Liberals Roar As Elizabeth Warren Vows To Mobilize Democrats To Defeat The NRA

[dairydog91]

112. Making up a pseudotechnical term (Now it's "HPHCSAR") doesn't make the argument better.

The first is that the objective of inflicting mass casualties is facilitated (that means "made easier&quot by the capabilities of the HPHCSARs.

How? At least the Australian gun-ban appeared to be written by people with actual knowledge of how firearms function. The ban encompassed all semiauto centerfire rifles. Now, I absolutely don't want that as law, but it makes sense. Semiauto avoids needing to manipulate the action between rounds, substantially speeding up shooting. The Australian ban is simple and based on the internal function of the gun. "Assault Weapon" bans in the US, at least as practiced, are more like obscenity bans masquerading as technical bans. They only encompass a section of semiauto weapons, leaving others alone for poorly explained reasons.

At Newtown, for example, Lanza fired over 100 rounds of .223 in the space of a few minutes. By far more the most important factor here is the fact that his weapon automatically cycled between rounds. .223 is also a low-powered round when compared to other centerfire rifle cartridges, which means smaller rounds (can carry more), lower recoil (easier to keep weapon on target), and a smaller weapon (Larger cartridges require a more heavily built weapon). Yet AWBs are NEVER written as pure bans on semiautos. Rather, they target semiauto weapons that "look military". Even in states with "strict" AWBs, you can still buy magazine-loaded semiauto .223 rifles, such as the Ruger Mini-14 or Ares SCR. The latter is essentially an AR-15 in drag, and could probably be equipped with a wood stock too. So, looking at this, the AWB looks less like a serious, informed attempt to ban weapons with certain technical capabilities and more like an obscenity ban which prohibits weapons because they trigger disgust at an emotional level. The core difference between a woodstocked Mini-14 and a standard AR-15 (both magazine-fed, .223 semiauto weapons) is that one is "respectable" in appearance and one is not. The Mini-14 has wood and a traditional appearance. It looks like something Uncle Milton uses on his annual deer hunt. But that AR looks positively awful! Clearly only a redneck would want such a horrible gun! To people with hands-on experience with those weapons, the idea that the latter is somehow much more destructive than the former sounds like poppycock. The supposed important difference would also be news to the 67 people Anders Breivik murdered on Utoya Island with a Mini-14.

As far as other reasons why HPHCSAR comes across as silly, well, here goes:

High-Power: Relative to what? And how are you judging "power"? Is this a technical, quantifiable measure of power? The "assault rifle" revolution that occurred at the end of World War 2 and the early Cold War was notable for a major reduction in the individual power of the rounds fired. During WW2, the typical bolt-action rifle would have fired a round with somewhere around 2500-3000 ft/lbs of muzzle energy, with the .303 British at the low end and the 8mm Mauser at the high end (The American Garand fired the .30-06, in that range as well). Notably, the very first "assault rifle" fired the 7.92Kurz, which developed 1400 ft/lbs on a good day. And the story of the STG-44 was largely one of German officers coming to the conclusion that the high power of the 8mm Mauser was effectively wasted. It had nasty recoil, the rifle was cumbersome in close quarters, and its vastly superior long-range ballistics were largely useless because very few soldiers were trained to a level where they could actually do anything at that range. Similarly the AK-47's 7.62x39 (1600 ft/lbs) and the M-16s 5.56/.223 (1300 ft/lbs) represented a drastic reduction in power.

High-Capacity: Most modern-day semiauto weapons load off of a detachable box mag. This is not necessary in a semiauto weapon (see the Garand for a fixed-magazine semiauto), but does remove the necessity of engineering the weapon so that a fixed magazine can be loaded through a port. Referring to a weapon that feeds from a detachable magazine as "high capacity" makes little sense. These weapons do not have a "capacity". They have a magazine port that can grab a magazine firmly and can detach it. The magazine manufacturer determines the capacity of the magazine. If the manufacturer figures out how to make a 5000-round magazine that feeds the rounds reliably, the weapon neither knows nor cares. It cycles. If the magazine works, the weapon will strip a new round of the mag.