The Assault Weapon Myth

[acalix]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/sunday-review/the-assault-weapon-myth.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle FBI data shows.

So why do people still go after "assault weapons?" They matter very little in the grand scheme of things.

[Duckhunter935]

1. Beats me

they sure waste a lot of energy on them and cause sales to rise.

[Eleanors38]

2. The prospects for an "AWB" grow dimmer with time.

As the American civilian population adopts the semi-auto carbine as its new utility weapon, and supplants bolt-action hunting rifles, small-caliber range/sport rifles, and even SD pistols, this not-so-new form will entrench itself into a growing constituency. This is why the controller/prohibitionists are trying for low-hanging fruit. Never has that outlook been so circumscribed.

[beevul]

4. "...this not-so-new form will entrench itself into a growing constituency."

"...this not-so-new form will entrench itself into a growing constituency."

The "growing constituency" is precisely what the gun grabbers wanted to prevent, as they did with automatic weapons via the hughes amendment.

It isn't that it was simply because it was low hanging fruit, it was also because they didn't want it to become "high hanging" fruit, if you follow me.

They're nothing if not predictably repetitive.

[Eleanors38]

5. Actually, the low-hanging fruit is not the AWB...

but calls for safety-oriented measures. The real progress (though still insufficient) comes mainly from the campaigns for gun safes and lockboxes in the home -- carried out by gun-owners and their organizations. And it appears that safety in schools has been beefed up, also a position supported by gun-owners. Gun-controllers may be in the position of having to play catch-up with their "foes."

[virginia mountainman]

3. The push to ban them..

Was simply a very transparent, and irrational emotional response..... And gun control advocates are finally starting to realize it, just how silly it was.

You know it when the New York Times says it was a complete waste of time..

[ileus]

6. It's an easy idiot audience target....

If you can't get support by naming a gun after the Mike Tysons and Ray Rices of the world what can you get support for?

Remember all Gun control is based on emotions...it's all they have. So they have to work with the lack of knowledge of their target group.

[Eleanors38]

7. The RW ideologue Chas. Krauthammer remarked over 20 yrs. ago

that the AWB would do little to reduce crime, but would serve to condition the American public to eventual confiscation. It was a sequence of events of which he approved. I think the controllers banked on the equivalent of a domino theory carrying the day. This was a huge strategic failure.

[pablo_marmol]

8. + 1,000

We'll never know what type of country we'd be living in had Democrats not lost so much credibility over this horrifying farce - but one thing is certain. It would be a much better one.

Makes me sick that the damage has been done. Our credibility will never be the same.

[jimmy the one]

9. end played

acalix:So why do people still go after "assault weapons?"They matter very little in the grand scheme of things

Due the potential. Due the history of why they were developed. Due ability to be converted to automatic (some of them). Due their relative poor comparison to more conventional firearms which work better for most all practical civilian applications.

eleanors: .. this not-so-new form will entrench itself into a growing constituency. This is why the controller/prohibitionists are trying for low-hanging fruit.

Straight from a gun enthusiast's keyboard. Due the more potent killing potential of assault rifles, combined with a growing constituency getting more skilled at handling & shooting civilian categorized 'assault rifles', the potential will grow leaping & bounding, and FOR WHY? just so some gunnuts can get a shooting range orgasm blowing a carboard target to smithereens?

article: when the ban expired, a detailed study found no proof that it had contributed to the decline.

I believe that very study also contended that not enough time (10 years) elapsed to properly gauge results of the asslt weapon ban, and thus it was end played into saying 'no proof' could be determined, meaning also that 'no proof' could be determined that awb didn't contribute to decline. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[friendly_iconoclast]

10. So much fail, so many declarations ripe for fisking

Due the history of why they were developed.

Derived from weapons designed for military use, just like 95% of guns ever made
including lever-action rifles...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_rifle

The original Henry rifle was a .44 caliber rimfire, lever-action, breech-loading rifle designed by Benjamin Tyler Henry in 1860. The Henry was an improved version of the earlier Volcanic Repeating rifle. The Henry used copper (later brass) rimfire cartridges with a 216 grain (14 g) bullet over 25 grains (1.6 g) of gunpowder. Nine hundred were manufactured between summer and October 1862; by 1864, production had peaked at 290 per month. By the time production ended in 1866, approximately 14,000 units had been manufactured.

For a Civil War soldier, owning a Henry rifle was a point of pride. Letters home would call them "Seventeen" or "Sixteen" Shooters... depending if one had one loaded in the chamber. The US Government purchased in late 1863 to early 1864, about 3,140 (these have inspector marks and are early versions) for mostly Cavalry units. Production was very small (150 to 200 a month) until middle of 1864. Many infantry soldiers purchased Henry's with their reenlistment bounties of 1864. Most of these units were associated with Sherman's Western Troops.

