@newtboy
@BSR
@mram


You can not have a military automatic weapon.

2nd 98% of killings are done by inner city thugs and yet the left only focus on suburban , school, theater killings .


Left wants to make it harder for people to buy legal -- The real problem is the illegal guns that are doing most killing - destroying families . cities. soles

The left has no desire to truly address this issue in their cities.

I was riding the bus in Paris, and all the streets in Paris were designed for anorexic horses in the 17th century and fuck you for trying to fit your fat-ass 21st century car down them -- much less a huge city bus. So we're squeezing down this street and we come across a moving truck blocking the road. I, as an America, am awaiting horns, swearing and automatic weapon fire. Instead, the driver stops the bus, turns it off, hops off and goes and has a smoke. The people in the bus were being totally French about it: not a murmur of complaint.

Two years later, I was in Canada and some dude cut off a taxi at a light. Out hops the taxi driver to confront the driver of the other car. I start scanning for my exit once pop-pop-pop / muthafuckas drop gets underway. Instead of a spray of bullets, or at least an amusing fist fight, the taxi driver shakes his finger at the guy and gets back in his cab.

I live in mortal fear of getting shot on the road in America over some stupid bullshit (this actually happened to me once: some asshole in Cupertino cranked off three rounds at my car when I accidentally cut him off). It's so amazing to visit civilized countries and see people acting decent and calm to each other.

You need to do some more research, there are some terrible bills out there in addition to ones with straightforward good things like background checks. The ghost gun fanatics will end up banning aluminum stock and most 3D printers, they are so ignorant.
https://www.westernjournal.com/dem-reps-attempt-get-rid-ghost-guns-ban-common-tool/
Ghost gun "kits" like you say are blocks of aluminum or polymer partially machined that have to be further machined to be turned into a gun. Cad files for turning a rectangular block of aluminum into a gun are easily available. These are not guns, and treating them as such is simply stupid.

Firearm accessories like magazines are critical parts to a functioning weapon. People have already been successful in getting most people to think 30rnd mags for an AR-15 is "high capacity" when it's actually the standard capacity. They want to ban every removable magazine, with zero data that it will reduce gun crime. There have been bills to define any semi-automatic weapon an "assault weapon". Ludicrous.

At best that leaves only the rare pre 1986 automatics already in private hands, only in some states (totally illegal under any circumstances in many other states), only if you can first pass an expensive background check more stringent than the one federal agents must pass. Sounds like some serious regulation to me.

What you, me, or others consider firearms means nothing. I gave you the law as written, it includes those, they are illegal, so there are effective regulations on firearms already....that doesn't mean they're sufficient. Those words are different words, that's why they're spelled and pronounced differently. Speed limits are effective laws, but not sufficient to regulate vehicle use.

Why do so many firearms lovers fear being on a registry? I've always found that insane, like every other purchase you make isn't tracked or something. There's no purchase privacy anymore, for anything.

It doesn't take any money to ban certain firearms, certainly not a boatload, and not the ocean of cash health care costs. That's a red herring. All it takes is for representatives to vote the way their constituents want them to by 98%.
Perhaps in that sense it would take money, because in order to get them to vote as the people want, campaign finance reform is necessary, and that will cost money, but it's the best thing our country could possibly spend money on.

I support a slightly modified second amendment and universal health care. My interpretation allows for regulations, registration, universal background checks even for family transfers, bans of certain types, seizure from violent convicts and mental patients (impossible without a registry, btw), etc. Yes, I understand that's not how the constitution is written today, but the constitution is a living document. In California, we have most of that as state law already, including an outright ban on fully or selectively automatic weapons.

Btw, you suggest....Try to make people feel welcome.
I was responding in kind to your off hand assumption that, without your derisive "warning", he would be "dumb" enough to make an assumption about you. Then you go on to say making assumptions is dumb. Care to rethink? Had you been more thoughtful and less derisive in making that point I likely would have ignored the hypocrisy.

I may be more pessimistic than the commentators above: a single handgun rather than automatic weapons seems innocent now.

I think there are 3 real issues with 3D printed guns that are genuinely new dangers worth being concerned about.

