firearms in our nation. The larger problem can be broken down into several unique and distinct problems.
!) How do we improve our existing gun laws to better insure that firearms are sold and owned only by responsible and honest citizens who have training in firearm safety?
2) How can we make sure that firearms in the home are securely stored to prevent access by young children?
3) How can we reduce gang violence in most of our large urban areas and even many of our small towns and rural areas?
4) How do we improve our mental health services to better treat mental illness which can and does cause some people to commit suicide with a firearm or occasionally to run amok and commit a mass murder?
5) Can we better address the issue of domestic violence in our society which often leads to gun violence?
6) The abuse of alcohol harms our society in many ways and all too often gun violence is tied to drunkenness. Can we find ways to reduce the abuse of alcohol?
Many gun control advocates feel the solution to gun violence is to make firearms difficult and expensive to purchase and some feel the best approach is to ban and confiscate almost all firearms in our nation. They will point out the fact that many other developed nations have extremely strict gun laws and only a few citizens are allowed to own one. In such nations gun violence is not a serious issue.
Unfortunately our nation has well over 300,000,000 firearms in civilian hands at this time and an estimated 80,000,000 gun owners. The simple political reality is that passing draconian gun laws at the national level is simply impossible at this time. A new assault weapons ban couldn't pass in the Democratically controlled Senate despite the tragic shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
It seems both sides of the issue are unwilling to sit down and politely listen to each other. If this were to happen by some miracle, I feel we might find some areas of compromise on the issues I listed above and perhaps we could pass some much needed improvements to our national gun laws and find ways to help those in need of mental health care. Perhaps we might also be able to reduce the level of domestic violence somewhat.
One of the first things we could do is to come to agreement on the terms we use to describe the problems. One such example is the term "assault rifle."
Assault rifle
***snip***
The term assault rifle is a non-direct translation of the German word Sturmgewehr (literally "storm rifle", "storm" as in "military attack". The name was coined by Adolf Hitler[4] as a new name for the Maschinenpistole 43,[nb 1] subsequently known as the Sturmgewehr 44, the firearm generally considered the first assault rifle that served to popularize the concept and form the basis for today's modern assault rifles.
The translation assault rifle gradually became the common term for similar firearms sharing the same technical definition as the StG 44. In a strict definition, a firearm must have at least the following characteristics to be considered an assault rifle:[5][6][7]
It must be an individual weapon with provision to fire from the shoulder (i.e. a buttstock);
It must be capable of selective fire;
It must have an intermediate-power cartridge: more power than a pistol but less than a standard rifle or battle rifle;
Its ammunition must be supplied from a detachable magazine rather than a feed-belt.
And it should at least have a firing range of 300 metres (980 feet)
Rifles that meet most of these criteria, but not all, are technically not assault rifles despite frequently being considered as such. For example, semi-automatic-only rifles like the AR-15 (on which the M16 rifle is based) that share parts or design characteristics with assault rifles are not assault rifles, as they are not capable of switching to automatic fire and thus are not selective-fire capable. Belt-fed weapons or rifles with fixed magazines are likewise not assault rifles because they do not have detachable box magazines.
The term "assault rifle" is often more loosely used for commercial or political reasons to include other types of arms, particularly arms that fall under a strict definition of the battle rifle, or semi-automatic variant of military rifles such as AR-15s....emphasis added
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
I can't list the number of threads I have seen on DU which broke down in an argument over what an assault rife was, but I do know that if I had a dollar for each one I could buy one or maybe two AR-15s tomorrow.
Another example is the differences between a magazine and a clip. I noticed recently that some talking heads on TV have started to say "magazine clip." One California lawmaker hilariously described a 30 round magazine as as "thirty magazine clip. "If you wish, you can read the reaction from the gun rights crowd by doing a search for "Beware the 30 magazine clip".
In my opinion, gun control advocates would greatly improve their arguments for gun control if they would simply learn a little about the subject. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand and properly use firearm terminology. Would you let a mechanic repair your car if he didn't know the difference between a carburetor and a fuel injection system?
Which goes back to my view that emotionally expanding the definition of the word "child" to include every individual under the age of 20 is unnecessary and merely leads to weakening the argument that we need to better protect both children and young adults from firearm violence and accidents. Merely reading the posts in this thread show that what could have been an interesting debate on how to solve this problem quickly degenerated into a discussion over semantics.
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