Oh, hey- apparently even the Supreme Court agrees that people don’t have an unfettered right to whatever weapon they want:
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a Second Amendment challenge to an Illinois ordinance that banned semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. As is their custom, the justices gave no reason for turning down the appeal in the case, Friedman v. City of Highland Park, No. 15-133, which comes at a time when the national debate on gun control has been reignited by terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented, saying that lower courts have been ignoring Supreme Court precedents on Second Amendment rights.
The ordinance, enacted in 2013, banned some weapons by name, including AR-15s and AK-47s. More generally, it prohibited possession of what it called assault weapons, defining them as semiautomatic guns that can accept large-capacity magazines and have features like a grip for the nontrigger hand. Large-capacity magazines, the ordinance said, are those that can accept more than 10 rounds.
Things like these:
Photos from the scene of the officer involved shooting. Weapons & ammunition carried by the suspects. #SanBernardino pic.twitter.com/6s2HpyEgqP
— SB County Sheriff (@sbcountysheriff) December 4, 2015
This is, inevitably, where the wingnut gun worshippers start squealing about how semi-automatic does not mean you just squeeze the trigger and hold it and bullets come out. And they’re right. That would be a fully automatic weapon. A semi-automatic weapon is one that a bullet comes out every time you squeeze the trigger.
For reasons that remain a mystery to me, they think that is somehow a legitimate defense, but I don’t understand why. You can across an extreme about of damage with a semiautomatic rifle, and with a modicum of training, that can be even more devastating. For example, here is someone shooting semi-automatic weapons:
And I’m not even going to get into how to bump fire a semi-automatic weapon. As you can see- that’s a lot of rounds down range, and it doesn’t take a lot of skill to do. Just pull the trigger as fast as you can. Combine that with the enormous magazines the NRA insists are necessary to protect you, and you can see how two individuals with similar weapons could walk into a crowded room and kill or wound 30 people before anyone can react. In that sort of scenario, you wouldn’t even need to pause to aim, just to reload.
So when we are talking about what these lunatics actually demand they need to defend themselves at home, THIS is what they are talking about.
It’s fucking insane.
Roger Moore
You can tell why they were so mad when Uncle Joe Biden said that a pump action shotgun is far more appropriate for home defense. Apart from him being right, it meant they were being a bunch of idiots for going after the AR-15-type weapons.
goblue72
With respect to that video, why do these gun nuts always insist on dressing up like G.I. Joe action figures?
scav
Viagra for the stand-in portable penis crowd. (If you experience a four-hour shooting spree, please consult your dealer.)
Elmo
Is a bolt-action deer rifle all that much slower or less deadly? They can accept magazines too, I’m pretty sure.
SteveinSC
A small mercy, finally. What part of “A well regulated Militia,” as preamble don’t the murder-abettors on the Supreme Court understand? It’s like “Only in case of an emergency, crossing the double yellow line while driving is permitted.” is interpreted as “Crossing the double yellow line while driving is permitted.”
Maybe now there is hope that the idiot Roberts will begin to realize that, no, Corporations are not people, with rights of “free speech.”
Ruckus
I had both a semi auto and pump 12 gauge. I could fire faster with the pump because I didn’t have to release the trigger. I doubt you have to ask me how I know these things. Plus the sound of a pump shotgun in the dark will give you pause if you aren’t holding it.
All that being said, both of these weapons were used for hunting and I stopped doing that almost 50 yrs ago because of the times I came within inches of being shot by people I was hunting with and realized that, I’m not that lucky. And that’s all that separates most people who fetishize guns and don’t get shot, luck. Don’t know about anyone else but trusting someone else’s luck with my life seems rather short sighted. My military experience didn’t change that view one iota.
Police now carry a semi auto handgun because the number of rounds and reloading of a revolver was considered not enough firepower. And that is because we allow anyone to have semi auto weapons with many more than 6 rounds and slow reloading. Something you don’t need hunting. Or even thinking you are going to protect yourself in a home invasion at 2am.
ETA That pump shotgun had a 5 round magazine, the max allowed in hunting. Worked fine, geese are not armed.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@goblue72: Because they think they have the courage to go to war, so they dress like they’re in a combat zone, but they’re actually too chicken. If I had a dollar for every gun nut that sits around the house all day fondling his piece, talking about killing terrorists, but who never, ever volunteers to put himself out there as a soldier of fortune, I’d be a multimillionaire.
BGinCHI
I should look up the court case, but I’m curious who the hell a “Friedman” is in Highland Park who would bring this suit.
HP is a wealthy North Shore suburb, with a large Jewish population. Not rural or gun-toting by any stretch.
I guess it only takes one nut.
coin operated
He’s put 90 rounds downrange in the first 30 seconds in that video. What possible home defense scenario applies here?.
Oh yeah…I forgot…WOLVERINES!!!
Ken
Plus, it takes at least five minutes and a kit (bought online) to convert a semi-automatic to a full automatic.
JustRuss
@Elmo: Yes, a bolt-action rifle is much slower. Which isn’t a problem if you’re shooting deer, but can really cramp your style if you’re massacring civilians. Can’t have that.
