January 19, 2017

Two factors.

(1) There are more gun owners now than in 2012, and one of the most common guns to start a collection with is a .22LR.

(2) The Great Ammo Shortage of 2012 recalibrated everyone's idea of how much .22LR is necessary to have on hand, whether for plinking or as a hedge against future developments. Even your casual box-or-two-in-the-closet shooters went out and bought as much as they could find during and after the shortage.

Keep in mind that American target shooters go through 14+ billion rounds of ammo a year, with several billion of that being .22LR, and manufacturers prior to the Banic were running near max capacity already. So a surge of new demand overtaxed the system for years.

January 19, 2017

You do realize that AR-15's and whatnot are common and legal in Canada and Europe, yes?

You are advocating for laws in the United States that most of the countries you admire have rejected.

Not even the UK has a 3-round magazine limit, and the UK is extremist by European standards.

January 19, 2017

If they want to ban modern-looking rifles and any gun holding over 7 rounds...

then they most certainly *are* after people's guns.

Even the very first Winchesters ever made back in the 1860's had 15-round magazines. A seven-round limit isn't just impractical, it is downright comical.

Clowns like this are directly responsible for the "Dems'll take your guns" meme. Exactly what kinds of guns do they think Floridians own?

January 8, 2017

So it sounds like the obsessive focus on attacking lawful gun owners and target shooters...

is focusing on the wrong cohort.

January 8, 2017

And yet every year, ten or fifteen times as many people are murdered with revolvers

as with all rifles put together, even though modern-looking rifles are more popular than revolvers among gun enthusiasts.

And before the gun-control lobby discovered how eeeee-villlll protruding rifle handgrips are, they were all about outlawing revolvers while protecting rifles (including AR-15's), because "rifles and shotguns aren't the problem; they aren't concealable". --Pete Shields, former head of Handgun Control, Inc., later the Brady Campaign.

Methinks there is a disconnect in your logic.

January 7, 2017

He probably intends to use it for long-range target shooting,

but you knew that.

AFAIK, not one single murder has *ever* been committed with a .50 BMG in the United States since 1919, but I may be wrong.

Ballistically, anything you can hit with a .50, you can hit with a .408 or a .338 or a .300 or a 6.5mm, which is why the gun control lobby has also expressed interested in banning everything down to the fast .30's also.

In terms of caliber and power, there are larger rifles than .50 that are considered Title 1 civilian rifles under sporting-use exemptions (the cutoff under Federal law is .51 caliber, but larger caliber sporting guns are allowed). .577 T-rex, .585 Nyati, and .600 Nitro Express come to mind. Most shotguns are .729 caliber, but operate at much lower pressures than rifles.

January 7, 2017

Since the #1 priority of the gun control lobby is outlawing the most popular *rifles*,

and the #2 priority is magazine bans that hit rifles hardest, I think "we want to take your pistols but we promise to leave your rifles alone" is not going to be believed.

There's also the issue that as many Americans own pistols as own rifles and shotguns, and will keep them.

I think focusing on *misuse* rather than lawful and responsible ownership would be a point of common ground, but I don't see the gun control lobby turning in that direction until the prohibitionists stop running the movement.

January 7, 2017

It was a ballot referendum that Bloomberg's people wrote and paid to pass.

I think he spent about $35 *per vote* to pass it. And yet his staff are so ignorant of the law that they wrote it in such a way that it is illegal to enforce. SMH.

If I remember correctly, I think Nevada law says that the legislature can't change a ballot-passed law within 3 years of passage. Meaning it's dead until November 2019, if my recollection is accurate.

Since he already tipped his hand by starting the push for a magazine ban as soon as the UBC referendum squeaked by, I think it will be a much harder sell next time. Anyone who thinks a ban on most magazines will fly in Nevada is probably from New York City or California.

January 7, 2017

Gun control advocates are demanding legislation banning rifle handgrips that stick out,

and limiting magazine capacities to 2/3 of an 1866-vintage Winchester. Neither of which would affect Chicago homicides *at all*.

I'll also point out that those areas outside Chicago where gun ownership rates are much higher have *vastly* lower homicide rates. It's not guns in homes, it's the culture that decades of neglect and dysfunction have created in a handful of Chicago neighborhoods.

January 7, 2017

Who was holding an Airsoft that someone else had painted to look real.

The people who called 911 told dispatch it was likely fake, but that info wasn't passed to the responding officers. The officer who shot the child had previously been "deemed an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty", says Wikipedia, and fired two seconds after arriving on-scene.

So, no, that case doesn't demonstrate that Red Ryders and other .177 air weapons, adult training replicas, and movie props need to be made to look like toys.