*related https://videosift.com/video/Bump-Fire-Stocks

Bump Fire Stocks has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579.

Even though it paid off last year it looks like its time to fire up my donations to the NRA again for this year, next and so on.

Careful, I hear karma is a fucking bitch and I'd never wish it on anybody. nope.

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.

Huh? Paid off last year? Explain please. Do you say that because Obama didn't come take your guns, so the NRA must have saved them for you?
Even the NRA is now supporting at least regulations on bump stocks (and I hope other devices that allow mechanical rapid fire of semi auto weapons, like the many types of after market triggers that do the same thing as a bump stock, but so far no one's mentioning that bump stocks aren't the only device that does this) if not an outright ban. Do you think your donation will change that? I don't understand.

Hmm. I disagree with your description text, @ChaosEngine.

I've never shot something fully-automatic. I have shot an AR-15 semi-automatic, and I know where you're coming from when you say that hitting a target on full auto would be difficult, especially for a relatively untrained person (recoil control).

However, I think Vox and others are basically correct when they say that this modification (bump stock) contributed to the Las Vegas shooting being so deadly. Specifically in that sort of scenario.

The dude wasn't picking targets and sniping, going for accuracy. He picked an ideal shooting location (elevation with clear LOS) and sprayed into a crowd. He'd have been more accurate by keeping the weapon on semi-auto and actually aiming carefully, and certainly would have gotten more hits per bullet fired, but on the other hand the rate of fire difference would have so different that people would have had more time between shots to scramble for cover, etc.

He had position, an abundance of bullets, and lots and lots of time. Given those givens, having a rate of fire approximately equal to fully-automatic means a much higher body count than if he'd have been limited to traditional semi-auto.


The NRA is being more cunning than I figured they would, and has come out in favor of banning bump stocks. I agree with you that they see that mostly as a pointless concession, and a distraction from additional / better stuff that needs to happen.

But it isn't a pointless concession. If banning fully-automatic firearms in 1986 (minus the ones grandfathered in) was the right thing to do, extending that to include bump stocks is also the right thing to do. For the same reasons.

@newtboy is correct to note that technically, a rifle with a bump stock isn't a fully-automatic "machine gun". The user's finger still pulls the trigger once for every bullet that comes out -- semi-automatic.

However, I think that the "spirit" of the distinction is that with semi-automatic firing you have to think and consciously decide to pull the trigger each time you want to shoot a bullet, whereas with fully-automatic you consciously decide when you want to start and stop shooting. By the letter of the law, weapons with bump stocks are semi-automatic. But by that definition of the "spirit" of the law, they are fully-automatic. Pull the grip/barrel forward to start shooting, pull it back to stop.

It's a pretty frequent occurrence for technology to outpace the law. The definitions of semi vs fully automatic include the word "trigger" because they didn't anticipate this kind of conversion that makes the trigger sort of one step removed from the conscious decision to fire. The law would have similar hiccups if a weapon was developed that used a button or switch to fire, rather than a traditional trigger.

When those hiccups happen, the solution is to clarify the intent of the law and expand or clarify definitions as necessary. I'm pleasantly surprised that many legislators seem willing to do that with bump stocks, and that the NRA seems like it won't stand in the way. Mission accomplished, situation resolved? No. But a step in the right direction.

@MilkmanDan, let's say he didn't have a bump stock. Do you think it would have meaningfully affected this tragedy?

If he had killed 10% fewer people (while it would obviously have been better for those people and their families), this would still have been the deadliest mass shooting in the US.

Basically, my argument is that plenty of people have managed to go on mass shooting sprees without bump stocks, and banning them won't stop the next mass shooting.

It's kinda like banning texting while drunk driving. Sure, you really shouldn't do it, but it's not the main problem!

I think his point is it's not a 10% difference, more like >90%.
Assume they're right and it only shoots 3 times faster, and your finger of steel doesn't get tired 100 rounds in, shooting at max manual speed is even less accurate. Full auto allows far more bullets for a longer time with far more control. In a crowd shoot, it clearly makes a huge difference imo.
It wouldn't make it a non tragedy, but would certainly meaningfully affect the outcome.

My fear is they'll only ban bump stocks and not the dozen other methods of making semi auto go full auto.

*controvsary *laws *engineering *history

Adding video to channels (Engineering, History, Law) - requested by ant.

I think a 10% reduction is pessimistic, 90% like newtboy mentioned is likely optimistic.

One person being killed would have been tragic. A quick search says most recent count is 58 dead, 515 injured. Tragic has been surpassed by some orders of magnitude, and I while see what you're saying, I think it would have been meaningfully "less tragic" if he had only had access to traditional semi-automatic.

