[MT2008]

My turn. There's a lot of stuff I disagree with in here...from BOTH sides.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

I'm a fan of guns, but only in games and other works of fiction, where they can do no real-life harm.

You're also quite clearly a Brit (judging by your spelling of "colourfully"), so I'm not particularly inclined to take you seriously. After all, I can't imagine you've fired a real gun (and if you have, you're the exception in a culture whose fear of deadly weapons is beyond absurd).

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

as well as the flash hider restriction (which makes sense when you realize it's meant to to limit people trying to hide their gun fire at night) do make sense.

Flash hiders only do what they're supposed to do when you're in a huge area (i.e. a battlefield) where you're engaging an enemy 100 yards (or meters) away. They're a lot less effective in, say, an urban or suburban area where that sort of distance doesn't exist. Not to mention that there are hundreds people who live in the same area and will give away your location to the cops when asked. From the standpoint of a typical ghetto thug, a flash hider's tactical advantages are pretty limited. So no, the restrictions on flash hiders do not make much sense. The VPC (which you quoted) has even admitted this.

The difference between semi- and full-auto can matter in CQB, and it certainly makes a difference when dealing with nutcases who intend to shoot up gigantic crowds of people. But for most criminals (bearing in mind, again, that mass-killers are statistically an extremely rare phenomenon), and most people who use guns in their line of work, semi-auto is more practical and more effective. That is why current military and LE doctrine now discourages auto or burst and encourages semi-auto. The U.S. military learned the hard way that full-auto fire leads to low kill ratios-versus-rounds fired (in Vietnam, our troops fired something like 50,000 rounds for every enemy casualty inflicted).

I do agree with you that magazine capacity is an issue about which there should be little debate, and for years I have disagreed with pro-gunners who attempt to minimize its importance. I have maintained that if there was no difference between a 30-round magazine and three 10-rounders, nobody would have invented 30-rounders in the first place.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

At the heart of the issue is the fact that we are all unavoidably human, or as Christopher Hitchens puts it more colourfully, "we are mammals with adrenal glands too large and prefrontal lobes too small."

Chris Hitchens is also a drunk buffoon who hasn't expressed a remotely intelligent or coherent opinion in years (and I say this as someone who agrees with him on atheism). Bad place to start.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

In other words, it is sometimes unavoidable that our instincts and emotions override our rational abilities. Far too many spousal conflicts have ended with one being killed by another's (legally owned) gun, too many cases of people killing or maiming their peers while inebriated or drugged have occurred, and so on. It is much too easy for all too many people to reach for their guns and end up with death or permanent injuries when they can't or won't stop to think things over, especially with a class of objects that in most cases is really only good for the intimidation, maiming, or killing of human beings.

There are also too many cases of idiot parents drowning their kids in the bathtub, or abusing alcohol while pregnant, or generally doing stuff that in my opinion warrants natural selection to remove them from the gene pool. What is your point?

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

A good blog summarizing the issues around gun regulation can be found here:

http://www.gunguys.com/

A good website showing how CCW permit carriers can prove "all-too-human" can also be found here:

http://www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm

Ridiculous choice of sources. Also, on a personal note, I used to be an intern at a think tank whose work has been cited by the VPC in their reports on American arms trafficking to Mexico. In fact, I did a double-take when I found out that the VPC cited an analysis that I worked on (though I just did research, not writing). They used us to make exactly the opposite argument that we made, which infuriated me (as well as the person who wrote the piece). Let me tell you right now: The VPC is not only untrustworthy, they have ZERO academic or intellectual rigor in their work. That's why nobody takes them seriously on Capitol Hill.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

Personally I think the restrictions on certain gun types and ammunition (especially those that have consistently proven themselves to be armour-piercing for police-level vests) don't always go far enough. Why aren't, say .50 Caliber Anti-Material rifles or armour-piercing PDW ammunition strictly military issue and usage?

