Well, if he is only talking about the mid 90's AWB, then he has a glimmer of a point in the first paragraph. Just a glimmer, and it is not the point I think he wants to make.

When we ban guns largely based on cosmetic featuress like the AWB did, it does not work very well. So we need legislation with stricter rules and a greater range of actual firearms. Factors like clip size, RPM, etc. No loopholes for guns manufactured after the fact with features slightly modified to skirt the law.

But it should be noted that the AWB did reduce firearm deaths a bit, even though the legislation was essentially toothless.

Us-vs-Them is a very bad policy when THE OTHER SIDE HAS FUCKING GUNS.

Seriously though, the level of discourse on Slog is pretty pathetic. You are cherry-picking the dumbest arguments possible, and white washing the argument. "Look how crazy these GUN-NUTS are! We better ban guns huh guys? hurr durr hurr hurr." Well no shit, these people are crazy. NO FUCKING SHIT. Everyone knows that. Gun advocates know that.

Not to mention, this article is complete incongruent with the article Cienna posted yesterday, which quoted statistics that only 300 some murders were committed with rifles, colored or not. I mean, it's obviously you've had meetings to normalize your lexicon (hell-O Fox News! we've got a new player in town!) but you can at least have some consistency in your arguments. These blind appeals to emotion are only convincing to a very small audience who already shares your ideals. It's like some sort of circle where everyone just sits around and jerks, fingers, or fists each other off, about how "baddd the gun-nuts are."

Make some real arguments. If you can't do that, and resort to arguing with a carefully constructed strawman, then re-think your fucking position.

Well, the idea of gun control is rooted in racism. Gun control laws like permits that needed approved by law enforcement were used to keep blacks unarmed, and the Gun Control Act of 1968 was partially fueled by the idea of black rebellion.
http://jpfo.org/articles-assd02/cramer-r…

Being a chicagoian you obviously have no information on the subject of firearms beyond being scared of them.

@2
Feinstein admittedly said that she flipped through a picture book and banned guns she thought looked scary
http://www.ammoland.com/2013/01/feinstei…

@ Chicago Fan, I have no idea what you're trying to say in your paragraph about gun sizes and blade sizes. Seriously, it makes no sense.

@1,

They're also more likely to be abused or killed.

Seriously though, the level of discourse on Slog is pretty pathetic.

Spoken by the dumb bitch who, just one line above this, threatens to murder gun control advocates. Physician, heal thyself.

Also, fuck off.

@5 Where can we find Feinstein's original admission regarding a picture book?

@3: Are you really that out of the loop? The scenario you spend so many words trying to describe is known as a "circle jerk."

Did you even read the linked article, or watch the clip? This woman was the president of the NRA. She's not just "some gun nut". This is, or rather between 1995 and 1998 was, the gun nut, the president of the largest gun lobbying group in the country. She remains on their Board of Directors today. This is not some fringe wingnut. This woman has serious clout in the NRA, and it takes a trivial Google search to prove it. Hell, she was even being interviewed by the NRA's own news show (which exists, unbelievably). If they thought this was a stupid remark, they wouldn't have released the interview, or would have at least edited that part out.

So, who exactly is constructing the straw man in this case?

paid nancy for balls is back! take the afternoon off, unregistered trolls!

if all a renewed AWB did was prevent dipshits from turning up at the range with ar15 copies and pretending like they are a member of the Swat team. That will be enough for me

It bears repeating that the NRA's radical interpretation of the Second Amendment is not in any way the tradition America has followed for 230 years. It's a strange, new, extremist idea that took decades of aggressive lobbying to gain traction, and then dutiful work by politicians and activist judges to put in place.

Ronald Reagan -- Saint Ronald Reagan, they call him, and they mean it -- signed the toughest gun control law in history. In 1967 Governor Ronald Reagan, paragon of conservative values, signed the Mulford Act. It banned any civilian carrying any gun loaded. In 1967 Reagan was one of the voices in the conservative wilderness. He was leading the GOP back to their traditional roots.

