If IGx can't solve the gun issue, who can?

[TerryB]

What's next? Gonna confuse us on how much your M4 was like an AR-15 again? One goes ratatatat the other goes bang-bang-bang.

:snigger

[nafod]

What's next? Gonna confuse us on how much your M4 was like an AR-15 again? One goes ratatatat the other goes bang-bang-bang.

:snigger

Honestly, I can't tell them apart from the air.



Gene, which version of Red Dawn do you masturbate to?

[TerryB]

OMG I hope they're ok

[Herv100]

OMG I hope they're ok

They didn't make it

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/05/asia/afgh ... -hospital/

[DARTH]

What's next? Gonna confuse us on how much your M4 was like an AR-15 again? One goes ratatatat the other goes bang-bang-bang.

:snigger

Honestly, I can't tell them apart from the air.





And that's your fucking problem, your perspective on all this shit is from the air. I know more than a fewa few trigger pullers who strait up own nasty black guns for any potential governmental fuckery and if they never get used for that, they make you better armed than the niggers.

So if guys who have actually been shot at (and some shot by) jawas and have killed jawas think it's viable, I think their opinion on matters on the ground trump your killing by coordinates against an enemy who had pretty much nothing to touch your bird. ( Until Obama sold them some)

Still respect you for flying those things and serving our nation. When you talk about those matters, I listen more as I was raised by one who were the USAF variant of " No Apparent Fear Of Death", they called it " Unarmed and Unafraid" ( cause F-4 jocks do what we tell them and kill what we point at!)

[Gene]

Honestly, I can't tell them apart from the air.

Sure that the altitude isn't the result of life in an Ivory Tower?

Gene, which version of Red Dawn do you masturbate to?

Ain't me doing the shooting, Nafod, it's "To whom it may concern".

The idea is to confront every violent person with a degree of uncertainty in their twisted business of hurting people for profit. Will they make a score or score a bullet? Such a reality confronts them with an incentive to halt their trade.

A policy of random death for the proactively violent sounds more civilized to me than returning us Peons to the Law of the Jungle - the many hurt the few, the strong hurt the weak.

Guns don't cause violence, people cause violence.

[nafod]

What's next? Gonna confuse us on how much your M4 was like an AR-15 again? One goes ratatatat the other goes bang-bang-bang.

:snigger

That was actually a nice piece of snark, Gene

You made a comment about the Ivory Tower. Kind of ironic in two ways. First, I've got a couple or more years deployed, been missiled at, small armed, and mortared. Not a lot, but enough to keep it real. I supported CT most recently. Find-fix-finish.

Second, perversely the Ivory Towers are the new front line in the active shooter war. I still remember when we had our own event. Luckily it was in the pre-AR-15 fervor era, and the shooter only had a bolt action Mauser with 5 round clips instead of a semi-auto with big magazines. Only 1 dead. It would have been far different.

The individual right to arms is settled law as per SCOTUS. I'm not making that argument, nor do I have any desire to. Just the rationale offered.

[Gene]

What's next? Gonna confuse us on how much your M4 was like an AR-15 again? One goes ratatatat the other goes bang-bang-bang.

:snigger

That was actually a nice piece of snark, Gene

You made a comment about the Ivory Tower. Kind of ironic in two ways. First, I've got a couple or more years deployed, been missiled at, small armed, and mortared. Not a lot, but enough to keep it real. I supported CT most recently. Find-fix-finish.

In which case why the BS about M4s and civilian legal military pattern rifles? Just doing a function check on a civilian AR-15 will cause a body to go "Tilt".

I can understand McChrystal confusing the two, he wants to get invited to cocktail parties in DC. You have similar ambitions?

Second, perversely the Ivory Towers are the new front line in the active shooter war. I still remember when we had our own event. Luckily it was in the pre-AR-15 fervor era, and the shooter only had a bolt action Mauser with 5 round clips instead of a semi-auto with big magazines. Only 1 dead. It would have been far different.

Schools have come shooting galleries because the law abiding obey gun laws that keep guns off of campuses. Mass shooters don't care about laws but are concerned about people shooting back. As a consequence they chose schools and posted "No Gun" places but shun police stations and gun shows.


