The quality of America:


SANDY HOOK SHOOTING
DEC 16, 2012 8:57 PM 616,010 1,362 Share

“Take That Nigger Off The TV, We Wanna Watch Football!”: Idiots Respond To NBC Pre-Empting Sunday Night Football
Timothy Burke
NBC pre-empted the first quarter of tonight's 49ers-Patriots game to show President Obama's speech at the Newtown memorial for victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. As you might expect, many football fans didn't take kindly to this. (So, too, some Bob's Burgers fans.) Here are those idiots...


Obama you stupid sand nigger get off my tv. Your just making the families hurt and miss their kids more and I want to watch football
Jarred Faul

I don't want to see some nig making a speech, I want to watch the 49ers beat the patriots
Pusha B

What the fuck is this nigger doing on my screen?!?!?!? I want football!!!
Nick Brack

WOOW THEY TOOK OFF SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL!! TO WATCH THIS NIGGER!! OBAMA TALK ABOUT THE SHOOTING NIGGA IDGAF! THE PATROITS PLAYING!!!
KR3W69-CEO

Obama can eat shit, trying to make a speech during the football game. Unacceptable
Hunter Johnson

I'm sorry, cutting into the football game so that gun grabbing nigger can make a political speech? Major fucking...
Liz Michael

You have got to be fucking kidding me Obama, you stupid motherfucker. It's football time in America not you to give a speech you fuck!


http://deadspin.com/5968935/take-tha...?post=55311576

Originally Posted by Joral

Here in GA, the paperwork was about the same... I don't recall the humane society having to make any phone calls though.

The Humane Society keeps a blacklist of animal-abusers. If you are not on the list, then adopting a pet is easy.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I thought you were being nice again. But you are just another gun nut, I guess.

You gun nuts are extremely in favor of people hunting children, I guess, and don't want to do anything about it. As I said, OK, maybe it will be YOU who gets killed in one of these shootings, or YOUR child. Maybe you'll have a different opinion then. Or maybe not. Anything except maybe admit that Eric has a point.

I think there is little that is more infuriating than the way you guys defend killers and their weapons of war. If you are right, which you are NOT, then damn all the hunters then. They shouldn't be out there murdering all these animals. I thought hunting was a sport, not a massacre. Hunters need to be "armed with hundreds of bullets in high-capacity magazines of about 30 rounds each" like the creep at Newtown. Yeah, that's what you think guys. Expect more and more of the same then, and YOU are as responsible for these deaths as the guy who did the shooting.

Stay classy, Eric.

School Shooter Adam Lanza Used Military-Style Bushmaster Rifle
Posted: 12/16/2012 8:06 pm EST | Updated: 12/16/2012 11:33 pm EST


Lanza, 20, carried "many high-capacity clips" for the lightweight military-style rifle, Lt. Paul Vance, a spokesman for the Connecticut State Police, told The Huffington Post in an email. Two handguns and a shotgun were also recovered at the scene.

The Newtown shooting quickly reignited the national debate over gun control. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pledged on Sunday that she would introduce legislation to reauthorize a federal assault weapons ban passed during the Clinton administration, but allowed to lapse in 2004. Other politicians, like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who leads a national coalition group pushing stricter gun-control measures, also used the shooting to call on President Obama to take immediate action tightening gun laws.

Any move to clamp down on consumer sales of military-style weapons could fall heavily on Bushmaster and its corporate parent, Freedom Group, a private company owned by a New York-based hedge fund, Cerberus Capital Management. According to its 2011 annual report, Freedom Group is the nation's largest manufacturer of military-style semiautomatics, which it calls "modern sporting rifles."

Freedom Group also owns Remington and DPMS Firearms, two other leading manufacturers of military-style semiautomatics.

In its 2011 report, Freedom Group described semiautomatic rifles as among the firm's most promising areas of growth. The market for such guns grew 27 percent between 2007 and 2011, the firm said.

"The continued adoption of the modern sporting rifle has led to increased growth in the long gun market, especially with a younger demographic of users," the company said.

A spokeswoman for the Freedom Group did not respond to voice or email messages.

"We produce environmentally sound products and only act within the law," said a statement on the company's website, which appeared to predate the Newtown shooting. "We will not compromise our moral or ethical principles."