He had a bunch of weapons and a bunch of ammo. Reload time was partially mitigated by the number of guns. But finger fatigue like newtboy mentioned would have made it hard to keep firing over a prolonged time (~10 minutes of active shooting time?), and the increased time between shots plus potential for fatigue would have let people make a break for cover or to get out of line of sight.

It may well have still been the deadliest mass shooting even if he only had semi-auto. Banning bump stocks (and other full-auto conversions) won't prevent the next one, but any mitigation at all is better than nothing. And I think it would have been rather more significant than that.


Is access to full-auto or generally equivalent to full-auto the main problem? No. I fully understand your reluctance here, because I agree that GOP legislators and the NRA are likely to hold up opposition to bump stocks as a more significant badge than it deserves to be. "SEE?! I did something about it! Pat me on the back!"

...But, on the other hand, it really is a step in the right direction. And there are no real downsides, aside from that concern about giving those parties a sort of political card to play. The public will just have to make it clear that this, while good, isn't enough by itself.

Why not take two steps in the right direction?

Taking the texting while drunk driving analogy - you'd ban both wouldn't you?. To simply ban the texting is surely tacit approval of the DUI.

I understand the sort of pragmatic approach and I'm not even sure I'd be against it... I just think you have to be careful not to imagine it as a step in the right direction because, frankly, it's not a step at all. To me it is closer to addressing a loophole in the preexisting law and it doesn't really facilitate or encourage further gun regulation. If banning bumpstocks is your end goal then great, but if you want more then I think you need to be asking for more, even (or perhaps especially?) if it means fighting for it.

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.

Before this I would have said that having 2 guns or 20 makes no difference how lethal you are, but this does show that to be wrong(he would have overheated his barrel with only 2-3 rifles). I think it's also an extreme outlier case, something we shouldn't necessarily legislate specifically for.

The 1994 AWB was totally useless, mostly concerned with scary looking cosmetic features like a pistol grip and a flash hider(!) that have no impact on lethality.

Of course anybody can bump fire an AR15 by hooking their thumb in a belt loop. Full auto firing is inaccurate, so firing from the hip isn't going to be too much worse.

And lastly but probably most important. 80% of gun deaths are from handguns. Focusing efforts there are worth so much more than trying to stop the next lunatic trying to kill 50 people.

Corrections :

Lack of mechanical parts is not the reason a bump stock was deemed legal.
(Furthermore, they highlighted 'no automatically functional parts', while they said lack of mechanical parts.)

External attachment also does not disqualify an item from being considered part of a weapon.
For example, it's illegal to attach a foregrip to a pistol (because there are piles of insane gun laws already, making esoteric combinations of parts worth federal prison and 100'000 dollar fines.)

A machinegun is a gun that fires automatically.
Automatically is a mode where more than one shot comes out with 1 trigger pull.
Rate of fire does not define a machine gun.

A bump stock required the operator to trigger the weapon for every shot, which is why it was deemed not an automatic.

-scheherazade

@2:03, it looks like Bernie is there backing senator Feinstein in trying to save people's lives, but the ban on the device didn't go through....

And then this is what happened:

http://thechronicleherald.ca/editorial-cartoon/2017-10-04-editorial-cartoon

Does it bother any one else to hear politicians and news reporters incorrectly calling things "machine guns," "assault rifles" and "clips?" It makes them look ignorant, just like watching Fox News report on anything scientific.

Machine guns are primarily support weapons for sustained automatic fire. They usually have an active or passive cooling mechanism to prevent the barrel from overheating during sustained fire.

An assault rifle is a rifle which has a select fire mechanism that allows it to switch from semi-auto to burst or full automatic fire. An assault rifle can overheat if fired fully automatic (or even semi-automatic) without letting it cool, which can lead to failure of the weapon (if you can even hold on to it when it's that hot).

A magazine is simply something that holds bullets. Guns can have internal magazines or external detachable magazines. A clip is a mechanism used to load bullets into a magazine.

A Gun Regulation Analogy For All You Stoners has been added as a related post - related requested by notarobot on that post.

An AR-15 on continual full auto fire (using 30 round or greater magazines) fails at approximately 840 rounds. It takes about 6 minutes to get to failure. With magazine changes it is an effective firing rate of approximately 140 rounds per minute.

He could have achieved his psychotic feat with 2 firearms, swapping firearm after each magazine change.

I shoot regularly (often multiple times per week). My lazy firing rate has splits (time between shots) of approximately 0.2 seconds. I can do that for a long time (many minutes before I slow done). That is a rate of 300 rounds per minute. My fast splits are approximately 0.12 seconds. I can't do that for very long (probably one magazine). That is a rate of 600 rounds per minute.

