Gun Control Anyone?

[Onlooker]

Re: Gun Control Anyone?

Now that you bring up alcohol, there is something to be compared between it and guns. Both have their uses, but its the misuse of both that leads to tragedy. Yet we know how banning alcohol in the US worked out. The criminals still had it. Organized crime grew because of it. Imagine what a gun ban would do for the illegal gun trade. And we think the war on drugs is out of control. Picture Mexico levels of violence.

Exactly. Why, oh, why can't some people really learn and understand the failure of prohibitions? It just doesn't work and has so many negative unintended consequences.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Gun Control Anyone?

Magazine size was irrelevant at Columbine since the response by police was virtually non-existent. They casually walked through the school shooting and throwing bombs. One of the best things to come out of Columbine was the understanding of the need to move quickly on the part of law enforcement. No doubt it saved lives at Sandy Hook.

Law Enforcement doctrine, at the time(and still in existence in many places), was for police first responders as well as with some SWAT units depending on training, was to cordon and contain.

Unfortunately, we've seen the rise of what are referred to as Active Shooters.

Offenders who will systematically attempt to execute everyone they can WITHIN a building/property....or even worse.....like in Mumbai, India......their are multiple offenders at multiple locations and they are mobile(not fixated on a location such as a school).

Previous doctrine of cordon and contain until help arrives was providing the offenders with the time and space to increase the carnage and facilitating a temporary slaughterhouse.

Current training amongst more progressive/aggressive law enforcement departments in dealing with an Active Shooter is for the first responders to go with what they've got to Find, Fix, Finish.

Find the offender by moving to contact, even if it means ignoring casualties along the way for followup responders to manage.

Fix the offender to a specific location and prevent/mitigate the risk of them moving and inflicting more casualties while awaiting for additional law enforcement response.

Finish the offender if rules of engagement and situation compels it.

That's the basic gist of it.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Gun Control Anyone?

But only because that looks to be a M1 carbine, which doesn't hold 30 rounds!

An M1 carbine is a handy little rifle that is easy to shoot and runs the entire range of applications from target shooting, hunting, personal defense, through law enforcement(historically) with the use of a glorified pistol round.

While I think it as/is far more common to see an M1 carbine with a 10/15 round magazine......many 30 round magazines were made for it.

And it came in a select fire(fully automatic) version as well called the M2.

For law enforcement, the AR15/M16/M4 carbine has replaced the role of the M1 carbine in recent decades.

And I guess the same could be said of civilian shooters as well.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: 6-guns in the Capital building ?

Effective weapons for self defense, for those with physical limitations:

Light weight.
Low recoil
Easy to sight/aim.
Easy to control.
Easy to load
Operable with minimal dexterity.
Ammunition can be stored separate from firearm.


Basically you have a light weight, semi automatic, box fed rifle.

The military did not develop the M-16 to be maximally effective in "killing" they had Napalm, 500lb bombs, 8" artillery etc to do the "killing".

The military developed the M-16 because it was accessible to the maximum number of troops with the least amount of training. {{ AND THEY ARE CHEAP, THANKS TAXPAYERS!! }}

Really, the AR is NOT the best, not even close - thanks America, for your support.

The AR15/M16 was also available in the same calibre as the rifle it replaced in the form of the M1 Garand/M14 in .308/7.62mm.

At that time(1950s/1960s) the .308/7.62mm AR-10 didn't gain much popularity, with only a few small export orders.

One reason why the US military went with the .223/5.56mm AR15/M16 combination was the volume of rounds a soldier could carry by weight. Armed with a .223/5.56mm chambered rifle compared with a .308/7.62mm rifle the former could carry approx 3 times as many rounds of ammunition by weight. Quantity over quality.

People will argue all over the internet(as well as between subject matter experts, military) about the strengths/weaknesses of each.

But what most fail to put into perspective, and what the general public is completely ignorant of, is the fact that modern infantry doctrine(say anything from World War II up until today) places the support weapons...things like man portable machine guns(M249SAW, M240B, GPMG, PK, etc) at the very center of both offensive and defensive operations.

