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As we all know, the discussion of the moment is the AR15 rifle, and the screaming, yelling, and foaming at the mouth to ban it. I know a lot of you all here really think that the AR is special, and I'm not here to denigrate that. Personally, I'm not an AR guy. I used to shoot them, and still have one, but my primary interest is older guns (nothing against the AR, just a personal preference). I'm also staunchly against a ban in principle, whether if necessarily effects me or not.
An argument that I use when talking to people about guns, is that the AR15 is NOT special. By that I just mean that it doesn't really do anything that many other designs can't. Yes, it does many things better than many older designs- it's a modular design that is easily modified or repaired, it's accurate and reliable, etc., but many other designs will shoot the same type and quantity of bullets just as fast. In a horrible shootings that we've seen recently, would it have made any substantive difference if the perps had used 80 year old M1 carbines instead? A 30 carbine soft point is very lethal at close range, a good one can be very reliable, and precision accuracy is not an issue here. Same size magazine, shoots just as fast. (note that I'm NOT saying it's just as good for military service)
Not that I ever want there to be shooting involving old guns either; I think it goes without saying that we all never want these things to happen again. My point is just that in the context of criminal misuse of firearms, the AR is not some kind of death ray that is head-and-shoulders above everything else in terms of lethality. It shoots that same little 5.56 round that was derided in Vietnam as being under-powered. The media and gun control crowd has the otherwise ignorant masses convinced that it's an unstoppable death ray that mows down everything in it's path, and it's not. I think it's worthwhile to point out that the little M1 Carbine, for example, has been around for 81 years, was very cheap, common, and readily accessible especially in the second half of the 20th century, and we didn't see this kind of thing every other week. Times were different, but guns were everywhere. The culture has changed, but the accessibility and lethality of guns hasn't. Even the AR has been around since 1959, though not as commonplace until more recent decades.
My point is specifically that it's not the tool that's the problem here; it's the deranged, demented mind of the evil human being behind the trigger. Taking away one tool won't stop a determined psycho from simply using another one.
An argument that I use when talking to people about guns, is that the AR15 is NOT special. By that I just mean that it doesn't really do anything that many other designs can't. Yes, it does many things better than many older designs- it's a modular design that is easily modified or repaired, it's accurate and reliable, etc., but many other designs will shoot the same type and quantity of bullets just as fast. In a horrible shootings that we've seen recently, would it have made any substantive difference if the perps had used 80 year old M1 carbines instead? A 30 carbine soft point is very lethal at close range, a good one can be very reliable, and precision accuracy is not an issue here. Same size magazine, shoots just as fast. (note that I'm NOT saying it's just as good for military service)
Not that I ever want there to be shooting involving old guns either; I think it goes without saying that we all never want these things to happen again. My point is just that in the context of criminal misuse of firearms, the AR is not some kind of death ray that is head-and-shoulders above everything else in terms of lethality. It shoots that same little 5.56 round that was derided in Vietnam as being under-powered. The media and gun control crowd has the otherwise ignorant masses convinced that it's an unstoppable death ray that mows down everything in it's path, and it's not. I think it's worthwhile to point out that the little M1 Carbine, for example, has been around for 81 years, was very cheap, common, and readily accessible especially in the second half of the 20th century, and we didn't see this kind of thing every other week. Times were different, but guns were everywhere. The culture has changed, but the accessibility and lethality of guns hasn't. Even the AR has been around since 1959, though not as commonplace until more recent decades.
My point is specifically that it's not the tool that's the problem here; it's the deranged, demented mind of the evil human being behind the trigger. Taking away one tool won't stop a determined psycho from simply using another one.
