DaButt
Sunday 18th March 2018 3:50pm
14,722 posts
Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 18th March 2018, 10:39 AM
I completely agree (as yet another non-American) that automatic rifles should not be sold to the public in gun shops or even be on display in gun shops.
I don't think you understand what an automatic rifle is. Sales and transfers of them have been essentially banned since 1986. Civilians are allowed to own pre-1986 automatic weapons after jumping through many legal hoops, undergoing a background check, and paying tens of thousands of dollars per firearm. They're rare enough to be considered essentially unobtainable, and I can't recall a time when a legally owned automatic rifle was used in the commission of a crime.
Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 18th March 2018, 10:39 AM
Clinton managed it on a ten year licence didn't he? - the licence expired and the massacres started again
Shooting sprees took place before, during, and after the Clinton ban on so-called assault rifles. The main reason that it was allowed to expire was that there was no proof that it had done anything to reduce killings or crimes.
Some important info about "assault" rifles and past/present attempts to ban sales of them:
1) The banned features are almost entirely cosmetic and have nothing to do with the rifle's lethality. Take grandpa's hunting rifle and add a pistol grip and it's illegal. Flash suppressor: illegal. Telescoping stock: illegal. Bayonet mount: illegal.
2) There were 15,070 murders in the United States in 2016. Firearms were used in 11,004 of them. Rifles of all types, not just "assault" rifles, were used in only 374 of them (2% of total murders.) More people were killed by knives (1,604), hands/feet (656), and blunt instruments (472) than were killed by rifles.
3) Over the last 70 years there have been 19 shootings with 10 or more deaths. Only pistols were used in 8 of them.
Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 18th March 2018, 10:39 AM
so what clearer proof do they want that military grade assault rifles should not be on the streets let alone freely sold to school or college students?
They're not military grade by any means. They look like military rifles, but they function no differently (and are no more lethal) than any other rifle or pistol: pull the trigger and one round is fired.