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>The only thing I think we can conclude about the incoherence of firearms legislation is that they have staunch and effective opposition from firearms advocates

>The only thing I think we can conclude about the incoherence of firearms legislation is that they have staunch and effective opposition from firearms advocates. I do not think it is at all valid to look at them and say "legislators don't know what an assault rifle is". Well, if we're calling AR-15s and centerfire semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines assault rifles, then we don't know what assault rifles are. The term has been in use since WW2 and refers to selective fire rifles with intermediate cartridges and detachable magazines. I'm not entirely sure what you mean about the original 1980s proposals - afaik the only major 1980s attempts at legislation occurred after a school shooting in California, had limited opposition in California, and was enacted into law. It included classifying rifles as assault weapons if they had detachable magazines plus at least one of other relatively features, such as pistol grips, barrel shrouds, folding/telescoping stocks, etc. Most of those features have limited to no impact on the ability of the rifle to be a deadly weapon. >(The AR-15 itself, of course, was designed by Eugene Stoner to be a standard-issue US military rifle.) The ArmaLite AR-15 designed for the military was a select fire rifle that ultimately became the M16. The trademark was sold to Colt. Colt later used that trademark in producing the semi-automatic civilian version. An AR-15 or AR-15 clone a civilian can buy is not the same AR-15 that Eugene Stoner designed. As best as I can tell, most legislators have no idea what assault weapons are, what assault rifles are, or much at all about guns in general. And this includes those on the conservative side. I'm pro gun control, if we can find a way to effectively do it, but if we're actually concerned about human life, assault weapons don't even make sense to be the focus. Over 60% of homicides committed with firearms are done with handguns. Rifles only make up about 4%. Mass shootings are scary, and make news, and are terrifying. But they're responsible for a tiny fraction of gun related homicides, and the focus on rifles (and particularly features that are more related to appearance than efficacy in being deadly weapons) screams to me that it is almost entirely a political play and less related to any real concern over the healthy and safety of those living in America.

partialrecall 7y ago
Incidentally, the National Firearms Act (1934) was originally meant to ban handguns. The current regulation on short barrel rifles and short barrel shotguns are vestigial remnants of this intent (if you ban handguns, it only makes sense to also ban somebody chopping up their shotgun to make it handgun-sized.)
tptacek 7y ago
Literally the one difference between the "official", Hitler-approved definition of "assault rifle" and an AR-15 is that the AR-15 doesn't support selective fire†. As, like, literally any time spent in gun and military nerd forums or "I was in combat ask me anything" AMAs will quickly inform you, the importance of more-than-semiautomatic fire in actual military operations is highly contested. Do I concede that the AR-15 is thus not an according-to-Hoyle assault rifle? Sure, but only Hoyle cares. The reason this debate exists at all is because of "assault weapons bans". But the semantic argument is, of course, circular: it matters if a weapon is an "assault weapon" because we might ban assault weapons, and a weapon is an "assault weapon" if we might ban it. To reasonably discuss them as they pertain to public policy --- which is what this subthread is doing --- you have to engage on the merits. The appeal to definitions is a smokescreen. † For the advanced Facebook version of this discussion, try making an argument about the legitimacy of binary triggers; is an AR-15 fitted with a binary trigger group an "assault rifle"? Well. Let me tell you something about fully automatic fire: it occurs only when you eject multiple rounds with a single depression of the trigger, and also, with a binary trigger, you have you depress the trigger a certain way to "select" rapid fire, which doesn't really count as "selection", so...
- partialrecall 7y ago
  > Literally the one difference between the "official", Hitler-approved definition of "assault rifle" and an AR-15 is that the AR-15 doesn't support selective fire. In case anybody isn't clear on what that means: one is a machine gun and the other is not.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I mean, sort of? If we're going this deep into the weeds on terminology, a machine gun is optimized for sustained fully automatic fire; in particular, it's heavier and doesn't become impossible to handle due to heat after prolonged firing. Automatic rifles are not generally machine guns. "Selective fire" is the gun nerd way of saying "capable of fully automatic fire".
    - 7y ago
kevas 7y ago
One of the interesting things too is the fact that in WW1 & WW2, we had a thing called a "Battle Rifle" and these were higher calibers, such as .30-06, .303, .30-30, etc... These "Battle Rifles" were able to reach out to thousand plus yards and still be effective for a regular grunt. These rifles and their calibers were meant for killing, taking body parts off, creating gaping wound channels. I don't remember exactly when, yet sometime after WW2, the US Forces surveyed and found that they weren't engaging targets 800-1,000 yards out. Instead, they were engaging targets in the 50-300 range. The US military decided that they wanted to carry more ammunition and bring the engagement zone down from the 800-1k to the 250ish. This resulted in a smaller cartridge (.223/5.56). The strategy moved to taking the enemy combatant out of the fight by injuring them instead of killing them. This had a huge advantage in their eyes... rather than the main goal of killing, they wanted to injure. By injuring, it took them out of the fight, but it also took precious resources away from the enemy, which now has to care for their injured comrade. Why don't we hear anything about the larger calibers, which are meant to be truly destructive? I loved your write up, cthalupa and i find it a shame that people, when discussing topics such as this, don't even know about the items they're arguing about.
- tptacek 7y ago
  This "5.56 is designed to injure not to kill" thing is another gun policy canard. What's true is that the Army concluded that the ability to carry more rounds was more important than the ability to hit at a long distance, and that in a military tactical situation, any non-trivial rifle injury is sufficient to neutralize. It is absolutely not in reality the case that an AR-15 is a less lethal weapon than a handgun. And, of course, injuries from rifle rounds are not the same as injuries from handguns, as this trauma doctor ably explains: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating-the-victims-from-parkland-should-change-the-debate-on-guns/553937/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-... Unfortunately, that's not the only narrative you can get on rifle injuries from civilian trauma doctors; there's also the famous (and amazing, excellent) narrative from the doctor that coordinated an ER receiving mass numbers of patients in Las Vegas after the Mandalay shooting.
- kevinmchugh 7y ago

