Another mass shooting in Kentucky. Are you surprised that the AR-15 was the chosen weapon?

Cue the “responsible gun owners” being outraged that people are upset.

@canidmajor
I bet the shooter considered himself a “responsible gun owner”, too. Until he was not.

Surprised that the AR-15 was the weapon of choice??? NOT in the least!!! Yet, I am shocked that he appears to be an adult.

What do you want from us(responsible gun owners)?

@elbanditoroso What B.S.? You mean how people are heavily influenced by the media narrative to use AR-15s? That’s not B.S. What B.S. are you looking for?

Personally, @SQUEEKY2, I would love to see a cessation of the “not all men” mentality. I would like to see some outrage at what is going on out there, rather than the outrage that the rest of us are being horrified. We actually know that you are not personally accountable, unless and until you are. Most of us don’t want to ban all firearms.
And I would really like you to stop being defensive about gun ownership when children are slaughtered.

Of course I am horrified when anyone is shot let alone children,it sickens me someone snapped and started shooting innocent people, I suggested maybe it was time to ban the sale of new AR15s, and mandatory register the ones that are already in public hands, but you ignored that.

^^Do you own an AR15?

@JLeslie No I do not, it’s not my type of rifle I have shot one at the range but have no desire to own one, and up here they are highly restricted.

^^ So that’s kind of the answer. Nobody thinks restricting those kinds of rifles in the US is the whole solution to the problem of mass murder but we have to start somewhere.

AR-15 and M-16 rifles are to kill humans ! ! !

@janbb Did you not read where I said it might be time to ban the sale of new AR15s?
And register the ones that are in the hands of the public now?

Also these rifles are quite expensive, you can get SKS, or AK style rifles a lot cheaper and they have a military style to them as well.

I am frequently surprised, by people choosing that specific firearm, for a mass casualty event, or recently in an assassination attempt.
It just illustrates that people who do things like that, aren’t any better educated on firearms than most anti-gun people.

As I’ve said in past posts, the 5.56 × 45 mm round (what an AR-15 is chamberedin,) IS a NATO round. The round, was made for military purposes initially. There are a LOT of different firearms chambered in that caliber.

Almost all bullets, initially have a military purpose.
Once the rounds are mass produced, gun companies make firearms that use the round.

From your grandfather’s hunting rifle, to the most popular handguns, their ammunition has it’s origin in military use.

There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of firearms, that could duplicate or outperform an AR-15’s performance.

As far as shooting at “soft targets,” in a surprise attack, practically any firearm will be deadly.

The AR, has developed a reputation for mass shootings.
But. It’s not unlike saying we should outlaw all German Shepherds, because they usually are guard dogs or used with police and/or military. MANY dogs, have the same capabilities.

@MrGrimm888 I was initially perplexed as well. Anti-gun people fixate on the AR-15 because mass shooters have. It has become the scapegoat. You can’t explain to non-gun people that there is nothing special about it. It’s just a rifle. It’s a huge clue that it’s the one mass shooters go to. There is no reason for it other than it’s what they see on the news and US gun-murica f-yeah culture glorifies it. The act of the way they’re reported seems to create a social contagen effect. That’s the only context it makes sense. Mass shooters would do better with pockets of handguns, or long distance with a hunting rifle… Etc. They keep going to this. If we change the reporting/narrative can it change things? Clearly the effect is real.

“Mass shooters would do better with pockets of handguns, or long distance with a hunting rifle”
No, they would not. The only thing the pistol has over the AR is concealability and manoeuverablility in tight spaces, and calibre for the hunting rifle, which is irrelevant for soft targets at nearly point blank distances. In every other metric, both the pistol and hunting rifle is worse.
Pistol:
– less accurate
– less powerful
– lower mag capacity
– more reloads required

Hunting rifle
– lower firing speed
– lower mag capacity/more reloads
– for many models: no detachable magazines, so you have to reload round by round or with stripper clips.

@SQUEEKY2 we want you to be outraged with us. Are you?

