Because I do not own a gun!

This is something I never knew and was only brought to my attention over lunch when a coworker mentioned it after I told Bitt where I lived.

Funny to move away from Texas and THEN run into a law like this.

I'm pretty sure I'll be OK though- I doubt they are every going to arrest anyone for this, and as I said at lunch, I'm pretty certain I'd be in more danger armed than not

Yeah, but you're still in the deep south, so it's not like you moved to the United States or anything.

Part of me loves laws like this due to the potential of increasing the speed of natural selection. The other part of me worries that I'll forget about this and end up in these places by accident.

A friend sent this out a couple weeks ago. I'm sure it's been around a while.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4069761537893819675#
Her last point (at 5:00 or so) is quite compelling.

I listened to the whole thing. Her last point is basically "let me have a bigger gun than all the bad guys." What kind of juvenile logic is that? I know it's trite to use the "well why not nuclear weapons" line, but... why not nuclear weapons? There's always going to be someone out there with a bigger gun than you. Anything we do to let you increase your odds of killing him before he kills you will also increase the odds that you kill someone else (or many someone elses) whether intentionally or not.

The "second amendment" debate is really over at the federal level. The NRA won. The assault weapons ban is gone and won't come back. All that gun control proponents want at this point is to allow municipalities to decide how to apply and enforce the laws that are on the books, but the NRA strongly opposes those efforts with all of its might.

So, we end up writing our gun laws for rural counties and having to apply those lax laws in urban settings where the ramifications of those laws are very different. The results are shown quite vividly in these two news segments from the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, PA:

City guns versus country guns

Entire neighborhood a victim of gun violence

I think we can give Ms. Gratia-Hupp her firearm for self defense and still try to stem the tide of illegal guns flowing toward our inner cities, but not as long as the NRA is writing our gun laws.

I'm all for letting the NRA gun-nuts have all the weapons they want, provided that we have one small change in the law: If a person is convicted of a premeditated crime in which a firearm was used, even if the weapon was not actually fired and regardless of the severity of the crime, that person shall receive mandatory capital punishment.

Death by firing squad would be ironically appropriate.

As is well known, the threat of capital punishment is not a deterrent, but it sure as hell cuts down on the recidivism rate.

tanstaafl.

Yeah, and good riddance. It was an asinine law. I feel like I must have commented on this before here, but I'm too lazy to search at the moment.

Here's a rundown of what the so-called assault weapons ban actually did, in, hopefully, non-gun-nut terms:

First, it had absolutely no effect on fully automatic weapons. (I find that many people are confused by the difference between fully- and semi-automatic guns, so let me define that really quickly. A fully automatic gun allows you to pull the trigger once and, while holding it down, will fire continuously. A semi-automatic gun fires one and only one bullet each time you pull the trigger, but it does automatically ready the next bullet, so you don't have to cock a hammer, or insert another bullet, before firing again.) Fully-automatic weapons are effectively banned due to a couple of laws dating back to the '20s.

Second, it called out about a dozen specific guns, by name, as assault weapons, and banned those.

Third, it defined "assault weapons" and banned guns that fell into that category. This is where it gets really asinine. A rifle was defined as an assault weapon if it was semi-automatic, accepted removable ammunition magazines that held six or more bullets, and had more than one of the following:

• Folding, telescoping, collapsible, etc. stock. That is, if the part of the rifle that normally rests against your shoulder when firing it can be removed in some way.
• Pistol grip. That's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Instead of your trigger hand cradling the bottom of the rifle, as with a more traditionally styled rifle, there is a protrusion allowing you to grip the rifle with your trigger hand as if it were a pistol.
• Flash suppressor. A flash suppressor is a device attached to the end of the barrel of a rifle that tries to hide the flame that is emitted from a rifle when it is fired. This has two basic purposes. One, the flash can be distracting to the person firing the rifle, and, two, the flash can be a giveaway to the position of a hidden assailant.
• Bayonet mount. The ability to attach a knife to the end of your rifle.
• Grenade launcher. It's actually not the type of grenade launcher you might be thinking of, where there's an almost separate cannon-like device attached to the rifle. There are some grenades that can be attached to the end of the rifle's normal barrel and a special "bullet" can be inserted to launch it.