Comrade Luke
@scav:
A guy I follow on Twitter is taking the V1agra stuff a step further: photoshopping dildos in for guns in photos.
http://gopdildo.tumblr.com, for all your #GOPDildo needs
trollhattan
@Elmo:
Lee Harvey Oswald found bolt action perfectly suitable.
Ruckus
@coin operated:
I thought that bullets don’t stop wolverines. Maybe I’m getting the different movie characters mixed up.
coin operated
@trollhattan: Win!
Comrade Luke
I’m in moderation, I think because I used the V word. I tried to go back and edit, but it’s still there. Is there anything I can do to get out of there?
trollhattan
@Ken:
I’ve heard the same thing. Per the FBI the San Berdoo murderers tried but failed to convert one of their rifles to foll auto. Did that make the slightest difference that day? I doubt it, although I’m told it’s hard to control the direction of a full automatic so maybe it would have ironically meant more misses.
Why does any civilian need a gun designed for military use?
scav
@trollhattan: That’s old school, when ‘Mercans had to put up with Less (3 TV channels! Entire Cinemas with a single screen!) Everything’s SuperSized now.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Ruckus: This is what worries me most about the right wing obsession with carrying guns everywhere. There are like 15,000 accidental shootings in the U.S. every year. Even if every one of the folks carrying open or concealed weapons are well intentioned, more people carrying more guns = more accidental shootings. Probably more people maimed and killed by accidental discharge than by terrorists wielding guns.
WereBear
Everything they do is fear-based. I’m so tired of living in their world.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@BGinCHI:
I grew up in Highland Park — we moved a little further north when I was ten. It would be hard to find a sleepier suburb even now. NOBODY needs an AR-15 in that town.
I think we need to get some hunter shaming started — if you need an AR-15 to shoot a deer, you are a very, very bad hunter and probably shouldn’t be in the woods at all.
David D
I’m glad the Court is allowing localities to regulate guns, but banning high-capacity magazines is not going to have much effect on gun deaths. It’s still worth it to try to limit mass shootings, though. Most gun deaths are from suicide or accident, which obviously isn’t addressed at all by magazine size. And the median number of shots fired in a crime which result in injury or death is 7. The only way to reduce gun deaths significantly is to outlaw and confiscate all semiautomatic weapons. Bolt action rifles, pump shotguns, and revolvers are hardly harmless, but it’s harder for them to be discharged accidentally, and they shoot slower and either carry (or can be required to carry) fewer rounds.
Barry
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: “Even if every one of the folks carrying open or concealed weapons are well intentioned, more people carrying more guns = more accidental shootings. Probably more people maimed and killed by accidental discharge than by terrorists wielding guns.”
What I’ve noticed is that the police never seem to shoot any white guys waving guns around in places where it’s not expected. By now, the sheer number of such things should have resulted in at least one less Tea Partier, even given highly competent police officers who really didn’t want to shoot anybody.
Ruckus
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
30,000+ gun deaths a year baby! Around 1% of the population. 80,000+ wounded, that’s over 2%. These do not include legal shootings.
What the fuck are we over protecting ourselves from? We’ve made it a somewhat dangerous place by being worried about danger from others having guns by more people having guns. I can’t be the only one seeing a problem with the logic here.
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): The biggest worry in HP is whether the Mexicans people hire to do their landscaping are going to take the whole 30 minutes for lunch.
I’d like to see more guns in Lake Forest, maybe by hedge fund and trader dudes pointed at their own heads. That might make the world a better place. Think Bruce Rauner.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Barry:
Somebody posted a story here the other day about a white guy in Ohio wandering around mostly-black neighborhoods and business districts with a rifle slung over his back, picking verbal fights with people. Local residents and business owners have been told that it’s his legal right to carry a gun around until he uses it.
Meanwhile, in the same state, John Crawford III and Tamir Rice were both shot by police for touching a gun.
One can’t help but notice a certain disparity in treatment, can one?
Yastreblyansky
If I’m not mistaken you can also (illegally) convert a legally purchased semi-automatic into an automatic; whoever gave Syed Farook the guns he used had tried to do this.
goblue72
@WereBear: You said it. Biggest pants shitters I’ve met are right wingers in the suburbs. Same wimps who don’t like going into “the city” because its “dirty” and too “dangerous”.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@David D:
I’m fine starting with “just” reducing mass shootings. We’ve already had over 300 this year alone. One can’t help but notice a certain correlation between the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban and the sudden rise in mass shootings.
Holden Pattern
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: And the actual people who do go to far away places and actually kill people for money would want nothing to do with the untrained gun fantasists. Most of the gun fantasists could not get hired on as mercenaries even if they were to put themselves out there. Maybe some of the former military nutbars could, but those reflexes (like most others) degrade fast. And one notes the former in former military — it’s not like there aren’t enough places for people to find if they really wanted to stay in live fire zones.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@BGinCHI:
Hey, now, I was born in Lake Forest hospital. It was a nice place before the day traders moved in. One of my high school teachers owned the Haagen-Dazs store there.
Villago Delenda Est
Scalia and Thomas both need to be exiled to the far side of the Sun.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: Teensy bit this side of the far side of the sun might be slightly more to the point.
