Aurora Colorado Violence

Well, you can only fire, like, one at a time. It takes two hands, after all. Why should I care if a guy has a whole crate of AR-15's? How is that going to make him more deadly than a guy with one? Now, if he's selling those weapons in a way proscribed by the hundreds of state and Federal laws that regulate the sale of firearms, that's certainly a problem. But he's already breaking the law. So besides his arrest for his crimes, what else do you do? Ok, but how do you pass a law against proliferation? Either they're legal to own, or they're not. You can't pass a law against something being popular. People like the AR-15 because it's a reliable, versatile, accurate firearm, but other than being a good rifle there's nothing special about it. And Mitt Romney owns far more homes than he could possibly have any use for. Most gyms have sold far more memberships than anyone has any possible use for. The problem is, there's no law against owning something you have no use for. If you think it's dangerous for people to own an AR-15, you have to explain how you're going to stop people, when "AR-15" is just the brand-name of a certain model of .223 caliber rifle. I don't own even a single gun. Not a one. I don't think owning one would mean I have a bigger dick than you, or anything like that. There's no "alpha male" going on, here. And the more I see your "anti-gun" side is really just a paroxysm of inchoate fear and rage. You don't know anything about what you're talking about, and you've simply chosen to assume that any time a person uses a gun to commit murder, that the government has failed. That there weren't enough laws, and if we'd only passed this law or that one, all future tragedies would have been prevented.You can't really think it works like that. Just because something is against the law doesn't mean that people will stop, or that we'll be able to catch them when they break it. And again, Americans have a constitutional right to own firearms. That's an enormous obstacle for gun control - legitimate uses of firearms are protected by the highest and oldest law in the land. The same principle does. The AR-15 is nowhere near as deadly as a missile battery, which is why it's legal to own one. Your inchoate, unreasonable fear of firearms is causing you to exaggerate. I disagree. The founders always intended Americans to be able to keep and own weapons they could use against invading armies. In fact, at the time of its ratification the Second Amendment protected the ownership of weapons more accurate and deadly than those carried by armies. The .50 caliber Pennsylvania Rifle was a far more effective weapon than the .75 cal Brown Bess carried by the British infantry.

Ridiculous. Bump fire, the AR-15 can fire much faster than the average person can pump his finger. 15 rds per minute is the average accurately fire semi-automatic weapon. Accuracy is not needed in a movie theater with dozens of people. In addition, finger fatigue would slow him down. The world-record holder shoots revolvers only because firing an automatic or semi would not be competitive. There is very little skill involved in rapid firing these weapons compared to that of a manual handgun or rifle. I am not talking about a specific grip or mere cosmetic differences. I am talking about rate of fire. Your wrong. Actually it did but the gun manufactures circumvented the law. The problem was the law was not strong enough as the VPC states above. I agree that the ban was ineffective as I said above. The gun is similar to the M-16 with minor procedural changes (bump fire) or minor modifications ( which can be circumvented to make it as fast if not faster than the fully automatic M-16 as the video yourself attached earlier showed. Even, the military rarely uses the M-16 in fully auto. In the Navy, we train with it in burst mode usually.

Similarly, one assumes a certain amount of risk by choosing to reside inside the United States. The Second Amendment is hardly a secret. But many feel that the benefits of living in such a nation outweigh the risks - just as the benefits of having roads and road transportation of cargo, goods, and people outweigh the risks caused by their negligent operation. Then that's a failure of imagination on their part. We don't justify freedom by popularity contest. Many people require and deserve freedoms that the majority of people do not intend to exercise. For instance, hardly anybody runs a newspaper. Is that a justification for overturning the freedom of the press?

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And the more I see your "anti-gun" side is really just a paroxysm of inchoate fear and rage. You don't know anything about what you're talking about, and you've simply chosen to assume that any time a person uses a gun to commit murder, that the government has failed.
  —Crashfrog

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Yeah, that's it. I'm just ill-informed. I'm just weak and timid and haven't made up my mind yet. That's it. That's why I apparently, at least by your account, have "chosen to assume that any time a person uses a gun to commit murder, that the government has failed."We were going okay up to this point, I respect your opinions, and I do NOT suggest any ban on your right to bear arms. I have stated my opinions, which I think may hold a little more weight than you're giving me credit for, given that I have lived for over a decade in BOTH societies (USA/UK - with their almost diametrically opposed attitude towards firearms), but you have me all figured out.Bedtime for me now, thanks for the chat. In future could you try not to put so many words into my mouth please? My jaw is sore.

Agreed. But again, why does the average citizen need a semi-automatic weapons that can fire much fast rate of fire for a longer amount of time than a manual weapon. What is the purpose?Again if you are going to limit magazine why not limited weapons that increase lethality to greater numbers of people. It is much harder to disarm someone with a semi-automatic weapon with a large magazine and higher rate of fire than one that with a manual handgun is it not? Why are they more accurate? Because they are modeled off of military rifles, that is why. That is not a need. That is an unjustified want in my opinion. Public safety is higher than this desire for an 'accurate' weapon IMHO.