Look up the Mulford Act. Don't waste too much time on Wikipedia. If you need any evidence for how much "the encyclopedia that any motherfucker can edit" is controlled by wingnuts, notice that they devote a mere three sentences to this, the most restrictive gun control law ever. The article on the Colt .45 is almost four thousand words. I rest my case. Go read about it in a book, not Jimmy Wales' Objectivist web site.

Yes, yes, the Mulford Act was a racist reaction to the Black Panthers waving guns around. But ask yourself, why weren't "real" conservatives saying the solution to the Black Panther problem was more guns? Why didn't they have any inkling that the law violated the Second Amendment? Why wasn't the law immediately found unconstitutional?

The answer is that the traditional, conservative reading of the Second Amendment is that a well regulated militia is necessary to a free state. They didn't just toss words out of the Bill of Rights because they didn't like them. They heeded the Second Amendment as it was written, not as they wished it had been written.

It took about two decades to flip the "conservative" understanding of the Second Amendment on its head and turn Reagan and others like him into the frothing gun loving extremists we see today. Our grandparents wouldn't have recognized them.

reminder that a semiautomatic ten-shot rifle with black tacticool furniture is functionally indistinguishable from a typical hunting rifle while also being visually indistinguishable from an M4

looks do not necessarily have anything to do with capability in firearms.

let's play a game. you tell me which of these guns is an assault weapon:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-co…

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL1600/81…

http://www.customdigitaldesignsonline.co…

wait, my mistake. those are all the exact same weapon--a Ruger 10/22, a semi-automatic rifle chambered in 5.56 (a typical hunting round), typically with a 10-15 round box magazine.

I'm sorry, what were you saying about how guns look?

Jesus, @13, I don't know where you come up with some of this crap. Your grandparents could order a gun — almost any gun — through the mail. Their parents could do the same with a full-auto machine gun or a sawed-off shotgun.

@15 has it.
It's about the functionality that is used in the crimes.
A bayonet lug is rarely used in crimes concerning semi-automatic guns.
The same with a flash suppressor.

@15/16 does not have it at all. the 5.56 (or .223, which is the same bullet, but a different case- you can shoot .223 in a 5.56, but not the other way around) is not a permissible hunting round in most states for big game. This creates a problem, as it is a round that has too much energy for small game (i.e. they explode due to hydrostatic shock) but is not sufficiently likely to humanely kill a large animal (i.e. you need to use larger ammo to put it down quickly, rather than wound it). People often refer to .223 as a varmint gun, as useful for picking off farm pests, like coyotes and foxes, at long ranges. Back home if you do not have a tag for 'Fur Bearers' (i.e. small game whose pelt has value) and are carrying a .223 it will be confiscated and you will get an expensive ticket, and likely not be allowed to hunt deer for a couple years. They are, therefore, useless guns that only kids (i.e. dipshits with out common sense or money management skills) carry around. The NATO 5.56 was developed as a small, wounding round for warfare (especially so w/ FMJ ammo), which is why it is ill suited to hunting.

@19: Oh, that totally proves that looks determine a gun's capability. Thanks for clearing that up.

@20 has it.

@19

16 indeed does not know what he is talking about, Two of the rifles are 10/22s chambered in .22lr and the third is a German made AK clone chambered in .22lr.

.22lr is for all intents and purposes is the weakest firearms cartridge on the market despite how evil the gun looks.

Though all the above rifles are essentially the same despite their looks.

In WA .223/5.56 is also banned for large game hunting, though I believe it would have the energy to take down a deer with the proper load and shot placement. Also despite the myths 5.56 was not designed to wound and has some pretty devastating terminal ballistics, it is also an externally accurate cartridge due to its flat trajectory.

fine, fine, 5.56 isn't a typical hunting round. not the point.

@17

Well, the way I look at it, regular readers of Slog have made up their minds how much credence to give your posts, and how much to give to mine. Maybe in your world you see it differently, but from where I sit, 99% of those who know you well think you're a kook and they either ignore you or, if bored, they take the time to mock you.