ETA: Or am I being over-kind?
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
If you are killing deer with an AR15 you are doing two things. Putting a lot of shots out there, which increases the possibility of rounds hitting things besides deer and trees. Putting too many rounds in the deer, possibly rendering much of the meat useless. IOW a fucking idiot. If you are hunting squirrels, that’s like taking a semi truck with doubles to the market 3 blocks away for a half gallon of milk. At rush hour.
Having an assault rifle for some may be like a 500hp pick up truck or a 700hp supercar. Actually useless for much except to show that you have no idea about excess and like to show off that you have personal equipment deficiencies.
Fair Economist
@David D:
Indirectly, cutting back on the increasingly insane armament in stores will have an effect. This is analogous to a policy the Netherlands tried to stop heroin addiction – they gave it away for free. Result? Addiction plummetted. Why? Pushers couldn’t make money anymore. So they stopped pushing, and new addictions almost stopped.
Ultimately, the gun obsession in the US is driven by the NRA, which is just a thinly disguised marketing company for gun companies. There’s already far more guns than the US could ever use, so for them to make serious money, they have to keep upping the ante to bigger and bigger guns. If we can just stop the ever-increasing drive to bigger guns and bigger magazine, their profits will plummet and both their ability and desire to drive the nuttiness will fade as well.
Besides, as in the story about the boy throwing starfish back into the sea, even if you can’t save them all, “it matters to this one”. I’m for saving every life I can.
Richard Mayhew
@Ruckus: Math error
30,000 is roughly 1 in 10,000 (1% of 300 million is 3 million, 1% of 3 million is 30,000)
A Ghost To Most
@trollhattan:
Yeah,but he had help.
rikyrah
Amazon Prime Customers:
The Year Without A Santa Claus is on Prime Video!
Ruckus
@scav:
Over kind. It is nice though that one thinks that there are punishments that are too harsh. Or did you mean so that you could watch them burn?
The Pale Scot
@Barry:
8 White People Who Pointed Guns At Police Officers and Managed Not to Get Killed
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: Easy, after both houses in Congress go Democratic after the next reapportionment.
In the spirit of the reactionary justices’ own Constitutional interpretation of the Second Amendment, Congress can declare that the phrase that enumerates the permissible reasons for judicial impeachment in the Constitution is just meaningless decorative language and we can impeach them for any old damn reason we please: like, they are incompetent and corrupt partisan hacks.
Edit: or, Scalia is an irritating blowhard asshole and demented stoop. That would do just as well.
Ruckus
@Richard Mayhew:
Damn, I was hoping no one would notice.
ETA Leave it to the math wiz who makes his living with numbers. (as I do also, hanging my head in shame)
scav
@Ruckus: Nah, teensy below visual range was my first instinct, I was just hoping to pop them in the core for maximum roasting. Didn’t think about the benefits of time and slow roasting, hence the second thoughts.
And rats, Highland Park rants now have my hungry for La Casa De Isaac & Moishe. Unfair.
scav
Also, can we find Betty? Florida woman arrested for hit-and-run after her car calls police
jl
The usual gun nut objection to Cole’s piece is that he did not throw in enough tactical talk, and made some supposed mistake in technical gun jargon, so Cole knows nothing about guns and is unqualified to write anything about it at all.
“We never use ‘bump fire’ at OUR sitrep debriefs.”
Ruckus
@scav:
Yes if you are going to roast people I’d suspect that being able to check on the doneness would be a requirement. Unless you were going for full char.
SatanicPanic
@goblue72: camo or tricorn hats, which is dorkier?
Rafer Janders
@Ruckus:
Point of order, the US population is 320,000,000. 1% of the population would be 3.2 million people, not 30,000.
gogol's wife
@jl:
Yes, I think the gun trolls must have gotten lost since the site redesign, because they haven’t shown up yet to make this kind of comment.
goblue72
@Fair Economist: To add to that, consider that while more and more GUNZ are in circulation in the U.S., the percentage of U.S. households that owns a gun has dropped. So we have less households owning guns overall, but of those that do own a gun, they own a lot more.
This reminds me of the situation with alcohol manufacturers. 30 percent of U.S. adults do not drink. Another 30 percent average less than one drink a week. By the time you hit the eighth decile, you are at adults that average about 6 drinks a week. That’s still not a lot assuming multiple drinks on weekends. But at the top decile (only 10% of adults), those folks average almost 74 drinks a WEEK. That top decile averages 3 TIMES as many drinks a week as ALL the other deciles combined.
That’s alcoholism. And that’s the target market for the industrial brewers and distillers. They make more money of just targeting that segment than all the other market segments. If the top decile’s drinking habits were just reduce to the next decile down (which is still averaging 15 drinks per week), total alcohol sales would drop 60 percent.
Same increasingly with gun manufacturers. Fewer and fewer households own a gun. So the gun manufacturers (and their marketing arm, the NRA) need to gin up more and more sales from the most gun-nuttiest, gun addicts amongst their customers. Much like the alcoholic, for these people, there is no such thing as having “too many” guns.
phoebes-in-highlandpark
@BGinCHI: I live in Highland Park – just moved back – and I’ll try to find the case. Very strange, indeed, as Friedman is a Jewish name and there ain’t too many of us totin’ Jews…
gogol's wife
I’ll put in another plug for Josh Horwitz and the Coalition Against Gun Violence. They’re feisty and active. I contribute to Brady Campaign too, but I hear a lot more from CAGV.
