JarinArenos said:
Topsider said:
You need exactly the same amount of licensing to buy a car as you do a gun: none.
Not universally true, but more importantly, is debating semantics. You can't legally operate a car without a license, snip
This is actually a common misconception. You need no license to operate a car. You need a license to operate a car on public roadways and private property that is used by the public for driving or parking. If you keep the vehicle on private land very few, if any, traffic laws apply. Which laws apply and which don't depend on the specific jurisdiction involved, but in many states you don't even need registration or insurance on the car.
chuckdm said:
Supernova1138 said:
I'd say restrict gun ownership to weapons available at the time the 2nd Amendment was drafted, so smoothbore muskets and flintlock pistols for everybody. Miss your one shot? Too bad, better pray the other guy misses too, and that you have brushed up on your swordsmanship and/or other hand to hand combat skills. You get your right to bear arms exactly as the founding fathers intended, and you eliminate the whole mass shooting problem the US has.
No I'm not being particularly serious about this, but I don't have much of a stake in this debate, I don't live in a country where half of everyone is armed to the teeth because they are afraid the other half is going to show up, kill them, and burglarize their miscellania.
I'd like this, but also shotguns. They also existed at that time, and unlike assault rifles, submachine guns, and pistols, they have actual, real world home defense applications. No, really. They have limited range
false. With modern shotguns it's perfectly reasonable to hit your target at upwards of 300 yards with a shotgun
, wide spray, and are much better at wounding than killing
No. A shotgun is typically a more lethal weapon than a rifle.
If you want to stop a charging intruder, the shotgun is the weapon of choice. Not a rifle, which is too long heavy.
a shotgun is far longer and heavier than an AR-15 style weapon or any defense rifle. Typical barrel length on a shotgun is 20 inches for a slug barrel(not recommended for shot), legal minimum at 18 inches. On the other hand, the typical barrel length on a defense carbine is between 16 and 18 inches, because the legal minimum there is 16 inches, not 18. As far as weight, defense carbines are designed to have a combat weight and balance for obvious reasons. However, typical combat shotguns are quite heavy, in order to compensate for recoil.
Not a SMG, which has so much kick after the first shot that all the others aren't going to even hit your target (unless you're an off-duty soldier. Real SMGs are hard to control. Very hard.)
This is closer to the truth, but is also a bit of a lie. More modern SMGs can be controlled quite easily.
And not a Pistol, which due to common bullet velocities are more likely to ricochet and potentially kill you instead of the intruder.
what? Shotgun rounds have higher velocity(and therefore more dangerous ricochets) than a handgun. In fact, More importantly, bullets don't ricochet straight back, and very few things are hard and strong enough to cause ricochets in the first place. Unless you have chunks of solid steel or solid concrete walls around your house, ricochets are extremely unlikely.
Only the shotgun has the proper characteristics to be a workable home defense weapon. Anyone who says otherwise has never woken up at 4:37AM in a stupor and tried to hit a target who was threatening to break down your door and kill you.
Shotguns are not like in the movies bro, they don't throw down a cone of death that fills an entire room. At typical home defense range, a shotgun is going to have a spread of about 5 inches at best. At those ranges, it really isn't substantially easier than hitting a target with a rifle. The lower rifle of an AR-15 type weapon also offers substantially faster follow-up shots, which any self-defense instructor or self-defense blog will tell you is the most important thing about self-defense. Even the best trained marksman is pretty likely to miss in a high-stress situation like that. Considering that, multiple shots is typically the more important consideration. That said, shotguns are still often a better choice because they have much less penetration(assuming you're using shot), only two or three walls worth. If you have close neighbors or any other over-penetration considerations, shotgun is the way to go. It's naive to say that only one weapon type has the correct characteristics for something like home defense. Every home is different, and therefore the perfect weapon for defending each home is likely to be different.
My cousin did. It's also nice that shotguns make good door-breaching weapons. Best part? I got to see the bastard hauled off.
If, on the other hand, you want to pick off 20+ children at mid range in rapid succession like the impotent dickhead you'd have to be to want one, buy an AR-15.
The AR-15 is one of the most popular models of rifle in the US. Tens of millions of people own them, considering how few use them for mass murder, it's a pretty fair assumption that there are other, much more common reasons to want one.
And for hunting, like quote said, musket. If you can't hit one of the dumbest creatures on earth (a deer) with bait and a miniball that travels at nearly 90 times the speed of the arrows that have killed them for fucking millenia, you're just a bad hunter.
it's not about accuracy, hunters prefer rifles because they're safer to the hunter and more humane to the deer. Did you know that even a modern muzzle-loader can have a delay fire, where you pull the trigger and then it doesn't go off until a minute or five or twenty have passed. Since the only way to make the weapon safe again is to unload it, a process that usually involves putting various body parts in front of the barrel, they're just not as safe. Also, every single time you shoot it has a different time delay before it goes off, which makes it much more difficult, not to hit the animal, but to hit it an a way that kills it quickly.
One more thing while I'm on the topic: The presedent of the NRA (the guy with the French name. which I'm sure he hates when people remind him, heh) said that "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
Yanno what the Navy Yard Shooting has taught us? There are two ways to really stop a "bad guy with a gun."
A) A good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. And another good guy. That's all. Only 13 good guys had to die to stop this bad guy.
http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/07/31/auditing-shooting-rampage-statistics/ There are numerous instances where a single armed civilian stopped potential rampage shooters.
B) A mental health system where, when the guy told the cops he was hearing fucking voices, he gets some fucking help. Nobody dead. Problem (mostly) solved.
No argument here, but passing gun control laws won't help our miserable mental health system.
Where did you learn all of these "facts"?