Trololzilla wrote: ↑Apr 05, 2022
Bump stocks are kind of a nothingburger; don't know why there's such a fixation with them. You can literally use a rubber band to bump-fire a rifle, or buy and install a binary trigger for faster ROF. But again, automatic fire is more or less useless - its only practical use is for suppressive fire. Even German MG42 gunners, despite the gun being able to fire up to 1800 RPM, were trained specifically to only fire 3-7 round bursts. Barrel heating issues aside, automatic weapons/fire is mainly just to minimize the volume of return fire by suppressing the enemy. Most of the killing in a firefight is done by semi-automatic or bolt-action weapons. Might be fun to fire off stuff that fast once or twice during range time, but it's wholly impractical (and very expensive) to do so more than that.
As to large capacity magazines: really just there for range time to minimize the time needed to load magazines or to decrease the number of pre-loaded magazines you bring with you. You don't want to spend valuable range time loading mags, and magazines aren't always very cheap so if you can get away with buying less of them, the better. Plus, it's not fun to load magazines, even with an autoloader or speedloader, which is why things like drums exist - they're big, bulky, and very unwieldy, which is why you wouldn't really use large capacity mags outside of a controlled setting like a shooting range unless you're an idiot.
Okay, I think we can have a real conversation, so long as we both accept that we're probably making some false assumptions and that gun violence is a real problem in need of solving. If not . . . well, there's no point. But if we can both accept that much then let's try this.
Bump stocks may well be less of a big deal than I'm guessing. My understanding of them is pretty much limited to what I've read in the mass media. None of my farmer friend's friends had one. But I think your other comments drive at the divide in the conversation. You're talking about guns from the point of view of someone who knows how to use them properly in a military setting, but nobody is worried about that. The military handles that. And there are specific tactical reasons that praying and spraying isn't such a useful tactic in a military setting: trained militaries changed after fully automatic weapons became prevalent in WWI. The better grade of general officers quit ordering their units to charge across battlefields in the open in large compact masses. But civilians still bunch up like the Boston Marathon at events like . . . oh . . . the Boston Marathon. Most of us haven't really practiced the fine art of moving in ways that make us harder targets. (And it is an art.) So that higher RoF that isn't so useful on the battlefield might still be a problem on the street. And a thing that makes it possible should probably be regulated. (Even if that thing is a drum magazine or a light trigger more than it is a rubber band or a special stock.)
A lot of your comments feel to me like a reaction against inconvenience. High capacity magazines are convenient for people using guns sensibly in sensible settings, so gun owners like them. But regulations aren't here because of sensible people behaving sensibly. They're here to stop idiots and a**holes from inconveniencing or harming everyone else. So this kind of becomes a question of who pays the price for the idiot gun owners: sensible gun owners, or everyone? I honestly think there is only one good answer to that. It's a close parallel to the drivers vs. pedestrians problem. Right now we inconvenience everyone so that car owners can car conveniently. The car-free are beginning to suggest this wasn't a good idea. A lot of the call for gun regulation comes from non gun-owners getting deeply sick of the personal indignities we must all increasingly suffer. Like airport security at sporting events, for instance. Or the crap students have to go through. And it's really hard to weed the emotion out to get to what will be an effective solution and what is just going to be theatre.
So I guess the question is what compromise is possible that allows a safer and more open society without the need for metal detectors at schools and stadiums, but still gives gun owners at least basic access to their hobbies? There's always going to be some risk, so how do we deal with it? How much can we accept? If we want an open sort of pre-90s society back how much do we need to reduce civilian firepower? Can we just let people walk into a building unmolested in a world where civilian guns are all long and have a maximum capacity of a half a dozen rounds? Would a dozen rounds be acceptable so long as you can't fire particularly fast? Maybe there's some false assumptions going on here, but I think gun owners could stand to accept the fact that the current situation inconveniences and potentially endangers non-gun owners quite a lot and this leads to a certain amount of animosity. I'm pretty sure we're all making false assumptions, but it's a mighty big ask for everyone to shoulder the consequences for what is, in the end, not something most people are all that interested in. Does that make any sense?
kipfilet wrote:SP: I apologize if I came across as trying to say you were insinuating something. That was not my intent, and I fully agree with what you wrote. I misinterpreted your initial post (to which I was replying) as trying to justify the absence of gun regulation, which at the end of the day is the one thing that would have the largest impact in preventing most of the incidents that are discussed on this thread.
No worries at all. And thank you. I hope I didn't come across as too snappy in my response. It's certainly worthwhile getting a more complete and accurate rundown on just what those UK gun regs are. We're never going to go full Japan, but a bit of Euro would do us good. I'm just at a loss on how to sell it.