Ruckus
@jl:
“We never use ‘bump fire’ at OUR sitrep debriefs.”
Which special forces fantasy camp did that guy attend?
scav
@gogol’s wife: Nah, Ubiquitous Steve was bottom crawling for the last word on a thread recently — Recent Comments are so very handy for noticing such brave conviction.
Linnaeus
@jl:
“Ah ha! You said ‘clip’ and not ‘magazine'”!
Schlemazel
@Elmo:
Did you watch the video? Go ahead, we’ll wait, or you can google “bump fire”. Done right (ant the youtube videos will teach you how) you would be hard pressed to differentiate from a full auto firing. But these assclowns think they are protecting America.
goblue72
@Ruckus: The National Micropenis Support Group.
Ruckus
@Rafer Janders:
Already answered Richard on my shitty math skills. It is however my day off so I may have turned off the math skills compartment of what passes for my brain.
Schlemazel
@trollhattan:
Lee only wanted one man dead, a bolt action deer rifle can do that OK but try taking out 14 people in a crowded room with one.
phoebes-in-highlandpark
@phoebes-in-highlandpark: Here’s the Tribune article
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-supreme-court-highland-park-assault-weapons-ban-20151207-story.html
Schlemazel
@trollhattan:
I have fired full auto weapons, it’s not hard, you have to remember 2 things, lean into it so that the barrel does not start rising and don’t sweep it back and forth like a fire hose. Smooth & steady, small movements, maximum damage.
David D
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I haven’t looked at the stats regarding the weapons used in most mass shootings, so I’m purely speculating, but: I doubt most mass shootings involve rifles or weapons with magazines larger than 10 rounds. I would guess the most common weapon is a 9mm pistol. It’s deadly because it’s easy to conceal and shoots quick. Anyway, total mass shooting deaths this year is 460 out of 12,000, 4% of the total.
raven
@Schlemazel: Try that with an M-14 AR.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
Wanna bet that was lower than they were going for?
I’d think that if you were mad or crazy enough to gear up and go looking to kill people, rather than a person, you’d want to amass as large a number as possible, otherwise what’s the point.
Schlemazel
@David D:
The problem is local restrictions are easily avoided. The horror stories the NRA tells about guns in NYC even with their restrictive laws always fail to mention the guns in NYC come mostly from Virginia and purchased by clowns to resell in NYC.
Did you see the video of the gun purchase for the one that shot those cops in Milwaukee? The actual buyer is obviously too young but the salesclown stands there while the kid picks it out & tell the paper buyer what he wants. We need national level laws
Schlemazel
@Ruckus:
Sorry, the results are horrific enough but 30,000 is not 1% of 350,000,000
OTOH, on average 1 person has been shot and killed by a shooter 3 or younger this year in the US. No numbers on wounded, thats just killed.
raven
@Schlemazel: They come from Georgia.
Schlemazel
@raven:
I have but the damn think kept jamming. So did the Soviet SSP but the excuse there was 60 year old ammo.
nastybrutishntall
@Ruckus: “We” are a bunch of terrified white dudes convinced once ladies and vary cute boys and Thug-Americans are in charge, it’s the End Times for them and their laughable, not-boning-the-ladies-on-TV private parts.
David D
@Fair Economist:
I’m not sure the analogy is a good one because magazines may not be the thing gun makers get their profit from. My understanding is that they thrive off of gun owners buying more and more weapons, as well as getting new customers to buy their first gun. Essential to that is news about crime and spreading paranoia that “gun grabbers” are coming to take their weapons away.
My point is that if really want to make a dent in gun deaths, we really do have to take their guns away.
scav
@Schlemazel: Well, WaPo claims 2 deaths with toddlers averaging about one a week. Also here, if you can’t stand the WaaaaaahPooo.
Schlemazel
@Ruckus:
I assumed they were not done yet. They may have finished what they wanted at the one place but after that they had to know there was only going to be one end so my guess is they would have very quickly found other targets.
BTW – sorry for piling on the math issue, thats what I get for not reading all the way through before commenting.
Roger Moore
@David D:
Given that guns kill a lot more people through suicide than through murder, I don’t think changing the kind of guns out there is going to result in a massive drop in gun deaths. Only a massive reduction in the number of guns in circulation will do that.
David D
@Schlemazel: I totally agree. Something like the lighter version of what Australia did.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
Geeze I thought everyone would accept my multiple apologies for crappy Monday morning math.
ETA No worries, I started the whole thing
Schlemazel
@scav:
OK, lets use their numbers, only 15 toddlers have been killed by toddlers with guns.
Schlemazel
@Ruckus:
sorry, see earlier apology for commenting before reading all the way through.
David D
@Roger Moore: About 60% of gun deaths are suicide. You’re right that confiscating semi-automatic weapons probably wouldn’t do much for that. But it might have a significant impact on the remaining 40%.