Everything I've said about Reagan, the Mulford Act, the NRA and the conservative interpretation of the Second Amendment is accurate and easily verified (by those who know how to use a library, not just Wiki fucking pedia). Don't believe me? Look it up, folks.

@20 -I think my bigger point was further into the post, where I describe these rifles as really having no practical value, and being primarily a showpiece for shitheads who want to pretend they are in/still in the military. They exist only for their looks, that is why people buy them.

@22 -Sure, you could take down a deer with a .223, even w/ FMJ if you got the right shot, but I really don't want to see the typical Elmer Fudd hunter out there thinking he's gonna take a head shot at 300 yards. As to your other point: absolutely 5.56 is designed to wound, as is FMJ ammo. That was the reason for the shit-fit after those Blackwater dickheads brought the blended-alloy ammo over and started exploding people.

@25
"That was the reason for the shit-fit after those Blackwater dickheads brought the blended-alloy ammo over and started exploding people."

Do you have any links to the "blended-alloy ammo" that explodes people?
Because I seem to recall that being one of those marketing myths.

"As to your other point: absolutely 5.56 is designed to wound, as is FMJ ammo."

I guess that depends upon your definition of "designed to wound".
FMJ bullets allow for higher muzzle velocities with less transference of the bullet material to the barrel of the gun.
In other words, using lead bullets at high velocity means that the barrel will become fouled with lead from the bullets and have to be cleaned.
FMJ bullets also are better at penetrating armor than lead bullets.

So, which is "designed to wound"?
A bullet that expands upon impact (hollow point lead bullet)
or a bullet that does not expand but travels further into the body?

And what would be a bullet that was not "designed to wound"?

@13 - I agree with your claim of the relative recency of the 2nd Amendment's current interpretation, but I wholly disagree with your assessment of Wikipedia.

On Wikipedia, you can view the full history of changes to any article - every single fucking change, big or small. This one had three minor ones, such as removing the quotes around the name of the act. The one about the Colt pistol has hundreds of revisions by scores of contributors.

There is no sign of mass deletion by gun nuts in order to make the article so small, as you suggest. In fact, there is no deletion AT ALL aside from the quotes mentioned above.

Why is this article shorter than the one about the Colt .45? Because no one has bothered to write about it at any length. In fact, if you have a ton more information about it, add it yourself. And don't hold your breath waiting for your additions to be purged. (Well, unless they are indisputably inaccurate. Those are removed at amazing speed.)

If gun nuts truly could control Wikipedia, don't you think they would have successfully rid this article of the Reagan reference?

I happen to own a Ruger 10/22. It fires .22LR bullets and would be suitable for hunting squirrels/racoons/small vermin at fairly close range (less than 50-100 yards). I replaced the stock with one that has a pistol grip and a collapsible stock so that it can be used by people with different sized arms. (I find the stock stock to be too short, myself). Due to this change which had absolutely no effect on how many bullets it can fire, or how fast, this rifle is now banned in several states including New York, Massachusetts and California. Yes, it is, in fact, discrimination based on size and looks.

How a gun looks typically has very little to do with how many bullets it can fire and how fast, or how accurately. It is absolutely not like a knife where what you see is what you get.

And if you're going to use 'hunting round' as an argument, then an AR10 should be perfectly acceptable but an AR15 should not? Give me a break.

@27

Blatant falsehood are not that easy to pull off. But neglect is the next best thing: Wikipedia's wingnuts lavish attention on the things they want to underscore. Points they want to make. They spruce up articles about points of view the like, and that attracts traffic.

Only five articles link to the Mulford Act article. One of them is just a disambiguation page for "Mulford". The "Featured Article" on Ronald Reagan doesn't take you there. The article "Governorship of Ronald Reagan" says nothing about the most restrictive gun law ever.

Look at all the attention lavished on Reagan's Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986. Yet Wikipedia has no article on Reagan's Law Enforcement Officer's Protection Act that bans armor piercing bullets. The article on the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, banning plastic guns, is a disaster of neglect, barely mentioning Reagan's part in enacting the law, and no article on Reagan link to it.