Why? Because the numbers don't lie.....most of the killing(by small arms) on average across most conflicts is done by a squad/section's support weapons, NOT the individual rifle carried by the individual rifleman.

The individual rifleman's real job is as part of the "life support system" of the support weapons, because support weapons typically do most of the killing and winning.

Another coldly clinical part of the equation of warfighting is that wounding the enemy is often a better endstate than killing him. Not as a result of intentional behavior on the part of a soldier trying to wound rather than kill an enemy, but from the inherent ballistics of the ammunition used.

Using an intermediate round like .223/5.56mm combined with the ugly math of war means the bad guy is more likely to be wounded than killed outright compared with a full power round like .308/7.62mm. And dealing with a wounded soldier places far greater demands on transport and medical logistics as well as morale.

The object isn't to make the bad guys all die in a war, but to make their individual units combat ineffective.

A crazy but legitimate argument could be made that civilian AR15/M16/M4 semi automatic copies are exactly what civilians need to defend themselves, because while they are MORE than just capable of killing, the ugly science behind it supports the argument that the odds of an offender being wounded and "crime ineffective" instead of dead is higher than if a more powerful calibre was used.

The bizarre thing is that when it comes to hunting, depending on the game you are targeting, there may be minimum calibres required to reduce the risk of just wounding an animal and it suffering unnecessarily.

At least in some jurisdictions, we seem to care more about the suffering of wild animals than we do humans.

It's all quite strange really.

Ultimately, I think some of the useful(and useless) background information I provided is irrelevant(the useful stuff that is), because the gun control debate is NOT about common sense or genuine solutions to protect the 2nd Amendment's intended purpose of deterring tyranny such as safe/secure storage compelled by civil/criminal liability for negligence.

This gun control debate crisis is a distraction to sap the limited political energy from Americans.

If it's successful, they win....if it fails, they win.

[shiny!]

Re: Gun Control Anyone?

Exactly. Why, oh, why can't some people really learn and understand the failure of prohibitions? It just doesn't work and has so many negative unintended consequences.

Didn't Roosevelt say that in politics nothing happens by accident? Some "unintended consequences" are absolutely intended, just not overtly admitted.

If you're a politician and you want an unarmed civilian population, you can't just come out and say "We want you to give up your guns"- at least not in this country. You must first create a climate of "gun violence" so bad, so pervasive, that, with the collusion of the propaganda machine MSM, large numbers of citizens sheeple will demand gun control.

Enter the "War on Drugs". Drug prohibition is the leading cause of gang violence and consequently "gun violence". The people who want to put a stop to "gun violence" don't call for an end to drug prohibition, no. They call for gun control.

If that's not enought to get your real agenda passed, you step up the horror of "gun violence" by killing school children. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have enough sheeple screaming for gun control that you can achieve your original desire, which was to disarm the population.

[bart]

Re: 6-guns in the Capital building ?

Feinstein and her cronies are doing ther best to cover that "loophole". They are crafty and sneaky. The buried details will be key points of the legislation, those are the parts that will get no media coverage and will be buried in page xxx in small print.

If you look to England, you'll see that there is never "enough" gun control. Airsoft is next on the list there.

"Never enough gun control", true for the ones who dislike or hate guns... but it's impossible for law makers to eliminate the "bad assault" rifles without also eliminating semi-automatic hunting rifles. I probably should have made that point more clearly.

They have identical basic functions - semi-automatic and fairly high caliber. And the higher caliber ones like .270 or .308 or larger are actually way more lethal than a .223. Even "worse", they're more accurate. I'd say something about scopes and non assault rifles, but I'll save that for the next incident when another psycho goes berserk in a different way. :-(

[unlucky]

Re: Gun Control Anyone?

Didn't Roosevelt say that in politics nothing happens by accident? Some "unintended consequences" are absolutely intended, just not overtly admitted.

