4 ms·

I hate to be pedantic in discussions like this one, and please know that I certainly don't mean any offense beyond correcting a technical error that perhaps nob

by bmelton 11y ago

I hate to be pedantic in discussions like this one, and please know that I certainly don't mean any offense beyond correcting a technical error that perhaps nobody really cares about. "Just like the debate over automatic weapons is a canard, since they're very rarely used in murders" There is no debate surrounding automatic weapons, or, at least there isn't one on the national stage. Automatic firearms are dramatically different from semi-automatic firearms, and it's been a (specifically expressed) political maneuver to confuse/conflate the two. The number of deaths attributable to automatic firearms is effectively nil, as they've been highly controlled since the days of Al Capone and his ilk. When people are referring to "automatic firearms" in today's political arena, they almost always mean to say "semi-automatic firearms", which most closely maps to the sorts of weapon used in the Newtown and Aurora shootings. It's a subtle, but important distinction, but as those who are trying to conflate the terms generally intend to do so to confer additional scariness to semi-automatic firearms that are simply not there.

vacri 11y ago
It's fine to be pedantic against someone who is claiming the issues are not what they seem. Even encouragable :) You are correct of course, regarding auto vs semi-auto, but I mean that the anti-gun lobby makes a lot of noise over 'big scary rifles' when it's actually handguns doing the most damage. I'm for gun regulation myself, but even if do rifles get heavily regulated in the US, it'd do very little to the stats. It'd actually work against the anti-gun lobby, because the pro-gun lobby would be able to point to the relatively unchanged stats.
- bmelton 11y ago
  Agreed. That said, thus far, handgun regulations are the most easily struck down under Heller & McDonald. The sea change of going after "assault weapons" has less to do with mass shootings and more to do with the Brady group's adaptation to the court's relative intractability on handgun regulations. As ownership (keep) and carriage (bear) of arms has been upheld by the Supreme Court as individual rights, the shift has been more and more towards "feature tests" that are defined as such that the assault weapons fail them. California has had luck simply increasing the feature list such that almost every firearm is effectively banned, but I suspect that won't last.
  - hga 11y ago
    Not so much the Brady group (which of course joined in) as Josh Sugarmann's Violence Policy Center, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sugarmann#Campaigning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sugarmann#Campaigning and especially this quote: Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons. Where of course self-defense is not "a practical use", e.g for bog standard "plastic gun" "assault weapons" such as the Glock. That's from an "assault weapons" political campaign he had ready for the first screaming headline abuse of one, conveniently in the following year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_schoolyard_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_schoolyard_shooting
    - bmelton 11y ago
      Correct. I've gotten used to dumbing it down to Brady (because very few people have heard of VPC) that I forgot that it was unnecessary for this audience. Thanks for the correction.
      - hga 11y ago
        You're very welcome. And, yeah, well, I suppose we might be the two most "expert" on this subject, with my having joined the gun politics battle in the early 1970s (sic), and you having worked at the ATF (!!!, I hope that was a youthful indiscretion! :-). I'm just particularly ... sensitive? in that the Brady groups are now really fading (see especially their $$$ lawsuit loss WRT to the Colorado movie theater shooting), and Bloomberg replacing them as the big threat. Hmmm, haven't heard much about the VPC since I and many other research minions helped Clayton Cramer destroy their "Concealed Carry Killers" paper.
        bmelton 11y ago
        "I'm just particularly ... sensitive?" attuned is, I think, the word you're looking for. As for my dalliance at the ATF, it was, frankly, about three years worth of time in which I had not yet developed much of a political conscience. Actually working for the government has helped shape much of my opinions of the government, and in most ways, for the poorer. Politics aside, I would have a very hard time convincing myself to work for any of the agencies again, if only because I can't bear to watch tens of millions of dollars evaporate when someone's opinion changes, or an election year happens, or the government decides that, despite having gotten to year 4 of the project with all milestones succeeding, they've neglected to budget for years 5+.
roel_v 11y ago
"The number of deaths attributable to automatic firearms is effectively nil, as they've been highly controlled since the days of Al Capone and his ilk." Well, since we're going to be pedantic, this should really say "the number of deaths attributable to legally owned automatic firearms", since there is quite a bit of criminal violence (as in, violence to support criminal activities, like drive bys, rip deals resulting in shootings etc) and deaths involving automatic weapons (although it's quite hard to find statistics on this, to my surprise). MAC 10's and Mini Uzis are rather popular for that sort of shenanigans, because of their small size (thus easily concealable). An AR15 style weapon (which is usually the type of weapon people talk about when the discussion is about 'assault rifles') is very impractical for such a thing, as per your point.
- bmelton 11y ago
  If true, thank you for the clarification. > there is quite a bit of criminal violence and deaths involving automatic weapons Is that true? I don't know that it is. Because of the inflated value of automatic firearms, I would simply have assumed that the cost to benefit ratio just wasn't there for automatic weapons. I suppose the two arms you mentioned may have easily replaceable sears or something to that effect, but every time I've seen an incident in the news involving a Mac 10 or the like, it's been a semi-automatic version. One incident I remember specifically from when I was working at the ATF had been recently (e.g., within a few months) from when it was initially purchased to when it was used in a crime, but its initial purchase was a straw purchase from an FFL, and was decidedly not full auto. That said, I've only anecdata at this point as I no longer have the ability to scan the ATF databases.
- LyndsySimon 11y ago
  > MAC 10's and Mini Uzis are rather popular for that sort of shenanigans, because of their small size (thus easily concealable). Since you have provided no citation, I can only judge this statement by my own anecdotal experience. As someone who is closely involved with "gun culture", I'm aware of only a handful of cases where automatic weapons were confiscated in the US - and of no cases they were used in a murder in my adult lifetime.
sudioStudio64 11y ago
I have friends who have class 3 licences and they say that the strictures in place on automatic weapons are why you don't see then used in crimes very often. They are heavily regulated and tracked. As to your point, I don't fault the antigun crowd for using any tactics that work. The progun crowd is certainly guilty of he same thing.
- bmelton 11y ago
  Post 1986 at least, the ATF not only (heavily) regulates the sale and manufacture of any firearm capable of automatic fire, but they also approve all manufacturing plans to ensure that firearms on the market today are not easily convertible to full automatic. If you get your hands on an old enough SKS, for example, a full auto conversion is dead simple (though obviously illegal without the $200 tax stamp), but for that very reason, those types of arms tend to get snatched up by the legitimate collectors and spirited away into collection vaults while their value climbs. I'd guess it as unlikely that there are fully automatic firearms in use in crime of any significant amount, but that's only a guess, and not really based on anything other than my gut. As far as political strategies go, I agree, in theory. As with all deeply held sentiments, in practice, it's harder to live and let live to those in opposition than just trying really hard... a fault I share with many.
  - sudioStudio64 11y ago
    Gosh, there was a time in Texas when you could get ex soviet weapons like the SKS for 90$. Granted that was thirty years ago... You are very evenhanded about this subject. I would like to thank you for it.
    - bmelton 11y ago
      Funny, because re-reading my own posts feels unabashedly biased. I tend to freely acknowledge my biases, but I've learned long ago that there's no "right" political answer. I can tell you that my opinion is very well educated, and predicated on (literally) years of research that begins with Madison's original 19 amendments, but as it's a matter of opinion, I can't prove that my opinion is more right than the other guy's, and I try to keep that in mind as much as I'm able. Danke, for appreciating the effort I'm making at least.

