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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2228 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: You can't use Visa to buy Bitcoin, but you can use it to buy an AR-15.

    This is an interesting take, although it does raise a question about what else Visa could block and what kind of activism we'd be okay with them dabbling in.

Exactly what I'm sure is being discussed in boardrooms right now.

    But good lord it grinds my gears whenever someone uses the term "assault weapon" and I know that's the wrong thing to focus on but please at least have some familiarity with the subject you are writing about.

Speaking as the former owner of an assault weapon,

get over it.

A guy I know and respect well, whom I have ended up on the wrong side of a debate many times, used to say "the first person to argue semantics has lost." And while yeah, Richard Speck killed eight people with just a bayonet the fact of the matter is, military-derived semiautomatic long guns are disproportionately represented in mass slayings.

You can want everyone on the planet to call it "bath tissue" because fuckin' hell Puff's doesn't make Kleenex, but the world's gonna keep calling it Kleenex regardless of the manufacturer because here in this modern world that's the term we've settled on. If the audience has a very clear picture of what an "assault weapon" is, you do not serve them by insisting it's an "AR-15 style semiautomatic firearm." Especially when the whole reason we mince words about "assault weapons" is because the NRA wants us to.

    Phillip Peterson, a gun dealer in Indiana and the author of “Gun Digest Buyer’s Guide to Assault Weapons” (2008), said he had fought with his publishers over the use of the term in the title, knowing that it would only draw the ire of the gun industry.

    After the passage of the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons, Mr. Peterson said, the gun industry “moved to shame or ridicule” anyone who used “assault weapon” to describe anything other than firearms capable of full automatic fire.

    His instinct proved correct: The National Rifle Association refused to sell the book on its Web site, he said. So in 2010, Mr. Peterson produced another version that contained “90 percent of the same info,” but was retitled “Gun Digest Buyer’s Guide to Tactical Rifles.” That book made it onto the N.R.A. site, he said.

That '94 ban? exempted 650 different weapons and required two of five if not specifically exempted: folding stock, pistol grip, bayonet mount, flash surpressor, grenade launcher(!). It was a tortuous way to enact law, especially as the term "assault rifle" (storming rifle) was coined by Hitler for this guy:

Can you hunt deer with an AR-15? Sure you can. Is that the AR-15's primary purpose? No it is not. So we can dance around with terms all day long but it doesn't change the fact that even the cartridge used in common "AR-15 style semiautomatic firerarms" is designed to turn humans into hamburger.

Run an experiment and report back to science. Open a word .doc and put a picture of a .223 Savage, a Remington 1100, a Colt 1911 and a Bushmaster .223 on it. Now go wander your local mall and ask random passers-by which one's the assault weapon. For bonus points, ask which ones should be banned. Regardless of the individual scores, we know which picture's gonna have the highest number.

We all know what we're talking about... and the people not interested in splitting hairs are all outta patience. After Sandy Hook, they were pointing at the Port Arthur massacre which led to Australia banning semi-autos. Now they're looking at Dunblane which led the UK to ban semi-autos and handguns.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/gunned-down/





BurnTheBarricade  ·  2228 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I get it. Just a pet peeve. You bring up the '94 ban which is indeed torturous, and I would argue further, didn't actually address the characteristics of "assault weapons" that make them more deadly. But the characteristics that they ultimately settled on are semantics, and without arguing semantics no legislation will actually get put forward. It also lends more credibility to your position, and while you clearly know your stuff I can't say the same about the author of the linked article.

But we both want to try to eliminate this problem, which is the dramatic uptick in the number of mass shootings across America in recent years. And obviously AR-15-derived platforms are, like you said, disproportionately represented in these shootings. Of course, more than half of the legislators in America today are part of a party opposed to any new restrictions on firearms, so that may be Step 0. And after that, we have options to ban, restrict, and disincentivize, but the approach will have to be multi-pronged. Speaking from anecdote, a majority of gun owners are okay with universal background checks, a significant minority are okay with a feature-specific ban, and a small minority would consider a buyback program. I don't know any gun owner today that supports a blanket ban, like the UK and Australia.

A Mini-14 looks different from an AR-15, but it shoots the same round and has the same magazine capacity options. And if we get sloppy about semantics then the only difference we will make is that the next shooter's weapon will have wood furniture and a rifle grip.

kleinbl00  ·  2228 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    You bring up the '94 ban which is indeed torturous, and I would argue further, didn't actually address the characteristics of "assault weapons" that make them more deadly.

Yeah it was a straight joke. Everybody knew it. Probably the reason they let it die; it was a watered down pyrrhic victory of no real consequence.

    A Mini-14 looks different from an AR-15, but it shoots the same round and has the same magazine capacity options.

Right - 'cuz it's also a civilian version of a military combat rifle. What do they have in common?

Detachable mags.

Ban detachable mags and all the pistol grips, bayonet mounts, bump stocks and Pickatinny Rail in the world won't make a lick of difference. It would also effectively sundown every militarily-derived rifle past the .30 carbine.