And again, as you can see, it’s more important to discuss the technical merits of guns than it is to discuss why people are killing other people.

At least we know our fluther friends.

^It doesn’t matter what the subject is, on Fluther, you need to know what you’re talking about or you lose credibility. It’s that simple.

I’m fine with banning selling AR-15s, but what do we ban next, when a different firearm is used?

Is there a problem, with wanting people engaged in this debate to understand what they’re talking about?

@SQUEEKY2 If you don’t own an AR15, why are you taking the discussion so personally when the main upset on this thread is firearms that rip through human being in a way that is almost sure to cause lethal damage of multiple people in moments?

It’s not an attack on gun owners, we are trying to stop these mass shootings.

It’s true that there are people who can’t understand needing or wanting a gun and wishes there were very few guns in the hands of the citizenry. I have lived in places where guns are not part of every day life or conversation at all and I have lived in places where it was very normal to own a gun and talk about going shooting, and the two groups from the extremes really have no idea what it is like in the other extreme community.

@ragingloli You’re not a gun person. You’re someone who has read a little. Pistols are accurate at the distances they’re used. You can carry a bunch of them. Magazines are available with high capacity, they reload fast etc..etc.. nothing spots a shooter faster than a white dude walking around with an AR. Hunting rifles do have detachable magazines, can fire semi-auto are more powerful, more accurate…. I really don’t care if the AR-15 is banned. It does nothing though except give people a feel good sense of accomplishment and a false sense of security. Then there are all the other platforms like the AR-15 that are not even being talked about that do the same thing but just are not being used….yet. We can ban the AR but more is going to be required if things are going to stop. Why is that so hard to understand.

@Blackwater_Park but it’s a start. You appear to be saying “it won’t solve the problem, so why even try?”. Which seems like an erroneous point of view.

I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that this takes the focus away from things that may actually make a difference. Banning the AR-15 is just feel-good legislation.

@Blackwater_Park We can argue all day or we can look for facts. I just did a search for mass murders during the assault weapon ban and every one of the reports cited a decrease.

Here’s just one report from the NIH. Nobody’s saying it’s the only solution but it seems like a good starting point along with a ban on bump stocks.

Do your own research. I’m not sure why this is the hill you’ve chosen to die on (pardon the metaphor.)

Your link is broken. I’m trying to tell all of you that there will need to be additional actions taken. This no hill to die on. There was never any assault weapons ban. It was just on paper. The same rifles were sold less a couple of cosmetic features. The “ban” did nothing. If it really did go down it may have been a coincidence, cooked numbers or more likely, the other factors that I have been talking about earlier.

Please Google it yourself and read all the many reports that said it did make a difference. I feel like you’re in tin hat country now so I’m out.

I’ll give you the search terms even “mass murder rate during assault weapons ban.”

And one last comment, nobody is saying that other measures aren’t necessary. Nobody.

@janbb Please look into what the “assault weapons ban” actually banned. It’s not tinfoil hat stuff.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8103291/

@janbb

Read @Tropical_Willie‘s link y’all

^^ Actually my link but I broke it somehow. Thanks TW!

Here’s the actual link that janbb posted: https://www.fluther.com/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8103291/

@Brian1946 and just why did you need to do that @Brian1946 ? I said already that I had gotten it wrong. Why be a snot?

Sorry, jan.

I meant no criticism or insult. I only intended it to be information that might be useful for future link formation.

However, I can see how it makes me look like Sheldon Cooper.

I’ll flag it for removal.

BTW, one of my own unsuccessful attempts to create a labelled link was publicly corrected.
It annoyed me, but now I use tinyURL a lot.

@Brian1946 You are forgiven!

@Blackwater_Park This is the unfortunate issue, with anti-gun people. They don’t seem to want, to understand.
Sadly, it is their lack of credibility by willful ignorance, that hurts their cause the most.

