Its mostly for kylie... anyway my favorite part

We should ban Assault Rifles!

Define “assault rifle”…

Uh…

Yeah. That’s the problem. The term assault rifle gets bandied around a lot. Politically, the term is a loaded nonsense one that was created back during the Clinton years. It was one of those tricks where you name legislation something catchy, like PATRIOT Act. (another law rammed through while emotions were high and nobody was thinking, go figure).

To gun experts, an assault rifle is a very specific type of weapon which originated (for the most part) in the 1940s. It is a magazine fed, select fire (meaning capable of full auto), intermediate cartridge (as in, actually not that powerful, but I’ll come back to that later) infantry weapon.

The thing is, real assault rifles in the US have been heavily regulated since before they were invented. The thing that the media and politicians like to refer to as assault rifles is basically a catch all term for any gun which looks scary.

I had somebody get all mad at me for pointing this out, because they said that the term had entered common usage. Okay… If you’re going to legislate it, DEFINE IT.

And then comes up that pesky problem. The US banned assault rifles once before for a decade and the law did absolutely nothing. I mean, it was totally, literally pointless. The special commission to study it said that it accomplished absolutely nothing. (except tick a bunch of Americans off, and as a result we bought a TON more guns) And the reason was that since assault weapon is a nonsense term, they just came up with a list of arbitrary features which made a gun into an assault weapon.

Problem was, none of these features actually made the gun functionally any different or somehow more lethal or better from any other run of the mill firearm. Most of the criteria were so silly that they became a huge joke to gun owners, except of course, for that part where many law abiding citizens accidentally became instant felons because one of their guns had some cosmetic feature which was now illegal.

One of the criteria was that it was semi-automatic. See above. Hard to ban the single most common and readily available type of gun in the world. (unless you believe in confiscation, but I’ll get to that). Then what if it takes a detachable magazine! That’s got to be an Evil Feature. And yes, we really did call the Evil Features. I’ll talk about magazines below, but once again, it is pretty hard to ban something that common unless you want to go on a confiscatory national suicide mission.

For example, flash hiders sound dangerous. Let’s say having a flash hider makes a gun an assault weapon. So flash hiders became an evil feature. Problem is flash hiders don’t do much. They screw onto the end of your muzzle and divert the flash off to the side instead of straight up so it isn’t as annoying when you shoot. It doesn’t actually hide the flash from anybody else. EVIL.

Barrel shrouds were listed. Barrel shrouds are basically useless, cosmetic pieces of metal that go over the barrel so you don’t accidentally touch it and burn your hand. But they became an instantaneous felony too. Collapsible stocks make it so you can adjust your rifle to different size shooters, that way a tall guy and his short wife can shoot the same gun. Nope. EVIL FEATURE!

It has been a running joke in the gun community ever since the ban passed. When Carolyn McCarthy was asked by a reporter what a barrel shroud was, she replied “I think it is the shoulder thing which goes up.” Oh good. I’m glad that thousands of law abiding Americans unwittingly committed felonies because they had a cosmetic piece of sheet metal on their barrel, which has no bearing whatsoever on crime, but could possibly be a shoulder thing which goes up.

Now are you starting to see why “assault weapons” is a pointless term? They aren’t functionally any more powerful or deadly than any normal gun. In fact the cartridges they normally fire are far less powerful than your average deer hunting rifle. Don’t worry though, because the same people who fling around the term assault weapons also think of scoped deer rifles as “high powered sniper guns”.

Basically, what you are thinking of as assault weapons aren’t special.

Simple: if it isn't a handgun and isn't expressly for the purpose of hunting, it's an assault weapon that nobody who doesn't want to foment rebellion has any legitimate business owning.

What about those who just want "protection" from the government. No initial rebellion. Just the exercise of the non-aggression axiom.

Is that not a legitimate reason? If the government is not interested in aggression, then it wouldn't be a problem. Not to say that there doesn't need to be a legitimate reason to own something. And if were to ban these firearms, we should restrict the same to certain other products that are excessively unecessary to the point of harm, but still bought. An example would be the sugar-based foods filled with corn-syrup in the diet of Americans. Certainly we can survive on other food, and there is no legitimate reason to eat THAT food.

Simple: if it isn't a handgun and isn't expressly for the purpose of hunting, it's an assault weapon that nobody who doesn't want to foment rebellion has any legitimate business owning.

dear lord where is the hunting clause in the constititon. 2nd who determines what an "expressly" hunting only rifle" is?

Yeah people will really suffer by not having assault rifles at home.  Can you imagine living without an assault rifle, what a struggle.

You're speaking to the wrong guy on that. I'm for ending corn subsidies to enable natural sugar to take its place, and for corn to be used for stuff that corn is best used for.

The difference in mindset is a point upon which i agree with KylieDog: armed action against the government is not necessary in this day and age. Armed insurrections are always messier than peaceful power transitions, because ALL of the armed individuals in the uprising need to be satisfied if there is to be peace.

Let's say there is a general right-wing rebellion in America, with armed factions including a moderate libertarian group (the main wing), a white supremacist group, and a radical christian group. The American government agrees to a peace that is most acceptable to the libertarians, but less so to the white supremacists and christian radicals. The libertarians stop, but the radicals don't, and keep on fighting even though their beliefs are severely minority.

Armed rebellion gives disproportionate representation to the armed, and leads to messes in the future. Look at Ireland, for instance, where the Irish Civil War followed on the heels of the Irish War of Independence, and where the IRA (losers of the civil war) have continued to plague the island since. Or the Russian Civil War, where the use of weapons against tyranny simply led to a different kind of tyranny.

Right in the Second Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to killing deer and gamefowl, the right of the people government aproved militia to keep and bear Arms, shall occassionally not be infringed."