(MiniRant) I don't care which side of the Gun Debate you're on...

[seawasp]

... but will people stop saying "semi-automatic" in a context that shows that they think it means "shoots like a machine gun"???? and misusing the term "ASSAULT WEAPON". Real assault weapons are NOT semi-auto.

A semi-automatic weapon is not a machine gun. It is not "made to kill a lot of people quickly", as one spam I got today says.

Most pistols are semi-automatic. You pull the trigger, it shoots, and a mechanism in the gun brings the next cartridge up so you can PULL THE TRIGGER AGAIN, having spat out the now-expended first cartridge's remains (the "brass").

Revolvers do the same thing through a different mechanism, but unlike a semi-automatic pistol, they don't eject the cartridges themselves, so you have to open the revolver up and clean it out and reload after 6 shots pretty much by hand, while you can eject a magazine from your semi-auto and keep shooting -- one shot at a time.

FULL AUTO weapons are the ones that shoot lots of bullets much faster than you can pull a trigger (well, faster than MOST people can pull a trigger; some of the stunt shooters can manage an impressive rate of fire for a short time). Real assault weapons are full-auto (many can SWITCH to burst and/or semiauto, but what makes them good military weapons is that they are in fact capable of fully automatic fire.

Semi-automatic covers most handguns and a fair number of rifles and some shotguns.

Fully-automatic weapons have been illegal in most states for YEARS, and generally HAVEN'T been used in the killings people get up in arms over.

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The term "assault weapon" is essentially meaningless in the US, muddied by the political climate. I would argue, myself, that a semi-automatic rifle could indeed qualify as an assault weapon if it were designed for close-quarters combat; as the AR-15 is a close relative to the military M-16, with the primary difference being a modification (apparently easily undone) to prevent fully-automatic fire, I'd feel comfortable labeling it as an assault weapon. Heck, I'd say the Ruger Mini-14 is effectively an assault weapon even though it was semi-auto and didn't look like one of Rambo's fashion accessories.

I would say one key defining element is the use of large-capacity magazines; there's zero hunting utlility in a 30-round banana-mag, it's there for spray-and-pray shooting whether the weapon's fully auto or not. I would argue that a large ammunition capacity would indeed indicate that a weapon was "made to kill a lot of people quickly."

Canada prohibits magazines of greater capacity than 5, IIRC, except for those designed for .22LR ammunition; those get a 10-round capacity ceiling. As a sports-shooter I never felt the lack. (Heck, most of my shooting was done with single-shot accurized sport rifles firing .22LR; then again, it was shooting for the Rifle team so it was more Olympic style stuff than casual plinking.)

-- Steve certainly agrees with you that there is a lot of sloppy (and magical) thinking about firearms going around in the press and social media.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

Steve, a standard cap mag for the AR15/M16/M4 is 30 rounds, is this what you mean by large-capacity? As to your claim "there's zero hunting utlility in a 30-round banana-mag" I use a AR15 on woodchucks, prairie dogs & other small vermin. My rifle is sub MOA and yes I do shoot 300 plus rounds at them in a afternoon.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Yes, up here in the Great White North a 30-round magazine would be considered large-capacity and thus illegal for civilian purchase. Curiously, you can still get the AR-15 here, albeit as a restricted weapon which requires special licensing and registration, but only with a smaller (5-round?) magazine. Press article from Ottawa after the Newtown shooting goes a bit into it.

-- Steve just doesn't see the utility outweighing the social costs on this.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Learn to reload. And if you can't hit something without emptying a 30-round magazine into the general area where you think it is, learn to shoot better.

Sorry, but this is a no brainer. And your right to shoot woodcuhcks pales into insignificance against the lives of innocent people who go to a midnight movie (and get mown down by assault weapons meant for a theatre of war) or those of six-year-olds whose only crime was going to school that day.

And yes, I KNOW that "bad guys would get guns anyway". But making them *harder to get* would probably make a measurable difference. And if that means you get to shoot fewer woodchucks, so be it. Children take precedence.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

You did read the opening para Rik posted I hope. A full auto "assault" weapon goes for between 8 & 30 K, it requires a fed tax & most states as Rik noted don't allow them. As far as I can tell in the past 50 years only 2 legal full auto firearms have been used in a crime & one of those was done by a cop.

We tried that "harder to get" btw, the '94 ban. It did absolutely nothing in stopping gun crime, look here for more info

Your post hoc on the children... well I'm not going to debate this, so you've won Conga Rats!

