Can we as a party please come up with a better idea than the AWB?

[backscatter712]

8. Bills regulating firearms should directly address the amount of hot lead that comes out the barrel.

Pistol grips and bayonet mounts are irrelevant.

The question is how many bullets can be fired from a weapon in a short amount of time? Say a minute? Or ten seconds?

As it turns out, the deadliest weapons, have one thing in common - they are designed to fire a lot of bullets in a short period of time. So bills should restrict the rate of fire, the number of bullets in magazines/cylinders/ammo-carrying-devices, and ease of reloading. Anyone who wants a weapon with a large magazine, or that can be very quickly reloaded, should be subjected to extra scrutiny and regulation.

So any bill regulating them should be written as follows: Weapons capable of firing more than ten bullets in ten seconds (the number of bullets and the amount and units of time can be adjusted) are to be restricted by banning, or mandatory licensing, or so on. If a weapon in its stock configuration from the manufacturer cannot fire more than 10 bullets in ten seconds, but can be easily modified to make it capable of doing so, it is also restricted.

If you are a firearms manufacturer, and you do not want your weapons to be restricted by this law, use your engineering expertise to make it damned hard to modify the weapons you make to accept larger magazines, or fire at a faster rate. I don't care how, so long as you do.