. But for the sake of not being a dishonest loony, one should
actually engage it, not laugh it off or fail to understand it.
TheFeniX wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:2) On the other hand, several high-profile mass shootings recently have involved nasty and highly dangerous rifles, enough to form a pattern, so we might want to at least consider if maybe they're too available.
The civilian AR-15 has been available for purchase since the 60s. It's recent popularity didn't just come out of a vacuum. So what happened?
Price dropped and availability went up. That said, remove it and what are mass killers left with? Multiple other guns that are functionally the same yet might cost a bit more. Fact is, the AR-15 is functionally the same as something like... [a boatload of other guns]...
You talk about the AR-15 like it's this magical weapon, way above the destructive capabilities of other firearms.
No,
no I do not.
I do describe them as "unusually dangerous rifles," but that is in the same sense that my uncle is an "unusually tall man." He's six feet five inches tall- significantly and noticeably taller than average, but not "OH MY GOD GIANTS WALK AMONG US" tall. And yet... he is unusually tall. Well above average. If I call him "unusually tall," it is not me panicking, thinking of him as a supernatural creature, or otherwise acting like some cartoonish idiot.
So please stop strawmanning and actually listen to what I am trying to say.
My point is this. AR-15s,
and numerous other models of firearms that can easily be used to shoot large crowds of people with an unusually high probability of killing many of them, are in some sense "more dangerous." Quite a few gun control advocates look at these "more dangerous" firearms. And they argue that these "more dangerous" or "more powerful" firearms should be restricted to reduce the risk of lone madmen shooting large crowds of people.
My point is simple: This argument at least
makes sense. It is not disingenuous, it is not dishonest, it is not unusually stupid. It may be factually wrong, but it deserves to be taken seriously, not just mocked and subjected to semantic nitpicking.
That is literally all I am saying here.
It's like, if someone comes up to me and says the world was created last Tuesday, I will tell him he's an idiot loony.
But if someone tells me the world cannot
really be four billion years old, because his thermodynamic calculations show that the Sun can't possibly have been burning for more than, oh, twenty million years, and the Earth must be younger than that... I will stop and politely explain to him why he is wrong. Because yes, he's wrong, he's ignorant of a fundamental fact about the universe, but intelligent people CAN make mistakes like that and deserve the courtesy of being actually corrected, rather than just mocked and ignored.
So at least stop and engage with the argument, and don't try to strawman it. When I get into gun control debates this happens a lot, because I keep trying to get
both sides to cut down the bullshit. For some reason, this causes the pro-gun people to assume I'm just another generic ignoramus who knows nothing about weapons but who wants to take away all their guns. And the pro-control people assume I'm just another generic gun-humper who can't understand basic arguments like "Guns. Kill. People. Death. Is. Bad."
It's tiresome. Because seriously, this isn't a golden mean thing, I honestly am pretty sure one side is largely right and the other is largely wrong. But can we at least not lie and misrepresent and bullshit at each other while talking about it?
You could possibly make the argument that lower mag capacities would lower the body count, but you can't even guarantee that because mass-killers, like criminals, seem to alter their methods based on what tools are available to supply them the largest body count. For Americans, this mean guns with hi-ammo capacity. All your government lets you have is a knife? Go stab a bunch of toddlers. Or maybe, and after just going to a 4th of July celebration and thinking "I hope some idiot doesn't run the barricade and kill a bunch of people because Houston drivers are D-U-M, DUM, dealing with the scary shit of someone just driving a truck through a crowd.
This fight isn't about the weapon or the method. It's about identifying the at risk people and doing something about them before they can go for a gun, knife, truck, bomb, whatever. Because just accepting the possibility of a lower body count by banning hi-capacity weapons is the chicken-shit way out of it.
Now see,
that is a serious argument addressing the issue on its merits- which was the
correct response to General Zod's original argument.
The comment that Zod's example of a "high powered" rifle was in fact
NOT a "high powered" rifle for purposes of technical discussion was, while legitimate, not a meaningful refutation of his argument. Which anyone who stopped to read it should have understood.
Channel72 wrote:Obviously, some people living in rural areas are complicit in illegal gun trafficking. Actually, "rural" isn't even a useful description here - it's more like
any region, sub-urban, rural or even urban, in a state with much more relaxed gun laws that ends up trafficking guns to larger metropolitan areas. Places like Indiana and Wisconsin, which service Chicago, and Pennsylvania and Georgia, which service New York/New Jersey.
Yes, it's unfair to the majority of law-abiding gun owners. Shrug, I guess? What's even more unfair is the
innocent bystanders who get caught in the crossfire, when criminals who benefit from illegal gun trafficking end up shooting at each other.
I don't think that federal gun bans are a sensible or appropriate response to this problem, though.
If the problem is
gun traffickers, as opposed to "people outside the big cities own lots of guns," then the solution is to crack down on gun trafficking. It really is not hard to come up with measures that would tend to drastically suppress gun-running, while not having much effect on the availability of guns to legitimate owners and buyers.
Saying "just ban the guns" is like responding to alligator attacks by draining the swamp. It's understandable, but it's also disproportionate,
even though alligator attacks are a big deal. There are other, better targeted measures that have better effects
without trampling on the rights and lifestyles of millions of law-abiding citizens.