partialrecall 7y ago

Incidentally, the National Firearms Act (1934) was originally meant to ban handguns. The current regulation on short barrel rifles and short barrel shotguns are vestigial remnants of this intent (if you ban handguns, it only makes sense to also ban somebody chopping up their shotgun to make it handgun-sized.)

tptacek 7y ago

Literally the one difference between the "official", Hitler-approved definition of "assault rifle" and an AR-15 is that the AR-15 doesn't support selective fire†. As, like, literally any time spent in gun and military nerd forums or "I was in combat ask me anything" AMAs will quickly inform you, the importance of more-than-semiautomatic fire in actual military operations is highly contested. Do I concede that the AR-15 is thus not an according-to-Hoyle assault rifle? Sure, but only Hoyle cares. The reason this debate exists at all is because of "assault weapons bans". But the semantic argument is, of course, circular: it matters if a weapon is an "assault weapon" because we might ban assault weapons, and a weapon is an "assault weapon" if we might ban it. To reasonably discuss them as they pertain to public policy --- which is what this subthread is doing --- you have to engage on the merits. The appeal to definitions is a smokescreen. † For the advanced Facebook version of this discussion, try making an argument about the legitimacy of binary triggers; is an AR-15 fitted with a binary trigger group an "assault rifle"? Well. Let me tell you something about fully automatic fire: it occurs only when you eject multiple rounds with a single depression of the trigger, and also, with a binary trigger, you have you depress the trigger a certain way to "select" rapid fire, which doesn't really count as "selection", so...

partialrecall 7y ago
> Literally the one difference between the "official", Hitler-approved definition of "assault rifle" and an AR-15 is that the AR-15 doesn't support selective fire. In case anybody isn't clear on what that means: one is a machine gun and the other is not.
- tptacek 7y ago
  I mean, sort of? If we're going this deep into the weeds on terminology, a machine gun is optimized for sustained fully automatic fire; in particular, it's heavier and doesn't become impossible to handle due to heat after prolonged firing. Automatic rifles are not generally machine guns. "Selective fire" is the gun nerd way of saying "capable of fully automatic fire".
  - 7y ago

kevas 7y ago

One of the interesting things too is the fact that in WW1 & WW2, we had a thing called a "Battle Rifle" and these were higher calibers, such as .30-06, .303, .30-30, etc... These "Battle Rifles" were able to reach out to thousand plus yards and still be effective for a regular grunt. These rifles and their calibers were meant for killing, taking body parts off, creating gaping wound channels. I don't remember exactly when, yet sometime after WW2, the US Forces surveyed and found that they weren't engaging targets 800-1,000 yards out. Instead, they were engaging targets in the 50-300 range. The US military decided that they wanted to carry more ammunition and bring the engagement zone down from the 800-1k to the 250ish. This resulted in a smaller cartridge (.223/5.56). The strategy moved to taking the enemy combatant out of the fight by injuring them instead of killing them. This had a huge advantage in their eyes... rather than the main goal of killing, they wanted to injure. By injuring, it took them out of the fight, but it also took precious resources away from the enemy, which now has to care for their injured comrade. Why don't we hear anything about the larger calibers, which are meant to be truly destructive? I loved your write up, cthalupa and i find it a shame that people, when discussing topics such as this, don't even know about the items they're arguing about.

tptacek 7y ago
This "5.56 is designed to injure not to kill" thing is another gun policy canard. What's true is that the Army concluded that the ability to carry more rounds was more important than the ability to hit at a long distance, and that in a military tactical situation, any non-trivial rifle injury is sufficient to neutralize. It is absolutely not in reality the case that an AR-15 is a less lethal weapon than a handgun. And, of course, injuries from rifle rounds are not the same as injuries from handguns, as this trauma doctor ably explains: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating-the-victims-from-parkland-should-change-the-debate-on-guns/553937/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-... Unfortunately, that's not the only narrative you can get on rifle injuries from civilian trauma doctors; there's also the famous (and amazing, excellent) narrative from the doctor that coordinated an ER receiving mass numbers of patients in Las Vegas after the Mandalay shooting.
kevinmchugh 7y ago