The brass framed rifles could fire at a rate of 28 rounds per minute when used correctly, so soldiers who saved their pay to buy one often believed it would help them survive. They were frequently used by scouts, skirmishers, flank guards, and raiding parties, rather than in regular infantry formations. To the amazed muzzleloader-armed Confederates who had to face this deadly "sixteen shooter", it was called "that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!"[1] Those few Confederate troops who came into possession of captured Henry rifles had little way to resupply the special ammunition used by the weapon, making its widespread use by Confederate forces impractical. The rifle was, however, known to have been used at least in part by some fifteen different Confederate units. These units included cavalry units in Louisiana, Texas, and Virginia, as well as the personal bodyguards of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.[2]

and bolt-action rifles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1903_Springfield

The M1903 Springfield, formally the United States Rifle, Caliber .30-06, Model 1903, is an American clip-loaded, 5-round magazine fed, bolt-action service rifle used primarily during the first half of the 20th century.

It was officially adopted as a United States military bolt-action rifle on June 19, 1903, and saw service in World War I. It was officially replaced as the standard infantry rifle by the faster-firing semi-automatic 8 round M1 Garand starting in 1937. However, the M1903 Springfield remained in service as a standard issue infantry rifle during World War II, since the U.S. entered the war without sufficient M1 rifles to arm all troops. It also remained in service as a sniper rifle during World War II, the Korean War, and even in the early stages of the Vietnam War. It remains popular as a civilian firearm, historical collector's piece, and as a military drill rifle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M24_Sniper_Weapon_System

Due their relative poor comparison to more conventional firearms which work better for most all practical civilian applications.

How would you know? You have provided multiple demonstrations of your historical
and technological ignorance, so your diktats don't carry much weight.

Indeed, a simple Google search for "AR platform hunting" will show, once again, that you don't know what you're talking about.

combined with a growing constituency getting more skilled at handling & shooting civilian categorized 'assault rifles'

Once again- they are not assault rifles, no matter how many times you repeat
that untruth. You've yet to learn that 'proof by assertion' is a fallacy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_assertion

Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction.[1] Sometimes, this may be repeated until challenges dry up, at which point it is asserted as fact due to its not being contradicted (argumentum ad nauseam).[2] In other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies.

[jimmy the one]

12. sturm waffen geban

icon: {re asslt rifles} Derived from weapons designed for military use, just like 95% of guns ever made including lever-action rifles... Henry rifle .44 caliber rimfire, lever-action, breech-loading rifle .. 1860. For a Civil War soldier, owning a Henry rifle..
... M1903 Springfield .. Cal.30-06, American clip-loaded, bolt-action service rifle used primarily during the first half of the 20th century.

Enjoy your trip down gun-memory lane? But what does your history class have to do with the modern issue of assault rifles? Little. A war rifle as you cite above is/was not necessarily an assault rifle (esp prior wwII), but an assault rifle is generally a war rifle, a rifle designed for war. The term 'assault rifle' wasn't in common usage until latter 20th century, & has morphed into a political TERM including semi auto versions of automatic rifles/weapons:

Germans first to pioneer assault rifle concept, during WWII, .. Sturmgewehr 44.
2 Soviets were so impressed with the Sturmgewehr 44, that after World War II .. winner was the AK-47 assault rifle.. entered widespread service in the Soviet army in the early 1950s
3 ... After WWII, US military looking for a single automatic rifle to replace the M1 Garand, M1/M2 Carbines, M1918 Browning >> development 7.62x51 NATO cartridge and M14 battle rifle ... 1963, SecDef McNamara concluded AR-15 the superior weapon and ordered a halt to M14 production ... new assault rifle subsequently adopted as M16 .. By middle 1970s, other armies were looking at assault rifle type weapons.. during 1970s, Finland, Israel, SAfrica Sweden introduced AK type assault rifles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle

4 In US "assault weapons" are usually defined in legislation as semi-automatic firearms that have certain features generally associated with military firearms, including assault rifles. The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban codified the definition of an assault weapon. It defined the rifle type of assault weapon as a semiautomatic firearm with the ability to accept a detachable magazine and two or more of the following:

Phillip Peterson, author of Gun Digest Buyer’s Guide to Assault Weapons (2008): The popularly held idea that the term 'assault weapon' originated with anti-gun activists is wrong. The term was first adopted by manufacturers, wholesalers, importers and dealers in the American firearms industry to stimulate sales of certain firearms that did not have an appearance that was familiar to many firearms owners. The manufacturers and gun writers of the day needed a catchy name to identify this new type of gun .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon

[friendly_iconoclast]

13. You're not very good at framing. Too obvious, for starters

That, and the source of your entire attempt is well known-

the head of the Violence Policy Center, Josh Sugarman:

http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm

"The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."

