And the actual point flies right over you head…
The point isn’t the down a rathole discussion of how to classify a particular gun. The point is that in everyone of these high profile mass shootings…the gun has been recently purchased. Ergo, limits on gun purchases and even bans on certain times of guns will have an impact upon future mass shootings. Full stop.
So. Who gets to tell Ohio? Will Our Revolution tell them?
No, I didn’t miss that point. I agree with that point. But if you focus on distinctions that are either a)wrong, or b)meaningless, you’re not going to get anywhere. Worse, if you set your sights on a particular weapon without understanding what the hell you’re talking about, you’re gonna set yourself up to have people declaring victory when they haven’t done a damned thing.
You’ll get the AR-15s. People will celebrate it… until the gun of choice changes, and the shootings continue. Then the gun-nuts will point to that and say ‘SEE? Your gun control laws didn’t help!’
So instead, cast a wider net. Don’t fall for illusory distinctions.
Except when the Clinton ban on assault rifles was put in place, shootings, particularly those done by the guns banned, nosedived. And then promptly rose dramatically when the ban was lifted. Which, once again, reaffirms my main point. People that want to commit mass murder with a gun, go out and purchase a new shiny gun to do it. If they can’t make the purchase, they don’t commit the mass murder.
I know you aren’t a gun nut, but your argument is essentially one they use. Its the perfect being the enemy of the good. Bans on this that or the other don’t work because people will just get another weapon. But we have actual data to show that banning a particular type of weapon DOES directly impact the murder rate.
I too would love to move the daily gun death rate for 95/day to zero. But reducing it to 85 or 75 or 50 or 25 works for me too. And is a damn sight better than keeping it at 95/day.
The gun nuts have been trying for a long time to convince people that only guns that can fire in bursts or fully-automatic should be considered “assault weapons.” But in fact we can define them any way we want, and neither the 1994 federal assault weapons bans, nor the bans currently in existence in a number of states, defined them that way.
As I said in an earlier comment, I do agree that some of the features we’ve defined as ones that make a gun an “assault weapon” are kind of superficial and not very meaningful. But the high-capacity magazine part is meaningful and has real consequences in these mass shooting situations – namely fewer interruptions and thus fewer chances to escape or interrupt the shooting spree.
I believe most (if not all) state assault weapons bans include a ban on high-capacity magazines.
Personally I would be fine with banning any semi-automatic rifles and just sticking with bolt-action, lever action, etc. But I’m not sure a clear majority of the public is there yet, or is likely to get there anytime soon…and the political reality is that we need a clear, sustained majority of the public behind us in order to break the NRA’s death-grip on gun policy.
There’s also the issue of the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, which formally recognized an individual right to own firearms. As I understand it, this decision explicitly left room for strict regulation / prohibition of particularly unusual / dangerous firearms. So there’s a question of just what sort of ban would pass constitutional muster (particularly under the current very pro-gun Supreme Court). And I’m skeptical they’d go for a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, which I suspect they’d see as not “unusual” enough and maybe not extraordinarily “dangerous” enough to justify the ban. But I think there’s a much better chance of getting a ban on high-capacity magazines past that hurdle.
So as a near-term strategy, if we can ban semi-automatic rifles that have removable magazines, or at least ban the high-capacity magazines, that seems (at least potentially) both politically and judicially do-able in the foreseeable future, and could make a significant difference in terms of lives saved, especially if we can also get universal background checks.
No, the gun nuts have been pointing out for a long time that ‘assault weapons’ is a meaningless term coined for the 1994 law that had completely arbitrary, superficial determinants, as opposed to 'assault rifle*, which is a well-defined term that has been in-use by the United States Army for half a century and includes very specific capabilities. But the media and gun safety advocates use both terms interchangeably. In doing so, they make themselves appear stupid, and make their arguments appear uninformed and easily dismissed.
It’s like arguing in favor of emissions standards for ‘bicycles’ because Harley-Davidson makes two-wheeled vehicles. A motorcycle is, after all, a bicycle. It’s a motorized bicycle. But if you tried to set emissions standards for bicycles, you’d look like an idiot. Arguing for controls on ‘assault weapons’ when there’s *no standardized definition of the term’ is just the same.
