The danger of an assault weapon ban is

[flamin lib]

that the gunners will always find a work around. If the definition is too specific they'll just change the way it looks. They did that during the first AWB.

California has tried to make it impossible to rapidly re-load semi-auto rifles. First they took the magazine release off the gun; gunners invented the 'bullet button' to replace the release button. Outlaw the bullet button and damned if they didn't find a workaround for that. Make full auto machine guns very hard to own and they made a bump stock that allows a semi-auto to mimic a full auto machine gun.

They always find a work around.

Make the thing that causes the carnage illegal: a semi-auto gun of any kind which has a removable magazine. That way if a gunner really wants to keep his AR he has to weld the magazine to the receiver and load it one round at a time through the breech.

Make the possession of any semi-auto gun of any kind if it has a removable magazine. Offer a one year buy back and after that a jail sentence for anyone found to have one. And thoughts & prayers to the poor sods who had to give up their semis.

[Canoe52]

1. Remind me, whats the system Canada has? I believe they dont have a assault gun problem.

[Hoyt]

2. Exactly. Gunners are devious souls when it comes to wanting the most lethal weapon possible to

kill and bolster their courage.

I like the idea of welding lo-capacity magazine to receiver. Like it a lot, actually. I might even go for a tax deduction, or even tax credit for the reasonable cost of doing so. Then, we'll see how many gunners are that in love with the other aspects of the rifle.

[retread]

3. Oh for pete's sake!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/23/australias-gun-laws-stopped-mass-shootings-and-reduced-homicides-study-finds

[gratuitous]

4. Danger?

I'm tired of making it so easy for white men contemplating mass murder. Let's force them to get a little more creative than "bangity, bangity, bang-bang."

[Decoy of Fenris]

6. Let's not.

Last time an angry white dude got "Creative", this was the result.

|

[Tommy_Carcetti]

9. That's extremely hard to do, compared to the relative easy of pulling a trigger.

McVeigh managed to pull it off.

Others have found it much harder to do.

Remember that the Columbine shooters also attempted to set off bombs. Those failed. Their guns, however, did not.

[Decoy of Fenris]

12. True. A bomb is stupidly difficult to make, I'd wager, and not worth the effort involved.

We'd be much more likely to see people using cars and trucks as weapons, I think, as on a straight one-to-one kill ratio, cars cause far more damage and are far easier to acquire. Imagine a vehicle plowing down a crowded elementary-school line of students waiting for buses, or driving into an outdoor concert venue at a hundred miles an hour.


Everyone wants to assume banning guns will stop all mass shootings, which they theoretically -could-. The question at that point becomes, what replaces them? These people would still be out there, still be psychotic, still have a reason/desire to kill, so what's their next option? Mass shootings go down, mass pedestriacide goes up?

I'm wary. "The devil you know", and all that.

[Downtown Hound]

11. And after that, the fertilzer required to make such an explosive was severely restricted

And it has not happened again.

[Decoy of Fenris]

13. And it hadn't happened prior, either. n/t

[Lee-Lee]

16. It was? I can buy it now at Lowes in 50lb bags

I see it’s even on Amazon.

[Downtown Hound]

18. Well to be specific, Ammonium Nitrate was.

http://www.businessinsider.com/oklahoma-city-bombing-ammonium-nitrate-sales-regulated-2011-8

Used in 1995 by Timothy McVeigh to attack the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and in the July Bomb attack on a government building in Norway -- ammonium nitrate will now fall under federal regulation.
Janet Napolitano yesterday announced how the new Ammonium Nitrate Security Program will affect buyers and sellers of the volatile compound.

Primarily used in fertilizer, when mixed with other substances the chemical becomes highly explosive, the new legislation will require anyone buying more than 25 pounds to register, be screened against a known terrorist list, and require any thefts to be reported within 24 hours.

[Lee-Lee]

19. I dont think any of that took place, although it was proposed

[Decoy of Fenris]

5. There are already workarounds and have been for years, thanks largely to California's laws.

"Cali-Compliant" rifles convert AK, AR, Bren, LWRC and many other "military-style" assault rifles to fixed-magazine status and are reversible via field-stripping. These have already started to filter through to the eastern seaboard and are finding a large market in the New England area, especially New York and Vermont. They've also found several ways around the magazine limits in the northeast, and likewise those are working their way westwards; I saw quite a few "SAFE-Compliant" mags during my last trip out to Vegas. They take a bit more to convert to non-Compliant, but still plenty doable. Hell, there are conversions out there to make fixed-mag bolt-actions semi-auto and back again on an as-needed basis.

I'm not shitting on your ideas, because they at least hold promise, just understand that the gunner side has been preparing for legislation like what you propose for decades. The Gun Control side is late to the party by at least thirty years.

[sl8]

15. Vermont?

Are you sure about that? I'm not sure why there would be much interest in them in Vermont.

Massachusetts and Connecticut, I could see.

[loyalsister]

7. I guess it depends on who one worries about

If a would-be mass shooter has to jump through hoops to acquire the guns, isn't it possible that that would reduce the danger to the potential victims?
If a gun advocate feels like they are in danger of not being able to participate in their favorite hobby or feel safe from an imagined potential threat because they can't instantly acquire an AR15, I have no sympathy. Some things should not be easy.

[better]

8. I'm with you. I think capacity and speed of reloading are the most useful things on which to focus.

There's legitimate reasons to own an AR as a civilian. Much harder to justify having the capacity to wipe out an entire classroom before having to spend 2 seconds reloading to do it again. I'd absolutely support this, but no high capacity, even with fixed mags. 10 round max.

[Downtown Hound]

10. That's why I don't even waste time saying "assault weapons ban"

In addition to the workarounds you mention, you'll inevitably run into the gun snob that will spend the rest of the debate lecturing you about what constitutes an assault rifle and how the AR-15 isn't it.

So I just get to the point and say SEMI-AUTOMATIC RIFLE BAN. Lever action, bolt action, or single shot only. Feel free to do whatever workarounds you want. If you can fire repeatedly without some kind of reloading or cocking, it's a no-no.

[johnpowdy]

20. BINGO. We need to be pushing a semi-auto ban

Not an assault weapons ban

[lame54]

14. That's not a ban problem...

those are separate problems that can be dealt with

[flamin lib]

17. Elaborate? nt