The massacre in Newtown is far from Bushmaster's first brush with tragedy. The company's semiautomatic rifles were used in at least four high-profile mass shootings since 1999, including a 2009 rampage that left 10 dead across southern Alabama, and a 2010 shooting spree in Virginia that killed eight people over 19 hours.

Most notoriously, a Bushmaster .223 rifle was used by the so-called Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, who murdered 15 people in 2001 and 2002. In 2004, Bushmaster settled a lawsuit brought by families of the Beltway victims, which alleged that the company failed to take precautions to ensure that its guns did not fall into the hands of criminals.

The company settled the suit for $500,000, but said the settlement was not an admission of culpability. A lawyer for Bushmaster told The New York Times in 2004 that the settlement was paid by its insurance company and did not "involve Bushmaster changing any of the ways it does business with its distributors and retailers."

Some gun-control advocates have voiced concerns that companies like Bushmaster are able to exploit loopholes in state versions of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which outlawed the sale of 19 types of military-style assault rifles. At the time, weapons like the Uzi and the Mac 10 were widely used in inner-city gang crime. The federal law lapsed in 2004 but many states have passed their own bans in the interim.

The loopholes in the law are evident in Connecticut, which has a state assault weapons ban modeled closely on the lapsed 1994 federal ban, said Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. The Connecticut law bans certain assault weapon models that combine multiple features, such as a pistol grip and a barrel shroud, which increase a gun's lethality.

“What’s happened is the gun makers figured out how to take their existing assault weapon models, modify them just a bit and bam, they can sell,” Everitt said. "If it has a grenade launcher and barrel shroud, you take the grenade launcher off and then you can sell it. If it has a pistol grip and some other banned feature, you drop one of them.”

What may be needed is a longer list of banned or forbidden gun models and single gun features that would render more assault weapons illegal to sell, Everitt said.

Lanza's mother, Nancy Lanza, who Lanza also shot dead on Friday, appears to have lawfully purchased and registered the Bushmaster .223 used in the Newtown killings, according to law enforcement sources cited by the Associated Press and other news outlets.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) told CBS News on Sunday that his state had "pretty tough regulation" compared to much of the rest of the nation.

“But obviously they didn’t prevent this woman from acquiring that weapon and obviously allowed the son to come into possession of those and use them in a most disastrous way,” Malloy said.

After a tragedy like the Newtown shooting, he said, "you have to start to question whether assault weapons should be allowed to be distributed the way they are in the United States."

Newtown Massacre: What Is a Bushmaster .223?
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/newtow...4#.UNAM-eTAf_F

A Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and ammunition is seen in Seattle, March 27, 2006. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)


By LEE FERRAN (@leeferran) and SHUSHANNAH WALSHE (@shushwalshe)
Dec. 17, 2012

Law enforcement officials said that Adam Lanza was armed with four firearms when he started his rampage at a Connecticut elementary school Friday that ended in the deaths of 20 children and seven adults, but nearly all the killing was done with just one of the guns: a .223 caliber Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle.

Lanza used the rifle, a modified civilian version of the military's M-16 similar to the popular AR-15, as he stalked through the school and opened fire on children as young as five. Dr. H. Wayne Carver, the medical examiner who investigated the massacre, told reporters over the weekend that all of Lanza's victims had been shot more than once.

The killing ended when Lanza took his own life, this time using a handgun, officials said.

Bushmaster, headquartered in North Carolina, bills itself on its website as the leading supplier of AR-15-type rifles in the U.S. and offers more than a dozen different models in various calibers.

A February report by Guns and Ammo magazine noted a growing demand in recent years for AR-15-type rifles – and specifically those loaded with .223 caliber bullets – for use in home defense. The .223 caliber load is popular, the article says, because it has better fragmentation upon impact, meaning it will deal a lot of damage with less chance of accidentally continuing through the target and endangering whoever's in the background.

The magazine reported that 1.5 million AR-15s were made in the last five years alone – one for every 209 Americans.

"This thing is just a killing machine," Josh Horwitz, Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told ABC News today. "It's designed, like I said it was designed... very similar to the weapon that's used in the battlefield."
....

Connecticut's gun laws are some of the toughest in the country, according to anti-gun groups, but they do not specifically ban the Bushmaster AR-15-type guns and the weapon can be easily modified to dodge other restrictions. On Bushmaster's website, the company offers to help customers make sure their assault-style rifles are "state compliant."

