Renzatic on 6/10/2017 at 19:20
Quote Posted by Goldmoon Dawn
The issue here, yet again, is you one, two, and three percenters.
None of us here belong to the 1%. And the 3%'ers are a bunch of paranoid right-wing libertarian types, so I doubt you'll see many of them here.
jkcerda on 6/10/2017 at 19:23
nothing would have helped with Paddock.
Renzatic on 6/10/2017 at 19:38
There were probably a few things that could've mitigated the damage he did.
From what I understand, he bought hundreds of pounds of military quality equipment and a near literal ton of ammo. I think the final tally, found at both the hotel, and his home, was that he owned over 40 rifles, some explosives, and had a few thousand rounds at his disposal. All bought over the course of 3-4 years. At the very least, there should be a system in place to red flag purchases like that.
But how do you do that, and not step on the toes of people who buy guns as a hobby? It is current a guaranteed right, and some people buy weapons simply to shoot, collect and sell them.
We're gonna have to find a happy medium here.
catbarf on 6/10/2017 at 20:06
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I know people who have claimed to want a big semi-auto rifle for home defense, and my first response is "why?" Unless you're finding yourself in a situation where you have to lay suppressing fire on roving hoards at a 150 yards from the comfort of your front porch, an AR15 is nigh useless for home defense. A handgun might not look as scary, might not give you that same sense of overinflated confidence, but it'll be 1000x more effective if some random crazy stranger decides to kick open your front door to invade your home.
Quote Posted by Renzatic
You're talking about highly trained professionals who have been taught to handle myriad situations with their rifles. For your average person, the extent of their training begins and ends with "well, I spent a couple hours being taught what does what, and shot a few rounds at the range."
...for those people, a handgun is a much better option for home defense.
Respectfully, Renz, I couldn't disagree more. I'm not sure how much experience you have with handgun shooting, but it's
really hard. Most new shooters with a handgun can't reliably hit a human-sized silhouette at just seven yards, and that's under shooting range conditions. I practice a lot and have some real-world experience, and even I can't guarantee that I could put every round on-target at that distance under the incredibly intense effects of adrenaline and fear. In contrast, long arms are much easier to aim and control, especially under recoil. And length doesn't matter precisely because we're homeowners, not SWAT officers- we're not room-clearing, we're going to post up at the top of the stairs or the hallway to the kids' rooms or whatever and call 911.
Then you have penetration. Not only are you much more likely to miss with a handgun, even at very short range, but handgun rounds are fat and slow projectiles that like to go through walls. High-velocity, lightweight rifle rounds tend to fragment and tumble when they hit intervening objects, which limits their ability to endanger your neighbors, and frangible rifle ammunition is both more effective and virtually guaranteed not to exit your home.
Lastly, ease of manipulation. My girlfriend has extreme difficulty racking the slide on most semi-auto handguns, and difficulty pulling the very heavy trigger on revolvers. In contrast, she has no problem with the manual of arms on her AK. For women, the elderly, and the physically handicapped, something like an AR-15 is much easier to operate than a handgun.
(Side note: You didn't mention shotguns, but all these same points apply. They're huge and heavy. They're difficult to operate. In particular, they're difficult to load under stress, and we're not advocating people leave shotguns loaded, right? They have enormous recoil. Their ammunition penetrates drywall very well. And they don't have the comical levels of spread seen in movies and games, so you better not miss.)
This is part of why I've said before that I would much more readily entertain further restrictions on handguns than on 'assault weapons'. For a homeowner, an intermediate-caliber rifle is the most practical and responsible weapon they could buy to defend their home without endangering their neighbors, family, or bystanders, while handguns are overwhelmingly (again, 97%) the weapon of choice for the home invaders they're ostensibly defending themselves against. If you wanted to add additional regulation to the sale and ownership of handguns, while rolling a national concealed-carry permit into the handgun purchase process, a lot of gun owners would readily accept that trade-off.