Tripod
@goblue72:
It’s a conspicuous consumption driven bubble. Eventually the market will collapse – resale values will dry up from over supply, and the meatheads won’t be able to finance their next purchasing by selling their last piece. The same bunch of morons did the same thing to the “custom” bike market. The number of American who think they’re gonna get rich by hording mass produced consumables is depressingly high.
raven
@Schlemazel: Wow, an M-14 jammed?
Schlemazel
There was another brave American making a stand today in Tucson AZ. He saw a guy shoplift beer so he shot and killed him! Hoo-RAY for vigilante justice.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/vigilante-gunman-shoots-and-kills-tucson-man-who-shoplifted-beer-from-circle-k/
Schlemazel
@raven:
My dog nabed dyslexia got me, I thought 15
goblue72
@David D: And that 40% represents – frankly – the more important variety of gun deaths to reduce. Namely, the non-consensual kind. We should be getting rid of all guns certainly, but at least the suicidal kind involves the shooter and victim being the same person.
LWA
And I’ll just toss in my usual comment that we need to change the conversation and go on offense instead of defense.
We need to challenge the very existence of a natural “right” to own a deadly weapon, outside of a demonstrated need.
Force people to justify the logic that says there is no right to an automatic rifle, yet a semiautomatic, a weapon unknown to the Founders, is somehow a right of divine provenance.
goblue72
@Tripod: Buying a mink coat is conspicuous consumption. The current gun fetishism is more related to fostering a perverse kind of paranoia – often race based – amongst gun buyers.
Timurid
@Comrade Luke:
The next remastered special edition of ET is going to be… interesting.
prufrock
The primary weapon I carried as a Marine 25 years ago (M-16A2) isn’t even fully automatic. It has a 3 round “burst” mode, but we hardly even practiced with that. The Battle Skills Training handbook I was issued even said that during a sustained firefight that the optimum rate of fire was 12-15 rounds per minute…because that meant the shots were aimed and thus were more deadly.
raven
@Schlemazel: Actual what we called an M-14 AR is an M-15.
scav
@goblue72: mmmm, to a degree that depends on what we limit one is being conspicuous about by consuming. Not a simple money flag, but gun, like fur coats, are probably often bought to conspicuously signal allegiance to a tribe, a big middle finger to people with different opinions.
Roger Moore
@David D:
OTOH, many 9mm pistols accept >10 round magazines; practically any two-column magazine for a 9mm will hold more than 10 rounds. The double-column magazines aren’t universally popular because they require a big grip and correspondingly large hands to control the weapon, but they’re widely available. And that’s without extending below the bottom of the grip; extended magazines like that can hold as many as 30 rounds.
Fair Economist
@David D:
They do need to keep making guns “bigger and better” to push continual upgrading. My impression at present is that guns that accommodate bigger magazines, as well as automatic fire, is a big part of that.
Although we might have to take guns away to make truly drastic reductions in gun deaths, IIRC a significant fraction of gun deaths comes from very recently purchased guns. This includes suicides. So you can make a big dent just by cutting back on new purchases. Again, it makes a difference to *this* starfish.
patrick II
Semi-Automatic AR-15 video of a bump fire (with an entirely legal bump fire attachment) vs. just pulling the trigger fast. These guns really should not be on the street.
Skippy-san
It is amazing to me how gun nuts seem to all use the same arguments. For example, when you point out that all things have limits-like drivers have speed limits, they respond with “driving is a privlege”. When you point out the obscene numbers killed last year, you get this response ( and this is a true quote), “2/3 of those are suicides and some of those people deserved it”-as if that mitigates the size of the carnage for some reason.
If you mention that 41000 people were killed or wounded year to date-you will inevitably hear some nonsense about the number of car crashes is bigger.
And they go on and on with whatever lines have been provided by the NRA this week. It is too weep how stupid we are as a nation.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
I wrote the comment you are commenting on while you wrote the one I was replying to. So I added the apology to you for apologizing to me for………
This could go on for weeks. Or until one of us got tired.
I call a truce on the apologies to the apologies for the apologies.
David D
@Roger Moore: True, but (again, haven’t researched this) I think the popularity of smaller, carry weapons like .380s and slim 9 mms makes it likely that a good percentage of them are less than 10 rounds. Also, we’ve seen mass shooters bring more than one weapon, so even if they don’t change a magazine, that’s still at least 20 rounds. Even if we decided that high-capacity magazines should be confiscated, it would be enormously hard to do.
Ruckus
@Skippy-san:
Any one that uses the car accident figure is figuring that you won’t argue because you drive a car and see accidents all the time. Ask them if they could drive their gun to work and then what they’d do if they lost their license to drive to work. If they say they’d just continue to drive, they are a completely lost cause, so don’t bother. If they say they’d have to stop driving ask them if they’d stop shooting because they couldn’t get to the range or an open safe area. If they say no, walk away very rapidly. If they say yes then ask them why not. If they say it’s not safe to drive without a license or shoot in anywhere but a range or open safe area, you’ve got them and made your point, it’s not safe to shoot in society and that we control cars even though they can be deadly when improperly operated while guns are deadly if used properly, that is their only function.