"But it's still just as deadly because what makes it dangerous is the ability to take almost unlimited amounts of ammunition and a pistol grip," said Horwitz. "That's what allows the shooter to keep the barrel down on the target."


"All guns are the same, so you can't ban or restrict them" say Kepi and Semo and Justin and Copperfield....... Welcome to 4T America, a battlefield of crazies.

This isn't gun expertise, this is just a basic, passing familiarity when you're talking about legislating something. I'm well aware that the media is completely unaware of the difference, and that they're merely copying information down from people who do (namely the police).

As for the term "military style rifle", that means it looks like a gun that the military uses, namely the M-16, however it does not function like the M-16. The rifle that was used in in this shooting was a semi-automatic and has no different functionality than any of the most popular hunting rifles, because most people hunt with semi-automatic rifles and keep semi-automatic side arms incase they get in trouble, because it can be a safety issue and the difference between a semi-auto, and a lever or bolt action rifle or a single action revolver (because by your definition a double action revolver would probably be out, too) can save a person's life.

The reason that we allow people to shoot more before having to reload is because reloading really doesn't take that long once you're on a magazine system. There's a point where I think we should limit it, but it's not likely it would have made that much of a difference at all.

And, nice stereotyping, but I'm a consistantly blue voter in a state that's gone blue the past two elections. I just also happen to know enough about guns to know when it's media sensationalism, not reality, people are responding to and you're just not responding to reality. You're acting kinda like conservatives on 9/11. You may want to come down off the 24 hour news cycle.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

"All guns are the same, so you can't ban or restrict them" say Kepi and Semo and Justin and Copperfield....... Welcome to 4T America, a battlefield of crazies.

I said no such thing, Eric. Once again, you're flat-out lying.

But go ahead. Keep lying. Keep insulting people.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

You were defending Kepi saying it. If you are saying something different, then say it, instead of insulting me.

I wasn't defending Kepi saying anything, Eric. Again, you're lying.

I told him not to waste his time trying to explain things to you, because you don't actually want to know and you get pissed when people correct you. In short, you're aggressively ignorant.

And, well... Obviously, you've proved that point better than I ever could have.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

You were defending Kepi saying it. If you are saying something different, then say it, instead of insulting me.

I said no such thing, either. Infact there are certain guns I'm in favor of banning (semi-auto shotguns among them). However, if you ban semi-automatic rifles and handguns, you've got a logistical nightmare on your hands and I'm opposed because semi-autos have been a positive thing or hunting.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

No, you haven't proved anything.

I didn't say that I did.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

Obviously, you've proved that point better than I ever could have.

See?

Why do you keep lying? Do you think that people can't scroll up to read what has just been said a few minutes ago?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It has nothing to do with whether I am aggressively ignorant or not.

Sure it does. My recommendation to Kepi was not to waste his time trying to explain something to you that has been explained to you dozens of times in the past, because you'd just throw a temper tantrum. And you did just that. Now he can decide whether it's worth his time and energy to engage with you.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

So, what is your opinion? Do you have anything constructive to say, or just another insult?

I already offered it upthread, earlier today. I'm not going to point it out to you, because I do not care what you have to say about this subject at all, and I have no intention of engaging you ever again except to point out when you are lying. Which you do a lot. Even about things that were said minutes ago and can be easily checked.

wikipedia:

A semi-automatic rifle is a type of rifle that fires a single bullet each time the trigger is pulled, automatically ejects the spent cartridge, chambers a fresh cartridge from its magazine, and is immediately ready to fire another shot. They may be operated by a number of mechanisms, all of which derive their power from the explosion of the powder in the cartridge that also fires the bullet... Automatically loading the next round more easily allows for rapid fire. These rifles are also commonly known as self-loading rifles ('SLR') or auto-loading rifles....

So-called "military-style" weapons have attracted the attention of gun control advocates, who have introduced and passed legislation restricting the sale, importation, ownership, and manufacture of semi-automatic rifles. In the United States, new semi-automatic rifles with a military-style appearance were prohibited from retail sale or importation by the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which was enacted in 1994 and expired in 2004. Certain U.S. states such as California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York have their own restrictive laws regarding to the ownership and sale of semi-automatic rifles.