At the same time, high-capacity magazines are meaningful, but given the ease of making them using nothing but scrap items… a ban isn’t really useful. Which is why I say all removable magazines should go. They’re not needed for hunting. They’re not needed for personal/home defense. Anyone who insists they’re more than a convenience, that they need a removable magazine, needs to look at how shotguns (internal magazine), the M1 Garand (also internal magazine), and revolvers (cylinder) all work. You don’t need a ban on all semi-autos… just the ones with removable magazines. You’ll see internal magazine versions of most sporting weapons (reloaded via the venerable ammo clip, mayhaps) within a year.
But those won’t take a 30-round feed, and they won’t reload as fast.
Dennis is also a nasty little racist.
First of all, I appreciate your explanation, and you make a good point about the removable magazines. I’m inclined to agree.
As far as the use of the term “assault weapons” and the less-than-perfect ways we’ve tried to define them in law I made a similar point in my very first post on this in this thread about the superficial nature of some of the features that were used to define “assault weapons.”
But I guess I just don’t agree with the idea that we have to accept the US Army definition of “assault rifles.” For better or worse (I’d argue “for better”) the term “assault weapons” is widely used, not just by gun control advocates and the media, but also politicians and a large portion of the population in general, to refer to guns like the AR-15. My sense is the “yeah, but that’s not even really an assault rifle as defined by the US military” line really only works on people who are never going to support a ban anyway.
In other words, regardless of the less-than-perfect categorization and the inconsistency with the US military’s definition, the idea of “assault weapons” as a broader category, has caught on. And in the end, words mean what most people have decided they mean…that’s just how language works. (And of course in terms of legislation, words mean what they are defined to mean in the “definitions” section of the legislation.)
The good news is that the majority of Americans already support banning “assault weapons.”
So my suggestion would be that rather than dropping the term "assault weapons, " which is a term that’s working for us, perhaps the better approach would be trying to make sure that any rifle with a removable magazine counts as an “assault weapon” for the purpose of a ban.
Currently, Connecticut’s assault weapons ban includes a list of specific models, but also includes “any semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least one of the following…” which is followed by a list of the more superficial “military-style” features that I think we both agree are less important.
So, I think what you’re proposing is basically this, minus the qualification that it has to have one of those features.
If so, that sounds good to me.
We may have to just agree to disagree about whether calling that an “assault weapon ban” helps or hurts the chances of getting such a policy passed.
I tend to think it should help. But I can also see the point that to the degree that people focus on the superficial features (and to the degree the term “assault weapons” encourages that misplaced focus) there’s a risk that the detachable magazine ban gets lost in the shuffle.
At the same time, I’m not sure “ban weapons that can accept detachable magazines” or “support the detachable magazine ban” is going to be as effective a rallying point as “ban assault weapons” or “support the assault weapons ban.”
So I think it may work better to try to define “assault weapons” as any that accept a detachable magazine, as opposed to abandoning the term “assault weapons” altogether just because it doesn’t match the US Army definition and has been poorly defined in previous and current bans.
But I don’t think it’s crazy or wrong to think otherwise. I think it’s a messaging question that is worth exploring further.
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion. I’ll check back to see if you have any further thoughts you’d like to share on this. Cheers.
I’d remove the centerfire requirement, as well. Take a look at that 597. That’s a .22 rimfire. Yes, there’s a difference in the load in those rounds, but if you leave rimfire available, you just encourage the development of a higher-power rimfire round.
If you want to establish a single, consistent definition like that? That’s great. But it has to be consistent, and it has to be a singular definition. As long as terms don’t have a consistent meaning they are, after all, meaningless. And that weakens the arguments of anyone using them. So if we want to use these terms, and we want to fight to win, then we need to lay the foundations to let us.
Yeah, Tena did. Don’t lie about it either.
No he isn’t and you can’t prove it either. If you think anyone believes your stupidity, then you prove that about yourself.
Kucinich won on a regular basis without much campaigning. The only way Republicans could get rid of him was to gerrymander his district out of existence. As far as I know, he is the only US politician who had to literally dodge bullets to stand up for his constituents. Regardless of what the polls say, Kucinich is a shoe in to win the race.