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The lapse of the assault weapons ban of '94-'04 slightly changed gun crime, but not dramatically. It did lead to more casualties in mass shooting events, but mass shootings constitute a tiny proportion of overall gun crime in the US anyway. (They are vastly more visible, though, which is why they garner so much media and political attention.)

The big problem in the US is the ubiquity of handguns, according to FBI statistics where their presense in gun crime incidences dwarfs all other forms of firearms combined. Canada's overall better record on gun crime likely results from its immensely tighter controls on handguns (and outright ban on civilian CCW) rather than magazine limits. Alas that's a genie that's truly out of the bottle in America; I don't know how American law could address this, though I'm certain that ubiquitous CCW is a huge step in the wrong direction. (And "Stand Your Ground" is an even greater mistake.)

The magazine limits do help limit the damage in mass shootings and spree shootings, though, which is still worth doing in my opinion.

-- Steve has opined in the past that needing more than 5 rounds in a magazine is a sign of needing more training or more backup, but that may be biased by his own training and background.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

My go-to explanation of the U.S.'s problem with guns and what's wrong with the arguments of a lot of the gun-rights advocates (without necessarily turning around and saying that gun-control advocates are always right, either) has quickly become Bang Bang Crazy parts 1-4, by Jim Wright in his Stonekettle Station blog. (The "semi-automatic weapon isn't an 'assault weapon' " thing is partly covered in Part 1, but only in the form of addressing it in terms of layman's terminology rather than getting into the legalese of what was & wasn't covered by the 1994 ban and similar measures.) Whether you end up agreeing or disagreeing (or both) with what he said, I think all four parts (and the precursor, about the various stages of typical American collective reactions to high-profile shootings) are worth reading.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

They're already "harder to get". In fact, assault weapons -- that is, weapons that one would use to assault a position -- have been prohibited to civilians in the US since 1968. Exceptions require a Class 1 or 2 (dealer) license or Class 3 (Curios & Relics) license from the BATF and even then there are restrictions. I leave it to the reader to read up on the various federal firearms licenses.

None of the perpetrators of the high profile shootings in recent memory were so licensed by the BATF.

But why let the truth get in the way of hype and ratings, eh?

[kengr]

Hunting regs in Oregon don't allow you to hunt with a weapon that has a magazine that can hold more than *five* rounds. Which means that you have to install a "blocker" in a .22 rifle that has a tube magazine if you want to go squirrel hunting with it.

There *may* be exceptions for "varmints".

This is why I have a 5 round magazine that can be swapped in for the 10 round on my SKS. Given that the magazine on an SKS is only swappable with tools (at least the standard 10 round and the optional 5 round) this makes sure I can't get in trouble.

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

Ugh, THIS.

[elainegrey.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Specifically, legally owned fully automatic weapons have been used in two murders since the US started regulating them; at least one was owned by a police officer. So by numbers, full-auto weapons are safer than cars, knives, baseball bats, belts, or beer. (It's also true that full-auto hobbyists are fairly rare, and the ones who jump through enough hoops to own their toys at all are pretty responsible.) The press seems willfully ignorant about terminology.

The magazine thing is pretty clearly a tactic to limit something about guns and take something away from gun owners; since removing the weapons themselves is legally tricky, it's more practical to attack the ammunition containers that have no particular protection.

[kengr]

I know some full-auto hobbyists. And got to go to a couple of the full-auto "shoots" that the Albany gun club does twice a year.

Somewhere on the net is a series of pictures of me firing a 20 mm anti-tank rifle (on a pedestal mount) at a plywood shilouette of a triceratops. Cost me $20 for the one round I fired.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

As far as I know there haven't been any instances of firearms over 20mm being used in violent attacks. Logically we could open up the ownership of Impractically Huge Cannon considerably. Few people want to shoot irresponsibly at $20 a round, and anyone who can conceal an anti-tank rifle under their jacket is damn well welcome to do so.

[kengr]

20mm Isn't that huge. The Lahti wasn't much bigger than a Barret .50 cal "sniper" rifle (the Barret is 5 feet long, That Lahti was a bit over 6).

Alas, I'm sure that if they had access under the same terms as regfular rifles, some nut case would set up someplace and start taking out cars & trucks on the freeway. *sigh*

[remus-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that most normal people don't see a difference between fully automatic and semi-automatic, especially in the case of psychopathic killing sprees. Whether you take 2 or 3 seconds to empty your clip doesn't matter much if you're shooting at unarmed civilians.