So a semi-automatic of this type is "immediately ready to fire another shot" and "automatically load(s) the next round" which "allows for rapid fire."

This is not hunting, this is war. You don't need "rapid fire" for hunting, only for massacres or battles.

I think hunting is unnecessary anyway. We are going to have to choose eventually between our desire to kill animals for sport, and our desire for our children to be safe. I'm willing to compromise, since rural states are not really where the gun violence problem is; but if military weapons are insisted on for "hunting purposes," then there is no compromise possible. They can't be tolerated in urban/suburban areas where people want to be safe to go to school, go shopping, watch a movie, attend a political meeting, etc. If that means disappointing some hunters and arousing the NRA, then people are going to have to choose between safety and appeasing these people.


From Huffington Post again, please read:

Adam Lanza used a semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 rifle during his rampage through Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, firing dozens of high-velocity rounds as he killed 20 children and six adults, authorities said Sunday.

Lanza, 20, carried "many high-capacity clips" for the lightweight military-style rifle....

"The loopholes in the law are evident in Connecticut, which has a state assault weapons ban modeled closely on the lapsed 1994 federal ban, said Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “What’s happened is the gun makers figured out how to take their existing assault weapon models, modify them just a bit and bam, they can sell,” Everitt said. "What may be needed is a longer list of banned or forbidden gun models and single gun features that would render more assault weapons illegal to sell," Everitt said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2312818.html

I think you're missing the nature of the "sport" of hunting. You're not competing with the animal. You're not interested in risking getting eaten, mauled or gored. Regardless, I'm not even really interested in the sporting aspect of it as much as I am the hundreds of thousands of people who depend on it for food. I've never been in the position where I depended on hunting for food (though a good yield is nice), but a lot of people do.

Meanwhile I'm not convinced such a ban would save the lives of innocent people, and I do believe that spree shooter types would move to explosives and that would actually cost lives.

From this discussion and others I've read/heard those of us who don't hunt or own guns know little about them.

When I was a victim of a violent crime many years ago, a cop told me to get a gun. I told him I wouldn't know how to fire a gun and he said, "It's easy. Just point and squeeze." The cop was a homicide, rape and class X detective. He'd seen the worst of the worst. But, had there been a gun available during that crime, I'd probably be dead, since I was ambushed when asleep in my bed at 2am by a man who crawled in my 2nd floor window. He was fully capable of killing, since once he was arrested he confessed to two murders along with multiple rapes. I am one of the fortunate. This guy was caught and remains in prison since 1978.

Having lived through this experience, I am always dumbstruck that many people somehow believe they would be able to disarm the attacker or defend and protect themselves and others when attacked. It's more likely that those with military or police training could, but the perp still has an huge jump on you, especially in civilian life. Dude's way ahead of you. You just get to react. Without constant training to get physical responses in split second conditioning, you're way behind. Even if you have all that, I'm not betting on your chances.

This Rambo mythology is just that. A myth.

I have nothing against hunting. I am not anti-gun. But I have my reservations about collecting arsenals. I think it's delusional.

Just in terms of everyone learning what the words mean, people might want to visit Automatic_Firearm page in Wiki.

The key paragraph is...

Originally Posted by Wiki

A fully automatic firearm is a firearm that will continue to fire so long as the trigger is pressed and there is ammunition in the magazine. Both "semi automatic" and "fully automatic" weapons are "automatic" in that the firearm automatically cycles between rounds with each trigger pull.

The article goes on to define additional weapons types including assault rifle, machine gun and machine pistol.

Many fully automatic weapons also have a burst mode. If you squeeze the trigger once, it will fire several times (usually three) in rapid succession, then stop until the trigger is released then pulled again. Using burst mode instead of fully automatic is quite common as the recoil from many shots makes any weapon hard to aim.

A for the most part irrelevant distinction is between a semi-automatic and a revolver. Both are one squeeze one shot weapons, but the revolver has an entirely different mechanism for bringing the next round into firing position. Automatics and semi automatics generally use the force of one shot firing to bring the next round into the firing chamber. Revolvers generally use the force of pulling the trigger or cocking the weapon to rotate a cylinder containing multiple rounds. Historically, revolvers were more reliable weapons, jamming less, but automatics feed in the next shot smoother with less force used by the shooter. The accuracy might thus be better for semi-automatics, and modern semi-automatics are generally more reliable than the early models. Semi-automatics and automatics can also be reloaded using clips of ammunition, which is often quicker than reloading a revolver.