by bmelton 11y ago

vacri 11y ago

It's fine to be pedantic against someone who is claiming the issues are not what they seem. Even encouragable :) You are correct of course, regarding auto vs semi-auto, but I mean that the anti-gun lobby makes a lot of noise over 'big scary rifles' when it's actually handguns doing the most damage. I'm for gun regulation myself, but even if do rifles get heavily regulated in the US, it'd do very little to the stats. It'd actually work against the anti-gun lobby, because the pro-gun lobby would be able to point to the relatively unchanged stats.

bmelton 11y ago
Agreed. That said, thus far, handgun regulations are the most easily struck down under Heller & McDonald. The sea change of going after "assault weapons" has less to do with mass shootings and more to do with the Brady group's adaptation to the court's relative intractability on handgun regulations. As ownership (keep) and carriage (bear) of arms has been upheld by the Supreme Court as individual rights, the shift has been more and more towards "feature tests" that are defined as such that the assault weapons fail them. California has had luck simply increasing the feature list such that almost every firearm is effectively banned, but I suspect that won't last.
- hga 11y ago
  Not so much the Brady group (which of course joined in) as Josh Sugarmann's Violence Policy Center, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sugarmann#Campaigning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sugarmann#Campaigning and especially this quote: Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons. Where of course self-defense is not "a practical use", e.g for bog standard "plastic gun" "assault weapons" such as the Glock. That's from an "assault weapons" political campaign he had ready for the first screaming headline abuse of one, conveniently in the following year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_schoolyard_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_schoolyard_shooting
  - bmelton 11y ago
    Correct. I've gotten used to dumbing it down to Brady (because very few people have heard of VPC) that I forgot that it was unnecessary for this audience. Thanks for the correction.
    - hga 11y ago
      You're very welcome. And, yeah, well, I suppose we might be the two most "expert" on this subject, with my having joined the gun politics battle in the early 1970s (sic), and you having worked at the ATF (!!!, I hope that was a youthful indiscretion! :-). I'm just particularly ... sensitive? in that the Brady groups are now really fading (see especially their $$$ lawsuit loss WRT to the Colorado movie theater shooting), and Bloomberg replacing them as the big threat. Hmmm, haven't heard much about the VPC since I and many other research minions helped Clayton Cramer destroy their "Concealed Carry Killers" paper.
      - bmelton 11y ago
        "I'm just particularly ... sensitive?" attuned is, I think, the word you're looking for. As for my dalliance at the ATF, it was, frankly, about three years worth of time in which I had not yet developed much of a political conscience. Actually working for the government has helped shape much of my opinions of the government, and in most ways, for the poorer. Politics aside, I would have a very hard time convincing myself to work for any of the agencies again, if only because I can't bear to watch tens of millions of dollars evaporate when someone's opinion changes, or an election year happens, or the government decides that, despite having gotten to year 4 of the project with all milestones succeeding, they've neglected to budget for years 5+.

