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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]After new town I was sure we were going to have at least a little sanity.  After Parkland I totally gave up on the possibility of gun control.  But since than we have had mass shooting at churches and schools and even the Amish have been victims.  What does it take to do even the smallest reforms enacted?

Jesus this is ridiculous.  [/quote]
I am a pro 2nd amendment guy and there is absolutely a way to get more gun control but you'll never pull it off.

Honestly.  After Newtown, you could absolutely have had a ban on magazines over 10 rounds.  If you playeds your cards right, you could have had licensing and registration requirements.  But you went all in on an assault weapons ban and it wasted whatever opportunity you may have had for him control.  You lost all momentum as Ted Cruz made Diane Feinstein look stupid with her definition of an assault weapon.

If you focus on things like limiting magazine capacity and licensing and registration, you can get these things.  I feel comfortable telling you this because the gun control folks are extremely uninformed and stupid and will always try to grab people guns and the blowback from that will be not getting your gun control AND losing elections in almost all the swing states.  [/quote]

Actually, we did have those things.  Under the 1994 Clinton Administration Assault Weapons Ban, the maximum capacity of a magazine was set at 10 rounds. AR-15s were one of 18 semiautomatic weapons banned under the 1994 law that expired in 2004 during the Republican George W. Bush administration.

Not surprisingly, there was a drop in mass shooting fatalities during that time period.  After Bush let the assault weapons ban expire, not only did the number of mass shootings increase, the scale of fatalities also increased.  It’s not rocket science.  We could have those things again, but Republicans have dug in their heels over the 2A and portrayed everyone in favor of even the slightest restriction as gun grabbers.[/quote]

Most mass shootings involve handguns.

Columbine happened during the assault weapon ban.

The creation of 24hr news ushered in twisted copycats looking to become infamous.

Many more people were murdered with rifles during the assault weapon ban that are murdered now.[/quote]

You've consistently been full of half truths, misleading arguments and outright false statements.

Fact check time:

- The 1994–2004 Assault Weapons Ban did in fact work. Mass shooting deaths were 70% lower during the ban. After it expired, fatalities and frequency skyrocketed. That’s not a coincidence, it’s cause and effect.

- AR-15s and similar rifles are the weapon of choice in the deadliest mass shootings. They’re used disproportionately in high-casualty events because they’re fast, accurate, and [b]built for combat.[/b] When long guns are involved, they’re almost always [b]military-style [/b]semiautomatics.

- Magazine limits matter. States that ban large-capacity magazines see 49% fewer fatal mass shootings and 70% fewer deaths per capita. Slowing a shooter down saves lives.

- Licensing and registration work. They reduce gun trafficking, improve background check compliance, and lower homicide rates. These are proven, scalable reforms, not theoretical wishcasting.

- Columbine? Happened during the ban, yes, but the shooters used grandfathered weapons and magazines. That’s a loophole problem, not a policy failure.

- "Most mass shootings involve handguns" is a dodge. True in raw numbers, but irrelevant when AR-15s are used to mow down dozens in minutes. Lethality matters.

- "More rifle murders during the ban" - That's flatly false. Rifles account for a small fraction of gun homicides overall, but account for a large share of mass shooting deaths due to their efficiency.

Bottom line: Assault weapon bans, magazine limits, and licensing aren’t magic wands, but they absolutely do reduce body counts. The data’s clear. Your deflections and misleading, deflecting narrative is completely broken.[/quote]

“Built for combat” — what does that even mean?  No military on earth uses AR15 or any other semiautomatic rifle as a “combat” weapon. 
[/quote]

The AR-15 is similar in function and design to the M16.  Same ammunition, same box magazines that can be swapped out quickly.  The main difference between the military version and the civilian version is that the military version can be fired in burst mode, up to three rounds with one trigger pull.

For the last couple of decades the American military has trained conventional troops to fire their M4s and M16s in semi-automatic mode instead - one bullet per trigger pull - instead of burst mode in nearly all shooting situations.  It’s more accurate, and more lethal.

What that means is that mass shooters with AR-15s have firepower that is functionally equivalent to the military.  There was a video analysis of a Florida school shooting that showed the gunman firing up to one and a half rounds per second.  That’s a faster clip than the military, which trains soldiers to fire at a sustained rate of 12-15 rounds per minute, or about one every 4-5 seconds.

[b]So far, nobody’s been able to give any real world justification for why a civilian needs that kind of firepower, as opposed to a rifle or handgun for self defense[/b].
[/quote]

The public has had access to rifles that are capable of that level of sustained fire for over a century. The AR15 itself is over 60 years old. And despite these types of rifles being widely available (and without any sort of paperwork whatsoever prior to 1968), the phenomenon of mass shootings using them is a relatively new thing.

Semiautomatic rifles with removable magazines have been around since at least 1921. AR15’s themselves have been around since 1960.  So what has changed? What other factors and variables have changed? Because the guns haven’t. They’ve been around more than a century.

There are other factors at work here. And focusing only on the rifles is the equivalent of a drunk searching for his missing wallet under a streetlight because he can see better there, rather than in the dark alley where he actually lost the wallet.

[/quote]

What changed? [b] People actually started buying them.[/b]

Before the late 80s, most people didn’t even know you could own an AR-15.  Colt, who bought the manufacturing rights from Armalite in 1959, tried to market it to civilians but the reception was lukewarm.  Many people thought it was ugly, expensive, and clunky.  It had a low profile among gun enthusiasts. The main market was law enforcement and survivalists.  Sales were flat.

Then in 1989, Patrick Edward Purdy used an AR-15 to kill 5 and wound 29 in a schoolyard in Stockton, California, and the gun became an overnight celebrity.

Colt was so horrified by the massacre, they suspended sales for an entire year.  (See, it can be done).  Once sales resumed, suddenly it was a very popular item.  Since then, sales have reliably increased after every mass shooting.  The gun lobby has an obvious economic incentive not to prevent them.

Sawed off shotguns, machine guns, 3D printed plastic guns, and hand grenades have stringent restrictions on their use.  Why not allow them too?  What’s the difference?[/quote]

“Them” being AR15’s as compared to the millions of mechanically equivalent “high capacity” semiautomatic rifles in wide circulation long before the AR15 was invented?

Anyone interested has known since the AR15 was introduced that they were available on the same terms as any other sporting rifle.

If AR15’s became more popular after a given misuse event it is likely because that was when the anti-firearm lobby began trying to take firearms from legitimate owners based on the acts of misuse of a few evil people. [/quote]

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