Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Popular rounds with metric designations (9mm, 10mm, 5.56mm, etc.) are known by their metric measurements in the USA. And the Glock 19 has a 15-round magazine (although the Gabrielle Giffords shooter was using a 33-round magazine--why on earth does any civilian need a 33-round magazine?).
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

No, but the intent is still to police drug use, not leave it to the whims of users and dealers. That said, the war on drugs has an inflationary effect on the price of drugs, and any economist will tell you that assuming some price elasticity the price of drugs will have an effect on their consumption. So in a round about way the war on drugs does have some effect on the use of drugs.



And that's exactly what makes it useless. The '94 ban was exactly like that, and was largely useless because of it. That's why I used the analogy of the sinking boat. You want to plug the whole, but ignore the bilge around your shoulders.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

But that's the only kind of ban that could be realistically enforced. It would be impossible to go round up millions of old guns, and the legality of taking them from people who bought them legally is questionable at best. A ban like the one in 1994 could work eventually, I think, if it were left in place for a long enough time to affect the gun market.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Sadly we're right back to where we were in the other gun thread it seems.
American's arguing about the size of bullets, mag sizes, comparing guns to drugs, and trying to find other loopholes by which owning a deadly weapon can be considered normal.
I don't know why there's even debate at this point?
The nature of guns, gun deaths and massacres aren't gonna change so long as responsible people think that the guns owned by other people are the problem rather than the ones they have in their possession right now.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I think we can take some pretty common sense measures here that won't hurt anyone.

Say we......go back to a 1994-style ban on magazines bigger than 10 rounds that grandfathers in weapons that have already been made and sold....allow for tracking of gun and ammunition sales....make it illegal for guns to be kept in the same house as anyone who cannot legally buy or own guns for reasons other than age (mental illness, criminal record, etc.)....require tests and renewable licenses for guns, like we already do with cars.
Because, as I noted earlier in this thread, massacres like the one in Connecticut are almost always committed with legally purchased weapons, laws like this really could help curtail them. People like the Virginia Tech shooter who buy guns for the purpose of going on a rampage would be affected immediately, and kids who go on rampages with the guns of family members would be affected in due time, as old guns are replaced with new ones. People stockpiling weapons and ammunition might be caught before they did anything crazy.

And virtually no harm would be done to the responsible gun owner. Rifles and shotguns for hunting would go on being legal, as would a wide array of handguns for self-defense and sport shooting. No one who legally owns a gun already would have it taken from them. It's good for just about everyone.

The only people who could conceivably have a problem with laws like this are those who (a) oppose every increase in bureaucracy on general principles, (b) think high-capacity guns are fun toys, (c) are afraid they might need to take up arms against the government, or (d) are afraid that any gun law is just a step toward outlawing all guns. And I don't much care about appeasing these kinds of people, frankly.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I think if we can come up with a law that angers both the pro and anti gun lobbies we will be moving in the right direction.

I also consider comparing gun deaths to other kinds of deaths to be a red herring of sorts. Lets look at gun violence and its causes on its own and see if we can come up with some policies that will decrease that.

I would be willing to bet that ending the war on drugs, legalize them and regulating them would decrease the amount of gun violence much like the end of prohibition did. Large amounts of gun violence is drug related.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

That's definitely true, but massacres like the one in question here usually aren't drug-related. Those are all about mentally unstable people having access to legal semiautomatic firearms.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Agreed, but I think we have an opportunity to look at all gun violence because of these massacres. With a decrease in gun related violence due to drug activity it would be easier to come up with reasonable regulations to help reduce the number of these types of tragedies without stepping on the toes of legitimate gun owners.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I think making it illegal to be in possession of (i.e. the act of carrying) a gun whilst intoxicated is a no brainer. Here's why:

Gun possession and use requires good judgement to be safe
Alcohol impairs one's judgement
Unsafe gun possession and use should be illegal
Therefore -> gun possession and use under the influence of alcohol should be illegal.

I'd be interested to see if anyone disagrees, and if they can express why gun use should be different to car use.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Yeah, that seems pretty no-brain to me as well. I dare someone to come up with an argument against that.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I think there are already lots of things we could be doing that wouldn't step on the toes of most gun owners that we're not doing because of the opposition of a very vocal minority (i.e. the leadership of the NRA--note that I'm not talking about the average NRA member who joins because he wants to take a gun safety course; I'm talking about guys like Wayne Lapierre).
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

9mm is at the lower-power side of the spectrum of handgun ammunition. It wasn't exactly a .45 or a 357 magnum.

The magazine it came with was standard for the weapon. It was not any sort of extended-capacity magazine. Though arguing 15 rounds versus 10 rounds seems like a red herring given that Cho successfully reloaded around fifteen times during the ten-minute massacre. If he could reload fifteen times, he could have reloaded twenty-two times.

Keeping a particular type of rifle (an AR-15) out of civilian hands is not going to have an effect on how bad massacres are. Cho killed more people with two handguns than any murderer using an AR-15 ever did. Since law enforcement dollars are a zero-sum game, I don't think a symbolic act which won't prevent or reduce massacres and won't have any impact on other crime is where we should be putting our emphasis.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Miltov, what is your opinion on the "war on drugs" and the gun violence that the drug prohibition leads to?
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I'm rusty on this but it isn't only the size of the bullet but also the load(amount and type of propellant used). The M-16 was only a 5.56 mm round but had a high muzzle velocity which made it useful as a weapon.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

My apologies. It might have been in the other thread.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

As a former Coloradan, I was fully supportive of Colorado's move to legalize marijuana, replacing a major drain on law enforcement dollars with a source of tax revenue and legal jobs.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Power has to do with a lot of factors, bullet diameter only being one of them. Bullet diameter is used as a shorthand for what round you're talking about, but you seem to be thinking that similar diameters mean similar power, and that's definitely not the case. The mass and the velocity determine the momentum of the round, and diameter doesn't tell you either.

.357 Magnum is a far, far more powerful round than 9mm when it comes to handgun rounds. And 5.56mm, a rifle round, is more powerful than either because it is a longer round (despite being narrower) and much, much faster.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

This is why I think any legal restrictions on the size of rounds are a waste of time and effort. There are too many variables preventing the efficacy of a law like that. Besides, any bullet will kill if put in the right place, and any five bullets won't if put in the wrong place.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Ok, that makes more sense, it felt like you were comparing them solely on size, which confused me.
 
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