May 15, 2015

Good point.

And using that analogy, restricting AR's would be a lot like restricting 4-cylinder sport compacts or maybe V6 sports sedans, not high-horsepower V8s and V12s or powerful trucks. I think a Civic Si with the factory aero package is a pretty decent car analogue of an AR, personally.

May 6, 2015

If you don't see the need for a group like Knife Rights,

then look at the situation in New York City.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/10/nyc-gravity-knife-law-arrests.php

There are those even now trying to justify the Freddie Gray shooting on the basis that he had an ordinary assisted-opening folding pocketknife clipped in his pocket, even though (1) he never attempted to draw it, (2) such knives are not illegal in Maryland, and (3) one-hand-opening pocketknives are as mundane as car keys, wallets, cell phones, and pocket change in most of the country.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2015/04/freddie_grays_death_in_police.php

May 1, 2015

Presumably a name change would do it...

since wouldn't be banned by the features list. Heck, you could alter the magwell so it takes AR magazines and call it the Mini 223, or upgrade the barrel profile, and then it couldn't be said to be a "copy or duplicate" either. Note that the 2003 Feinstein ban wouldn't have banned the exact same gun in 7.62x39mm (the Mini Thirty).

AR's would have needed a grip shape change to comply with the 2003 proposal, unlike the 1994 non-ban which allowed protruding handgrips as long as the rifle met the Evil Features Count rule. Ironically, the 1994 law didn't even require a name change for most AR's, since "Colt AR-15®" was and is a registered trademark of Colt, so all the other AR manufacturers weren't using that name anyway.

May 1, 2015

Yup. And the factory stock is brown walnut, not black nylon.

That can be changed in 30 seconds, of course...yank the trigger guard, yank the trigger group, yank the action/barrel out of the stock, drop it in the other stock, pop in the trigger group, close the trigger guard. Of course, that assumes both stocks are fitted with the liners. I actually had three stocks for my mini-14; the standard wooden stock, a Choate fixed stock with a pistol grip, and a Butler Creek folder that I bought after the expiration of the Feinstein non-ban in 2004.

Interestingly, the gun-control lobby calls the wooden-stocked mini-14 both an evil "assault weapon" that should be banned, and a benign "sporting" rifle, depending on how much they think they can get away with at whatever given moment they are talking about it. Feinstein's original non-ban exempted all nonfolding mini-14's, but some of her later Senate bills (such as S.1431, 2003) would have banned all mini-14's by name, even the wooden-stocked ones.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.1431:

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2003'.

SEC. 2. DEFINITIONS.

(a) IN GENERAL- Section 921(a)(30) of title 18, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:

`(30) The term `semiautomatic assault weapon' means any of the following:

`(A) The following rifles or copies or duplicates thereof:

(snip)

`(xviii) Sturm, Ruger Mini-14;

May 1, 2015

Yup. This gun is identical to an AR-15 in every functional way...

http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14RanchRifle/models.html

...just less accurate and somewhat less durable, but same ammunition, same rate of fire, same range of magazine capacities. I used to own one; Ram-Line used to make magazines that would fit and function in both an AR and a mini-14. I sold it because I wanted something more suitable for target shooting, but the mini-14 made an excellent HD carbine and was fun to shoot.