And, remember, any weapon could legally have any one of those things, just not two or more. These things fall into two camps from my point of view. The "so what" camp: pistol grips and collapsing stocks. Okay, maybe a collapsing stock can aid in concealing a rifle, but, so? Notably, it doesn't prevent a rifle from simply having no stock at all. And the "holy crap" camp: bayonets, flash suppressors, and grenade launchers!?! That's right, under this supposedly onerous law, you could legally have a grenade launcher.

I'm trying to imagine the thought process behind this law. I mean, clearly, the NRA was trying to get any concessions they could, but was there someone up there lobbying that they might run out of ammo while shooting a deer and have to run over and stab it with their bayonet? Or that the bear might be scared off because of the flash coming from his rifle. I guess he's hunting deaf bears.

There are similarly, but not quite as, asinine provisions for pistols. They could have any one of the following features:

• Magazine that attaches somewhere other than the grip. Semiauto pistols you usually see in the movies have the bullets in a container in the grip itself. This is talking about when the container attaches somewhere else.
• Threaded barrel. Basically, the ability to attach things to the end of the barrel, things like flash suppressors, barrel extensions, and silencers.
• Barrel shrouds. Basically part of the body of the gun surrounds the barrel and allows you to use a second hand to grip it.
• Weight over 50oz/3 lbs 2 oz/1.8kg.
• Basis on a fully automatic pistol.

The "so what" camp: must be lightweight, can't look like another gun, and must have the ammo in the grip. The "holy crap" camp: again with flash suppressors, and this time, silencers!

Ultimately, in my opinion, this law did a lot of damage. It served to irritate gun nuts (never a good idea), while also doing nothing to reduce gun violence. Manufacturers simply redesigned weapons to meet these asinine rules. And, notably, a significant portion of the rules seemed to be based not on mitigation of danger, but on the appearance of the weapons. Some guns nuts ended up referring to this law as the "ugly gun law". Any political progress that may have been made towards a realistic weapons law was squandered and dashed with this useless legislation.

Wow, that's not what I took away from it at all.

I thought her point was that the people should be allowed to arm themselves in order to put down the government, if need be.
Sort of gives teeth to the whole 'by the people, for the people" thing.

Her point was specifically NOT about criminals, IMO. (unless you count the state legislators in that group)

I didn't think she wanted any bigger gun, either.

/not a gun nut
//approves of everyone learning all about them

Yeah. Her penultimate point was that there have been instances where weapons with "no legitimate use" have legitimately been used for defensive situations. Her last point was that the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with hunting, sport, or anything else along those lines, it's there to allow the people to defend themselves from an oppressive government. Which, if the amendment is to have any teeth, means that people are allowed to have weapons that serve no purpose other than to efficiently kill people, and that is a legitimate use.

Also not a gun nut, but learned to shoot in church camp.

OK, I thought you were referring to the part about using the "so-called" assault weapons in self defense. I apologize for that, because her last point about defending herself from a tyrannical government is even more absurd.

Let's just assume for the sake of argument that the government is out to get us lowly citizens, confiscate all of our wealth, and create a communist dystopia. And, let's also assume that the various militias and resistance movements across this great country banded together, created an infrastructure for organizing themselves, etc. Do they stand a chance against the U.S. military? A hundred guys with assault rifles aren't going to take out a tank squadron. A thousand guys with extended magazines on their Glocks aren't going to take down an FA-18. The sum total of all the gun owners in this country with all of their weapons won't be able to do anything against a carrier battle group.

The idea that citizens are taking up arms to fight off tyranny a la 1775 is romantic, but it's antiquated and just plain silly.

I never said it would work, just clarified her argument.

