BLUF: US Gun Laws are actually complicated and not the "free-for-all, everybody has an M-16" situation people seem to think is the case.DVS BSTrD said:
This idea that America is a place where people hand out guns like candy and anybody can have any gun is one of the most preposterous suppositions out there about the US in the International mindset.
The US doesn't actually allow all people to have any and all types of firearms. As a matter of fact, I'd wager that most people in the US don't own, never will own, and probably never have or will hold a firearm. The 0.75 Guns per capita statistic that I see bandied about doesn't take into accounts the guys who own thirty or forty firearms.
Furthermore, military-grade firearms are actually banned, and have always been banned. The Glock Model 18, for example, is an illegal gun (It's a pistol capable of fully-automatic fire). The so-called "assault weapons" ban has only ever effected cosmetic features of weapons, with only two of said features actually having any sort of effectiveness of the weapon - "high capacity" magazines and threaded barrels. There are numerous iterations of firearms which are both legal and illegal under the "assault weapons" ban because the legal version has, say, a fixed, wooden stock instead of a folding, metal one.
Call me crazy, but i think the fixed stock might actually make it a slightly more dangerous weapon.
Hell, the M9 Beretta is illegal under the assault weapons ban. The standard-issue, nigh-ubiquitous sidearm used by the police, military, and quite a few civilian shooters, and the image everybody conjures when they think of a "pistol" is illegal (It accepts a 15-round magazine and may have a threaded barrel), whereas the M 1911 - which fires a .45 calibre round and has notably more stopping power - isn't.