You underestimate that Mauser, by the way. Loaded with hunting rounds we're talking one shot kills in the thorax. Using stripper clips you can hammer out the fire power. Google "Mad Minute" for more details.

Assault Weapons always were on the Hit List as a prelude to banning handguns. Josh Sugarmann said it, Feinstein said it and every time we come close to a ban the subject changes to handguns. They're used in less than 500 kills in the US per year. The average person is in more danger from dying of a slip and fall in the shower than being killed with a military pattern rifle. Sugarmann, cynical prick that he is, said he needed to rely upon the public's confusion of them and real military arms.

All about creating a legal precedent to ban handguns. Such a ban will work as well as the ban on dope, coke and smack, in other words it'll just put more people in prison.

I never understood the allure of military pattern firearms. A person can buy a sporting purpose shotgun. Buy or make a magazine extender. Speed loaders for shotguns can be made from plumbing supplies. If they use a slug barrel now they have something that will either out perform a sub machine gun at ranges under 30 meters or can fire a 1 ounce chunk of lead that will punch through a car door or windshield. Just by picking the right round.

Ban buckshot and slugs? Take bird shoot, pour it out, substitute the same weight of larger shot with a buffer. Cornmeal will do.

Fun fact - the Aurora theater shooter did most of his killing with a pump shotgun. His AR-15 jammed.

I support their legal status because it gives the gun control lobby something to whine about, instead of handguns. If they were declared contraband I wouldn't notice it.

The individual right to arms is settled law as per SCOTUS. I'm not making that argument, nor do I have any desire to. Just the rationale offered.

I don't trust the wisdom of the same institution that gave us Dredd Scott, legalized Civil Forfeiture, Sobriety Checkpoints and Kelo vs New London. Us gun nuts have to keep the pressure on the Congress to tone down stupid knee jerk reactions.

[DrDonkeyLove]

The individual right to arms is settled law as per SCOTUS. I'm not making that argument, nor do I have any desire to. Just the rationale offered.

I don't trust the wisdom of the same institution that gave us Dredd Scott, legalized Civil Forfeiture, Sobriety Checkpoints and Kelo vs New London. Us gun nuts have to keep the pressure on the Congress to tone down stupid knee jerk reactions.

SCOTUS will have plenty of opportunities to expand or contract 2nd amendment rights despite Heller.
Regarding anti-liberty SCOTUS decisions, let's not forget Korematsu v. United States. Tossing all those Japanese citizens into internment camps - SCOTUS says OK!

Zero doubt in my mind that if Hillary et.al. wins, there is a great chance for SCOTUS to change such that expansive gun restrictions will be pretty much inevitable. Same is true w/several of the Repugs (Christie, Kasich).

[mike.b]

Hey gun people is this true or bullcrap? just curious

[Schlegel]

Yes, the so called assault rifles are all typically of intermediate power, not high powered rounds. Not sure why they put 308 in both categories, belongs in the deer gun category where it's been in use since WWII ended, alongside the 30-06 of WWI era.

[milosz]

.308s widely exist in both forms (bolt action hunting and AR/semi-auto). Makes sense to put it in both.

The chart is technically correct but also pretty irrelevant - 'muzzle energy' is meaningless in most contexts.

[johno]

'muzzle energy' is meaningless in most contexts.

Except to rebut idiots who describe AR's as "high-powered assault weapons."

[milosz]

Still irrelevant. Artillery has more muzzle energy - is a .50BMG no longer "high powered"?

A 5.56 round has more than enough 'muzzle energy' to kill or gravely wound a human inside of 500 yards, particularly with civilian hunting and self-defense rounds. High powered is a reasonable descriptor.

[johno]

A 5.56 round has more than enough 'muzzle energy' to kill or gravely wound a human inside of 500 yards, particularly with civilian hunting and self-defense rounds. High powered is a reasonable descriptor.

By that logic, a .22 long rifle round is "high powered." You are an idiot.

[Sua Sponte]

Still irrelevant. Artillery has more muzzle energy - is a .50BMG no longer "high powered"?

