For spree shooters? Semi-autos like the AR-15 in particular are clearly the weapon of choice. They often also have sidearms, but they're not the primary weapon.
I mean, Canada's pushing a national handfun freeze through Parliament as we speak and they're relatively controlled to begin with, so it's more that it's never a focus in America.
Largely because it shifts the focus from "mass shooting events" to "y'all are just REAL fuckin' murdery, compared to anywhere else". There's no real way to approach that subject other than mandated licensing for any firearm, and the like, and those bills die before they get started.
Registration and the other things promoted as new gun control laws that don't target specific types of firearms would obviously include guns, guess what, people are against them because "muh rights" or "can't trust the gubberment". If you're interested you can read these arguments and others probably about 1000 to 2000 pages ago.
and of course the popular RW talking point of :"well what about Chicago" ignores that in dealing with inter city violence means the government doing things. which of course the government doing anything means tyranny is right around the corner and not finally holding the one's in power to weld it for the general good of everyone.
Yah.
https://theweek.com/gun-violence/101...s-favorite-gun
https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...choice-107819/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/ar-15-styl...ry?id=53111745
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Also, another iteration of the classic "ignore population and per-capita statistics". They pull that scam one way regarding the nation as a whole ("the USA's so much bigger, you just can't compare"), and the other way with Chicago ("Look how high their absolute numbers are compared to Bumfuck Nebraska. Ignore the population difference and how that puts Chicago down around like #25 on the scale of most-dangerous cities in the USA, mostly below red-state cities").
So you may get a technicality, in that the definition of "mass shooting" there covers a lot of non-public shootings, particularly in family homes. But when you look at public mass shootings, where a spree shooter tries to kill random people, it's primarily assault rifles. I should have said "spree shooter", like all public school shootings qualify as, to exclude the cases where a distraught father kills his wife and children, or the like.Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines were disproportionately used in public mass shootings. Of the shootings with known weapon type, 76 percent of those that involved an assault weapon and/or high-capacity magazine occurred in public compared to 44 percent of those that involved a handgun.
Also, this whole additional study by the same site, linked directly; https://everytownresearch.org/report...ity-magazines/
If you're claiming that site is arguing against the idea that assault weapons are a problem, you haven't read the source you're citing. And if you're quibbling about precise differences in technical definitions like the difference between "mass shooter" and "spree shooter", I don't think your goal is to contribute meaningfully to discussion in the first place.
yeah, something like the Kali-key. Makes it so you have to pull the charging handle every shot.
There's other ways around assault weapon laws. You can permanently attach a magazine. Then you have to reload using a stripper clip like tool. There's also things like a maglock that you can only release the mag of you pull the takedown pin and open the gun.
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I provided data saying this and they immediately move the goalpost to "the worst mass shootings."
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Almost all the weapons used are state compliant and are not "assault weapons."
You keep repeating the same nonsensical things.
It's not even me trying to be pendantic, but you're saying nonsense.
Sad, Endus, another reading comprehension failure.
You're ignoring the fact that 81% of mass shootings involved a handgun and only 16% of mass shootings involved an assault weapon.
So public shootings with a handgun would be 44% of 81%, or 36%, whereas public shootings with an assault weapon would be 76% of 16%, or 12%, meaning that handguns are 3x as common for public mass shootings.
Even if you use the "handguns only" total of 60%, that's still 44% of 60%, or 26%, which is still more than 2x as common as assault weapon public mass shootings.
Now, of course, the quote also says "assault weapon and/or high capacity magazine", so technically, it could actually be 100% of assault weapon uses that were public, but the handgun 26% is still far higher than the 16% for assault weapons in that case.
Aaaaand, of course of course, if we reaaaaally want to be technical, it could be that each and every one of the handgun-but-not-handgun-only shootings were public. That would account for 21% out of the earlier 36%, leaving an absolute theoretical minimum of only 15% handgun-only-public mass shootings, compared to the absolute theoretical maximum of 16% assault-weapon-public mass shootings.
So in the absolute, very best, totally improbably result for your argument... they're practically even.
And that leaves aside the fact that assault weapons can be handguns, too, and would therefore not be the semi-automatic rifles that were being discussed here. But whatever.
Or we could just add another metastudy to the list:
Semi-automatic rifles are sure talked about a lot, but they're not the common choice for mass shootings. (And yes, that was the original subject, despite your attempts to goalpost shift.)
Perhaps, if you narrow the definition down to only public spree shooters who are not targeting individuals, but only looking to just straight up murder people, then you might see a correlation. But that's a tiny amount of even mass shootings, and those are precisely the people who are far less likely to understand anything about firearms, and probably just did exactly what you just did: google "is an AR-15 the most dangerous weapon I can get" and got confused by the widely-spread (but inaccurate) results.
Basically, all your (and I use "you" extremely collectively here) screaming does is just reinforce to potential copycat mass-murdering spree killers that they should be getting an AR-15, regardless of whether or not it actually is any more "dangerous" than any other weapon choice for their target.
So why do some of those shooters choose an AR-15? It's because of you.
"The difference between stupidity
and genius is that genius has its limits."
