If you were a strident vegetarian, would you refuse to go to his house if he eats meat?

The question is - are you trying to make a political statement or are you trying to ensure your familiy is safe? These are 2 different questions with very different answers. If you are trying to let your politics destroy your relationship with your family, by all means, avoid family gatherings with him or at his home. If you are worried about safety, then have a calm, reasonable conversation with him about how/where he stores his weapons and what his safety plan is with children present. Any responsible, intelligent gun owner will be perfectly happy to have that conversation with you before you set foot in their house. And if he's not, that tells you he isn't responsible or intelligent.

Arguing over the definition of "assault" or "automatic" is a red herring here. Even short of being "vehemently anti-gun" like OP, it's reasonable to be leery of visiting someone that has recently stockpiled guns without assurance of responsibility in handling them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Holy fuck. You cannot own automatic weapons in this day and age without an extra license and much monitoring. Semi-automatic weapons are perfectly legal, requiring you to pull the trigger for each round fired, and the black plastic merely makes them cheaper than the fancy wood stocks.

And you can convert them to an automatic with a kit that costs about $100. No, thanks.

It costs way more than that. And you have to jump through the same hoops to get the kit. And you have to have gunsmithing tools. And some gunsmithing knowledge.

But even if he was doing this, to what end? It is illegal to own a fully automatic weapon without a permit. Fully auto weapons at a range would get a lot of attention, and very few people who live in close-in DC have enough land to safely shoot rifles at home. So your $1000+ rifle is now unusable except as something nice to look at.

I doubt OP's brother is converting his AR-15 to fully automatic. Or was the concern that the kids would find the rifle, happen to have acquired a conversion kit (what kind of allowance are you ladies paying??), have access to the tools to complete this conversion and the know-how to complete the conversion, then know how to load and fire an AR15 (when OP is adamantly anti-gun so I doubt her kids have any exposure to them) and THEN is going to go on a shooting rampage? If this is the case, OP really needs to check in on her kids more often. Having an uncle who owns firearms is the least of their problems.

Anonymous wrote:Holy fuck. You cannot own automatic weapons in this day and age without an extra license and much monitoring. Semi-automatic weapons are perfectly legal, requiring you to pull the trigger for each round fired, and the black plastic merely makes them cheaper than the fancy wood stocks.

And you can convert them to an automatic with a kit that costs about $100. No, thanks.

Holy fuck. You cannot own automatic weapons in this day and age without an extra license and much monitoring. Semi-automatic weapons are perfectly legal, requiring you to pull the trigger for each round fired, and the black plastic merely makes them cheaper than the fancy wood stocks.

Anonymous wrote:It is highly unlikely the sibling has fully automatic weapons. Tightly controlled since 1986.

She didn't say automatic; she said assault. Assault-style weapons are ones that can be used to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time--usually semi-automatic. It's not an "official" type of weapon; it's a term coined by people who want to see them outlawed. Of which I am one.

I would not go to my brother's house if he kept such guns. But he never would, because our family has been affected profoundly by gun violence.

I would stay away unless the sibling could show me that the guns were properly stored--locked, unloaded, with ammo locked up separately. And even then, I'd keep a close eye on my kids. You can tell them to stay away from guns, guns are not toys, etc., but kids make mistakes, and the consequences of that mistake are too high.

Frankly, I'd wonder why my sibling had a sudden interest in weapons of this sort. Any other changes you've noticed?

It is highly unlikely the sibling has fully automatic weapons. Tightly controlled since 1986.

Anonymous wrote:^^^ name an assault weapon that's legal?.....oh wait!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15