A 5.56 round has more than enough 'muzzle energy' to kill or gravely wound a human inside of 500 yards, particularly with civilian hunting and self-defense rounds. High powered is a reasonable descriptor.

It's an arbitrary descriptor. One that's used to promote a certain mental image. Not unlike the term assault rifle, which has been appropriated to mean something other than what it was first defined to be.

Artillery is neither a deer rifle nor does it use an "assault rifle" cartridge. Same for .50BMG. Meaningless comparison. And in comparison to artillery and .50BMG, 5.56 is even less high powered in the relative sense that makes it an arbitrary descriptor.

Muzzle energy is not meaningless. Especially given muzzle energy is used in many states to define what calibers are appropriate for taking deer. It's just not a one-to-one correlation to 'stopping power' or 'killing power.' It is meaningless in the sense that energy and power are different things but used interchangeably depending on the point one wished to make.

[johno]

In fact, many states ban deer hunting with .223/5.56 because it's too low powered.

[milosz]

A meaningless phrase is not the same as incorrect phrase. Yes, 'assault rifle' and 'high powered' have no external meaning... but they also aren't "wrong." That's not how language works.

http://wredlich.com/ny/2013/01/projecti ... ing-power/

A .22lr round has 8% of the energy of a 5.56 round measured in an actually useful term (joules) where a 5.56 round has 40% the energy of a 30.06. That's a rather large difference - but still calling the first "high powered" would not actually be incorrect... because high powered means nothing and truthfully "power" means essentially nothing without specifics. (At a certain distance, can a round be reliably called upon to kill a coyote/person/grizzly, etc.).

Now, how is this relevant? Because a pro-gun image maker decided to use the "power" of various rounds as a measure - when he should have just said "high powered doesn't mean jack shit."

[milosz]

Muzzle energy is not meaningless. Especially given muzzle energy is used in many states to define what calibers are appropriate for taking deer.

A narrow usage that's irrelevant to the original image.

Arguments about civilian gun ownership and the points that images like the above try to make (your grandpappy's deer rifle is 'more powerful' than an AR-15) have fuck all to do with hunting and arguments about power ignore the fact that "low powered" rounds like a .22lr or a 5.56 are perfectly capably of killing humans. That's the actual counter-argument - scary rifles are no more or less capable of causing mayhem than less scary rifles - dependent on context. From the top of the UT clock tower, I'd much prefer the sniper shooting at me have a 16" AR with a red dot than a .308 and optical scope.

(Conversely, anyone pretending that modern semi-auto features like 30 round magazines that can be changed quickly doesn't improve the killing efficiency of a given platform is a dishonest asshole - if there wasn't an advantage to these features, we wouldn't have them and people wouldn't spend so much time figuring out how to reload quicker.)

Hell, even in terms of hunting the power question is about humane killing not actual performance or usefulness - in a survival situation, that 5.56 may not make for a one-shot kill on our four-legged friends but you can sure as fuck do the job with a few more.

[Sua Sponte]

Where to begin. While the post of the chart was without context to its origin, and you're only otherwise assuming that context, plenty in the gun debate have a belief that the bullet fired from an AR-pattern rifle has some sort of magical properties for killing. Further, those in the anti-gun debate speak of hunting rifles and "assault rifles" as if they are entirely different machines. A chart that shows that the typical hunting rifle has more energy than "high powered assault rifles" seems entirely appropriate in that context. The .223 on which the 5.56 is ever so closely based was launched as a varmint cartridge, for the hunting of little critters, not a "military cartridge."

The tired argument about magazine capacity leaves out simple facts such as high capacity military rifles in the form of the M14 or the much earlier M1 carbine being available for decades for sale to civilians through the gov't under the CMP; essentially treating the AR platform as though it were some wunderkind weapon rather than a simple evolution of those rifles. Why is mag capacity all of sudden a center of mass of debate, even then ignoring the AR platform itself has existed for coming on 6 decades now.

Incidentally, if I were the victim of the statistically minute chance of a mass shooter, I would hope he had a high capacity magazine in a full auto rifle cause that's the one that's most likely to jam. Jamming, not reloading, has more often than not provided the opportunity to take down such people.