The uncomfortable truth that is being buried here is that "true conservatives" used to support many, many restrictions on guns. During a period of about 20 years, the conservative view changed, radically, and Ronald Reagan's political career was right in the center of it. Reagan's own changing beliefs charted the wavering course of conservative thought here.

There is a damningly consistent pattern to the way Wikipedia ignores and neglects the real story of gun control. They work to paint it as a bunch of nanny state laws cooked up by female Senators from the Bay Area who don't know a lever action from a shell casing. Reagan was one of them, a man's man, a true conservative, and they hate admitting it on Jimmy Wales' encyclopedia. So they ignore all of it.

Do I need to talk about Wales being an Objectivist fan of Ayn Rand? You know that Jimmy Wales has the final say in all Wikipedia decisions, right? He's usually hands off, but he intervenes whenever he wants, to set the overall course. It shows.

@29 Wow. Are you a Truther, too? Tinfoil hat much? So, the reason why Wikipedia, which likely has just as many liberal gun-control-nuts making entries and conservative gun-nuts, is secretly promoting an anti-gun control bias???? For reals???!

Maybe the article on the Undetectable Firearms act is neglected because no one cares, gun-nut or gun-control-nut? Ditto for the armor-piercing bullet act!

@30

Likely to have equal numbers of liberals and conservatives? Likely? Why? [citation needed]

Knowing nothing about Wikipedia's articles, I would have guessed the left and right bias would average out somehow, but then when I took a look at the evidence, I saw a different story. The content itself shows a heavy political bias. Wikipedia editors are not a random sample; they are self-selected. And further, the quantity of time and effort they put into editing is self-selected. You can win your point of view on Wikipedia by sheer persistence alone.

Read How right-wingers took over Wikipedia. I'm not the first one to notice this problem.

@30

A more technical explanation was reported in the WaPo, Study: Wikipedia perpetuates political …, which describes Collective Intelligence and Neutral Poin….

Linus’ Law says “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow," and articles with very large numbers of editors and lots of traffic tend to be more neutral. But articles with few editors are often heavily biased, and nobody is around to correct it. This is what has happened to the story of gun control: certain things get lots of attention, and others get little attention. Why? Conservative bias.

Over 90% of wikipedia editors are males. Mostly white, mostly young, mostly in technical fields. Mostly in rich countries. They don't have an objective understanding of history. They think the way they've been told the world is today is the way its always been. The extremist view of the Second Amendment is conservative, and therefore, they suppose it's a very old view.

These young, white male technophiles don't understand that some of today's conservative ideas are very, very young indeed.

@26 - FMJ is designed to remain intact, and pass through the body as opposed to standard ammunition which is designed to expand, break apart and tumble inside the body. FMJ is illegal for hunting as well, for exactly that reason.

The Hague Convention (which the US is only partially adherent to) forbids expanding ammunition, (non-fmj) hence the upset. The US military generally adheres to this, and there was a dust-up about whether or not contractors need to adhere as well. The ALPL ammo is bullshit, but it is certainly not Hague approved.

this feels like a bit of a side-track to the main point which is that there is no purpose to these weapons (or at least the weapons they are made to emulate). they are toys. The issue with them is that they appeal to the sorts of folks who are least capable of making good decisions about guns.

@33
"this feels like a bit of a side-track ..."

You are the one making all the weird claims about the guns.
The fact is that the 5.56 bullet is available in many configurations.
http://www.ammunitiontogo.com/index.php/…

As always, you are conflating the *cosmetic features* of the gun with the *functionality* of the gun with the *capabilities of the ammo* fired from that gun.
They are NOT the same.

Learn what kind of bullets can be fired from a gun like this:
http://blog.riflegear.com/archive/2007/1…

@34 I am well aware that all sorts of ammo is available for the 5.56/.223. you can buy birdshot for .22lr as well, that don't mean the gun is designed to hunt birds.