There are also the obsolete muzzle loaders. It might be noted that the founding fathers put their basic gun laws into the Constitution when muzzle loaders were state of the art.

If anyone cares for the Constitution, note that Congress can call up the militia for three purposes: to enforce laws, to suppress insurrection, and to repel invasions. The weapons commonly used by the government for these three purposes are the weapons that are most explicitly protected by the 2nd Amendment. During Prohibition the US government wanted to get Thomson submachine guns out of the hands of gangsters. There is a Supreme Court case on file which states that as the Army and Militia do not use submachine guns, and the 2nd Amendment only protects the type of arms used by the Army and Militia, the 2nd Amendment doesn't protect the right to keep and bear submachine guns. There is a second Supreme Court case that uses the same logic, that as the Army doesn't use sawed off shotguns, the government can regulate or ban sawed off shotguns. (Again, there have been times when the Army has found use for sawed off shotguns, notably when exploring Viet Cong tunnel systems, which should effect the case law.) Alas, the weapon of choice today for the Army is the assault rifle. If the Supreme Court precedents count for anything, now that the 2nd Amendment is established as an individual right, the most protected guns by law would be M-16 style assault rifles used by the Army and the light automatic pistols commonly carried by police officers.

Of course, not many are reading the Constitution as written. Even the NRA isn't pushing for fully automatic weapons in the hands of the general public. Still, if one reads the Constitution as written...

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I'm glad you are more patient than Semo, who could only butt in with insults.

Tell me that I'm just as responsible for the deaths of twenty children as the fuckface who pulled the trigger in Sandy Hook when you don't even know what my position is (although I laid it out earlier), put me on ignore, and then take potshots at me from behind the ignore barrier?

Like I said before, stay classy, Eric.

Originally Posted by annla899

From this discussion and others I've read/heard those of us who don't hunt or own guns know little about them...

I have nothing against hunting. I am not anti-gun. But I have my reservations about collecting arsenals. I think it's delusional.

Okay, I wasn't talking about the rest of the world. Eric. Eric don't understand what he's talking about when it comes to fire arms. That's not a terrible thing, but it's a fact. I know some people who've never fired a gun in their lives, and they know the basic terminology and facts, and they're rare, but I know some people who own them and are clueless.

Now, again with the term aresenal, you're creating an image in your mind largely borne of ignorance. While people only have two hands and owning several guns seems foolish at first glance, different round sizes are better for different things. So I can own a .22 for really small game, a .30-06 for larger game, a shotgun for duc
k, and a different one for turkey. If I live in a place that is out in the middle of nowhere and the police response time is 30 minutes or more, I'll have a personal defense shotgun, and I'll need at least one pistol as a side arm, and I may keep a second and even third if I'm hunting something really big or something smaller but dangerous. If I have enough money, I may want to get into something like black powder, so I go and buy a black powder rifle for all the round sizes I commonly fire, and then, let's say a relative dies and I wind up with all his guns... And it adds up quick.

@ Eric. The sport is a competition, most often competed against one self, though there are organized competitions between hunters. Same with fishing.

Also, I think "respecting" the animal involves not letting it sit in misery. Sometimes you wind up injuring, but not killing an animal. The most respectful thing you can do is make sure it dies as quickly as possible. Using a semi-automatic (nobody uses rapid fire weapons hunting, it ruins the pelt and/or meat) means that I'm less likely to need to reload my weapon (vs. Single shots or muzzle loaders) and I won't need to do anything to chamber a round, and therefore I will kill the suffering animal much quicker.

Off the top of my head, both the Columbine shooters and the Aurora shooter manufactured explosives, and they would have used them if they hadn't spent all their time shooting. Tossing pipebombs is far more dangerous than shooting people. The reason we haven't experienced much of it is because these types are wasting their time shooting people.