roel_v 11y ago

"The number of deaths attributable to automatic firearms is effectively nil, as they've been highly controlled since the days of Al Capone and his ilk." Well, since we're going to be pedantic, this should really say "the number of deaths attributable to legally owned automatic firearms", since there is quite a bit of criminal violence (as in, violence to support criminal activities, like drive bys, rip deals resulting in shootings etc) and deaths involving automatic weapons (although it's quite hard to find statistics on this, to my surprise). MAC 10's and Mini Uzis are rather popular for that sort of shenanigans, because of their small size (thus easily concealable). An AR15 style weapon (which is usually the type of weapon people talk about when the discussion is about 'assault rifles') is very impractical for such a thing, as per your point.

bmelton 11y ago
If true, thank you for the clarification. > there is quite a bit of criminal violence and deaths involving automatic weapons Is that true? I don't know that it is. Because of the inflated value of automatic firearms, I would simply have assumed that the cost to benefit ratio just wasn't there for automatic weapons. I suppose the two arms you mentioned may have easily replaceable sears or something to that effect, but every time I've seen an incident in the news involving a Mac 10 or the like, it's been a semi-automatic version. One incident I remember specifically from when I was working at the ATF had been recently (e.g., within a few months) from when it was initially purchased to when it was used in a crime, but its initial purchase was a straw purchase from an FFL, and was decidedly not full auto. That said, I've only anecdata at this point as I no longer have the ability to scan the ATF databases.
LyndsySimon 11y ago
> MAC 10's and Mini Uzis are rather popular for that sort of shenanigans, because of their small size (thus easily concealable). Since you have provided no citation, I can only judge this statement by my own anecdotal experience. As someone who is closely involved with "gun culture", I'm aware of only a handful of cases where automatic weapons were confiscated in the US - and of no cases they were used in a murder in my adult lifetime.

sudioStudio64 11y ago

I have friends who have class 3 licences and they say that the strictures in place on automatic weapons are why you don't see then used in crimes very often. They are heavily regulated and tracked. As to your point, I don't fault the antigun crowd for using any tactics that work. The progun crowd is certainly guilty of he same thing.

bmelton 11y ago
Post 1986 at least, the ATF not only (heavily) regulates the sale and manufacture of any firearm capable of automatic fire, but they also approve all manufacturing plans to ensure that firearms on the market today are not easily convertible to full automatic. If you get your hands on an old enough SKS, for example, a full auto conversion is dead simple (though obviously illegal without the $200 tax stamp), but for that very reason, those types of arms tend to get snatched up by the legitimate collectors and spirited away into collection vaults while their value climbs. I'd guess it as unlikely that there are fully automatic firearms in use in crime of any significant amount, but that's only a guess, and not really based on anything other than my gut. As far as political strategies go, I agree, in theory. As with all deeply held sentiments, in practice, it's harder to live and let live to those in opposition than just trying really hard... a fault I share with many.
- sudioStudio64 11y ago
  Gosh, there was a time in Texas when you could get ex soviet weapons like the SKS for 90$. Granted that was thirty years ago... You are very evenhanded about this subject. I would like to thank you for it.
  - bmelton 11y ago
    Funny, because re-reading my own posts feels unabashedly biased. I tend to freely acknowledge my biases, but I've learned long ago that there's no "right" political answer. I can tell you that my opinion is very well educated, and predicated on (literally) years of research that begins with Madison's original 19 amendments, but as it's a matter of opinion, I can't prove that my opinion is more right than the other guy's, and I try to keep that in mind as much as I'm able. Danke, for appreciating the effort I'm making at least.