Getting the terminology right is something that the media should strive toward, but it doesn't affect the gun debate one bit. Both firing styles are equally effective at mass murder.

[seawasp]

Actually, if you're talking about decent-sized magazines (say 10+ rounds), it's more a difference of one second to TEN seconds for most people. Trick shooters can approach auto-fire rates, but most people are going to manage one shot a second, maybe two, instead of the between ten and twenty per second that a full-autofire weapon can reasonably reach. (Miniguns can manage FIFTY, but no one outside of an action film's ever going to use one of those as a carriable weapon).

In combat with people shooting at you, an extra 4-9 seconds is a LOT. Even someone fat and slow like me can cover over 50 meters in 9 seconds, and in a building that means getting out of the room or finding reasonable cover a LOT easier.

If it's irrelevant, then it shoudn't be mentioned as though it was (which specifying "semi-automatic" does), and those trying to ban guns should just say they want to ban guns. This will not work,and given current political climate could lead to vastly worse events, but I'd prefer people be straightforward about what they want.

[kengr]

Oh. A note about high capacity magazines. For several weapons on the market, it's actually quicker to use the standard 10 round magazine and reload it from "stripper" clips.

The bigger magazines take up a lot more room, and are harder to "seat" than the stripper.

With the stripper, just pull the clip (a strip of springy metal that holds 10 rounds by their bases), insert it into the top of the open action, push down with your thumb to "strip" the rounds off the clip, and toss away the clip.

Compare that with pushing the magazine release (on the bottom of the weapon) and fumbling to get the magazine lined up right without damaging the "lips" (if you bang them wrong, the magazine will "seat", but the ammo won't feed)

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that the military rarely uses full-auto mode on their rifles. You burn through ammo too fast -- you use up a standard clip in something like three or four seconds of full-auto firing. Burst firing or semi-automatic firing is usually more effective.

Note that this says nothing about belt-fed machine guns, which are a whole different beast.

Of course, there's also this. It gives you pretty much the firing rate of a full-auto weapon, but it technically not full-auto, and is perfectly legal.

[randallsquared.livejournal.com]

Indeed. When I was in the Army, the standard issue M16A2 had only semi and burst fire, so even a military-use assault rifle didn't have fully automatic fire.

[kengr]

Yeah, and I've seen posts about the semi-auto weapons used in one of the shootings in the last few months that claimed a "rate of fire" of 700-900 rounds per minute.

No, dear, that's the *cyclic rate*. Which is how fast the action can cycle . (ie how long it takes from the point a round is fired to the point a where another round is chambered and ready to fire).

For fully automatic weapons the rate of fire *approaches* the cyclic rate. For semi auto, the rate of fire is more a matter of how fast you can pull the trigger. Which isn't anywhere *near* the cyclic rate.

Note, the same post also mentioned that there was a grenade launcher available for said rifle. Without mentioning that grenades and launchers are classified as "destructive devices" by the ATF and require all sort of checking and lots of money to get. Just like machine guns.

Which brings us to "assault weapons". That's a made up term to let anti-gun folks confuse the public. It sounds like "assault rifle".

Assault rifles are selective fire (usually, full auto, 3-round burst and single shot) military weapons that require going thru a lengthy process with the ATF and then paying a large transfer tax to get. And they have all sorts of restrictions on where you can have them, and how you can store or transport them.

"Assault weapons" are rifles that essentially "look military" or "look scary". The expired ban that they want to revive classified a gun as an "assault weapon if it had 2 of the following features:
bayonet mount
pistol grip
folding stock
(there's a fourth one I can't recall at the moment)

The bayonet mount is a joke. So is the "pistol grip". trying to shoot a rifle that has a pistol grip (which is always in addition to the part that goes against your shoulder) one handed means you'll be lucky to hit anything.

The folding stock makes the gun somewhat concealable. But even with a carbine, you are left with two or more *feet* of rifle to hide.

Hmmm. I think the fourth criteria may have been capable of taking magazines holding more than 10 rounds. So that might have *some* slight justification.

Oh yeah, the folding stocks and stocks with a pistol grip? They are available as after market add-ons. And under the "ban" you could quite legally *add* them to the rifle after purchase. Because the ban was a ban on *importing* the guns.

It resembles the "Saturday night special" laws that way. A measure to keep cheap guns out of the hands of the public by making them *sound* like a major danger.