Scary black yada yada yada

good for target practice

can be used for hunting

nobody can define what it is

you need to understand all the gun lore about these guns to have an opinion

we need to talk about things that actually have a chance of becoming law.

We have the backing of the people and Hillary will have long coattails

and you will not see Dems from pro-gun western states support AWBS and registration. So there are limits to what even a Dem congress will pass.

If HRC and the congressional leadership is smart, they will learn the lessons from the post Sandy Hook debacle and focus on one or two things that they know they can pass like UBCs.

The "backing of the people" at least not for stricter gun control generally. Yes, UBCs are popular and should be passed, but I doubt gun controllers will get much more than that done.

obtaining a Democratic congress.

It's on my bucket list.

What people can buy is a semi-automatic firearm. Big difference between the two.

the attraction to a m-16 style rifle is. They were made to be efficient killing machines.

... relatively inexpensive, accurate, easy to change out uppers for specific hunting or target work out to 600 yards, easy to work on without a gun smith, cheap ammunition.

That's part of the attraction, plus a lot of us trained and carried a similar rifle in the military, that's why the 1911 is still so popular 114 years later.

swapped out with your existing lower and they fire one of the cheapest centerfire cartridges. Plus I find them a lot of fun to shoot.

I don't really have any want or need of one, however...

I have occasionally considered getting one, just so I could post that I finally got one.

Because defying those who hate guns is a satisfying counter to gun hatred and restrictions proposed based on that hatred.

Quite satisfying.

See the long lines at gun shows for another example of this.

...but the fact that the most popular rifle in the country for a good few years now is seldom used for nefarious purposes tells me all I need to know about those who urge banning them: that they struggle with math. The utterly obvious gun control priority is handguns in the possession of criminals, period. I strongly oppose the political left spending our hard-earned political capital on gun control measures that don't address that priority.

I've shot a good few ARs. They're very good rifles. Low recoil, decent ergonomics, accurate for what they are...but as much as I enjoy shooting them, I have no particular need for one. I compete, but not in events for which an AR is a good choice. I prefer handguns for personal defense. For purely recreational plinking, I prefer my .22 rifle and pistol (even with .22 getting stupid expensive). And while I don't actually give much thought to "shit hits the fan" scenarios, well...I'm a long-range rifle competitor. My preferences there should be obvious...

That's certainly wasn't part of my calculation in getting my first AR -- but it's a nice bonus.

I've been thinking about getting a fairly small AR decal for my car to go along with others that hint at my status as a liberal just to serve as an example that gun rights aren't always a left vs right issue.

This just might be the "brilliant" hit and run OP that pushes me over the edge.

In my opinion you make gunn owners look bad

First, I haven't done it. I said I was at times tempted.

Second, It is a perfect way of responding to a group that is comprised in large part by people to whom the means are more important than the ends - modern day gun control advocates. In fact, it is EXACTLY the right response to that group and its methodology.

Now, we can debate this if you want, but you and I both know that it can be proven that modern gun control advocates are more interested in the means (gun control) than they are in the ends (less gun violence). It tracks, logically, particularly since it satisfies their hatred of guns.

We're already told we have the blood of children on our hands. Called 'gun nuts' and 'gun humpers' and 'gun suckers' and 'ammosexuals' and 'murder inc', 'murder enablers', 'rude toters' 'emboldened by possession of a gun to commit crime', 'delicate flowers, 'gun fuckers', 'compensating', 'the small penis (and presumably clitoris) brigade', 'gunner trash', Trash (have a look at who authored that one why don'tcha), 'gun hoarders', 'the cult of the firearm', 'gunner shitheads', 'murder advocates', 'pro-gun sanctimonious charlatans', 'glib sociopath gunthusiasts', 'gun apologists', 'terrorists'...

And you think we should be concerned how being spiteful in return or retaliation makes us look in your opinion?

Really?

In a typhoon, a squirrel's fart is discerned.

My kids were big enough to shoot the ARs by 6 or 7. They still have problems with some of the "youth" LOP firearms we have.

A 3" change in LOP makes the AR's one of our favorites for family range day. (that plus the lack of recoil)

You'd know that Don's points in post #13 are entirely truthful and accurate. Well.......unless of course you're totally blinded by ideology.

And in your preemptive hand-waving upthread, you forgot to mention that they offer bolt-action accuracy in a semiauto package, and can be easily configured and customized without paying a gunsmith. You can also swap the caliber simply by swapping the upper, anything from .22LR to .50 Beowulf, and there are even airgun and crossbow uppers on the market if you are into that.