Vtr
I will be telve years old friday and I think that gun is vary neet
David D
@Fair Economist:
I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to reduce gun deaths, just to be realistic about what we can accomplish.
The gun industry thrives on what’s called “tacticool”, which isn’t exactly the same as “bigger is better.” For example, “assault weapon” is a marketing term created by the industry, which wanted to sell guns by making them look like military or police weapons while having none of the features and specs which make them fit for combat or policing. Thus the advent of the “black gun”, with rails and attachment points for every accessory you can think of: lights, lasers, foregrips, adjusting stocks, sights that glow, “breaching” tools, etc. (Full auto doesnt enter into it.) In my opinion, a semi-automatic rifle is a semi-automatic rifle, no matter how many bells and whistles it can hold.
Selling new high-capacity magazines may reduce the number of deaths at the margins. But there are so many already out there, unless you confiscate them, banning the sale of new ones won’t even have that marginal effect.
Tripod
@goblue72:
There is a whole element of down market gold buggery that’s happening. That History Channel bullshit on getting rich off of pawn & resale shop crap didn’t just happen out of thin air.
That’s why they get so pissed about the gun shows – it’s like going after a Lionel toy train show, or a trading card meet.
There is a vast number of American idiots who think guns are a for sure investment.
mclaren
A common misconception, John. Actually, most semiautomatic weapons have two modes: single-shot and semiautomatic, which is either two or three bullets per trigger squeeze.
With the selector switch set to “semi” a typical assault rifle will fire 3 shots per trigger pull. By pulling the trigger fast, repeatedly, you get a very high cyclic rate of fire, even though it’s technically a semiautomatic weapon and not a fully automatic weapon.
You were in the army, John. You should know this stuff. This also explains why I think semiautomatic rifles should be banned as well as full auto weapons. There’s not a big difference between semiautomatic and full auto rifles in the real world because you can get a humongous amount of bullets coming out really damn fast even in a semiauto rifle. In fact, semiautomatic weapons are arguably more more dangerous than full auto weapons because when you press the trigger on a full auto weapon, the entire clips tends to go out in about 1/2 a second — zzzip, and the entire clip is gone. That leaves the shooter with an empty clip and the victims with enough time to run away while the doofus fumbles around trying to change his clip (and the clips often jam when you try to change ’em, especially when you try to do it fast).
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
Pump action shotguns are shitty for home defense. Unless you take regular care of a pump-action shotgun by oiling and cleaning it routinely, the pump tends to jam. This means that you try to rack the shotgun, the pump jams, and now you’re fucked, stuck, ‘n outa luck.
A much more effective weapon for home defense is a 6-shot revolver. Unfortunately, by the time you get that revolver out of your gun safe (or unlock the trigger lock) and load the damn thing, the home invaders have killed you.
The best mode of defense against home invasion is to live in a place where there isn’t lots of crime.
Weapons are largely useless for home defense. Statistics prove that the major cause of death for people who own guns is neither home invasion nor accidental shooting, but suicide. People who own guns are five times more likely to kill themselves by deliberate suicide than to successfully defend themselves against an armed intruder.
a different chris
@mclaren: That’s a misconception on which planet, exactly? Go down to your local Gun Shoppe and ask to see the rifles with the 3-shot-burst selector. Then come back and tell us what happened.
mclaren
@Tripod:
Depending on the weapon, they are correct.
The total number of legal fully automatic weapons was frozen in the 1980s. To legally own a fully automatic weapon, including historical pieces like WW I Vickers machine guns, you must register it and get federal paperwork and pay a licensing fee. Since the number of legal full auto weapons is now limited, prices have skyrocketed over the last 30 years. A historical legally registered crew-served weapon like the Maschinegewehr 08 Maxim gun (a water cooled fully auto machine gun from the 1890s-1910s) will cost you well over a hundred thousand dollars.
There’s no limit to the prices for these things now because the federal government limited the total pool of legally registrable full auto weapons. So doctors and lawyers and other rich folks are investing in historical full-auto weapons because, like real estate, the value is bound to rise over time.
Other guns, however, are not likely to rise in value. So if the person in question is buying an historical legally owned and registered full auto weapon, yes, it’s an excellent investment. The value of those things is rising faster than New York real estate. For all other types of guns, no, it’s a dumb way to invest your money.
Source: “Fully automatic guns in the US are highly regulated, and regulation works,” Daily Kos, 17 December 2012.
TriassicSands
@coin operated:
Really? Really? Obviously, you’ve never seen the documentary films “Godzilla” and “The Lost World: Jurassic Park.”
When one of those giant beasts is coming through your front door, you’re going to want to have one of those weapons for every member of your family. Maybe you’ve been lucky enough so far to avoid being attacked by packs of marauding dinosaurs, but sooner of later it’s bound to happen. When it does you’ll want all the firepower you can get. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has recognized the threat that both dinosaurs and alien beings represent for average Americans and have acted accordingly — allowing almost unfettered access to all manner of home defense weapons.
mclaren
@a different chris:
Thank you for illustrating the kind of grossly clueless ignorance typical of the Balloon Juice commentariat.
Source: “Selective Fire,” in Wikipedia.
