3 ms·

>This is totally disingenuous. You want an exact legal definition of what an assault rifle is, and then you'll just come up with a gun that does the thing that

>This is totally disingenuous. You want an exact legal definition of what an assault rifle is, and then you'll just come up with a gun that does the thing that the government is trying to prohibit in a slightly different way. This is how laws work. If you want to put limits on what weapons are legal, you have to specify what those limits are. I mean, you could give broad intent-based discretion to the ATF, but that means that people don't know what is and isn't allowed and have to go through lots of uncertainty and risk when it comes to owning guns. Of course people want to make the laws clear, specific, and consistent. You wouldn't want a "don't let people get high" intent-based law when it comes to drugs. It would mean that you wouldn't know whether the antihistamines in your medicine cabinet will get you into legal trouble. Complicating things is the bona-fide economic pressure to do things within the limits set. Guns that are better for mass murder are often better for legitimate purposes such as sport, hunting, shooting for fun, or home defense.

cameldrv 9y ago
Well, there are a lot of reasons people buy guns. Men like to play with powerful, dangerous things, c.f. chainsaws, sports cars, etc. All well and good, count me among them. One indicator of a powerful dangerous thing is it being used by the military. Some of the very richest people in the world own things like decommissioned fighter jets. All of this is good fun as long as we're just blasting flowerpots at the range. We live in a confusing world, where killing, especially mass murder is prohibited, and we will give you our harshest punishment for it, unless it's in the context of a war, in which case we will give you a medal and call you a hero for it. All of this is to say that people want to own the closest thing to a military assault rifle that they can. You saw in the 1994 assault weapons ban, and in the various California assault weapons laws, that entrepreneurs will come up with ingenious ways to obey the letter of the law while circumventing the spirit of it. I do support an assault weapons ban. I don't like the idea of a bureaucrat deciding whether something falls under the intent of a law, but I don't see a great alternative given all the water under the bridge on workarounds for gun laws. The intent should be this: discourage/restrict guns that are not relatively better for sporting or defensive purposes, but are relatively better for offensive, murderous purposes. Magazine capacity limits for sure, and maybe restrictions on detachable box magazines should be considered. In a mass shooting scenario, where one person is armed, and everyone else is unarmed, we want to give the unarmed as many chances as possible, and for as long a duration as possible, to disarm the shooter. Any sort of mod that enables the weapon to shoot more than about 1-2 rounds per second is obviously unnecessary for sporting purposes and dangerous for a mass shooter with a high capacity mag. Pistol grips I'm neutral on, although I don't see a sporting purpose, and they do certainly help with control of a weapon in combat. Intermediate caliber cartridges don't seem to have a sporting purpose, and they are good for mass shootings. I'd be inclined to restrict them, perhaps allowing a pistol grip or intermediate caliber but not both in one weapon.

cameldrv 9y ago

Well, there are a lot of reasons people buy guns. Men like to play with powerful, dangerous things, c.f. chainsaws, sports cars, etc. All well and good, count me among them. One indicator of a powerful dangerous thing is it being used by the military. Some of the very richest people in the world own things like decommissioned fighter jets. All of this is good fun as long as we're just blasting flowerpots at the range. We live in a confusing world, where killing, especially mass murder is prohibited, and we will give you our harshest punishment for it, unless it's in the context of a war, in which case we will give you a medal and call you a hero for it. All of this is to say that people want to own the closest thing to a military assault rifle that they can. You saw in the 1994 assault weapons ban, and in the various California assault weapons laws, that entrepreneurs will come up with ingenious ways to obey the letter of the law while circumventing the spirit of it. I do support an assault weapons ban. I don't like the idea of a bureaucrat deciding whether something falls under the intent of a law, but I don't see a great alternative given all the water under the bridge on workarounds for gun laws. The intent should be this: discourage/restrict guns that are not relatively better for sporting or defensive purposes, but are relatively better for offensive, murderous purposes. Magazine capacity limits for sure, and maybe restrictions on detachable box magazines should be considered. In a mass shooting scenario, where one person is armed, and everyone else is unarmed, we want to give the unarmed as many chances as possible, and for as long a duration as possible, to disarm the shooter. Any sort of mod that enables the weapon to shoot more than about 1-2 rounds per second is obviously unnecessary for sporting purposes and dangerous for a mass shooter with a high capacity mag. Pistol grips I'm neutral on, although I don't see a sporting purpose, and they do certainly help with control of a weapon in combat. Intermediate caliber cartridges don't seem to have a sporting purpose, and they are good for mass shootings. I'd be inclined to restrict them, perhaps allowing a pistol grip or intermediate caliber but not both in one weapon.