1. They completely avoid background checks.

2. They're untraceable to a gun seller.

3. They could lead to relatively inexpensive and unregistered fully automatic weapons.

It does seem that plastic guns are not worth worrying about because they're so terrible. But, metal shaping CNC Mills aren't that expensive and can do a decent job of printing guns at home.

I can't really buy the argument that no one will be interested in printing out machine guns because of the existing criminal penalties. If someone is planning a murder or bank robbery or terrorist attack, they're already expecting a life sentence if they're caught. And, even if they plan to get away with it, a gun that can do the job really well, has no history to trace, and can be destroyed or disposed of right after could just make the crime easier to get away with.

The tricky thing about full auto is that most people avoid it primarily because of the severe penalties. Simply owning one that isn't registered and taxed is opening yourself to up to 10 years in federal prison plus a fine of up to 250k. If you commit a crime with one, they will hit you for the crime and the NFA penalty.

It isn't difficult at all to modify most current semi auto rifles into full auto. Heck, some of the older ones like the SKS can actually duplicate full auto fire by accident via slamfire. People don't do it because of the heavy penalty if you get caught, but it 'is' doable.

Of course, that doesn't take into account international concerns over automatic weapons, where access is usually limited to the military style rifles.

As an aside, you will see people here exploit loopholes like the bump stock to simulate full auto because they can't be subject to the NFA. Personally I think that is a bigger issue than printable guns, at least in the US. I think we still have something like 400-500k of those still floating around. To me it is far more of a 'sky is falling' issue than plastic printed guns, but that's just me.

Good point, but not exactly right.
Plastic guns, yeah, not so scary here in the U.S. where anyone can get an unregistered gun in hours, but in other countries where guns are rare, this gives criminals access to better weapons than the general public, or in many cases better than average police carry.
Also-
There are both 3d printers that can print metal and the guy putting the plans out has a business making small cnc milling machines that can mill guns from his plans in steel. That means these guns can be exactly the same quality as licenced manufacturers make. I would bet there are or will be plans for fully automatic weapons as well.

As @jimnms alluded to re Afghanistan, civilians may not be able to 'win', but well armed civilians can certainly make it hard, bordering on meaningless for their opponent to win either.

No, automatic weapons don't guarantee liberty from tyranny. On the flip side, try opposing a tyrannical government without them.

I actually agree with you mostly, but you're not gonna like it.

One thing I will point out though - "I just don't connect gun regulations as an effective solution to mass murder."

We have data on this. Take Australia. In the 21 years leading up to Port Arthur and that massacre itself, which triggered the nation into heavily regulating guns, there were 16 mass murders of four or more people, totaling 137 murders. Since then, there have been 12, with a total of 76 murders. This despite there being population growth.

Violent crime rate has dropped from 1996 to now, mainly from reductions in robbery and a small drop in homicide rates.

There is very clear evidence that if most guns are removed from circulation, there are very real and likely benefits when it comes to reducing violent crime in general and murder.

I'm a political moderate and pragmatic. I go with what works. Don't care how liberal or conservative the solution is. I'm never in favor of regulation that is ineffective at solving problems.

And to that end, I'm against most gun control measures. I'm on board with banning assault weapons, fully automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, but most gun control things like psychiatric evaluations, universal background checks? No.
Why? Because societal models we know that provided real progress on problems seemed to suggest one thing - it's the prevalence of guns that is the problem. If you make it marginally harder to buy guns by things like...

Three day waiting periods
Universal background checks
Psychiatric evaluations

They don't work. Banning guns works, though. It's worked time and time again. Australia, Britain, over and over and over, if guns lose prevalence, violence, murder, etc. decrease significantly.

At some point, society has to decide that giving up guns is worth it. But until that time, "common sense" gun control is a waste of time, and I quite frankly think it might do real effective gun control measures harm because when nothing gets better from these mild measures, they're going to point that out.

The framers didn't specify rifle, or any other specific weapon. They thought a person should (not just be able to) own a standard soldier's armament of the day. Today that would include grenades and automatic weapons. Back in the day owning a person was legal. That didn't change because the Supreme Court decided that the definition of a person had evolved, the constitution was amended. There's no reason it shouldn't be for this topic as well.

And after more viewings of video, the rate of fire was not that great and sustained, and could have been pulled off by 2 or 3 weapons.