No, some of us believe that reregulating areas of public safety outweigh someones want to have a cool military toy. Has nothing to do with fear (from someone who fires weapons on a regular basis in the military).Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

Bump fire modifications to rifles are already illegal. Also you may be familiar with the practice of "fanning" a revolver, which is the world-record fastest fire rate of a singlefire weapon. Handguns are faster than rifles. That's just a matter of physics. Well, unfortunately an attack on any group of people in a controlled-access environment with limited exits is likely to injure or kill more people than an attack in open ground. But it's already illegal to fire on a crowd of people in a movie theater. It's already illegal to fire an AR-15 with the intent to murder someone. It's already illegal to own a tear gas grenade. It's really fucking illegal to rig your own apartment with explosive booby-traps. None of the above laws dissuaded James Holmes from doing all of that. How would one more law have changed anything? And the AR-15 doesn't have a particularly high rate of fire, as I've demonstrated. But, fine, let's pass a law restricting the ownership of a weapon capable of a high rate of fire. Pick a number. What is it? Ok, so how do we measure the rate of fire of a weapon that has no cyclic firing mode? Do we just go with the highest theoretical rate of fire? If I toss a box of ammo into a bonfire, all the rounds go off at once. Does that make a bonfire a machine gun? No more than it's "circumventing the law" if, it having been made illegal to drive a truck, you drive a car instead. "AR-15" is just a brand name. If we passed a law against iPhones - say, people got tired of buying apps - do you think Apple would just give up and go out of business? No, they'd immediately release the Apple uPhone. Is that "circumventing the law"? That's a pretty loaded way to describe to-the-letter compliance with the law.Flawed legislation isn't going to solve the problem. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to expire precisely because it had no effect, precisely because banning a certain appearance of a gun does nothing to save any lives. Well, ok. How would you make it "stronger"? How do you get over the problem that there's no such thing as an "assault rifle"? How do you make the law any stronger until you can precisely define what it is about guns like the AR-15 that, in your view, makes them uniquely and unacceptably dangerous? Owning something that is similar to something the military uses is not inherently illegitimate. The military isn't a different planet - they do things that civilians do, as well.

Fuzzy on the concepts is a bit more accurate, I think. For instance you've called for "stronger gun laws" but what is that supposed to mean, and how would a stronger law have stopped James Holmes, who had already broken two pages worth of laws by the time 12 people were killed?Why isn't the law against murdering people sufficient? Because people are still murdered? Maybe not all problems can be solved by laws.

What attitude? The attitude that the Second Amendment actually exists and still counts?

Are you saying there are NO restrictions to freedom of press much less any other freedom (i.e. freedom of speach). Of course there are.
Can you publish anything you want without restriction? Of course not (i.e. slander, inciting violence and unlawful activity, etc). The question is balancing freedom with moral responsibility and the public good. It is a balancing act. All of our freedoms are restricted in one way or another. Why should the right to bear arms not also be restricted (in fact it is, you can't buy an RPG from your local gun shop).

Semi-automatic weapons are more reliable, more comfortable, and more accurate than bolt-action rifles. And in the United States, we don't require that someone need something before they're allowed to buy it. I'm sure you own all kinds of stuff that you don't need. Some of it is probably even quite dangerous. I don't understand this. Again, handguns are far more dangerous than AR-15's, based on the number of people who die by them, but you all are focused on this single type of gun because it looks like something soldiers carry.That strikes me as an incredibly stupid thing to be worried about. An unloaded AR-15 also looks like something a soldier carries, but is completely incapable of harming anyone, unless you use it like a baseball bat. I don't see how it's any harder at all. And again, if the number of shots fired is the key danger, that holds no matter what type of gun we're talking about. Hence, I support a ban on magazines larger than seven rounds.My proposal has the advantage of complete legal clarity - there's no quibble about how much "seven" is, or what a "magazine" is. Your notion of banning "assault rifles" founders on the critical problem that there's no such thing as an "assault rifle." How is the public any safer in a world just like this one, except that you can't legally buy any gun labeled "AR-15"? Do you think Colt would go out of business, or simply release the exact same rifle under another name? Hint: what did they do under the previous Federal Assault Weapons ban?What law could you pass that would have prevented the Aurora tragedy? Be specific. Why does it matter what gun 12 people were killed with?

Certainly there are legitimate restrictions. But there's still a lot of damage you can do with a printing press, because the laws that would prevent it would also prevent a great deal of legitimate exercise of press freedom.And again, it's already illegal to murder people in a movie theater with an AR-15. The exact thing that happened in Aurora, CO is already against the law. What further laws are necessary? How can a law physically prevent you from being able to break it?

The AR-15 is not a "cool military toy." It's already illegal to fire an AR-15 in a movie theater full of people. What other laws are necessary? Be specific. How can the passage of a law physically prevent anyone from breaking it?Not everything can be prevented by a law.

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For instance you've called for "stronger gun laws" but what is that supposed to mean, and how would a stronger law have stopped James Holmes

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Again with this putting words into my mouth business. Please quote the portion of my comments above that called for "stronger gun laws". When you find yourself unable to do this, please remember that... and try in future not to assign me with statements that I didn't make.

Fine. I guess I was just supposed to understand that you were calling for the proliferation of firearms in the United States to be reversed by magic, or something.