My own "AR" is a Rock River Arms midlength flattop with a 16" Wilson target barrel, adjustable stock, and 1-6x scope. Sales really took off after the civilian market replaced the military-style carry handle.

BTW, you realize that the M1 Garand, Springfield M1A, Ruger Mini-14, SKS, and M1 Carbine are also "assault weapons" to the prohibitionists, yes?

You could just pop in a conversion BCG, and use the .22LR mags designed for standard lowers.

modular rifle that I can change an upper and have a totally different caliber and barrel assembly for differing uses. Easy to breakdown and clean. Parts are readily available. It is also a plus that I was trained on a military version that is not available to the public, but functions quite similarly with the exception of full auto or burst..

Telling.

Many if not most jurisdictions in that state refuse to enforce it. What makes you think other jurisdictions in other states will?

They tried the registration/turn them in thing in CT, and got a ten percent compliance rate.

What makes you think that rate would be higher elsewhere?


The reality, is that if ten plus million people say "no, we wont", you have a huge problem on your hands, that legislators went out of their way to create, and have no easy way out of - except repealing the law.

Is that really a situation you want to see exist?

Other than making enemies, losing votes and offices, that would accomplish nothing.

given that (a) rifle handgrip shape, stock adjustability, etc. are absolutely and completely irrelevant to rifle misuse or lethality, and (b) rifles are the least misused of all weapons? Or are you still blindly following Josh Sugarmann's (mistaken) 1988 prediction that the AWB fraud would build momentum for a ban on handguns, rather than undermining the gun control movement's credibility and sparking a backlash that would ultimately decimate the gun control movement?

Democrats will never see the "right congressional make up" as long as "assault weapon" idiocy continues to be pushed. Banning rifles based on the way they look rather than function is correctly viewed by the electorate as culture war.

When you spit in a person's face they push back hard. When is the Democratic Party going to put this together?! I fear the answer is NEVER.

Paint them green.

Is from 2012. I did a quick bit of research and didn't find anything from 2015 with respect to "assault weapons," but some more recent polls show that a majority of Americans do NOT favor a ban on assault weapons (and of course, answers change depending on how the question is worded). So here ya go:

2012 poll - http://www.guns.com/2012/12/28/gallup-poll-americans-oppose-assault-weapons-ban-but-support-universal-background-checks/

And here's an article explaining why gun control groups have moved away from trying to implement an assault weapon ban (summary - no support and they don't have any impact):

http://www.propublica.org/article/why-gun-control-groups-have-moved-away-from-an-assault-weapons-ban

And here's a recent poll showing that a majority of Americans oppose stricter gun control laws:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/21/politics/gun-control-poll-americans/index.html

Last edited Fri Nov 13, 2015, 12:54 PM - Edit history (1)

Even among the ample gun control propaganda, I've rarely seen such baseless, unscholarly garbage. For instance, despite citing the firearm used in Sandy Hook among the statistics, no mention is made of how the gun was actually compliant with Connecticut's assault weapon ban or that in many of these shootings more than weapon was used, and would have been more than sufficient. Terms like high-capacity magazines are often used interchangeably with "assault weapons," anf the terms are rarely clearly defined, nor is there any discussion of how items like barrel shrouds or folding stocks actually make a gun more lethal.

More importantly, actual research by the Department of Justice is either omitted, misconceived, or willfully misconstrued.

In fact, the DOJ has already essentially concluded that the federal assault weapons ban did little to nothing, and assault weapon bans are generally useless.

http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/PDF-News/nij-gun-policy-memo.pdf

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf

http://www.propublica.org/article/fact-checking-feinstein-on-the-assault-weapons-ban

Lastly, there's no mention of the potential constitutional problems with such bans after Heller and McDonald, and how the Supreme Court will likely have the last word concerning any assault weapon ban legislation, including a current petition for certiorari before the court on this very issue.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/1021/Supreme-Court-battle-on-assault-weapons-looms.-But-do-bans-do-anything

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/friedman-v-city-of-highland-park/

(Damned things came out before Taft took office.)

LCPGV is an anti-gun propaganda mill (sorry for the redundancy).

Apparently, they would rather people own "rapid firing" rifles that are more difficult to control when firing.

It seems that LCGPV believes inaccuracy and increased danger to bystanders is a feature, not a bug.

Traditional stocks are more conducive to 'spray firing from the hip', than any other design.

Yet they focus on designs that intended to allow more control over a firearm.

If one didn't understand their motivation, it would boggle the mind.