Here's a fact: most people survive gunshot wounds. To stop a threat you must a) shut down their nervous system, b) deliver a mechanical stop such as breaking the pelvis making the threat non-ambulatory or c) the most likely by far, inflicting enough damage to vital areas that the threat loses facility. This is true whether the threat gets around on two legs or four. Note that while killing is a certain stop it's not necessary to achieve a kill to effect a stop. The energy of a projectile defines the potential it has to inflict such damage, while the projectile design determines whether and how that energy is deposited in the target in the form of tissue damage. Clearly lung, heart, and other vitals represent such preferred targets but that raises the other aspect of cartridge performance, adequate penetration. That's first-don't go deep enough, you won't get a physical or physiological stop. Beyond that it's energy coupled to the bullet's design that results in the infliction of damage; an over penetrating round doesn't do relatively as much damage. If energy didn't matter then the .22lr, as it generally does have adequate penetration in a round nose, would be as capable as a 5.56, but it isn't. Energy matters but again the key here is bullet design and its ability to deliver that energy to the target.

[johno]

that 5.56 may not make for a one-shot kill on our four-legged friends but you can sure as fuck do the job with a few more.

So, compared to many/most other rifle rounds, the 5.56 is not "high-powered."

You could say that the 5.56 is "high-powered" compared to throwing darts at a target, but that is a dishonest argument in a Gun Control discussion.

[johno]

Sua Sponte raises the stopping power vs. killing power of rounds. Cops are coached to shoot to "stop, not kill." But my nearly 30 years on the street has shown that people who are "killed" are often not "stopped." Meaning that people can suffer a soon-to-be fatal gunshot wound, yet perform great physical feats before succumbing.

Almost any wound that physiologically stops someone will be a fatal wound. By that I mean, if you cause someone to bleed so badly that he loses consciousness, he will most likely die. And if you shoot him in the brain so that he can't operate his body, he will most likely die.

It is a myth that a shooter can "shoot to stop," and that will not also usually result in a fatality. This myth can hurt good cops and lawful shooters.

[milosz]

So, compared to many/most other rifle rounds, the 5.56 is not "high-powered."

Why not?

Again, if your argument is that everything with less "power" is not "high-powered" then we have to reach a terminal item which is, in fact, high-powered. Unfortunately, there is a projectile throwing machine that will always outpace everything until we hit, I dunno, a naval 16-inch gun. If nothing is high powered, then everything is.

[milosz]

A chart that shows that the typical hunting rifle has more energy than "high powered assault rifles" seems entirely appropriate in that context.

The chart is, then, as dishonest as those who try to paint "assault rifle" rounds as more dangerous. Everything listed is more than capable of killing a human being (who are, after all, closer in size to 'varmints' than they are to elk) and so the argument is (drumroll) irrelevant. You don't counter bullshit with a different kind of irrelevant bullshit.

The tired argument about magazine capacity leaves out simple facts such as high capacity military rifles in the form of the M14 or the much earlier M1 carbine being available for decades for sale to civilians through the gov't under the CMP; essentially treating the AR platform as though it were some wunderkind weapon rather than a simple evolution of those rifles. Why is mag capacity all of sudden a center of mass of debate, even then ignoring the AR platform itself has existed for coming on 6 decades now.

The M14 was never available from the CMP.

It's disingenuous to act like magazine limits are AR-specific or assign it in particular. The same laws, when made, apply to AKs, .308 semi-autos and all the varieties of 5.56 semi-autos that have come onto the market in the last ten years.

Moderate caliber semi-auto rifles are more effective at defense and offense - which, yes, includes killing people - than the rifles that came before them. That's reality, that's why they exist, that's why people want them for home defense.

It is, again, dishonest to pretend that there is no advantage to large magazines. If there wasn't, they wouldn't exist. The proper argument is about the real world effect of such bans. Limiting magazines to 10 rounds or five rounds has no apparent real world effect on gun violence overall (for whatever reason), there's no need to play dumb about their usefulness. You argue statistics and facts, not ideology. The "pro-gun" arguments are as blindly ideological as anti-gun arguments - and that's harmful.

