Gun-control mistakes

[krispos42]

5. If I asked you for specifics, do you think you could provide them?

I don't. I'm not being snarky, and I could be wrong. But usually "the military designed it" somehow equates automatically to "then civilians shouldn't be allowed to have it". And there's not really any good reasons attached.

It's a rifle. It shoots rifle ammunition. I can walk into a gun store and have a vast array of rifles that will shoot military-issue ammo. It's not like the ammo is nuclear-powered or laser-guided or something. It's copper-jacketed lead attached to a brass case filled with gunpowder.

As originally designed it had three ergonomic improvements over traditional rifle designs:

1. It was made mostly from aluminum and plastic, which made it lighter and more durable.
2. It had a pistol grip, which is more comfortable and natural to the design of the hand and wrist. The traditional inline stock grip, a feature of making the entire stock out of one piece of wood, tilts the wrist forward and makes it harder to absorb recoil.
3. The barrel was in-line with the shooter's shoulder, so that recoil would push straight back into the hollow of the shoulder. Other rifle designs had the rifle barrel somewhat higher than the shoulder; when the gun discharged, the recoil would act to pivot the rifle upwards. This pulls your sights off of the target and makes follow-up shots slower and less accurate.

So why is any of this bad? Why should these advancements be banned? Why do you think you can lock gun design to 1912 levels?


"It's made to kill people". Yes, a goodly number of them are purchased for that reason; it's called "self-defense". I own several 9mm pistols, and yes, I bought them "to kill people". Specifically, if my life or my family's life is threatened. I make no pretense about it. They have flashlights and lasers attached to them and are loaded with premium hollowpoint ammunition. If you break into my house I'll be doing my damnedest to confront you with a gun designed and equipped for self-defense in my hand.

I live in a small house with very little real estate around it; I don't want or need the length and bulk of a rifle to face down an intruder or an attacker, but I understand those that live in larger houses and/or have larger properties.

Trying to address the mass shooting phenomenon as a hardware problem has been a failure and will continue to be so. This is a social problem, not a hardware one. The piles of corpses left in our urban areas (and still are, in some places) are also a social problem: the crippling addiction to illegal drugs and the associated gang and criminal activity left bodies all over the place. That was not reduced by gun-control laws; it wasn't even really affected by them.

It was reduced because of social solutions a generation before, by making birth control widespread and easily available, by making abortions widespread and easily available, and by taking lead out of our air, water, and paint.

Thanks to the culture-war nature of gun-controllers, we have Republicans running things on the federal and state levels (including the judiciary) that are taking away birth control, taking away abortion options, and letting poisons back into our air, water, and food. The crime rate is going to go UP in the red states over the next couple of decades as unwanted, unplanned children with dysfunctional childhoods are going to reach adulthood and become the new criminal class.