benEzra
benEzra's JournalGermans tend to value privacy, so tourists don't see a lot of the German gun culture,
but it is there. And a lot of American gun control activists who idealize Europe would be shocked and horrified that AR-15's and other modern-looking rifles are legal across much of Europe, including Germany.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=189580
If you go with a Mini-14, get one 580- series or newer,
and lubricate the heck out of it, particularly the bolt nub where the op rod cams it open. Especially if it's a stainless Mini.
I owned a 188-series Ranch Rifle, and it was an accuracy lemon, but reliable. It didn't like to run dry, though (galling on the bolt nub).
A .729 caliber is "kinder and gentler" than a centerfire .22?
He's talking about owning a non-automatic civilian AR-15, not an M16 or an M249.
A .223 JHP from an AR-15 is less likely to exit your walls and injure/kill your neighbor than a handgun JHP or a load of 00 buckshot, never mind a shotgun slug.
Civilian small arms drywall penetration test
So now you want to ban small-town gun shops, too?
Speaking out against sporting goods stores in small towns is ridiculous, and from a gun-control standpoint it is stupidly counterproductive to your cause. It is reactionary fundamentalism, not issue advocacy. A few seconds' thought would probably have even Bloomberg himself facepalming over this.
As I said in the other thread, I'll believe the gun control lobby is primarily concerned about violence when they stop targeting the lawful and responsible. And trying to eliminate small-town gun stores is pretty much the definition of "targeting the lawful and responsible".
And a note to the clueless: small towns with a "historical, agrarian feel" sold guns back in those historical, agrarian days. Heck, I'll bet you could buy high-capacity military-style rifles at the general store there back in the 1870s, if the town existed back then...
"Is a gun store, rather than, say, an Apple store, something that would make our downtown sizzle...?"
Because there's nothing that says "historical, agrarian feel" like an Apple store...
Then why are their top legislative priorities...
"The fact that people like you seem to miss constantly is that very few people are against owning guns, what most people are asking for is more control so that the bad guys don't get them"
Then why are the following the top legislative priorities of the gun control lobby?
(1) Making it a felony for *me* (squeaky clean record, 30 years' shooting experience, licensed, trained) to buy a civilian rifle with a handgrip that sticks out?
(2) Making it a felony for *me* to buy or possess regular capacity magazines?
(3) Revoking *my* concealed carry license, or rendering it moot via expansion of no-carry zones?
I'll believe the gun control lobby is primarily concerned about criminal violence when they stop targeting the lawful and responsible. And I'll believe they're not interested in banning guns and magazines when they stop trying to outlaw the most popular civilian guns and magazines.
All those 30-round rifles killed *ZERO* people in Rhode Island in 2014.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-20You hate gun *ownership*, not gun violence. Even if a class of guns is used in zero murders a year in RI.
FWIW, a ten-round limit is less than what was sold in Rhode Island in the *1860s*. The very first Winchester repeating rifles (1866) held 15+1, as did the Henry (1861) that preceded them. A ten round limit is like banning all abortions after the tenth week; it only sounds reasonable to those who either know little about the issue, or who want the thing banned entirely and don't give a crap about reasonableness.
Most such incidents involve people leaving guns within reach of young children,
failing to use a holster (or using a crappy one), using an old gun that's not drop-safe, or someone grabbing the gun by the trigger after they fumble it. Often a combination of all of the above.
A decent defensive firearm shouldn't go off if it's dropped, or even thrown off a building. And if it does drop, let it hit the ground and come to rest, then pick it up by the grip; don't try to snatch it out of the air. It won't go off if you drop it, but it will if you pull the trigger trying to catch it.
As to why keep a round chambered, if you are carrying a pistol, it isn't just the time factor, it's that chambering a round requires two hands (as others have mentioned). If you are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm that you can draw a gun and shoot, you almost certainly need that other hand to fend off your attacker, get to cover, get your children to safety, etc. And if you are carrying a revolver, leaving the cylinder ahead of the hammer empty doesn't make it child safe, because if a child can pull the trigger once, they can pull it twice. Keep it on your person IN A HOLSTER or under your direct supervision, and store it where a young child won't access it.
As an aside, I am a fan of manual safeties in addition to passive safeties, and the one gun I typically carry IWB (Smith & Wesson Lady Smith 9mm) has one. They aren't for everyone or for all situations/carry modes, but they are another option to consider.
If you think a ban is feasible (however unlikely), and you might want to own one someday,
picking one up would be a small investment; a Smith & Wesson or Ruger AR can be had for under $600 if you shop around. AR's are still legal even in California and New York, but the handgrip shape legislation makes ban-compliant ones less ergonomic and (to my eye) rather funny looking, so if you one one with a decent grip and adjustable stock and are worried about new handgrip/accessory restrictions, then by all means get one. Or, pick up a few magazines for guns you might want to own someday, as a hedge against unlikely-but-not-out-of-the-question new bans.