The thing about bump stocks that people are not realizing is that they are simply a mod that allows you to do the same thing you could already do with many semi-automatic weapons, emulate automatic fire.

There is a slightly more dangerous method which can be done simply by not bracing the stock and using the pistol grip. Many semi-auto weapons also can easily be 'broken' to cause slamfires, where the rounds are auto-fired as soon as they are loaded due to a stuck firing pin.

I highly believe in gun rights and the second amendment. But this latest tragedy has finally done it. There is simply no need to have that many semi-automatic rifles in one's possession. We need to re-enact the AWB from 1994, we need to set a cap limit on how many semi-automatic rifles a person can own, and we need to clearly state that ANY modification that can simulate automatic fire is illegal.

We have fostered a state where the mentally ill are no longer being treated or taken care of, except by drugs. Since it is clear that we have multitudes of people separated from becoming the next mass murderer simply based on whether to not they took their meds (or were diagnosed correctly to begin with), we need to make a stricter environment that prevents these people from getting the weapons to make it easier.

Ok, gotta point out that it is not illegal to own an automatic weapon in the US. Any owned before the ban are grandfathered. I also think certain types of firearm dealer/manufacturer license holders can buy, sell, and make them under certain circumstances. Plenty of people legally own full auto weapons in America, you can rent them at certain ranges (remember the little girl that shot the instructor in the head), and there was even a TV show about a guy who's business was making them that ended just recently.
I think it is illegal to sell them to non license holders in America...but that's a far cry from saying no one can legally have them.

They missed the NRA's contention (that the courts agreed with) about why bump stocks weren't machine guns too. The argument was that since only one bullet comes out of the gun for every trigger pull, it's technically not a machine gun, it's still a semi auto.

Ban semi-automatic weapons?

How reasonable is it to legislate to control clip capacity? As in, is it practical, not is the law actually passable, because with the current POTUS I'd be surprised if any sort of gun control was possible.

Tbh I still feel that even without 900rpm the capacity for a single bad actor to snuff out lives with a semi-auto rifle and 30 round mag is enormous. Doubtless they'd be people alive today who aren't now if he didn't have a bump stock... but it'd still be another mass murder with far too many people having to bury their loves ones. Idk. Progress of a sort maybe...

Thoughts:

1) There has been a ban on sales of new, fully-automatic firearms ("machine guns") since 1986. That leaves some loopholes (can still buy them if they were manufactured before then, but that demand plus scarcity makes them expensive, etc.) but in general, there isn't a whole lot of uproar over that 20-year-old ban.

2) These bump-fire stocks don't technically convert a firearm into fully-automatic; the trigger is still being pulled 1 time for each bullet that comes out (semi-automatic).

3) However, they easily allow for rates of fire (bullets per minute/second) comparable to fully-automatic weapons. So, I think an unbiased and reasonable person would say that while a firearm equipped with one of these does not violate the letter of the ban on fully-automatic firearms, it does quite reasonably violate the spirit of that ban.

4) Doing anything to correct that discrepancy will require updated laws. Updating the law requires a legislature that generally supports the update and a president that agrees, or a legislature that overwhelmingly supports the update and can override a presidential veto.

5) None of that exists at the moment in the US. So, it is (perhaps coldly) logical to say that these bump-fire stocks will not be banned as an extension to the 1986 ban on full-auto firearms, at least not in the short term.

6) However, before quietly accepting that, it is worth noting that political fallout amongst those individuals in the legislature that refuse to consider updating the law is a very real possibility. Plenty of people, even on the right, even plenty of gun nuts, say that they are in favor of some degree of "common sense" gun control. Pointing out that bump-fire stocks essentially circumvent the already in-place ban on fully-automatic firearms seems like a good way to test that professed adherence to common sense.

7) Get that word out there, and pretty importantly, try to do it in a way that is as respectful towards the average "gun nut" as possible. Their minds can be swayed. Hunters, sportsmen, and even people that have guns for self defense can be persuaded with reason -- they can still do their thing even without bump-fire stocks, just like they can do their thing without fully-automatic firearms. Congresscritters probably can't be convinced, because they've already been bribed"persuaded" with campaign donations, NRA lobbyists, etc.


So, don't preach to the choir. Try to convince the people that do actually own guns. The good news? You've got "common sense" on your side.