Coming up next: A Different Chris will lecture us, with the kind of deer-in-the-headlights buffoonery only found in a sinkhole of deluded ignorance like Balloon Juice, on how the alleged “fact” that the earth is flat is “a misconception on which planet?”
ranchandsyrup
those dinguses at NPR framed this as “SC stays out of gun fight”.
mclaren
@TriassicSands:
Alas, even a fully automatic weapon proves ineffective against a 500-foot-tall dinosaur like Godzilla. The only realistic method of home defense against Godzilla is a tactical nuclear weapon.
But our liberal-dominated congress is too cowardly to let individual homeowners legally purchase and register tactical nuclear weapons!
It’s a goddamn scandal. There should be a background check, of course — someone who wants to purchase a tactical nuclear weapon should be required to provide a drivers license, or at least a library card. And they should be required to pay a registration fee.
But the second amendment allows us to defend our homes, god dammit, and if it takes a tactical nuclear weapon then that’s what it takes! Write your congressman today! We need to legalize these things stat!
Cpl. Cam
@Ruckus: I think your math is off, 1% of 300 million is 3 million.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Cole is correct. You are wrong.
EthylEster
@Ruckus:
US population = 300 million
1% of 300 million = 3 million.
3,000,000 is much MUCH greater than 30,000. 100 times greater. MATH FAIL!
I see Cpl. Cam got there before me.
PIGL
@Villago Delenda Est: more like the deep interior.
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: On a military weapon, the selector will generally have three settings: safe, single, and burst/auto. Single is semi-auto. Burst/auto is automatic with or without a limiter. Older weapons tend to have auto; newer, burst. Some of us worked with these things for a living instead of simply misreading an article.
moderateindy
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): A father of my friend was the Lake Forest Police Chief for many years.
Also, their is actually a form of hunting that might need large capacity magazines. I’m told that some of the bigger Feral Hogs can take dozens of rounds without going down. I imagine that they could simply issue specialty permits for such people the way they do with other weapons.
Any time I hear the gun control/2nd ammendment cry I ask the person if they think anyone should be able to own missiles or anthrax? Because the 2nd guarantees, not the right to own guns, but to bear arms, including all the weaponry around at that time. Private citizens owned cannons and such. When they say they don’t think people should be able to own stuff like a tank, or nukes, then I point out that they to believe in limits on the 2nd, so their absolutist argument about assault rifles, or magazine size isn’t valid. They don’t believe the 2nd covers everything, they simply draw the line at a different spot
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
That’s what dickhead used to kill people in AZ, and shoot congresswoman Gabby Giffords. I don’t use the names of shooters, try to forget their identity. Started with the fool who shot John Lennon, one of the most musically gifted humans of our time.
Dickhead had a plain old 9mm pistol with 30 round clip inserted. Someone jumped on him when he had trouble putting in another magazine. Note: For my purposes, clip and magazine are synonyms, and clip is easier to say with fewer letters and syllables.
J R in WV
@mclaren:
Everything you say in this comment with one exception is completely wrong.
Semi-automatic weapons will not shoot bursts and have no selector to choose between single shot and burst mode.
You are correct that aiming an automatic weapon is difficult, all else is bilge water. I assume many others have already pointed this out, but I don’t care.
a different chris
@mclaren: When I was still just a lurker I thought the BJ commentariat was awfully hard on you, harsh, verging on bullying at times. But I’m beginning to understand the situation a little bit better now.
Ruckus
@EthylEster:
Yes, yes he did. Along with several others. Along with my apologetic responses several times.
Interesting to see how much of a thread gets read before comments are made. I could have said that my math mistake was a test to see who reads the thread before responding. But I didn’t.
NotoriousJRT
@goblue72:
My thoughts exactly.
John Cole
@mclaren: You don’t know what you are talking about. Seriously, you don’t. And I carried an M16a2 for six years as a combat engineer- I’m aware of burst.
Hell, as I was joining my unit, they were transitioning from the fully auto m16 to the m16a2 (surplus after the Iraq War drawdown went to the Guard and Reserve), and the fully auto m16 had a piece of medal welded on it so you couldn’t switch from semi mode to full auto, and the old timers called it the “Kent state stopper.”
Seriously, stop correcting people when you have no idea what you are talking about.
Waysel
@Rafer Janders: Wait ’til next year.
mclaren
@John Cole:
Thanks. Clearly I was wrong. I stand corrected.
mclaren
@a different chris:
Then you’re as ignorant as you are incompetent. Getting one thing wrong doesn’t mean everything I say is incorrect, or even that most of what I say is wrong.
What it does mean is that you’re not very bright, and have a habit of jumping to conclusions.
Next time Hillary’s press release contains a single misspelled word, I look forward to your excited claim that Hillary is illiterate and therefore not qualified to be president.
Next time Bernie Sanders cites a single wrong statistic, I look forward to hearing you explain why this means Jeb Bush would make a much better president than Sanders — after all, Jeb doesn’t get his stats wrong.
mclaren
@EthylEster:
Speaking of minor mistakes, do you people realize what ignorant assholes you’re making yourself look like by hammering on Ruckus for making a trivial math error?
Look, what Ruckus is pointing out what you nattering nincompoops are completely ignoring is that America has incredibly higher rates of gun homicide than any other first world country on the planet.
