I am a Vietnam Veteran whose job was Casualty Reporting, all before the Internet, cellphones and 24/7 news and opinionating. I have seen the damage done by AK-47 and M-16 rounds. A round of M-16 ammunition goes into your musculature and explodes into fragments and the biggest part of the round looks like a damn metal flower with razor sharp petals which wipe out everything in their path.
Assualt weapons are not hunting weapons used to put food on your table.
Remember when a sitting President allowed the assault weapons ban to expire?
What has happened since?
It’s hard to connect with the truth that Sandy Hook is ten-years old:
STAMFORD — For Stamford high school student Naomi Alvarado, the day of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School 10 years ago was one of the most confusing days of her young life.
At the time, the current high school student at the Academy of Information Technology & Engineering was a second grader at Hart Magnet Elementary School. It was Dec. 14, 2012, and as she was singing the “Water Cycle Song” with her classmates, a fire alarm went off. She and her classmates hid behind cubbies, as they had practiced before during lockdown drills.
“The quick drill turned into 30 minutes, then two hours,” Alvarado said, as she spoke to a crowd of roughly 50 people who gathered outside Ferguson Library in Stamford Wednesday night.
Wouldn’t that be the ammunition and not the M-16 that does that? If they made it to where the only weapons that were allowed to be possessed were single shot weapons that would solve the problem.
Now Rob I think you know what a single shot shotgun, rifle, or hand gun is, at least anyone with a cowboy hat on their head should, or they shouldn’t be wearing the hat. “Assault Weapons” are semi automatic.
I assume nothing as to what anyone thinks when there is ambiguity. That’s one reason I put “assault weapons” in quotes… it’s a misnomer. Heck, any weapon can be used to assault. Even non-weapons can be used for assault.
And, for anyone here who is unaware, “semi-automatic” means it fires once with each pull of the trigger… it doesn’t release a stream of bullets.
Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
You ever been shot by a semi-automatic? If you had you would understand exactly how it works. It goes off every time you pull the trigger and as fast as you can pull your finger. Leaves a lasting impression. Especially when someone has a full clip. I bet I could make a semi automatic go as fast as an automatic because an automatic still needs to cycle the round.
In Las Vegas the killer that shot everyone up had semi automatic rifles that actually worked “like” an automatic because of the bump stock that was put on the weapon. Allowing it to cycle much faster, almost as fast as an automatic.
Rather than get all worked up, you could have just said you agreed with me… because that’s what you just did. One trigger pull… one bullet.
As for your bump stock commentary, those are illegal… just as automatic weapons are largely illegal. So that portion of your post was irrelevant in terms of responding.
Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
Rob I am not worked up. That must be you projecting your feelings onto me. I thought we were just having a discussion here. Anyone that understand guns and someone tells them they have a single shot gun, well the first thing that comes to mind is one bullet loaded, fired, then the chamber opened by hand, the next bullet loaded by hand, the chamber shut, fired again, the chamber opened again by hand, and so on and so on. Now nobody I know calls a semi automatic a single shot, but maybe that is because I am in the western side of the states.
Bump stocks are illegal now but not at the time that is was used. What is the next “bump stock”.
This nit picking over terminology drives me crazy. It’s used by one side to avoid or side track the discussion. It is used too loosely by the other side.
Address the problem in the larger sense and work on the details later.
If you want to build a house, you don’t start by arguing over the paint colors.
In that spirit, here’s my opinion. We have too dam many guns in this country. Last time I checked, there were more guns in this country than people.
You don’t that is why I was discussing single shot weapons. There isn’t any way to get rid of all the guns but if you make them single shot’s many people will not be enamored with them. It also relieves a lot of the discussions on the 2nd amendment. But the beautiful thing about it is most people don’t really enjoy firing a single shot weapon. It is fun to shoot a semi automatic or a fully automatic but a single shot gets old fast so most people won’t even want to own them.
I never said to get rid of all guns. Just to reduce the number.
As to single shot (as, for example, the bolt action .22 I first learned to shoot with - manually open the chamber, load a round, manually close the chamber, fire, manually open the chamber to eject the spent casing and load another round), well, that effectively bans an awful lot of guns that aren’t designed to work that way. Even if you expand that to the bolt action weapons that load the next round for you as you operate the bolt, you’re still effectively banning an awful lot of guns.
And if you are thinking of one trigger pull, one shot - well, I believe (but am more than willing to be corrected) that that definition includes pretty much every gun that is legal to own in the US. That describes an AR-15 (barring illegal modifications). You have to pull the trigger for every shot. The bump stocks you referred to use the recoil of the gun to allow the trigger to be pulled faster than almost anyone could do it on their own. But it’s still one pull, one shot.
I don’t think that is a practical solution.
I don’t think banning any particular type of weapon is feasible. (I think banning a couple might be desirable, but not currently feasible.) Instead, I’m wondering what kind of incentives would work to encourage people to have fewer guns. Buybacks? Stricter liability for ownership? Something else?
We have about 330 million people in the country and around 400 million guns. What would it take to get that number down to 300 million guns that those who really like owning guns might agree to?
Here is a rifle, notice there isn’t a bolt action on it because it is a single shot. It is not a semi automatic, a bolt action, or a pump action rifle either. A single shot is a specific type of gun that only allows one shot and then you have to load another shot in by hand. Pay specific attention to the breach.
Well first we all have to educate people on what a single shot, pump, bolt action, semi automatic, and automatic gun really is. Then we can start having real discussions around guns.