Terrance Howard made some internet buzz, by challenging a lot of current science, with his own ideas on the Joe Rogan podcast.
He essentially made a fool out of himself.
Many scientists came forward, to call Howard’s ideas out as complete nonsense.
He attended a follow-up interview, and spoke to an actual scientist on air.
Howard couldn’t understand why nobody would listen to his ideas.
The scientist explained that Howard was too ignorant about the subjects he was trying to talk about, to even start a conversation.
Howard challenged (or didn’t understand) very basic concepts of mathematics. An example was that there is no such number as 0. He argued that 0 could not be used in any mathematical equation.
The scientist tried many times to explain to Howard, that he couldn’t even really talk to him about his theories, because he is trying to have these conversations with people who do understand mathematics.
No scientists would speak to Howard about his ideas, because he refused to admit that without a basic understanding of math, there was nothing to talk about.

Howard was never rude, or angry. He is not stupid, either.
But. It’s hard to listen to someone talk about something, when they clearly don’t know what they are talking about.

Example.
Ft. Hood (American military base,) 2009.
Nidal Hasan, a US Army Major, and psychiatrist, using a semiautomatic pistol was able to kill 13 troops and injured over 30 others.
This shooting happened on an active US military base.
An M-4 rifle, would have been the equivalent of an AR-15, and likely available to the shooter.
Although the M-4, is considered obsolete by US military standards. Mainly because the military needed a better rifle for use against people with modern body armor.
Instead, he used a pistol.
He had to reload multiple times, but it’s much faster and easier to change magazines in most pistols, than with most rifles.
A former colleague of mine, knew people who were present at the shooting. Witnesses said, the guy was able to pop new mags in, before the spent ones hit the floor.
This was no school, or mall, it was an active military base.
The shooter WAS taken down by an M-4 (leaving him paralyzed.)

This shooting, illustrates multiple facts that are relevant to this conversation.

The pistol used, was an FN 5.7.
This pistol is chambered in 5.7 × 28 mm. Smaller than normal handgun rounds, and less capable than the larger more frequently used 5.56.
The 5.7 × 28 mm round, is a cold war round. Designed for use against Russian armor 30 years ago. The bullets are expensive, and would have been hard to find back then.
The point, is that (as most firearms enthusiasts know,) it’s not the firearm, it’s the person using it, that is the biggest factor.

This man, with training, and a good knowledge of what he wanted to do, did NOT choose an M-4, M-16, or privately owned AR-15.

I’ve already commented that if Trump’s would be assassin, had chosen a better weapon than an AR, he likely would have succeeded in killing him.

This is VERY similar, to the nation’s “Pitbull” issue.
Most people can’t even pick a pit out of a line up of similar looking dogs. I guarantee that most on this thread couldn’t differentiate an AR, from an M-4.
But. You want one of them to be illegal…
Your elected leaders, who talk in front of congress about gun control, are similarly ignorant. Which is why, we haven’t gotten very far with this.

I took some time and tried to “research” this issue under the lens of someone who is not part of the firearms community. I.E. someone without any real knowledge. It’s surprisingly hard to get good info. I’ll try not to write a wall of text but let’s start with the 1994 FAWB.

Semi-automatic rifles with two or more features:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash hider or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher
So what happened after the ban? They used a standard stock or added a “thumb hole” removed any bayonet mounts or threaded barrels. Like this
The only part that had any real teeth was limiting magazines to 10 rounds, but in all respects, it’s the same firearm. None of those features really mattered.

Next were pistols with assault weapon features:
Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
Threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, hand grip, or suppressor
Barrel shroud safety feature that prevents burns to the operator
A manufactured weight of 50 ounces (1.42kg) or more when the pistol is unloaded
A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm

This really only banned a couple of guns that were not common and generally poorly regarded. Semi-auto pistols were all still perfectly legal.

Finally:
Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
A fixed magazine capacity over 5 rounds
Detachable magazine

This affected basically zero shotguns outside of a few rare items. Objectively speaking, the FAWB did practically NOTHING and most recent studies showed that the effects were “inconclusive” The wikipedia page is pretty spot on.