I had a discussion on here a few years ago in which my interlocutor asserted that ergonomics increase lethality, and therefore are fair game for regulation. Following that line of reasoning, my suggestion was that perhaps Federal law could mandate that in the future, the stocks of all semi-automatic rifles must be embedded with ground glass.

The argument displays its absurdity, when applied to other things that allow for better more precise control, like radial tires and sway bars.

"What do you need a race car for?"

Same shit, same stupid.

Also why the NRA will always be well-funded.

And why Democrats will continue to piss away political capital.

And why citizens don't trust us on a myriad of other issues.

And why some Dems either don't time & money to our party, or donate less. (They'd rather not donate just to have their "betters" throw away their hard work or hard-earned $$.)

Gun 1 looks fine.


Gun 2 looks scary. Ban it.

As for the collapsible stock. I'm 6'3". My wife is 5'4". We have different ideals for how long the stock should be. Its nice to make it customizable. Also, A GUN WITH A COLLAPSIBLE STOCK MUST MEET MINIMUM LENGTH REQUIREMENTS WHEN COLLAPSED", so if the law was made, and I wanted a highly concealable gun (An AR-15 is probably not the best choice, but whatever). I can just pin the stock in the shortest length, and still be legal.


Typical scenario:

"Is that an AR-15 under your trench coat."
"Obviously not, its at least 3 inches too short to be an AR"
"Ohh, good point"
"Bad guys pulls out gun, lengthens stock 3 inches and kills everybody"

We need to add a forward grip.

http://www.assaultweapon.info/

Just for people who may not know what it is.

Just sayin.

Do you just get some subscription to old articles to post, or do you actually have to go looking for them?

Cynical fearmongering about guns that kill fewer people than bicycles, despite being the most popular rifles on the U.S. civilian market for about two decades now.

Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2014 (FBI)

[font face="courier new"]Total murders...................... 11,961
Handguns............................ 5,562 (46.5%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,052 (17.2%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,610 (13.5%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,567 (13.1%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 660 (5.5%)
Shotguns.............................. 262 (2.2%)
Rifles................................ 248 (2.1%) [/font]

Law enforcement deaths in the United States are about as low as they've ever been, per capita, and are still falling, down by 20% over 2014. And for perspective, 2012 was the lowest year in absolute numbers since *1887*.

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/

"The Lapsed Federal Assault Weapons Ban: In 1994, Congress adopted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which made it “unlawful for a person to manufacture, transfer, or possess” a semiautomatic assault weapon.13 The law was adopted with a sunset clause, however, and expired in 2004, despite overwhelming public support for its renewal. Thus, semi-automatic, military style weapons that were formerly banned under the federal law are now legal unless banned by state or local law."

That is exceedingly brazen bullshit, considering that "assault weapons" as now defined by the gun control lobby were never banned, and more AR-15's, civilian AK's, and other "assault weapons" using the gun control lobby's current definition were sold 1994-2004 than in the prior fifty years combined. The 1994 Feinstein non-ban outlawed no guns, just names, and required some subtle cosmetic and ergonomic changes that you non-gunnies wouldn't even notice. Yet the homicide rate dropped.

Ban-era civilian SAR-1, very collectible, freely imported and sold between 1994 and 2004 (this is probably a 2002-2003), with a ban-era-import 30-round magazine; see if you can spot the differences between this carbine and a pre-1994 or post-2004:


After the non-ban expired in 2004, allowing the name "Colt AR-15" to be used again (as if that mattered, since Colt is a minor player in the AR market) and encouraged adjustable stocks to be unpinned, the rifle homicide rate dropped by another 50% since 2004:

Rifle homicides 2005-2014 (from FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2005-2014, Tables 20, collated)
[font face="courier new"]2005: 442
2006: 436
2007: 450
2008: 375
2009: 348
2010: 358
2011: 323
2012: 302
2013: 285
2014: 248[/font]

"Anecdotal evidence from law enforcement leaders suggests that military-style assault weapons are increasingly being used against law enforcement by drug dealers and gang members."

False. Rifle murders are decreasing. Murders of police officers are decreasing. Being a police officer in the United States is safer than it has ever been.

"67% of Field & Stream readers polled did not consider assault weapons to be legitimate sporting guns. "

The most popular sporting guns in the United States aren't legitimate sporting guns? That is too funny. You do realize that sport shooters are mostly target shooters, not hunters, right? Guess what the #1 centerfire target rifle in the United States is. And guess what the #1 target caliber in the United States is.