An AR-15 on full auto fires at approximately 600 rounds per minute - twice what I can do on semi-auto. Using a competitive shooter as an example, and taking into account magazine changes (which with training are done much quicker than any of the operators in AR-15 to failure tests I've seen), and assuming lazy splits of 0.30 seconds, a competitive shooter can probably fire at a faster rate per minute than a novice can on full auto (i.e. well more than the approximately 150 rounds per minute a novice shooter achieves when taking into account magazine changes).

The thing is, it is well known in military and firearm enthusiast circles that the massive reduction in accuracy when shooting on full auto does not give the perceived payoff. You have much less control when firing a fully automatic firearm. You hit your target less often. Semi auto plus aiming = hits on target. At the range he was shooting (300 to 350 meters), the same lunatic deciding to aim his firearm would have resulted in less wounding and more fatalities.

Any ex-military here? Chime in.

I don't believe for one second that you could keep up that rate for a full minute, much less over 10. If you take the time it takes to aim a 300 yard shot accurately, you're talking 10-12 shots per minute.
Shooting with your finger at maximum speed is always far less accurate and slower than full auto with the same gun. You have to prove it to me that I'm wrong, because that's simple logic. Full auto is a more stable rate, so easier to adapt to, and doesn't require you to vibrate one hand, shaking the gun, dividing your attention, and tiring you out.
It's silly to imply the full auto functionality didn't exponentially raise the number both wounded and killed. Without the crowd, it might have made less difference. With the crowd, absolutely not imo.

Ok...open question to @bobknight33 and other 'constitutional originalists' ....
...if the constitution should be interpreted by the standards when it was written, why are non muzzle loading guns legal?
The constitution was only referencing them, not cartridge firing guns.
Discuss.

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.

Just about any competition shooter can keep up 0.3 splits for 10 minutes. Go to a three-gun competition near you and ask someone to show you.

Aiming is relative to what you want to achieve. From "spray and pray" to taking many minutes per shot in Palma and F-class. You might take 10-12 shots per minute with a semi-auto at this distance. Others will aim and shoot at 5 to 10 times that rate.

"Shooting with your finger at maximum speed is always far less accurate and slower than full auto with the same gun. You have to prove it to me that I'm wrong, because that's simple logic."

No. That's not how it works. I don't have to prove anything to you (as much as you have to prove anything to me). How about this though - first go read "On Killing" by Dave Grossman, which covers this topic, then go search on Youtube for the many videos (I checked just now and there are plenty) showing how full auto hits much less, (and the shots where you do hit are mainly sub-optimal) compared to aimed fast shots in semi-auto, then go join a gun club and try some competitive shooting. I'd be surprised if at the end of that you still imagine full-auto is what you think it is.

Also fun to watch are videos of guys like Jerry Miculek who can fire in semi-auto at insane rates of fire.

Now, lets be clear, I'm not saying full-auto doesn't have its uses, because it does. I'm taking umbrage with your claim that you have more control in full-auto (you do not) and that you get more hits on target with full auto across a series of targets (you do not).

You said almost 3 times that speed, continuously for over 10 minutes....and not with a lightweight speed shorting pistol.

If someone wanted to kill with each shot on moving targets at 3-400 yards in the dark, yeah, 5 seconds+- per shot still seem reasonable, maybe half that for someone who practices on living, moving targets often. Your claim some people can continuously do that 120 times a minute including mag changes is just laughable. They might shoot that fast, but not hit anything accurately at that distance.

You have to prove it to convince me...better? If it's as common as you say, that should be easy to provide with a comparison video instead of a suggestion to buy and read a certain book. The videos I found are all short range small target, not at all the same as what we're debating. Show me a comparison of a field layered deep with 10000 balloons getting shot at from distance, that would be informative, short course accuracy target shooting isn't.

My claim is you will have more control at full auto than absolute maximum possible finger speed.
My other claim is you will put more lead down range with most full autos. In a crowd situation where missing is basically impossible and aiming wasted effort, like this one, more bullets means more damage. Once the crowd dispersed, aiming a high powered rifle would probably be more effective, but not before. Were this not the case, why would any military allow them, ever?

In this Turkey shoot situation, you get more hits on target in full auto. In target shooting, you won't. This was not a series of targets at 20 yards, it was a target zone at 3-400 yards in the dark.

"You said almost 3 times that speed, continuously for over 10 minutes....and not with a lightweight speed shorting pistol."