As for your attempt to redefine the meaning of words by sheer weight of verbiage-
also well known:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_assertion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipse_dixit

[jimmy the one]

14. where's your rebuttal? none

icon: ... the source of your entire attempt is well known- the head of the Violence Policy Center, Josh Sugarman:

I had not seen that article before today, & I have no idea what you're driving at; you continue to be a very silly poster who just ducks & evades issues when he's been caught wrong, as I expose you about a weekly basis recently.
You didn't rebut anything whatsoever regarding your attempt to include pre wwII firearms as being somehow related to the modern term 'assault rifle/weapon', when the term didn't come into play until circa wwII. It's because you couldn't, you were end played, your argument was irrelevant.

icon had posted: {re asslt rifles} Derived from weapons designed for military use, just like 95% of guns ever made including lever-action rifles... Henry rifle .44 caliber .. 1860. For a Civil War soldier.. ... M1903 Springfield .. Cal.30-06, American clip-loaded, bolt-action service rifle/ first half 20th century.

icon: As for your attempt to redefine the meaning of words by sheer weight of verbiage- also well known:
https en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_assertion
https en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipse_dixit

And you continue to absurdly post irrelevant & inapplicable references to logic fallacies or platitudes without adding any explanation, as if by doing so automatically proves some kind of absurd point you're trying to make.
Continue to abide by your 2nd amendment mythology, I'll continue to expose it's hypocrisy.

icon's link: Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction .. In other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies

Akin to 'repeat a lie long enough & people will think it true'. I'm not doing that, I'm not technically contending an assault rifle is a semi automatic; I am saying the TERM 'assault rifle' has come to conflate the semi-automatic version of an automatic rifle as both being 'assault rifles', and I tacked on the general capability of the semi being converted to full automatic either with simple tools or conversion kits. These are demonstrably true, no lie.
So go spin your bs with somebody else.

[friendly_iconoclast]

15. I have no need to rebut, the onus is upon you to prove your assertions

Which you have not done, merely repeating the claim that there is now a new term of art.

Further, your 'proof' of simple conversion consists of a video of someone putting different parts into a semi-automatic rifle and claiming that it is now fully automatic, without
actually being seen firing it in full automatic mode


To be blunt, you employ standards of "argument" usually seen at sites like:

http://www.icr.org/

https://answersingenesis.org/

In your defense, it must be said that you do a fine job of convincing those who
already agree with you...

[jimmy the one]

19. oodles of conversion links

icon: I have no need to rebut, the onus is upon you to prove your assertions ... Which you have not done, merely repeating the claim that there is now a new term of art.

Thanks for the truth, you admit you have no need to rebut, thus you don't really understand what's going down here, do you? You actually think you've disproven what I've contended, don't you? without doing much of anything at all, you smirk & claim success. Ethics are often absent from pro gunners on these boards, relying more on blowing smoke.

link: From what I understand you could convert practically any AK into it's full auto configuration with about $20 in parts and an hour or two. Highly illegal of course and I would absolutely never condone it...http://www.bayoushooter.com/forums/showthread.php?57418-Full-auto-AK-47-AK-74-AMD
.... Full automatic and select fire on the AR15/M16. The M16 series ... There are several ways to legally and illegally convert a semi-auto AR15 to full auto. The legal ... https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=convert+ar15+to+full+automatic
... https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=convert+ak+47+to+full+auto
... http://www.savvysurvivor.com/full_auto_and_autoburst_modifica.htm

There. Now post a link saying it can't be done. (some links pro gun, can't vouch for them elsewise)

.. as for my other contention that the term 'assault rifle' has come to mean in political jingo, a semi auto as well as full auto, here it is again, since I suspect you are blind at times & miss a lot of what I say that you don't like:

wiki: The term assault rifle when used in its proper context, militarily or by its specific functionality, has a generally accepted definition with the firearm manufacturing community. In more casual usage, the term "assault weapon" is sometimes conflated or confused with the term assault rifle. .. In the United States "assault weapons" are usually defined in legislation as semi-automatic firearms that have certain features generally associated with military firearms, including assault rifles. The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban codified the definition of an assault weapon.

[NYC_SKP]

17. Good grief, do you ever give up? At the risk of getting some incoherent lengthy reply....

.