I’m sure you’re all delighted with yourself for pouncing on a tiny mistake and no doubt you’re all puffed up with yourself and strutting around the room high-fiving one another shouting MATH FAIL! What you’re not doing is realizing that Ruckus’ essential point is that America is wildly out of line in its gun homicides.
America is way, way, wayyyyyyyyyy out of line in gun homicides. As in: 20 times more goddamn firearm murders than the typical European country or Canada.
Let’s look at the numbers:
FACT: The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world – an average of 88 per 100 people. That puts it first in the world for gun ownership – and even the number two country, Yemen, has significantly fewer – 54.8 per 100 people.
FACT: America has 5% of the world’s population, but 50% of the world’s citizen-owned firearms.
FACT: Here are the numbers for the total gun murders in various countries. They’re shocking:
Denmark – 15 gun murders per year
England & Wales – 41 gun murders per year
France – 35 gun murders per year
Germany – 158 gun murders per year
Greece – 59 gun murders per year
Lithuania – 6 gun murders per year
New Zealand – 7 gun murders per year
Netherlands – 55 gun murders per year
Norway – 2 gun murders per year
Singapore – 1 gun murder per year
Canada – 173 gun murders per year
America – 9,146 gun murders per year
Now to pre-emptively debunk the lies from the various ignorant commenters who jump into howl “Oooohhh! Ooooohhh! Look how stupid mclaren is, he forgot that America’s population is much bigger than the population of Lithuania!”
So let’s break down the per capita gun murder rate in these various countries to see how wildly disproportionate American gun deaths really are:
Denmark – 15 gun murders per year, 0.27 per 100,000 people
England & Wales – 41 gun murders per year, 0.07 per 100,000 people
France – 35 gun murders per year, 0.06 per 100,000 people
Germany – 158 gun murders per year, 0.19 per 100,000 people
Greece – 59 gun murders per year 0.26 per 100,000 people
Lithuania – 6 gun murders per year, 0.18 per 100,000 people
New Zealand – 7 gun murders per year, 0.16 per 100,000 people
Netherlands – 55 gun murders per year, 0.33 per 100,000 people
Norway – 2 gun murders per year, 0.05 per 100,000 people
Singapore – 1 gun murder per year, 0.02 per 100,000 people
Canada – 173 gun murders per year, 0.51 per 100,000 people
America – 9,146 gun murders per year, 2.97 per 100,000 people
Q: How many times likely are you to be murdered by a firearm in the USA as opposed to any other first-world country
A: Between 148 times more likely (2.97/0.02 = 148.5) and 5.82 times (2.97/.51 = 5.82).
In short, you are a whole lot more damn likely to be murdered with a firearm in America than in any other first-world country. That’s correcting for population differences, accounting for percent of murders by firearm, and everything else.
Ruckus’ point, which everyone has completely ignored, is that America is a far more violent country than these other first-world countries like the Netherlands or Britain or France. Americans gun each down like wild animals in the U.S. of A., while gun murders are far far far more rare in other countries like Canada or those in Europe.
Bottom line? There’s something terribly wrong with American society. We own a ludicrous number of guns per capita, we use them to kill each other far more often per capita than any other first-world country, and the overall level of gun violence in America (including police use of guns against civilians) is off the charts compared to any other first-world country.
That’s the important point, and you all completely missed it.
MAJOR READING COMPREHENSION FAIL.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: You do realize that, for years, commenters here have been talking about the excess of guns in this country, gun violence here, the difference between the US and other countries on this, etc? Should we also repudiate Stalin and the broccoli mandate at the outset of every comment? If there is a fundamental agreement on a topic, there is a greater likelihood of disagreements about minor things. Much like your step in to correct Cole about what a semi-auto is. At least the people who nit-picked Ruckus were correct.
Skippy-san
@Ruckus: Great responses! Wish I had those a couple of days ago. I’m saving these.
Skippy-san
@mclaren: Well put.
Scapegoat
@mclaren: Illuminating stats. Why is Canada second highest per capita in gun deaths?
Scapegoat
@Tripod:
If guns are ever confiscated, they just might become rich idiots.
Scapegoat
@Comrade Luke: Most excellent!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Holden Pattern: Yeah I’ve always wondered why all the digital Rambo’s on my facebook feed don’t crowdsource funding to fly over to the Middle East and kick ISIS’s ass themselves. Actually I haven’t wondered that, because it involves more than empty talk.
EJ
Though something worth pointing out – contrary to popular belief it’s not actually illegal for civilians to own a fully automatic weapon in the US. It’s just highly regulated. A friend of mine has a full-auto version of one of these things: http://www.guns.com/2014/03/10/ruger-ac556-totally-legal-totally-full-auto-mini-14-video/
Yes, he has all the proper paperwork, tax stamps, etc. And, not gonna lie, while the genteel sport of breaking clays with a shotgun is generally more my speed, ripping off 30 rounds out of that AC556 on full auto is a hoot.
Kiera Winters
no, the best heavy metal metal album is still La Bite du Diable by Antekhrist 67 https://demonecromancy.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/greatest-albums-youve-never-heard-2-la-bite-du-diable/