Ottawa gunman launched attack with slow-loading, John Wayne-style rifle: experts

[benEzra]

57. So how inaccurate do civilian rifles need to be to be allowed?

"I did ok with skeet, caught on quickly; qualified in Annapolis shooting range as navy marksman (noncomm) with 45 pistol, first time I ever shot for badge (& last time too, only time), but they're what, 50 yard targets or slt, & navy issue (for a couple hours)."

So how inaccurate do civilian rifles need to be in order for target shooters and hunters to be "allowed" to own them?

"Fighting against tyrranical soldiers who have similar rifles is indeed about the only time I can see where precision assault rifles would be 'needed', to far right gunners."

We're talking about the most popular non-automatic civilian rifles in U.S. homes, and you know it. Specifically civilian centerfire .22's like the AR and Mini-14, in the hands of civilian homeowners, target shooters, and small game hunters, not military weapons.

You also know that rifles are the least misused of all weapons in the United States.

The Mini-14 is specifically referenced by Dianne Feinstein as "particularly suitable for sporting purposes"...but you seem to be saying that accurate civilian autoloaders shouldn't be allowed. So I guess that would ban the AR and the Mini-14 Target, but not the Mini-14 Ranch Rifle.

Or would you allow .223 autoloaders allowed to be accurate if they have stainless steel receivers and nonadjustable wooden stocks instead of aluminum receivers and adjustable polymer stocks?

And if you were really former military, you'd know that asymmetric long-range engagements in a military or paramilitary context would use sniper rifles like the M24 or M40, not the M4. Which are, of course, accurized bolt-actions in hunting calibers. Although the gun control lobby wants to ban accurate bolt-actions too, so at least you're consistent in that regard, I suppose...

"Regardless, it makes it capable of being converted to full auto, as I contended. Of course the predominance of assault rifle owners don't even want full auto nor would take it if a gift, waste of ammo & expense, but that's really beside my point in that the conversion ability makes for another qualification as to what the TERM assault rifle has come to mean."

All civilian repeating weapons can be converted to full auto. Bolt-actions, lever-actions, and semiautos can all be converted with add-on machined parts and a little rework, and have.

The key criterion for whether a gun is classified under Title 1 (civilian) or Title 2 (restricted) under the National Firearms Act is how much machining is needed to make those add-on parts. Post-1986 AR's are made to be as difficult to convert to full auto as a Mini-14, a 10/22, or any other civilian semiautomatic.

And those drop-in parts are themselves restricted as machineguns under the National Firearms Act, are a 10-year Federal felony to possess outside of police/military/government, and are aggressively prosecuted via stings and undercover operations. Even the mere allegation of manufacturing or possessing illegal conversion parts (for an AR, or a Mini-14, or a 10/22, or a Remington 7400 deer rifle, doesn't matter) are investigated and prosecuted with extreme prejudice.

The "conversion to full auto" canard is a red herring to cover for your real agenda, e.g. to ban the most popular autoloading rifles in U.S. homes. I can't think of a single murder that has ever been committed with a converted post-1986 AR, and I suspect the number is quite close to (if not exactly) zero.

It's not illegal full-autos you're after, and it's not M4gerys in the hands of some tiny fringe minority posing for the media in the woods. It's people like me, and the rifle in my gun safe, that you are after. But thankfully it's still a free country, and I can choose for myself. If you don't like AR's, don't own one.