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So this just bans that "style" of rifle? Someone can just go buy some other semi-automatic rifle that doesn't look as imposing or whatever but will still kill a person just as dead? I don't really get what this accomplishes other than inconveniencing people who already own one of the guns this prohibits.
Several northeast states passed kneejerk legislation of this type in the wake of Sandy Hook. Common sense gun legislation that provides a pathway to purchase for those without red flags without violating the privacy of owners would be nice, but neither Democrats or Republicans are capable of passing any such legislation. Republicans want no regulation at all while Democrats want to score points in a punitive culture war.
The AR platform is high modifiable, has a nearly infinite number of configurations, can be customized to meet just about any need, and is easily the most widely available sem-automatic rifle on the market. This makes the barrier for entry (to being a mass shooter) much higher.
It really doesn't. AR-15s are everything you said, but just because you take this one specific model rifle it off the market doesn't mean there aren't thousands of lightweight semi automatic rifles that are cheap and just as capable to buy instead. They might not be the gun owner's version of LEGO, but they're just as available and just as lethal.
If someone wants to be a mass shooter they have unlimited options in the USA. AR-15s are just so common you see them more. Starting this decade about 1/4 of the firearms produced in the USA are AR-15s.
If 1/4 the cars sold in the USA were Corollas because they're cheap and easy to drive, would banning Corollas in Maryland reduce car wrecks? No, people would just drive Camrys or Civics or whatever and still drive like idiots.
Read the law before you assume what it says.
https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2013RS/bills/sb/sb0623f.pdf
It doesn’t take “one specific model” off the market, it redefines assault weapon in the text of the law to include any weapon with certain features.
Well, it defines assault weapons rather than redefines. As that wasn't previously any kind of classification of gun. Just a scare term that politicians liked to use similar to "super predator".
I mostly agree with you (see my other comments in the thread). I was just explaining it from the perspective of the Maryland lawmakers. Although, you're not entirely correct. It appears that the law is a lot more broad than the title would lead you to believe
If that's true, then it would be reflected in statistics about states with AR15 and magazine bans. I wonder if that's really true or if it's just a matter of being used in attacks because it's the most common (just like the most common vehicles are probably involved in more crashes - it doesn't mean they are unusually dangerous compared to other cars, just that there's more of them).
ARs make up a significantly higher percentage of gun sales than they do in gun deaths or homicides.
It's just posturing, really. It's the kind of gun legislation that gets liberals excited, but probably won't actually change much in the long run
If you buy guns based on looks, you shouldn't allowed to own a gun in my opinion.
Every gun should be legally required to be neon pink. If you're using it for sport shooting or hunting or even self defence it wouldn't matter.
According the language of the actual law the answer is either "no" or "not really, no". The law calls out a couple dozen aspects of firearms that precludes most of the "style" concerns. The biggest one is a limit on magazines only containing a maximum 10 rounds. While, yes, 10 rounds can still do lots of damage, it requires more frequent reloading, more chances for error, greater amount of encumbrance of the shooter. Assuming a shooter was using a gun that complied with this law, it would allow more opportunities to intervene or for people to get away.
You'd think that if someone was about to slaughter as many people as possible they wouldn't really be to worried about a 10-round mag law.
By that logic, why should anything be illegal?
That doesn't follow logically at all unless you think a society with frequent mass murders is a foregone conclusion.
Well it doesn’t matter what you make illegal, because criminals will just get it anyway. That’s why every other country has the exact same gun death rate as the USA, even though guns are illegal in most of them, right?
I'm not saying don't try to stop mass murders. I'm saying do it in a way that makes fucking sense. This part bans make no fucking sense, especially when they don't grandfather in for existing owners. I wish we would put all the effort spent on supporting these piecemeal measures into pressuring legislators to provide access to a good education and medical / mental health services for everyone as I'm convinced lack of those things are the source of the violence, but all this stupid system can do is take from people and it bothers me to see people jump on that train so willingly when it happens.
Especially at a time where government agencies are committing acts of escalating terror against the population, like we're seeing with ICE. It's just so tone deaf.
You must be right since every other country who’s already solved this problem solved it in the way you’re saying doesn’t work.
You’ll never convince me that guns aren’t the problem, because places that don’t have guns don’t have the problem. The evidence is thoroughly and definitively not on your side.
There are literally dozens of countries that allow private ownership of semi-auto long guns with a permit (Canada is one of them - I see your home instance is .ca), many of them don't even require a stated reason. The legal difference in the US is that one of our founding documents specifies access as a right. Access to guns is not why we're a violent county. We're a violent country because we're a genocidal settler-colonialist racial slaver society with no health care and piss-poor education. If all of our guns were to poof vanish tonight we'd just have more euro-style mass knifings in our schools and department stores. This shit is like water pressure, you can put your thumb on the hose with piecemeal measures but it's going to burst out somewhere else so long as it's still flowing.
Ok, let’s try it and see if you’re right.
The second amendment has four clauses, each separated with commas. The way I interpret it (the way it was originally interpreted for over 200 years) is that it guarantees states the right to maintain well regulated militias of its citizens, and that the federal government can’t take away the firearms of those militias.
It’s only relatively recently (2008) that we’ve reinterpreted the amendment to basically forget about the first two clauses and the third command. That’s why the NRA only has the second half adorning their office buildings.