Now you're demonstrating your ignorance of our laws (and guns in general) again. ANY hunting rifle will penetrate the types of body armor worn by most American law enforcement officers. Also, most "armor-piercing" ammunition is already off-limits to the American public - we can't buy the "armor-piercing" ammunition for the P90 and Five-Seven, for instance (SS192 is not classified by BATF as "armor-piercing").

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

Sometimes I wonder about the threads here talking about gun shows--how lax are they? There's always been the problem of straw purchasers (someone who is really buying for someone else) and the fact that these guns often end up in places where they're not supposed to be, such as in the hands of terrorist right-wing militias, or criminals in Canada, or even the drug cartels in Mexico. Easy, unregulated access from gun shows is a source of proliferation in the wrong hands.

It has nothing to do with gun shows; it's about private sales generally. That's a legitimate issue, and one for which I've argued that something close to licensing might be worthy of discussion.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

I've no desire to start a flame war, but I think this thread needed a little balance. Modern guns, with their power of very easy life or death with little other purpose require strong sense of responsibility and trigger discipline, and the notion that any "common citizen" automatically possesses those hard-to-maintain and easily-lost qualities because of an outdated document more than a hundred years old is frankly, quite silly.

It's sometimes hard to tell whether you support gun control or gun bans, and your disrespect for our Constitution is not going to appear very "balanced". On the contrary, it appears rather...well, British (and I hate speaking so stereotypically, as someone who studied in London and loved my boatmates).

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

Mazryonh, but you're using VPC !!!!! as one of your sources! Talk about losing your credibility from the get go! Violence Policy Center is the political action Arm of the Brady Campaign (previously known as HCI - Handgun Control Inc), the most lying, distorting, dishonest anti gun group in existence.

Yes, VPC/HCI/Brady is hardly what I would call trustworthy. That being said, neither are NRA or GOA.

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

The 50 cal ban is idiotic. Consider that no 50 cal weapon (of the modern high end rifle variety) has been used by criminals or even terrorists (Al Qaeda types seem to like BOMBS, the homemade type) and what goon is going to carry around a 10 thousand dollar 50 pound rig around with him. Guess what? he won't.

I've told Excalibur (in this same topic) that the IRA did in fact purchase Barrett rifles in the 1990s. They got the weapons from American gun stores, too. And they used them to kill British soldiers in Northern Ireland.

Saying this does not mean I am in favor of a ban on .50-caliber rifles, but I think it does us no good to exaggerate.

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

I just LOVE IT when a gang banger shoots it out with a a gun that's already ILLEGAL under California law and the media and politicians use it as a call for MORE GUN LAWS. As if a perp with a rap sheet a mile long can buy ANY gun legally in this state, and also getting something which the rest of the population cannot. The lapse in logic is astounding.

The law is certainly illogical, but it's not illogical to see why it fails: As long as gun laws differ between cities and states, then obviously a law passed in one state is not going to be effective. I'm a gangbanger in Los Angeles and I have a beyotch in a neighboring state (like Oregon) with no criminal record, the only thing I have to do to get an AK or AR-15 is get her to buy the gun for me and then drive across state lines to get it from her.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Look, a crazy guy with a Glock and 10 mags of 10 round capacity limit killed 12 people and injured many others in a single day. Could he have killed more if he had 10 mags of 33 for his Glock 17? Maybe? Maybe not.

Which "crazy guy" are you referring to? And if you can't tell intuitively that said "crazy guy" could kill more people with 33-shot mags, then you have something wrong with you.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Limiting magazine capacity doesn't stop a man from pulling the trigger and killing someone.

No, but that's a moot point. Anyone with common sense knows that magazine capacity allows you to fire more and, potentially, shoot more people. Are you telling me that I shouldn't have spent so much money buying 15-round mags for my SIG, when I could have bought the 10-rounders for cheaper? (they're always on sale at my FFL, because nobody around here wants to buy them anymore)