Yes, and that's good. But at the time, it was an obvious obstruction to actual conversation.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Now, again with the term aresenal, you're creating an image in your mind largely borne of ignorance. While people only have two hands and owning several guns seems foolish at first glance, different round sizes are better for different things. So I can own a .22 for really small game, a .30-06 for larger game, a shotgun for duc
k, and a different one for turkey. If I live in a place that is out in the middle of nowhere and the police response time is 30 minutes or more, I'll have a personal defense shotgun, and I'll need at least one pistol as a side arm, and I may keep a second and even third if I'm hunting something really big or something smaller but dangerous. If I have enough money, I may want to get into something like black powder, so I go and buy a black powder rifle for all the round sizes I commonly fire, and then, let's say a relative dies and I wind up with all his guns... And it adds up quick.

Why do the most heavily armed nations that have lots of hunters, own typically less than a third of the total guns that Americans do, per capita?

If you live in places where people hunt, like "out in the middle of nowhere," gun crime is very low, so you don't need a "personal defense shotgun."

The point is well taken. Guns are no defense against well-armed criminals. If he just has a knife; well maybe, if you can get to it and unlock it first. And if the gun IS easy to get to and use, then it's unsafe. Your 20-year old demented son can take it and kill you with it, for example.

Americans can afford them, less economically afluent nations can't, it's unfortunately that simple.

The reason gun crime is very low out in the middle of nowhere, is as much because there are fewer gun laws as there are fewer people. More urbanized areas have lots of laws regarding guns (as they should), and rural areas don't because if you're living on 200 acres and you shoot your gun in your back yard, you're not likely to shoot anybody at all. Nobody is there. Meaning you're going to interact with people less and be less likely to encounter crime. But less likely doesn't mean "totally safe from" and even though your odds are about 50/50 in terms of personal defense, I'll take that over the zero that a 30 minute response time offers.

Originally Posted by Kepi

@ Eric. The sport is a competition, most often competed against one self, though there are organized competitions between hunters. Same with fishing.

Good. Make it sporting.

Also, I think "respecting" the animal involves not letting it sit in misery. Sometimes you wind up injuring, but not killing an animal. The most respectful thing you can do is make sure it dies as quickly as possible. Using a semi-automatic (nobody uses rapid fire weapons hunting, it ruins the pelt and/or meat) means that I'm less likely to need to reload my weapon (vs. Single shots or muzzle loaders) and I won't need to do anything to chamber a round, and therefore I will kill the suffering animal much quicker.

But according to the articles I posted above, semi-automatics ARE "rapid fire weapons." And it's true, as I posted before, that it ruins the object of the hunt. You don't need a rapid-fire weapon to make sure an animal is dead. A few more seconds of "suffering" makes no difference, and such a concern pales beside the concern we all need to have for the safety of our children. People need to give in on these subtle arguments, and give up the justifications for gun obsession and gun fetishes. Hunters can keep their non "military-style" weapons, and cities can be protected against them and other needless guns. If we are going to compromise and keep our nation together, that's the outline. Otherwise, because of this and other issues, we are going to have to part ways.

Off the top of my head, both the Columbine shooters and the Aurora shooter manufactured explosives, and they would have used them if they hadn't spent all their time shooting. Tossing pipebombs is far more dangerous than shooting people. The reason we haven't experienced much of it is because these types are wasting their time shooting people.

Well, these kinds of bombs are already banned, if I'm not mistaken. So the police and FBI can foil these plots, whereas guns are allowed and can't be stopped until it's too late. If bombs were easier, wouldn't they have been the weapon of choice by now? No, I suggest the rapid increase of military-style weapons makes it easier to use them, and to kill more people. That's why we are having more of these shootings, and deadlier ones at that. And more than in any other country by far. We need the ban back in place ASAP. And the ban should be retroactive, so possession of them is illegal. I don't know if that will happen though. Such a partial ban may not work very well.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Americans can afford them, less economically afluent nations can't, it's unfortunately that simple.

True, many nations can't; but these other nations I refer to are often economically and socially superior to the USA in every conceivable way.

The reason gun crime is very low out in the middle of nowhere, is as much because there are fewer gun laws as there are fewer people. More urbanized areas have lots of laws regarding guns (as they should), and rural areas don't because if you're living on 200 acres and you shoot your gun in your back yard, you're not likely to shoot anybody at all. Nobody is there. Meaning you're going to interact with people less and be less likely to encounter crime. But less likely doesn't mean "totally safe from" and even though your odds are about 50/50 in terms of personal defense, I'll take that over the zero that a 30 minute response time offers.