The text:
How I interpret it:
How republicans interpret it:
The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
I think you misunderstand. I'm not trying to stan the 2A. I'm trying to point out that the US is not at all unique when it comes to private access to the sort of gun that Maryland has banned.
Europe doesn't even have a lot of stabbings either, you see that more in other continents outside Europe/NA. In Europe people just use a car to drive into society ....
You're missing the point of these laws entirely. No one is saying that passing a law like this is going to remove every possible avenue for someone to get the most destructive gun on the planet and do the most damage possible.
What these laws are intended to do is make it less likely someone will have access to the most destructive gun on the planet. If someone plans multiple years ahead, they can go to the far ends of the Earth to get the most destructive gun possible. However, if they got pissed off at their boss that morning and decide to commit this kind of crime they'll only have wants available to that morning. If they were a legal gun owner when the day started, that means they'll only have 10 round magazines at most. Even if they drive to the local store nearby, they'd only be able to buy more 10 round magazines.
Lets even say that higher capacity magazines are available in the next state over. That may mean hours of planning and travel just to get to the other state to get the high capacity magazines, then all the time it takes to get back home to commit their crime. That's a lot of time for someone to consider what they're doing, the impact it will have on others, and even their own lives.
Will some still do it with all of that planning and bother needed? Yes. Will everyone? Doubtful.
That seems like an awfully fringe and roundabout improvement for a law that ruins the fun for everyone else. But I guess this is the flip side of the same leadership that's engineered a society in which so many people decide to be mass murderers in the first place.
Ruining the fun? That seems to be an incredibly weak argument for gun proliferation. I can see an argument for strong 2nd Amendment proponents as the Constitution grants rights and freedoms, and restrictions on those granted in the Constitution could be a pathway to a bad place. However, I can also see an argument that the evolution of firearms has outpaced our society's safe use of modern firearms and that the freedom of victims of gun violence are also having their even stronger Constitutional rights restricted and spirit of our nation with the Declaration's "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". In this conversation I'm not advocating a position either way, but I can see the valid arguments on both sides.
In neither one of those is "ruining" the fun" even a fraction of a thought to consider. You do you though.
Have a good night.
Why, you have an issue with fun? You have an issue with a society where everyone can pursue their hobbies to the fullest extent, and find enjoyment in them? Do you not think it's possible to provide responsible restrictions on firearms in a way that doesn't prevent one from going out into the woods on a weekend with friends to merely enjoy nerding out on the intersection of machining and marksmanship? More importantly, do you not find it justified to argue for rights from the goal of having a good time? Fun isn't covered in the constitution per se but I think this falls under the old "If I can't dance, I don't want to be a part of your revolution".
Yeah, firearms have been the top cause of death of children in the US for years, but wouldn't want to ruin the fun for you.
And before that it was cars, Detroit just had better lobbyists and didn't use them to shelter Russian intelligence assets. Cars continue to get larger, faster, heavier, and with higher raised bumpers because fuck pedestrians.
There have been several mass shootings which were stopped when the shooter stopped to reload, and a bystander was able to intervene at that moment. Limiting the capacity saves lives.
Gun advocates like to mock those who want to ban military-style guns, while other hunting rifles with the same capacities are still available, but that misses the point. If both guns were the same, why are nearly all mass shootings done with military-style weapons, and are NEVER done with standard hunting rifles?
Something that is never discussed is the psychological effects of military-style weapons, in both the shooter and the victim. In general, mass shooters are people who feel weak, abused, outcast. A scary black gun makes them feel powerful in a way that a standard hunting rifle doesn't. In addition, that military-style gun is scarier to their intended victims as well. It forces them to fear the shooter, something the shooter craves.
Military-style weapons may not have any more practical characteristics than a standard hunting rifle, but it's psychological effects are much stronger.
Most mass shootings are done with pistols though...
This is accurate, and before anyone else downvotes I challenge you to google that shit. Homicides in the USA involving rifles are only 3% at most of the total. About 80% of mass shootings involve the use of handguns, while only 20-30% involve rifles (some crossover due to multiple guns used in events).
Maybe it isn't discussed because ARs are also the most common rifle in the U.S., and for at least 10 years now, the cheapest non-22LR. It's hard to know how much of a role the psychological factors actually play when "easy to obtain" is a significant one of them.
"Easy to obtain" is also the part that is easy for legislation to address, while vaguely defined and hard to measure "psychological effects" requires significant effort just to understand, let alone implement the required social safety nets and induce cultural change to address the root causes.
Pretty much!
Illegal:
Perfectly Legal:
"But, but, you can't shoot a lever action as fast as a semi-auto!"
https://youtu.be/n68PJM5bazM
https://youtube.com/shorts/CUb8iza_iuc
If you don’t see the difference between a trained professional plinking with a lever action .22 and a 20 year old mowing down 20 kids and 6 adults with a semi-auto assault rifle, you’re hopeless.
A 20 year old firing indiscriminately is a 20 year old firing indiscriminately. There's no effective difference.
Let me put it this way, which gun would you rather have in a gunfight?
Mass shootings are rarely gunfights.
Maybe both should be banned. Personally I don't like having so many people armed with weapons that allow them to easily kill people.
It accomplishes fewer people dying.
And no, it doesn’t just ban a “style” of rifle. The law does ban specific models, but also defines what makes a gun an assault weapon. If a gun has the features outlined in the law, it’s considered an assault weapon, regardless of the style.
You can read the text of the law here:
https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2013RS/bills/sb/sb0623f.pdf