At minimum, rifle and magazine prices are going to increase for a while over the next year, because I think sales are going to increase. I don't think an actual Federal ban is likely for many reasons, not least of which is the backlash against the Feinstein non-ban of 1994; if 25 or 50 times as many people own "assault weapons" now as then, and the Feinstein law provoked an immense backlash even though it didn't actually ban AR's and AK's or their magazines at all, then the backlash against an actual ban now would be monumental.
I'm actually in the "thinking about buying a rifle" boat myself, not for a second AR but for a small-caliber bullpup of some flavor; I've wanted an AUG since the late 1980s, but William J. Bennett and Dianne Feinstein priced that idea right out of my working-class reach in the '90s, so I went with an AR-15 instead. Now that I'm a bit better off financially, I may make an AUG or something a financial priority; we'll see. I would hope Clinton would be smart enough to not actually push for new rifle or magazine restrictions, but I thought Gov. Hickenlooper was too until he caved, so I've been wrong before.
They are indeed rifles. The most common rifles in U.S. homes, in fact.
Non-automatic, civilian, Title 1, small- and intermediate-caliber, rifles. Shotguns and the occasional odd pistol (like the Hammerli pistols used in the Olympics) sometimes fall afoul of "assault weapon" regulations, but almost all "assault weapons" are simply autoloading rifles with handgrips that stick out.
For example, this rifle (a Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle) is *not* an assault weapon in any state:
http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14RanchRifle/models.html
This one *is* an "assault weapon" in some states:
http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14TargetRifle/models.html
And this one will get you half a decade or more in prison in California or New York:
http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14TacticalRifle/models.html
Here's the kicker: All of the above are the SAME RIFLE. Just different furniture. You could take the very modern looking one at the bottom and swap the stock for the straight wooden one up top in literally 30 seconds. I used to own a Mini-14 myself, and I owned 3 stocks for it; the straight wooden one, one with an ergonomic vertical handgrip, and one that folded for storage. With the latter, it would have been an "assault weapon" under the 1994 Feinstein law; with the former, legal under the Feinstein ban and AFAIK even legal in New York City; and with the middle one, it was a felony in California but legal almost everywhere else. Simply by swapping the stock.
AR-15's, the most popular rifles in U.S. homes, are the same way. Mine looks a lot like this:
http://thrumylens.org/firearms/jumping-into-the-ar-15-world/
but if you alter it a little to accomodate a straight 19th-century-style stock, you get this, which is legal in every state. Again, stock shape. The upper receivers are interchangeable.
http://www.aresdefense.com/?page_id=729
As to hunting, plenty of people hunt with "assault weapons", especially small game, but AR-15's and such are often considered underpowered for deer-sized animals because most of them are very small caliber (most fire .223 Remington/5.56mm, the smallest of all common centerfire rifle rounds). But, one of the nifty things about the AR platform is that you can also get them in larger calibers better suited for deer, like 6.8mm SPC, or (if you step up to the larger AR-10 platform) .243 Winchester, 7mm-08, or .308. The only difference between a "hunting" rifle and a "nonhunting" rifle is whether or not the person holding it is in the woods stalking a deer, or not.
The thing is, though, that "assault weapon" owners outnumber hunters by at least 2:1 (although most hunters also own nonhunting guns, so there's overlap). And gun-owning nonhunters outnumber hunters by at least 5:1.
Were it not for the ongoing Holy War against lawful and responsible ownership,
I think discussions of this nature could find a lot more common ground. When I first started posting on DU circa 2004-2005, I floated a few proposals that I thought might could be a productive middle ground. I don't recall all of them, but universal background checks (with felony criminal penalties for abuse of the system, such as compiling a registry), a tax credit for the purchase of UL-listed gun safes, and such were a couple I remember. There were more.
That was before it became clear that the real goal of the gun control leadership isn't to reduce violence, but to reduce lawful ownership by the non-violent, which is why the #1 priorities of the gun control lobby are banning the most popular sporting rifles, and restricting/banning lawful concealed carry. I think the reasons are complex, and range from elitism at the Bloomberg/Wall Street/corporate-media level (you don't see them advocating to take guns away from corporate security and elite bodyguards, do you? just from the working class and middle class), to a variety of issues on down the line. But the goal is not violence prevention, it is ownership prevention. Just look at California, or what the gun control lobby is now proposing at the national level.
In that environment, compromises such as those I once advocated---or prior compromises that gun owners made, such as the ban on all automatic weapons, the ban on armor-piercing handgun ammunition, requiring a license in order to carry, ownership bans for certain people---become weapons to be used against lawful ownership itself, and until that changes, I think you'll continue to see mistrust of all such proposals. For example, had gun owners ever thought that a veteran appointing a financial representative to help manage his/her Social Security benefits would be later used by the gun controllers to label him/her a "mental defective" barred from gun ownership for life, there would have been a lot more opposition to some of those bills. And when the people pushing "mandatory training" or "safe storage" or "universal background checks" are simultaneously talking about compiling registries, banning and confiscating the most popular guns or else, and outlawing self-defense, it undermines even the proposals that might have some merit.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Eastern North Carolina
Home country: United States
Current location: Eastern NC
Member since: Wed Dec 1, 2004, 04:09 PM
Number of posts: 12,148
