IMHO, it would be darn near impossible to completely ban the AR-15

[Kaleva]

That's because the AR-15 is not just a rifle. It is a highly adaptable platform.

It can be configured to fire dozens of different calibers. Anything from .22LR rim fire cartridges to .410 shotgun shells including pistol ammo. Here is a partial list of the different rounds the platform can fire:

.410 shotgun
.50 BMG
.22LR
9mm
.40 S&W
.45 ACP
.50 Beowulf
7.62x39mm
5.7x28mm
6.8 Remington SPC
6.5 Grendel
.223 Remington / 5.56x45mm

Here is a link to a more complete list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AR_platform_calibers

One can buy a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle or a pump action AR-15 style rifle. Very, very few people are talking about banning pump action rifles. It should be noted that one cannot turn a semi-automatic into a pump action or vice versa without significant skills and the tools and parts to do so.

Here is a picture of a pump action AR-15:

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Then we just get to shrug our shoulders

and pretend to be surprised every time another massacre happens.

Only in America.

[Atticus]

2. Which of those would be safe to fire into a room full of six year olds? nt

[krispos42]

5. According to some people, the ones not "assault weapons".

It's not a hardware problem. The hardware is a distraction from the deep-seated and very profitable causes of these events. Treating it as a hardware problem is guaranteed to fail.

[yagotme]

16. All of them, why.

As long as they are wearing proper hearing and eye protection, and you DON'T AIM AT THEM, they would be fine.

[Atticus]

17. You obviously have WAY too much time on your hands. nt

[yagotme]

18. I'm here, aren' I???

[Comatose Sphagetti]

3. "IMHO, it would be darn near impossible to completely ban the AR-15"

That's what I thought about Quaaludes.

[Squinch]

4. Yes. They tried it in Australia, and look where that got them. We should just give up.

It's too hard, and the next couple dozen people slaughtered and the couple dozen after that and the couple dozen after that are just not worth the effort.

[krispos42]

6. Let's look at what it got them.

We live in a very large and populous country. A person gets murdered here an average of every 35 minutes.

Of those 15,070 per year, 11,004 are with firearms.

Of those 11,004 with firearms, 7,741 were with a gun known to be identified as a handgun, rifle, or shotgun (the balance are either "other guns", or the type of gun was not noted or not identified).

Of those 7,741 victims that were killed with a handgun, rifle, or shotgun:

• 91.8% of them were killed with a handgun
  
• 4.8% with a rifle
  
• and 3.4% with a shotgun.

Over five hundred people have been murdered since the school shooting in Florida on Valentine's Day two weeks ago.

On edit:

Forgot the link! https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4.xls

[Squinch]

12. I'm not sure why you are giving me those statistics. You know my post was sarcastic, right?

You know I don't really think that dozens of lives are not worth the effort, right?

[AtheistCrusader]

19. Are we going to apply the 'dozens of lives' standard equally to all human-death related issues?

Because that gets exciting in a hurry.

[GaryCnf]

7. I am pretty sure that the restrictions

sought on the AR, and indeed all high capacity semiautomatic rifles, are directed toward the very specific and limited goal of reducing the number of victims in random mass shootings.

That end is not nearly so unattainable as banning them. It begins with limiting the number of rounds which can be placed in a detachable magazine. As anyone who has hunted waterfowl knows, this is a restriction which has been around for decades in the context of other firearms without even a whimper that it constitutes a "taking" from a constitutional perspective. It ends by banning manufacture or importation of any weapon capable of accepting a detachable magazine OR of holding more than, say, 5 rounds in a fixed magazine.

[leanforward]

8. I'm an advocate of the 2nd Amendment

with the understood weapons: Bow and arrow, black powder/muzzler loader. The Industrial Revolution brought us the lever action, bolt action, pump action, and revolvers. Sounds like the old west.

You raised questions about magazines. In RVN I had a basic five-20 round mags for my M-14 (without a firing switch), in case Charlie decided to come into the base camp. Anyone knows that on auto, the recoil causes the barrel rise.

That was warfare. (Didn't a young son kill himself when his dad let him fire a full auto weapon at a gun club in Massachusett in the last 10-15 years?


We are not in warfare. We are a polite and civil society? Magazines holding more rounds than permanently attached magazines should be banned. As I understand, pump action shotguns have plugs to limit rounds for bird hunting.

Ban the AR-15 and any similar weapon adapted from warfare weapons. Likewise, ban the ammunition. As I now understand the rounds cause considerable damage to the body. Why would you want to hunt with something that causes you to discard the meat when dressing out the carcass.

[gejohnston]

9. The AR generally uses

the 5.56 NATO aka the .223, which is far less powerful than the .308 round used in the M-14 and M-60. In fact, the 5.56/.223 round can't be used for big game hunting (regardless of the rifle in question, since there are bolt actions that use it) because of its low power. For hunting (in Wyoming) detachable box magazines is limited to five rounds.

As for pump actions (3 rounds) is a hunting regulation, not a gun control law. If some pundit/demagogue/propagandist makes a claim, it probably isn't true.

In MA, the kid killed himself because he couldn't control the climb.

[friendly_iconoclast]

11. How does this sound?: "I'm an advocate of the 1st Amendment"

"with the understood means of 'speech': Quill pens, and hand-cranked printing presses. The Industrial Revolution brought us the high-speed offset press, telegraph, and radio"

It makes little logical sense to declare that the Second Amendment only applies to what was applicable in
the 18th Century, when all the rest of the Constitution is generally held to apply in the current day.

Ban the AR-15 and any similar weapon adapted from warfare weapons.

You do realize that all weapons were 'adapted from warfare weapons', don't you?

That includes *all* of those that you intimated were suitable for public ownership in your post.

[flotsam]

10. A "pump action AR15"

is not an AR15.

[Kaleva]

13. Did I say it was?

[yagotme]

15. There are bolt action rifles made on the AR platform,

you just switch out the upper, and you have a bolt action.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=yfp-t&p=bolt+action+ar+upper#id=4&vid=cfbbd1f2b7b034a61d124d7956c38ef1&action=click