I must say that I am agains guns with a quick rate of fire and/or a big clip, more than say 20-25 bullets.
This is the second time I've seen this in this thread, so I feel like I have to address it now. There's a lot of buzz about so-called 'assault weapons'. When Bill Clinton signed the 1994 ant-crime bill into law, he told us it would make us safer. Diane Finestein (sp?) told us these were the guns of choice for criminals, and that no 'real sportsman' has any valid use for them. Even the name itself conjures up images of fully-automatic rifles, spraying bullets all over the place.
The reality is that none of this is true.
After Bill Clinton signed the law, he commissioned a series of studies to determine the effects of the law. It personally strikes me as odd considering that he claimed to 'know' that this law would make us safer, but he did it anyone. When one of the early studies came in around 1997 or so and revealed that there was no solid evidence indicating that the law had done much of anything, the rest of the studies were cancelled. I don't know why Clinton cancelled the other studies, but the simple chronology of the events should be enough to get you thinking.
If we listened to the politicians who wrote and sponsored this bill, people like Chuck Schumer and Diane Finestein, it would sound like these weapons are everywhere on our streets; these guns are the favorites of criminals. Drug dealers, gang members, even pimps are hiding these things under their fur coats, albeit plated with gold and encrusted with rhinestones. Of course, this is also a little white lie. Just a little one. Turns out these guns were used in about one percent (1%) of crimes. The reality is that rather than using $800 AR15s that are three feet long, criminals have a tendency to prefer cheap, concealable handguns.
Consider the other side of the story, that no sportsman has any use for these. I have met people that have turned AR15s into great long-distance varmint rifles, though, which is great for those land-damaging pests who tend to be very shy of humans. Far from being the inaccurate bullet-hoses that groups like the VPC and the Brady Campaign protray them as, these are very nice rifles capable of extremely accurate fire. There are a great many after-market accessories available for them that give the user a great deal of choice in terms of putting together a rifle that works best for them in their situation. While the .223 round is considered a bit too marginal for deer, I've met plenty of people here in Kansas who tell me just about perfect for coyotes at fairly close ranges. And the lightweight, accurate AR15 is a great platform for that round.
What about the AK47 pattern rifles? Those are scary-looking guns. In America especially, they've become associated with Communists and terrorists, but even these rifles have their place. The round they use, 7.62x34mm, is ballistically similar to 30-30 Winchester, meaning that with proper bullet selection it can be used to take deer in relatively close ranges, like the woody areas in the Ozarks. The rugged reliability and solid construction of these rifles combined with the affordable price (Around $300 or so) means that you can trek these guns through places you wouldn't bring your $600 Remington brush gun, and you can be confident that they'll function flawlessly as you do it.
A lot of sportsman use these weapons: even Bill Clinton did a hunting photo op with a shotgun in an 'assault weapon' configuration just weeks before the ban was enacted. So much for that claim.
It seems unlikely that these politicians would want to ban these weapons for no reason. With a name like 'assault weapons' it seems like these
should be fast-firing, powerful guns. Once again we see that reality is different than the picture that politicians paint for us. These guns fire no faster and are no more powerful than other perfectly legitimate hunting firearms. In fact, both the AR15 and AKM patterned rifles fire
less powerful rounds than deer rifles. Something in .308 or 7mm-08 would kick the crap out of an AR15 in terms of the amount of energy the projectile has. And your expensive Browning hunting rifle fires just as fast as any AR15 or AKM you can buy in a store. There is functionally no difference between these 'assault weapons' and many other guns not banned by the bill.
It is true, though, that there is a good reason these guns were banned. Here's the dark secret in the whole thing: it was politically feasible. Government studies have indicated that there are 44 million gun owners in this nation. Since the vast majority of those are voting-eligible adults, politicians who support gun control have to tread lightly. I'm not speculating here; this isn't guesswork. Diane Finestein, the senator who helped author the assault weapons ban, came on 60 minutes and said if she could have gotten the votes to ban every gun in America, ("Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them in" were her very words) then she would have. Instead of writing legislation that she knows wouldn't pass, she picked a group of guns that look scary and get hyped up in Hollywood. She helped create this fictional class of weapons because they were guns she thought she could ban. At this point, it's just about the only motivation that makes sense.
But here's a chance to show your quality. These politicians lied to us: when they told us the ban would makes us safer, when they told us these guns were the choice of criminals, when they told us that no sportsman would use them. They count on the fact that the electorate is a gullible audience that won't research the facts on their own. Do the research. Look at the studies, and look at the facts. Then you'll see through the bullshit and the hype.