Renzatic on 6/10/2017 at 21:26
Quote Posted by catbarf
Then you have penetration. Not only are you much more likely to miss with a handgun, even at very short range, but handgun rounds are fat and slow projectiles that like to go through walls. High-velocity, lightweight rifle rounds tend to fragment and tumble when they hit intervening objects, which limits their ability to endanger your neighbors, and frangible rifle ammunition is both more effective and virtually guaranteed not to exit your home.
Admittedly, I don't know that much about guns. I have a basic understanding, and I've shot a few handguns in my day, but I'd say you have me outclassed on general knowledge.
Like the above quoted? I would've assumed the opposite were true. Rifles, I would've thought, would be more likely to penetrate walls over longer distances, putting your neighbors in danger. One of the major advantages of a rifle over a handgun is that it has more power at longer distances. Handguns, being used more for short range, would be, to me, more likely to fragment and spin when they hit drywall or wood.
With everything else you've said, I guess I gotta cede my point now. :P
jkcerda on 6/10/2017 at 22:14
I am more than happy to hold you really tight and teach you how to shoot , whisper in your ears what you can & can't do among other things..........call me.................... forever yours. Midge.................
Renzatic on 6/10/2017 at 22:37
Say "wee wee", JK.
Jason Moyer on 6/10/2017 at 22:45
Quote Posted by catbarf
Well, yeah, they would. I mean, I'm not huge on the whole 'resisting tyranny' aspect of American gun ownership, but it's rather unreasonable to expect that police or Army regulars are going to be keen on going door-to-door on their former friends and neighbors pulling a Mujahideen 2: Electric Boogaloo. The government may have tanks and Hellfires, but those have much more significant repercussions to their use (eg the likelihood of mutiny when they're deployed against civilians) than just sending in riot police.
We had a lone shooter in Dallas last summer killing police officers. They killed him using C4 and a robot. Imagine the response to a real rebellion.
Small arms fire isn't going to do shit against a drone. And if things were really serious, you have artillery. That's before even discussing real bombs, cruise missiles, tactical nukes, etc.
I think the one lesson no one learned from Waco is that you can have the biggest arsenal in the world, you aren't surviving against militarized police.
heywood on 6/10/2017 at 22:47
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
I know there are many sane people in the US. Most of the people I've worked with were just normal people. But overall, the average American is different from the average European. (And I think the European are way more different amongst themselves. If not only because of language). And your average American voted Trump into office. That's something that says something.
I would not say that the average American voted Trump into office. When you divide the number of Trump votes by the population, it's 19%. And the voters who really swung the election to Trump are pretty average working class people who voted for him simply because they were sick of losing manufacturing sector jobs.
Quote:
Also, that whole discussion about "good neighborhoods" and "bad neighborhoods" is weird. I know some suburbs around Paris are bad. But I've never heard of neighborhoods in NL, BE, Germany, or even the UK where you can't walk around because "it's a bad neighborhood". I've actually lived for 2.5 years in the worst neighborhood in our country (Amsterdam South-East, aka The Bijlmer). It wasn't fun, it was a poor area, half the people were immigrants. But I never felt unsafe. There was criminality, more than anywhere else, but that didn't mean you'd get mugged or shot if you walk outside (not even during the evening).
I've walked around some pretty bad neighborhoods in the US, but never worried about getting shot. Definitely worried about getting mugged though and know people who have. Ironically, the only time I was ever mugged was in Canada, in the center of St. John's, in an area that didn't seem to be a bad neighborhood at all. Honestly, the only places I can think of where I wouldn't want to visit due to personal safety concerns are parts of Central and South America and Africa where people are known to get kidnapped and ransomed.
heywood on 6/10/2017 at 23:00
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
We had a lone shooter in Dallas last summer killing police officers. They killed him using C4 and a robot. Imagine the response to a real rebellion.
Small arms fire isn't going to do shit against a drone. And if things were really serious, you have artillery. That's before even discussing real bombs, cruise missiles, tactical nukes, etc.
I think the one lesson no one learned from Waco is that you can have the biggest arsenal in the world, you aren't surviving against militarized police.
There is a HUGE difference between going after one person, or one building full of people, and trying to put down a nationwide insurgency. Our military can't even handle the Taliban, and you think they're going to handle an insurgency in a country ten times the size? It's doubtful they would even want to.