And I'd like to see a source for that poll, given the backlash by hunters and shooters against Outdoor Life's Jim Zumbo when he suggested something along those lines. Field and Stream regularly runs articles on hunting with modern-looking rifles (do you even read it, bro?), and if I am not mistaken, even that magazine's old-school-curmudgeon-in-chief (David Petzal) owns an AR. You are really stuck in 1992 here.

" During the 1980s, the firearms industry sought to reverse a decline in consumer demand for guns by developing and marketing new types of weapons based on military designs"

That's pretty funny, considering that most civilian rifles manufactured since the 1770s have been "based on military designs", from muzzleloading muskets, to military-style lever actions, to military-style bolt-actions, to straight-wooden-stocked semiautos, to more modern looking semiautos.

And Federal law regulates how rifles work, not what they look like. Semiautomatic is the default mode of operation of civilian guns in this country, and 75% or so of U.S. guns sold annually are semiautomatic (meaning they fire once and only once when you pull the trigger, and won't fire again until you release it and pull it a second time, unlike a select-fire military rifle or a machinegun).

Finally, that graphic is hilarious; you can tell the person who did it didn't actually know much about the gun market. An adjustable stock adjusts the stock to fit the shooter, but doesn't make the gun any shorter than a fixed stock would; Federal law defines the minimum length, not whether the stock can be extended to longer than that. And "concealable"? LOL. An AR with the stock full short is nearly THREE FEET LONG and eight or more inches high with sights, even without the magazine. A 9mm and a dozen magazines will fit in your waistband and pockets; try that with a three-foot-long rifle. If anybody can point me toward a photo hosting site with good privacy settings, I'll post a comparison pic of an AR vs. a large handgun and a smallish handgun.

And, ummm, that's not a barrel shroud. That's a forestock (handguard), like a target rifle has. A barrel shroud is a heat shield like you might see on an old Intratec pistol or an old Sten reproduction, whereas the forend of an AR is made first and foremost for holding the gun rather than preventing accidental contact with a hot barrel. You can get a barrel shroud for an AR if you want, to cover the exposed barrel in front of the forend, but they're rather silly, IMO.

And you're not trying to outlaw 100 round range toys; you're trying to outlaw standard 11 to 30 round magazines, of which 50+ million citizens own maybe half a billion, going back to the early 1860s. Be honest.

Frankly, the gun control lobby's obsession with banning the least misused, most popular rifles makes no sense from either a violence prevention standpoint or a strategic standpoint. Even door to door sweeps that confiscated every rifle in America would do nothing to reduce the (falling) murder rate, because rifles are hardly used at all in murders or violent crime in general (~2.5% of murders, 0.6% of violent crime), and shotguns and handguns---both responsible for more murders than rifles are---can be easily substituted. All the "assault weapon" fraud does is to motivate gun owners to fight the prohibitionists tooth and nail; those shooters who might go along to get along with UBC's and whatnot will rise up and get active when you start talking about banning their guns. The prohibitionists' obsession with legislating rifle stock shape is arguably directly responsible for the utter collapse of the gun control lobby after 1994, for the wave of concealed carry licensing reform that swept the nation after 1994, and for the doubling or tripling of annual gun sales (especially rifle sales) since 1994. Yet rifle murders continue to fall. Hmmmm.

I'll close with a quotation from the head of the gun control lobby a few decades ago, when rifle murders were two or three times what they are now, that is even more apropos now than it was then:

&quot O)ur organization, Handgun Control, Inc. does not propose further controls on rifles and shotguns. Rifles and shotguns are not the problem; they are not concealable."

--Nelson T. "Pete" Shields, head of what is now the Brady Campaign 1978-1989, Guns Don't Die--People Do, Priam Press, 1981, pp. 47-48 (emphasis added).

I guess at some point, idealogical purity in gun control fundamentalism won out over pragmatism, but it certainly shot the gun controllers in the foot. Anyway, we own rifles with handgrips that stick out. Protruding rifle handgrips and adjustable stocks aren't a crime problem in this country. And we will keep them.

Are you serious?

For real?

Did you even read this crap?


So 20% of LEOs killed ILD were shot with assault weapons DURING THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN.

That is somehow evidence that we need another AWB? RIIIGHTT!

Where's that smiley with it's head up its ass?

...more difficult for the user to control and are more likely to burn their flesh.


And you do realize that telescoping stocks don't really do much for concealability, but are more about being able to quickly and easily adjust the buttstock for the individual shooter and whatever layers of clothing he or she may be wearing, right?