I think the reason we equate the look of a gun with the functionality is that a huge amount of the functionality dictates the cosmetics. Picatinny rails to mount accessories, big curving ammo clips, black composite collapsible stocks, oversize gas tubes, etc. Those things look aggressive because they are designed for aggression. People aren't fucking stupid. If you buy a .22 that looks like an AR15, you are looking to cop the war-fighter vibe. And the fact is that reasonable people recognize the gun, if not the caliber, as derivative of military arms.

I don't necessarily believe that an AR15 derivative is more dangerous than another rifle as an object. What is more dangerous about them is the social context. I went to buy ammo last week at a new nearby gun store. Walked in and the wall was covered with UZI, Bushmaster, etc war fighting weapons. And the shop was filled with 20-something mouth breather dudes looking to defend themselves from something. I couldn't help but wonder which of these dudes was going to shoot their wife first.

@36
"I am well aware that all sorts of ammo is available for the 5.56/.223."

Apparently you were not because you were making comments about the 5.56 bullet that were completely wrong.
Fortunately now I have educated you.

"I think the reason we equate the look of a gun with the functionality is that a huge amount of the functionality dictates the cosmetics."

While that is correct as far as it goes it is incorrect when discussing the subject at hand.
That being that the cosmetic issues have very little bearing on the crimes committed with those guns.
When was the last time that someone used the bayonet lug in a crime?

"If you buy a .22 that looks like an AR15, you are looking to cop the war-fighter vibe."

And since I have now educated you on the capabilities of bullets you are now going off on a tangent about a "vibe".
You have no idea what you are talking about.
You were conflating the *cosmetic features* of the gun with the *functionality* of the gun with the *capabilities of the ammo* fired from that gun.

Now you are conflating the *cosmetic features* of the gun with the *functionality* of the gun with the *capabilities of the ammo* fired from that gun with a "vibe".

@36
"clips"

*snicker*
I think the word you are looking for is magazines, I can't think of any firearm designed after ww2 that is loaded with clips.

Almost as funny as "designed to wound."

5.56 was designed to yaw and fragment at the cannula. It was designed to stop a threat as quickly as possible.

Also collapsing stocks allow the same rifle to be used by people of differing statures, as well as adjust the length of pull when wearing extra layers of clothing.

I have never heard of an "oversize gas tube" but if such thing did exist it would have a detrimental effect on the function of the weapon as it could result in not enough gas pressure to cycle the action.

Looks like you are totally a gun authority.

@31, Funny right-wingers say the same thing about liberals taking over Wikipedia!

http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of…

Yes, Conservapedia is pretty ridiculous, and I'm embarrassed to be using it as a reference, but the fact is that you can find evidence in Wikipedia to support almost any contention of "bias".

@36 So, in your book, a Browning BAR or Remington 7400/750 semi-automatic "hunting" rifle that has a wood stock and fancy engraving on the receiver and no 'tacticool' features, and is usually chambered in 308 or 30-06 is perfectly okay, but an AR15 is not?

I'm also impressed that you have a gun store that still has stock of AR15's/Uzi's similar things because every sporting goods store around me is completely sold out of virtually everything other than bolt-guns as all the gun-nuts prepare for the gun-control-nuts.

How about a Keltec SU-16A - it is black and it does have a picatinny rail, so it looks kinda scary in a kinda tacticool way, but it is not an "assault weapon" because it doesn't have a pistol grip, or a collapsible stock or a threaded barrel, bayonet lug..etc. And it is not based on a military firearm. But, oh wait. It also comes in an SU-16C, which, oh no! has a threaded barrel and a folding (not adjustable, but can be fired folded) stock and is not allowed in California because it is now an "assault weapon"

Both versions fire the exact same cartridge as an AR15, both have similar capabilities to an AR15. Yet, the SU-16A is perfectly okay!!

The concept of banning 'some' semi-automatic rifles is ridiculous. It is sort of like saying, "All SUV's are gas guzzlers and are bad for the environment, but black ones with chrome trim, nerf bars and tow hitches are scary looking so we're not going to allow those."