The Terminology Of The "Assault" RiflePosted By Rod Kaufman |
I think its lethality, as demonstrated by the plethora of mass shootings associated with it, is the point. The AR15 type rifle is lightweight and controllable, carries a high capacity mag, and is effective for mass killings at distances as evidenced by the mass shooting in Vegas wherein 60 died. The Vegas perp, who killed himself, was reportedly armed with multiple AR15s, including one made by Daniel Defense, maker of the AR15 used in the Uvalde massacre. While you may be correct in that the reason people buy them is because of the way they look, that's the same argument that could be made for other types of military weapons that appear equally menacing but aren't available for sale to the public...Originally Posted by James Brown
Hi Rod, Mel, Greg, James, Rich and everyone. This long discussion of the relative lethality of the AR-15 style rifles is interesting, but I think it misses the key point. School shooters favor the "assault rifle" weapon not because it is particularly lethal. They favor it because it looks bad-ass and they are almost universally copying previous school shooters who used this weapon, like Klebold and Harris at Columbine. The magazines are nice too - how many movies feature a hero or villain dropping a spent magazine to the ground while clicking in in a fresh one? The answer is virtually every action movie or shooter game ever made.
Much of this was in the Secret Service report Rich posted a few weeks ago, which was really informative.
I would bet anything that not a single school shooter of all time knows a quarter as much as you guys do about guns, shooting range, stopping power, the lethality of various rounds and so on. They don't care about that stuff at all. These shooter want to extract revenge on their alleged oppressors, and they usually want to commit suicide and achieve infamy by taking out as many innocents as possible, in as dramatic a fashion as possible. So they want bad-ass looking guns. Again, see the secret service report. So they copy the endless succession of school shootings featuring AR-15 style rifles. These are the weapons that look menacing in the movies and video games, and these are the weapons chosen by Klebold and Harris. The magazines clip in and out dramatically. That is about it as far as weapon choice goes for the school shooter.
So, is it legit for society to regulate an otherwise fairly normal gun because it looks menacing, just because it is the gun favored by copy-cat school shooters? I think this is a legitimate line of debate and I think both sides can make good points. Arguing about the actual and objective lethality of the AR style rifles kind of misses the point, in my opinion.
Jim
