General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsReclassify semi-automatics with detachable magazines under the NFA
Require a Federal license for any new acquisitions (including resale or passing down among family members of current weapons). It doesn't necessarily need to be as stringent as the current full FFL's (for instance you could have a "mini" license that doesn't allow selling weapons or keeping automatic weapons). Include handguns (that was what Cho used at Virginia Tech, and what about 95% of gun murderers use anyways). If you want a modern-styled weapon, it needs to have a fixed magazine reloaded one round at a time.
Don't fall for the red herring of an assault weapons ban. That keeps this type of weapon legal but mandates it not be able to mount a bayonet or have a grip of a certain shape. It also polls worse than banning semi-autos with detachable magazines despite being much less restrictive (though that may well just be the fact that few people have any idea what this stuff means).
uponit7771
(90,225 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)That's what's killing people; horrific incidents like this can be kind of misleading in that sense.
Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)Literally tens of millions...and hundreds of millions of detachable magazines.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)But if we're going to charge this hill I want us to finally have a law that at least makes sense we're pushing.
Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)I think extant weapons of those types, in such vast numbers, make such a plan effectively impossible. Voluntary compliance would be minimal, and aggressive enforcement has far too high a downside.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Your support and excuses for guns are well known.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)If it becomes more of a pain in the ass to buy these new, eventually that will change the market.
auntpurl
(4,311 posts)But I would like to advocate for this position. Can you break it down so a child/person who knows nothing about guns can understand?
What is the NFA? What is a detachable magazine? What does "classifying" mean?
I think most people don't understand this stuff.
melm00se
(4,974 posts)NFA = National Firearms Act
Classifying (as it relates to NFA) = firearms are classified within the NFA. the one most referenced are Title II weapons which require extensive background checks and special tax stamps to own
Detachable magazine
auntpurl
(4,311 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)(If any of this is too elementary sorry; I just want to start from zero-knowledge for anyone reading.)
A bullet is what comes out of a gun when it's fired. That bullet is sold as a "round", which is the bullet as well as a brass cylinder containing gunpowder.
The round sits in what's called the chamber of the gun, at the back of the barrel. When the gun is fired, the bullet goes out of the barrel and the cylinder stays.
What happens next is what's important in terms of this suggestion.
In a manual-action gun, the shooter has to do something to open the chamber, get the cylinder out, and put a new round in.
In a revolver, a larger cylinder with multiple (usually six) chambers rotates , and those chambers have to be emptied and reloaded after all six are fired.
In a semi-automatic gun, the power from the recoil (or hot gas) is used to empty the chamber and pull the next round from a storage place. That storage place is called a magazine.
A gun can have an internal magazine, which you then have to feed individual rounds into one at a time. Or it can have a detachable magazine, which you take out and replace with another detachable magazine that you've preloaded while planning your rampage. Guns that are semi-automatic and accept detachable magazines are capable of firing the most bullets in a given period of time.
The NFA is the Federal law that makes you need a license to sell many guns in many circumstances (I'd like to see that become all guns in all circumstances), as well as making it prohibitively expensive and difficult to own, say, a machinegun.
Now, many people seem to think that the Assault Weapons Ban banned those types of guns, but it did not. It said if a weapon had those capabilities, it could not have a bayonet mount or have a grip of a certain shape. I don't want to go down that road again.
auntpurl
(4,311 posts)Can guns with detachable magazines be handguns OR rifles?
I literally knew nothing of what you said except the bullet comes out of the gun, so no, it definitely wasn't too elementary. I loathe guns, but that doesn't mean I need to be ignorant of them or else I cannot advocate for gun control from a position of intelligence.
melm00se
(4,974 posts)yes
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Which, again, is where I'd rather focus, personally.
auntpurl
(4,311 posts)I see on tv shows police call a rectangular thing that they shove into the bottom of a gun a "clip". Is that a detachable magazine? If so, are those considered semi-automatic weapons?
Recursion
(56,582 posts)but let's pass over that for now because in casual use it's kind of just come to mean "magazine".
If so, are those considered semi-automatic weapons?
There are some rifles that are manual action and use detachable magazines (they're popular with hunters and some competitive target shooters). The ones I can think of are pretty expensive though.
Honestly I think handguns are the bigger problem anyways...
And just to clarify:
Semi-automatic refers to how the round gets from the magazine to the chamber. If that magazine is detachable, and the gun is semi-automatic (these are at least in principle unrelated questions), its rate of fire over a long-ish period of time (say, a minute) can be incredibly high.
auntpurl
(4,311 posts)jmg257
(11,996 posts)Recharge the magazine, often internal to the weapon, including bolt action repeating rifles.
The terms have become more interchangable lately but should be 2 different devices.
Semi auto refers to the action - the way the next round is introduced into the chamber; semi autos can have a fixed magazine, which may be clip-fed.
auntpurl
(4,311 posts)Kang Colby
(1,941 posts)Expanding NFA won't do any good.
Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)Banks still get robbed.
I guess that law does no good.
We need to do something rather than stand by and say, people are going to commit mass murder anyway.
Response to Agnosticsherbet (Reply #7)
Name removed Message auto-removed
tallahasseedem
(6,716 posts)NO civilian needs a semi automatic weapon. 50 people are DEAD...get a grip.
Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)Than to pass reasonable gun regulations?
That is your argument?
I don't agree with that.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)No matter what the size shape etc. if someone can keep reloading with preloaded magazines he/she can do alot of damage in a hurry. Regulate the magazines and guns that utilize them.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)I mean, the vast, vast majority of murders never need to get past the first bullet, but since mass shootings are what moves the public dial sometimes you have to go where the passion is rather than what might be the absolute best policy...