The only thing they got right was going after capacity by limiting magazines to 10 rounds. 30+ round magazines are worthless to most recreational shooters. I personally hate them because they’re bulky, you can’t shoot from a rest because they get in the way and frankly, they’re used in mass shootings. There are so many out there now though. They’re cheap and easy to make with a 3d printer. It’s just a piece of plastic with a couple off springs. Future band need to surrender these.

@MrGrimm888 The very few things I really am an expert on shock me with the misinformation that is “common knowledge” online, especially on YouTube. We are living in a strange time where information can’t be casually trusted anymore. Perhaps we never really could and have just awakened to that understanding.

^Agreed. The internet, is a double edged sword. Always has been, and probably always will be. Misinformation, and misinterpretation of available information, are rampant.
The fastest spreading “news” is whatever has been shared on social media by those who usually use such “information” to back their preconceived notions.

The restrictions you mentioned, were indeed useless. They also illustrated, that the motivation behind much of the banning was how a firearm looks. Black rifles, with pistol grips, and they even went after flash suppressors, or anything that looked scary.

The magazine cap of 10 rounds, only was relevant for new firearms. Aftermarket magazines, and preexisting high capacity mags, were VERY available, even without the internet. I remember in ‘95, my father and I purchased a Ruger P-94 (pistol,) and it had two 10 round magazines that it came with. The next month, a trip to a gun show provided us with 15 round magazines, for very cheap. I’ve since traded the pistol, and if I recall, we still have a small collection of 10 round magazines, from that time period.
That seems to elude the anti-gun folks’ understanding of the firearms world. The fact that there is simply a MASSIVE amount of firearms and parts, that are in circulation, means many laws, are difficult to impossible to enforce.

“Gun guys,” also are a lot that doesn’t care for government overreaching. If I had a nickel for everyone who told me they’d hide their firearms, if they were made illegal, I’d be a wealthy man.
Admittedly, I wouldn’t turn in my firearms either.
If they were ALL made illegal today, it would be impossible to recover all the guns in circulation. I can’t even imagine how such a law would be enforced. They’d have to search EVERY place in the country five times, and they would probably just have to shoot it out, with a lot of country people who would rather die than relinquish their firearms.

Simply put, we can’t just eliminate guns, from the equation.

For those who support gun control, or want more, it behooves you all, to have representatives who know enough about firearms to make effective legislation.

Banning AR-15s, but not say a wood stock Mini 14, is pointless, as they both have near identical performance and capabilities.

BWP said it right, that this AR-15 issue, is “not the hill to die on.”

High capacity magazines, would be a realistic thing to address, but we would have to really think about how to do it so it has an actual impact on mass shootings.

It’s not just anti-gun people, who need educating. I’ve seen about a million tictok videos of dumbasses with 30 round clips in compact pistols, and apparently the streets don’t teach kids much about safety, maintenance of a firearm, or simple things like all magazines don’t fit in every gun.

High capacity magazines, are bulky, and most are unreliable, as they aren’t made by the manufacturers of the guns they are being sold to fit.

The big snail/drum mags, I see would be pretty difficult to use for an everyday carry. But. I think, if you want a 30 round capacity, you are stepping out of the handgun market.

Switches, bump stocks, and some of the collapsible semiautomatic rifles, just shouldn’t be legal.
But. If the same ol’ people who don’t know anything about guns make new laws, they will likely be ineffective, and make “gun nuts” that more worried about their rights.

The last attempt by Feinstein to reintroduce the FAWB exempted the Mini 14. SMH, the next day mini 14’s would start being made at every price point.

^Oh, I’m aware.

That was just the first weapon that popped in my head.
Arguably, the .223, wouldn’t be as “hot” as the 5.56, but it could put multiple rounds on target, quickly, and I know they have 20,25, and 30 round mags. Speaking of off brand large capacity magazines, I believe that there is a 100 round mag for the Mini 14.
I could argue, that the Mini 14, is less likely to malfunction, and unless the AR is piston driven, it is more susceptible to weather and the environment.

The Mini 14, doesn’t have the pistol grip, and isn’t all black.
Otherwise, functionality wise, they are almost identical.

THAT’S why people, need to know what they are talking about…