I've seen people argue with a straight face that banning guns wouldn't have an effect on the US crime and murder rates - that's silly. Of fucking course it would (and can be borne out statistically) - if it were fucking possible. Granting everyone a self-defense unicorn to ride at all times for protection would also matter and is equally feasible. You work with the reality you have, not fairytales.

[Sua Sponte]

Let's recap. Nowhere on that chart does it say that the any of those rounds are more or less capable of killing human beings or anything else. Somebody posted it here and asked if it was true. It is true. I assume this is news to the poster. As it is to many who think the 5.56 round or its ilk are some sort of magic. You, and you alone, made the assertion that the chart was disingenuous because all those rounds can kill people. The chart doesn't even attempt to make a distinction between what can or cannot kill people or what is and is not high power. It simply lists typical cartridges under two categories. How you came to the conclusion it meant something else is your own bias and dishonesty and you being disingenuous. The chart can only be dishonest if the information on it is incorrect or deliberately misleading, which it isn't, as opposed to the person ascribing some meaning to it that isn't there.

High-power and other similar terms are, of course, relative. Yet, if I speak of a motorcycle as being high powered it's construed by people with full mental faculty in the context of other motorcycles and, perhaps, other vehicles used to travel places, such as cars. Only a village idiot would respond to a statement to the tune of "that's a high power motorcycle" with a statement such as "not compared to an F15." Or "all motorcycles are high power". This is especially laughable since the very definition of an assault rifle, a military coined term, is that it's selective fire (meaning via some simple mode it can be turned switched between semi- and full-automatic fire), and that it uses a cartridge of *intermediate power*. What the anti-gun crowd lists as assault rifles aren't and even AR-10's and M14s aren't, using the 7.62 NATO cartridge which is considered a high or full power cartridge in the military usage against which it's defined. If high-power is meaningless then the anti-gun crowd and the media should stop using it as though it has some meaning.

Nowhere did I or anybody else say that magazine limitations are imposed only on AR's. What I said was that high capacity rifles (of military origin) have been around since the 30's, as have for that matter "high-capacity 9's". Yet the media debate centers on these weapons as though they are responsible for the recent spate of mass shootings. That the AR and the Glock (spoken in the same fearful hushed terms as the "assault rifle") are some recent scourge upon society solely responsible for what's going on. If the appearance of these weapons are not responsible then the blame (at least some of it?) must be placed upon the people doing it. Perish the thought. And leave no doubt that in places such as the self-anointed enlightened California that ergonomic features of the AR, such as pistol grips, are being targeted as somehow critical to the function of the rifle.

Likewise I nowhere made any argument, in either direction, about the impact of magazine capacity. It is dishonest and disingenuous to pretend, however, that magazine capacity has a any large effect in mass killings. Limiting capacity to 10 rounds doesn't halve the casualty rate from a 20 round magazine, or even nearly so, even if we leave aside the use of multiple firearms, bypassing that point entirely, as is the norm in these mass shootings. So many variables are at play that to claim this is a pivotal one is dishonest and disingenuous, even if we assume that mass shooters would constrict themselves to using the legally approved limit. Magazine capacity matters most when I'm engaged with a person or persons who are returning fire and that is why they earned military favor. Exactly the reason that people who acquire guns for self-protection don't want to limit mag capacity.

It is laughable to say that eliminating or limiting guns wouldn't eliminate limit shootings. Eliminating cars would stop all traffic deaths as well as eliminate a major source of pollution, too. This is an obvious point. It's equally laughable to pretend that the media and anti-gun crown don't mislead when with every mass shooting we hear statistics about gun violence that fails to report that the gross preponderance of gun deaths has noting to do with mass shootings which are statistical noise or that any of the proposed measures would do absolutely nothing to impact those numbers in a meaningful way or even have prevented the mass shooting being reported.

It didn't go unnoticed that you said "intermediate caliber cartridges are better..". They're not intermediate caliber, they're intermediate power, meaning now by your own admittance energy does matter. It's why 10/22 with 30+ rd magazines are not being used by mass shooters despite the fact the .22lr will kill.