--Alexandre Dumas-fils
I literally acknowledged the technicality, and ignored nothing, dude. Way to not bother reading the post.
Are you arguing that assault weapons should be legal? Despite the assault weapons ban doing a lot to reduce these kinds of killings? If you're arguing that there should also be restrictions on handguns, you're not actually criticizing anything I've said, since I've never advocated only focusing on these kinds of rifles. I definitely support extensive handgun restrictions, too. So it's a false dilemma you seem to be trying to catch me in, for some reason.
The AR-15 is specifically called out as an assault weapon and specifically banned by the USA's 1994 assault weapon ban. So were other things, but the AR-15 was 100% one of them.
It's been my experience that people who say "it's not an assault weapon" don't have a list they can point to, and are arguing vagueries so that they can't lose. I've posted the list before, but it's trivial to find.
If someone has an alterante list with any air of officiality, feel free to post it. Handwaving is not a list.
There will always be ways for criminals and other bad people to circumvent laws and find loopholes, but I'd think there'd be a bit less implicit cheering on of said behavior and a bit less implicit, "Laws aren't perfect and can be circumvented so we don't need more of them." that's been pervasive throughout this thread.
Doesn't sound like responsible gun owners who own weapons for self defense or practical use like hunting or going to the range, to me.
Here in the UK we have had one school shooting Dunblane Massacre in 1996, which killed 17 and injured 15. This radically closed down access to firearms for the general public and banned handguns all together.
You can still get a shotgun and firearm certificate, but you need a really good reason to get approved and requires extensive background checks, police interview, inspection of where it will be kept and used. We haven't had a school shooting since.
Australia had a mass shooting 6 weeks after Dunblane Port Arthur massacre which killed 35 and injured 23, they also changed the gun laws and bought nearly 650,000 banned weapons back from the public. They haven't had a mass shooting since.
I'm glad I'm not raising kids in the US, it cant be fun sending them off to school after yet another shooting. The thing I find most baffling is how can it be ok for somebody who isn't legally old enough to order a beer to have access to any weapon? (apart from maybe an air rifle).
Civilized nations reacting in a civilized way to a horrific incident. There is no reason any citizen needs more than a single shot rifle or a revolver (for bears/moose when camping).
The people in this thread advocating for anything less than the removal of the 2nd Amendment (because, remember, we've changed others in the past - see also slavery) continue to defend that it's ok for children to be slaughtered so long as they can go a shootin'! Because...Murica. For those "gun advocates" who bristle at this - please explain why the US is the only country with continued mass shootings.
(in before the gun advocates nit pick and avoid the big ticket issues)
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The failure has been yours, the entire time. You just don't understand why.
Read your first two sentences again. Tell me again why we need assault weapons if banning them would prevent 16% of the mass shootings?
Give us one good reason (outside the ridiculous notion of the 2A) why we shouldn't ban all guns with the exception of bolt action rifles and revolvers? Do you have any reasonable argument to that? And please don't give us the "I've already laid out my positions, go find them". If you have, link the post, and I'll go read them.
If you do this - I promise you, right here, right now, I will answer your point, directly, and professionally.
Leave the shittalking to Endus. He's practically a professional and you're just... bad at it. I suppose that would normally be a mark in your favor, but, like... you're just embarrassing yourself here.
Because... it wouldn't? This "argument" (if you want to call it that) ignores the fact that these shooters could have just obtained a firearm that was functionally the same as one of those "assault weapons" and still committed the shooting. It also ignores the fact that many of these shooters also had handguns with which they could have carried out the shooting.
To think that you're going to somehow stop these shootings by banning assault weapons is just ludicrous.
You call yourself a lawyer, but I have serious doubts about your ability when you can't even make a rational argument.
Well, I'm not going to do your homework for you.
But the simple answer is that it wouldn't have the effect you suppose it would, nor, frankly, would it be possible. Even if, magically, this was the case tomorrow in the US, you'd just be handing power back to the GoP, which would be incredibly counter-productive and actually make the conditions that lead to crime worse, resulting in even more crime and subsequently more deaths.
The cold, hard truth is that you will not be able to repeal 2A. And with 2A in place, you won't be able to ban most guns. Threatening to do so, clamoring for more and more measures (measures that more often than not won't have the effect you want) just plays directly into the GoP's hands and literally makes things worse.
If you want homicides of any type to go down, then you want crime to go down, which means tackling the issue at its root. Systematically dismantling the GoP would be a good start. Instead, you'd fight for bans that won't work, give rise to more copycat shooters by continuing to talk about these shootings ad nauseam, and hand power back to those who have a vested interest in the status quo of poor education, poor income equality, poor healthcare, you name it.
You'll pardon me if I don't believe either your word or your "professionalism" even a little bit at this point. Threatening to post PMs is a morally repugnant act, regardless of the fact that they don't contain anything nearly as incriminating as you seem to imply they do.
You can choose to believe it or not, but I sent that PM out of respect. A respect, I'm sorry to say, you don't deserve after your shameless attacks.
"The difference between stupidity
and genius is that genius has its limits."
--Alexandre Dumas-fils