Life is not ever "totally safe," and you shouldn't seriously endanger people in cities by imposing a "right" to bear military-style weapons on them. Most sensible people, even in cities, don't even own guns. It is far more dangerous to own a gun, than not to own one, all things considered. There are many better ways of personal defense. But if I (or we urban blue-staters) can concede to you the need for non-military-style guns in rural areas, for protection of life and property, then you guys in rural areas and red states should concede to us the right to protect ourselves from dangerous guns.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

But according to the articles I posted above, semi-automatics ARE "rapid fire weapons..."

...Well, these kinds of bombs are already banned, if I'm not mistaken...

Firstly, the articles you posted are either sensationalist nonsense or they're utterly ignorant op ed drivel. Semi-auto means that all you have to do to get a single shot to fire is depress the trigger, but it doesn't keep firing until you depress the trigger again. One shot per depression of the trigger. Any more and it's considered full auto. Anybody who says otherwise is wrong, because it's a matter of fact.

As for the animal suffering a few more seconds... I'm sorry, but if somebody shoots me in the gut and there's no way that I'm going to get taken to a hospital or receive the type of care that will get me healed, I'd consider it the worst thing possible if you didn't put one between my eyes and end it for me immediately, and I'd be somewhat disgusted.

Also, if you're trying to make a retroactive ban, that'd be pretty much unconstitutional (no ex post facto laws), and therefore illegal, so that's just never happening.

Explosives are pretty much illegal most places, but that doesn't stop them from being manufactured personally, which can be done quite easily using basic household chemicals, which you could amass enough of relatively quickly without arousing much concern. Again, The Columbine shooters did deploy explosives, they just didn't explode them. The Aurora shooter did deploy explosives, the police just eventually disarmed them.

The reason that fire arms are prefered over explosives is that the shooter craves to make it more personal, but I doubt they'd exchange personalization for kill count.

Also, an assault weapons ban wouldn't apply to the AR-15, because it's semi-auto and at this point, because of the sheer volume of them out there... You just won't be able to stick a "and lookalikes" clause on there and expect it to be enforcible. It wouldn't bother me either way if it was, other than I hate stupid, unenforcible laws.

For the last time, I'm not in a red state and I don't live in a rural area anymore. The bottom line is that any ban is really going to be subject to the Supreme Court, and it's a constitutional issue. That's really what it boils down to, and considering how the SCOTUS ruled on DC, I sincerely doubt they'd rule any differently for anything else.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Mac-10's are automatic, not semi-automatic. You go to full auto and then you have a weapon that's there for supressive fire. It serves no practical applications for anything but, and supressive fire only really works on people. It's also in a price range that's utterly prohibitive for most people. I've known many people who've had a lot of guns, and the only people who I've known to own something like that were exceedingly wealthy. Only .08% of crimes are committed using automatic weapons. They're expensive and impractical.

As for hunting weapons using military technology, they're using technology, period. There are tons of technological innovations spearheaded by the military with a wide array of civilian applications. We're using one of the most efficient and brutal right now. If plastic framing makes my gun easier to shoot, why should I have to give it up? I'm sure a wood framed rifle would be just as likely to kill unarmed people.

Outlawing carabines isn't a bad idea in general and barrell length on shoulder arms is a reasonable concern, but I think the problem you run into with spreeshooters is that they don't seem to care as much if they live or die, so they're really a hacksaw away from making their standard rifle a carabine.

My thoughts weren't of the general public playing cowboy, my thoughts were more on SWAT tactics which would allow them to secure sections of the scene down so that you can start EMS providing services. It maybe piecemeal, but it's better than waiting.

Good. At least we agree that a machine pistol with a silencer is not approriate. Now, we need to find the point of separation between what is and what isn't. Remember, weapons originally designed for full-auto operation, but re-purposed for semi-auto only, can be returned to their original intent easily enough - legally or otherwise.

So no, I have no interest in making it easy for potential killers to have at it. I absolutley want them them underarmed in comparison to the authorities. If you study the 1920s and 30s, you'll see that the availability of submachine guns had a lot to do with the violence of the era. The bad guys were often better armed than the cops. The most likely bad-gun in a better managed world is a sawed-off shotgun. At least it limits the carnage to those with malice and forethought - not just some angry dude with access to the gun safe.