Well, you did say it was compelling. *shrug*

You and I have been debated the assault weapons ban in the past, and you persuaded me that it wasn't the best legislation ever. I still think it did some significant good, especially the restrictions on magazine capacity. It's pretty clear to me that there would be fewer dead in Arizona had Jared Loughner had to reload after a ten rounds instead of squeezing off thirty-three of them, for instance. But, you have a point that there are parts of the law that make no sense, as there are with any number of other laws that you and I would agree on.

I think what you have to understand, though, is that the AWB is what happens when you try to craft legislation that can get around an NRA veto. The Brady Campaign and the NRA fought for years on a compromise, and the ban that became law on a 216-214 vote would have been squashed like a bug by the NRA if it had any real teeth to it. With Waco and Ruby Ridge fading from peoples' minds, there wasn't going to be a better time to pass a gun control bill, yet it still passed by the slimmest margin possible. In other words, it was the AWB or nothing. You would have chosen nothing, I would have chosen the AWB we ended up with.

Ah! At last I see why you stay here. Think of all of those Canadians north of the border. Defenseless!

I dunno. There's been a couple of instances recently where the local population (insurgents) have been able to tie up a first-world power's military pretty effectively. Without tanks or planes or carriers.

And any gun is better than none

You could also make the point that if more people in the crowd were carrying, there would also be fewer dead. I saw something (wish I remembered where I heard/saw it) that gun safety course attendance and concealed carry went up after that incident (you don't need a license to conceal carry here).

That's a cute analogy, so let's run with it.

For starters, I would posit that the U.S. occupying force in (take your pick of countries we've unsuccessfully invaded recently) is nowhere near an adequate simulation of the amount of force we'd utilize domestically if control of the government itself were threatened. In stark contrast to the relatively small number of forces deployed in each of Afghanistan and Iraq, every military asset under our control would be made available immediately to quell the domestic unrest, and upon seeing this mass insurrection, tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of able-bodied men and women would join up with the side currently in power -- for short, let's call them "The Union." Maybe some of the insurgents (we'll call them "The Confederacy") would be members of the military already, and would be able to abscond with a few humvees or a tank or two, but I don't think that would happen on any large scale.

I can't really game out a hypothetical play-by-play of such a civil war in the U.S. without knowing more about what supposed tyranny led to the uprising, as the duration of such a conflict, and the number of casualties, etc. would be related to how passionately the insurgents believe in their cause, but for them to believe in it strong enough to hold out against such overwhelming force, there would have to be some *serious* tyranny going on. Certainly more than just taking away certain classes of guns, forcing people to get an education in a government-run high school, or a 3% increase in the marginal tax rate on households with income over $250,000.

Then there's the issue of how exactly the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents have kept the U.S. (mostly) at bay. Sure, some of them are packing Kalashnikovs, but most of the "coalition" fatalities have resulted from improvised explosive devices. In other words, they don't really need the guns.

As an example of what the populace can do to end tyranny without firearms, I give you the Arab Spring. Imagine if Egyptian protestors, instead of peacefully assembling and bonding with the military, had decided to start shooting soldiers.

So, I think you've actually proved my point, which is that unfettered access to firearms isn't going to do a lick of good to help Citizens Joe and Jane fight against GIs Joe and Jane.

I agree that that was a positive piece of legislation, but it was technically distinct from the Assault Weapons Ban. But that's picking nits.

That said, it's still a removable magazine. It's not like it's not specifically designed to make reloads quick and easy.

I don't even know what you mean by "technically distinct." It was part of the same legislation. It was signed into law at the same time. How are you defining technically distinct?

The piece that banned large capacity magazines was added as a distinct subsection of the US Code and was not directly related to any of the definitions of assault weapons and their banning. Like I said, picking nits. Just explaining why I didn't initially talk about it.

OK. I tend to think of things in terms of the legislation that's passed, not in terms of what it looks like after the sausage is made. I think that's easier -- kind of like using pseudocode to demonstrate an algorithm instead of what it looks like when transformed into assembly.

I'd still be interested to hear your thoughts on how you would have done things differently in the early 1990s, given the political climate, the NRA's power in DC, etc.