You are not making any sense. I see what I wrote but it is unclear what you are referring to. You are welcome to quote the part you are referring to.

As I wrote above, you can choose the length of time you are aiming your firearm for. I even gave a comparative set of aiming scenarios.

I love how you take the top end of my approximation as your "laughable" scenario and don't mention the rest of the range (i.e. 50 rounds per minute with mag changes). Could you shoot at one round per second aimed? I think with a little training you could.

Doing 0.2 second splits (i.e. you shoot twice at each target) and taking about a second on every target, using 30 round mags, you can do 90 round per minute without much trouble. Going a little slower, say 0.3 second splits, and taking 1.5 seconds per target you can do about 60 round per minute. I could go on. The point is, these are aimed shots with a higher chance to hit the target, and with just as much chance to accidentally hit another target on a miss. This has the result of more hits on target.

"you get more hits on target in full auto".

No, you don't. On target means a hit near the point you intended on a target. He was getting random hits - as is evidenced by the low fatality rate versus high injury rate. The only way you would be correct was if you argued that he intended non-fatal injuries as much as he intended fatalities (and you're welcome to make that argument - it has some merits depending on what this lunatic was trying to achieve).

"If it's as common as you say, that should be easy to provide with a comparison video instead of a suggestion to buy and read a certain book. The videos I found are all short range small target, not at all the same as what we're debating. Show me a comparison of a field layered deep with 10000 balloons getting shot at from distance, that would be informative, short course accuracy target shooting isn't."

The book is good because it shows military statistics with full-auto versus other fire modes. Books are often better than videos. It also outlines military teaching methodology, include marksmanship and how it evolved over time. Full auto is still used in military engagements but you'll find it is used very sparsely (here is a good thread of military and ex-mil talking about it's uses: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-militaries-use-assault-rifles-when-the-full-auto-feature-is-rarely-ever-used )

Short range targets are easier to hit. Are you trying to prove my point? Long range targets are harder to hit. Your rate of randomly hitting targets does not get better at longer ranges. But aiming does increase your chance of hitting a target at any range.

If you really wanted to do a comparison at that range then the targets would be a lot larger than balloons.

You're arguing against established marksmanship knowledge that is readily available over the internet or in firearms courses.

I think you owe it to yourself to prove yourself right or wrong by doing some rifle marksmanship courses. Approach it as a sport and you'll have a lot fun doing it!!!

I can't chat much longer - thanks for the good discussion!

I mixed up your two fire rates (.2 and .12) still you said you can keep up 5rps for many minutes (10 for a short time) not 3...."My lazy firing rate has splits (time between shots) of approximately 0.2 seconds. I can do that for a long time (many minutes before I slow done). That is a rate of 300 rounds per minute. My fast splits are approximately 0.12 seconds. I can't do that for very long (probably one magazine). That is a rate of 600 rounds per minute." And that's only really 300rpm if you have a 300 round mag.

....wait...why am I wasting my time on this? It's clear you're not comparing Apple's to Apple's.
You didn't come close to convincing me that manual 120 shots per minute at 400 yards all well aimed is believable...even belt fed. Keep in mind he actually averaged hitting one moving person in the dark at 400 yards per second for 10 minutes. Your generous competition numbers have you double tapping at 45 targets per min (without a hit rate given, or range).

First you claimed .2 second split is 300 rpm, now you say it's 90rpm. I'm so over this. Have fun at the range.
Again, the target was the crowd. He got more lead on that target on auto. No aim needed.
I've been shooting (non competitively) for 40 years btw, after rifle marksmanship courses for 3 years starting at 7...but thanks for the suggestion.

"First you claimed .2 second split is 300 rpm, now you say it's 90rpm. I'm so over this. Have fun at the range. "

Ahh I see the confusion. I should have been clearer.

I'm reporting two different rates - max theoretical, and actual with aiming and magazine changes.

So using splits alone on an unlimited mag, 0.2 split is 300 rpm.

Using that same 0.2 split with fixed aiming time of 1 second per target and two mag changes (30 round mags) you'll get approximately 90 rounds per minute actual.

Etc. as per my other examples.

It's good to hear you've been shooting that long. If you've been doing it that long you must still enjoy it - which is great.

Confusion, no. Misdirection, absolutely. You said quite clearly you can keep up a 300rpm rate for long periods, indefinitely. Now you admit at best you shoot at (not hit) 45 targets in that time, double tapping. Your bullshit contention was that, because at best you can pull the trigger twice in .12 seconds that you can actually accuire, aim, and shoot 600rpm. You knew that's bullshit, not confusion but lies. (The truth being that you still max out at <2 rps)
So have a nice day.