General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Many people may not know this about the AR15. [View all]better
(884 posts)But leaving aside the rather significant difference that the AR15 is a semi-auto rather than a select-fire weapon, the argument you are making here is not actually against the AR15. It's against the .223 caliber projectile, which is fired by literally thousands of weapons other than the AR15, and is in fact very widely used for hunting smaller game.
Would it not make more sense to focus on weapon capacity rather than weapon design?
Regardless of caliber, I'd be a lot less concerned about AR15 patterned weapons with fixed mags with a 5 or 10 round limit.
Still well suited to target practice and small game hunting/pest control, but far less risk for mass shootings.
The damage we see in these mass shootings isn't a product of any specific weapon design anywhere near so much as it is of the capacity and the ease and speed of reloading. Deal with those two things, and the design of the weapon becomes dramatically less relevant. Furthermore, it would be vastly easier for law enforcement to instantly spot violations than any bans on specific weapon designs, combinations of features or caliber.