I am saying the TERM 'assault rifle' has come to conflate the semi-automatic version of an automatic rifle as both being 'assault rifles', and I tacked on the general capability of the semi being converted to full automatic either with simple tools or conversion kits. These are demonstrably true, no lie.
So go spin your bs with somebody else.

"general capability of the semi being converted to full automatic either with simple tools or conversion kits." Is nonsense.

In terms of the number of models legally sold and owned in the US, a mere fraction of semiautos are convertible at all much less with simple tools or kits.

icon has buried you with Sugarman's damning admission that an ignorant and confused public can be misled into supporting gun control legislation.

His ilk is delighted that people consider "semi-automatic" to be interchangeable with the term "assault rifle"

[jimmy the one]

20. I don't feel no inhumation

Attn readers: I dislike replying to the below types of people:

brown noser A person who acts favorably to his or her peers to gain stasis or fancy that will eventually be used to their advantage. Such as a raise, promotion, or acceptance in a group. Usually brown nosers will do anything to gain the approval of their person of choice. These people can also be described as losers because they can’t work for what they want, instead they play dirty and butter-up the boss/teacher/peer into getting what they want. Another word for this person is a shoe shiner or a rough translation of brown noser in Spanish is, an eye licker.

nycskp: In terms of the number of models legally sold and owned in the US, a mere fraction of semiautos are convertible at all much less with simple tools or kits.

I posted the google list after your above post, so check that out & let me know how many are fakes. There will of course be some duplication within the google search.

skp:icon has buried you with Sugarman's damning admission that an ignorant and confused public can be misled into supporting gun control legislation.

You call icon's red herring a coffin? you're as silly as he can be. Oo, also see first paragraph.

[NYC_SKP]

21. Your links refer to conversions of a single model of rifle.

But your first reply refers to the generic semi-automatic rifle, which would include for example a Ruger 10-22.

Your Failed Assertion:

I tacked on the general capability of the semi being converted to full automatic either with simple tools or conversion kits. These are demonstrably true, no lie.
So go spin your bs with somebody else.

Most semi-automatic rifles in America are not AR-15s and, as it turns out, not easily converted.

Your links don't help your failed assertion.

[jimmy the one]

22. he argues with himself, & loses

skp: Your links refer to conversions of a single model of rifle.

Right, a single model semi-version of an accepted assault rifle in full auto.

skp: But your first reply refers to the generic semi-automatic rifle, which would include for example a Ruger 10-22.

Copy & paste this first reply; I think you another drive by gun enthusiast who drops in without following the thread closely, where the topic is confined to assault rifles.

skp: Your Failed Assertion: {jimmy wrote} I tacked on the general capability of the semi being converted to full automatic either with simple tools or conversion kits. These are demonstrably true, no lie. So go spin your bs with somebody else.
skp: Most semi-automatic rifles in America are not AR-15s and, as it turns out, not easily converted.

Oh I think I see. You need get your head screwed on straight, for I was not speaking of conversion of any semi rifles other than those derived from commonly accepted assault rifles capable of full auto. This is a blatant cheap shot from you, since it was obvious I was referring to the assault rifle in the previous clause of my paragraph in post14. Go away.
I am well aware what you say last, but it is irrelevant to this conversation since you're creating a false premise & attributing your stupid thoughts & opinions to myself. Follow the thread more closely, or sit down & shut up if that's all you're gonna do is put words in my mouth.

Your links don't help your failed assertion.

Since you're barking up the wrong tree you haven't counterproven jack.
You're arguing with yourself - and LOSING.

[Duckhunter935]

11. "Due the more potent killing potential of assault rifles,"

there you go again, lying about them being assault rifles. You keep saying that and always get corrected but I guess if you say it enough people will start believing you.

All hunting rifles are based on military rifles. The semi-automatic AR platform is now becoming the next generation in a long history of them. AR-10 and AR-15 type weapons make fine hunting rifles.

[friendly_iconoclast]

16. There are a couple of faith-based websites that use similar techniques

They, too attempt to redefine words and phrases by fiat, and every counter-argument is
handwaved away with lots of verbiage and appeals to authority.

They can be found at:

http://www.icr.org/

https://answersingenesis.org/

[michaelhr]

24. Heller vs DC made Berger's opinion irrelevant

Due to potential ? How about facts. The DOJ 2013 Homicide Report, based on facts, says that gun homicides fell 39% from 1993-2011.

[Eleanors38]

25. Check OP date. "I Walked with a Zombie."

[Taitertots]

18. Facts don't matter when people are scared

It doesn't matter how infrequently they are used. The people who want them banned are too afraid to be concerned with reality.