If you're a politician and you want an unarmed civilian population, you can't just come out and say "We want you to give up your guns"- at least not in this country. You must first create a climate of "gun violence" so bad, so pervasive, that, with the collusion of the propaganda machine MSM, large numbers of citizens sheeple will demand gun control.

Enter the "War on Drugs". Drug prohibition is the leading cause of gang violence and consequently "gun violence". The people who want to put a stop to "gun violence" don't call for an end to drug prohibition, no. They call for gun control.

If that's not enought to get your real agenda passed, you step up the horror of "gun violence" by killing school children. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have enough sheeple screaming for gun control that you can achieve your original desire, which was to disarm the population.

I don't think that's fair. Many people are in favor of gun control because they quite honestly believe that by restricting the most dangerous weapons they can reduce the number of people getting shot. The number of people who are in favor of a police state is actually quite small.

[flintlock]

Re: Gun Control Anyone?

I don't think that's fair. Many people are in favor of gun control because they quite honestly believe that by restricting the most dangerous weapons they can reduce the number of people getting shot. The number of people who are in favor of a police state is actually quite small.

I agree that most people in favor of gun control are sincere. I just am not convinced the politicians behind it are. But then, when are they ever sincere?

[flintlock]

Re: 6-guns in the Capital building ?

Assuming that an assault rifle ban goes into effect, and for irony points, I wonder how long it will be until some manufacturers assemble the exact same action and barrel etc. into a rifle that *looks* just like a regular hunting rifle?

They already do this.

http://www.ak-47.net/ak-47/vepr.php

[bart]

Re: 6-guns in the Capital building ?

They already do this.

http://www.ak-47.net/ak-47/vepr.php

Wasn't aware of that - thanks. Ironically funny about it being "free market" in Russia.

[flintlock]

Re: 6-guns in the Capital building ?

The AR can also become a "Jam-o-matic" if not properly maintained. If I'm not mistaken, two of the recent mass shootings, the Batman movie and the Oregon mall shooting, both involved AR15s that jammed. In the Aurora case especially, things could have been much worse had the weapon not jammed. I would not be surprised to find out that both shooters had never fired them before the shootings. In the Sandy Hook case, we know the shooter was experienced with his weapon and probably knew how to maintain it.

[LorenS]

Re: 6-guns in the Capital building ?

The AR can also become a "Jam-o-matic" if not properly maintained. If I'm not mistaken, two of the recent mass shootings, the Batman movie and the Oregon mall shooting, both involved AR15s that jammed. In the Aurora case especially, things could have been much worse had the weapon not jammed. I would not be surprised to find out that both shooters had never fired them before the shootings. In the Sandy Hook case, we know the shooter was experienced with his weapon and probably knew how to maintain it.

He was also experienced enough to go with magazines of proven capacity instead of "high capacity" magazines.

The Aurora shooter tried to use a 100 round magazine - unproven technology.

Magazines are considered an expendable item in the military. Drop them once on the open side and they're toast. The biggest single point of failure on a box fed magazine firearm is the magazine.

[LorenS]

Re: Gun Control Anyone?

I agree that most people in favor of gun control are sincere. I just am not convinced the politicians behind it are. But then, when are they ever sincere?

Being sincere while you do someone harm is no virtue.

[flintlock]

Re: 6-guns in the Capital building ?

Yeah when I heard about the 100 rounder I understood why the jam. Those are hit or miss in the best of cases. Especially if all the kinks were not worked out in advance. I went shooting the other day with a friend and he rented an AR from the range. Two shots and jam. Two shots and Jam. I couldnt resist saying "that's why I bought an AK". But I was just kidding, I was very close to buying one myself at one point. But at half the price I bought an AK-74 type instead. The Range AR was filthy of course. Not exactly the best way to encourage a customer to buy one though.

[flintlock]

Re: Gun Control Anyone?

Being sincere while you do someone harm is no virtue.

Misguided and naive doesnt make them evil though. But dangerous just the same.