The *seventh* person is ‘less shot’ if the shooter is shooting with a gun with only six bullets.

I get that in a mass shooting situation something that is slower to reload and/or has lower capacity might (and I stress might) in some circumstances result in a lower body count. However, because we're in agreement that mass shootings really shouldn't govern how we look at this, I don't see how that's relevant to what a person can legally purchase for self defense. The self and home defense issue is what I was responding to.

Well, *shotguns* (Firing shot) don’t go through drywall, at least not any reasonable manner. In theory, if you hold them right against the wall and shot, they would make a hole in the other side, and if someone was literally leaning against that wall, they *could* be injured, but practically speaking, from any logical distance you might accidentally hit a wall while aiming at someone (Call it five feet), shotguns do not go through walls.

However, I keep saying the term ‘high velocity small caliber’, and for someone who seems to know a lot about guns, you keep sorta skimming over me saying that.

While slower, larger bullets *can* go through walls, they lose more momentum, and are more likely to start tumbling and causing less damage. High velocity smaller caliber just cuts straight through them.

On top of that…these sort of rifles also are basically *designed* for people to fire repeatedly, very quickly. They have less recoil, they have less trigger tension, they are designed that you can fire more shots than with a traditional rifle. A traditional rifle, a 308 for example, you aim it, you pull the trigger, the person is down before you can aim the thing again and fire. With AR-15 style rifles, you pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, and you’ve put two bullets in them and three through a wall.

I think where we differ is on how much the issue of penetrating a wall matters when we're talking about what should be permitted for home defense. By the time we're at a point where deadly force is legally justified we're already talking about a very dangerous situation.

I also think you're discounting why it is people would want a high velocity, small caliber weapon for home defense. It's precisely because you can get those multiple shots off to stop your assailant in a platform that's easy to wield. To me that's a feature, not a bug.

I’ll assume you’re conceding my point that rifles are pretty stupid for *self* defense, as opposed to home defense, because you can’t actually carry a rifle around ready to go.

Would it be practicable for me, and where I live, and the types of threats that may or may not be out there? No, it's not something I would chose, but my life isn't everyone's life and my circumstances aren't everyone's circumstances and I am therefore hesitant to say that it would never be reasonable. I'm also probably the wrong person to ask. Even if I lived somewhere that it wasn't nearly impossible to carry a handgun legally for self defense it's not something I have any desire to do.

Interestingly, in Maryland it's legal to openly carry a long rifle but very difficult to obtain legal permission to carry a handgun so under the law in my state there are times where a long gun could be your only option if you feel you really need something.

Only because we have created devices that shot so quickly that people don’t have to. Which is, as I pointed out, entirely counter to the idea of self-defense.

The law does not say you have to pause. However, the law could easily say ‘You have a use a weapon that *forces* you to pause.’. Or, rather, not only could it say that, it actually should, if we believe in what we’ve said about self-defense.

On this we'll just have to disagree. I think that being able to get those shots off could be essential for self or home defense. Trying to force a slower rate of fire on people who are lawfully using deadly force is not a worthwhile trade-off for me.

‘Largely’ because 90% of a gun is, in fact, a grip for people to hold. Asserting we’ll be 3D printing them is like asserting that because a flash drive is mostly plastic, we’ll be 3D printing those soon. No, we won’t, because they have a crucial bit that *isn’t* plastic.

There are already companies out there working on this. Just because they might never match up to a firearm with metal parts doesn't mean they'll never get to something capable of firing a few hundred rounds before coming apart.

Erm, no, that’s pretty much what everyone who looks at the issue says: Explosives are much much harder to get than they used to be, and you are very likely to trip over the BATFE while getting them. I’m not going to bother to argue with you over this, but if you think criminals can just switch to explosives, you are wrong…in addition you’re, weirdly, being deliberately stupid, because we both know, and have already said in this discussion, the *actual* problem is normal gun violence of individuals being shot in the streets, not mass shooters. Random gangbangers aren’t going to switch to explosives!

I think we might be getting into a disconnect because of the numerous topics. My reference to explosives was only about your reference to a mass shooter limited to revolvers and/or very low capacity magazines. I don't think that explosives would ever be used in what we (sadly) would have to classify as routine criminal violence. I think it might be something that someone determined to cause mass murder for political reasons or due to their own insanity would explore.

Regarding the government, to me that's just an appeal to authority. Of course they say they're successful at what they do, and maybe they are but no law enforcement protocol is going to catch everything.

I didn’t say anything about ‘honor’. They don’t want to be involved in mass shootings or terrorism because the police will *track them down and arrest them*. A handgun used in a crime, shrug, could have gotten to the criminal any way. An assault rifle….maybe spend the time tracking that down. An *actually illegal weapon*. Yes. Track that down.

I don't think I'm the one postulating that the market would change. If the guns they're selling now that are legal generally but illegal for the particular purchaser become illegal the black market is not going to just stop dealing in those weapons.

Regarding Australia and the UK, I don't want to get too much into link trading (I'm not Australian or British so all information is limited to what I happen to come across), but contradicting the success stories you do also see stuff like this:

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2015/11/10/australias-secret-gun-problem-exposed/

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/police-reveal-277000-guns-scotland-6529023#FjdEvHzmtOFK6FEz.97

Customization of weapons is not a constitutionally protected activity.

I've never argued that it was, nor did I say hunting and target shooting were. This was in response to your implication that rifles on an AR platform are useless for any legitimate purposes. The contours of what activities involving firearms are constitutionally protected will probably be developing for years as courts interpret Heller and McDonald. If your point was just that there's no clearly established constitutional right to own an assault style weapon then I agree, no court to date has gone that far, and with the current federal court decisions I'm aware of I don't think they ever will. That doesn't mean that bans are effective or desirable.

People should feel free to use rifles for that. What they shouldn’t feel free to use is rifles with detachable magazines.

Why that arbitrary distinction? Is a person any less shot if they're shot with a magazine loaded handgun? A revolver? A shotgun?

Considering it is *literally not legal* to shoot at people to defend property in Baltimore (Or, really, anywhere. Sometimes you’re allowed to brandish a weapon at people, but nowhere, not even Texas, allows you to actually shoot people who are running down the street with your TV.), I find this statement baffling.

I should have been more specific. The context is a business about to be destroyed, in certain instances attached to homes. I agree that it is not legal anywhere I am aware of to shoot someone running away with stolen property.

And, no, as I have pointed out, assault-style weapons *should not be fired in homes*, at least not if there’s anyone else nearby that you *don’t* want to shoot.

No guns should ever be fired in a home and if you're at the point where that is happening then obviously things have gone terribly wrong. However what gun precisely is it that you could never miss your target with or which couldn't theoretically go through dry wall or hit another person? Some ammunition is safer than others (at least in terms of going through walls) but there's no sure thing. There is nothing unique about assault style weapons in this regard.

Likewise, I do not understand how you think they work for ‘self-defense’, by which is traditionally meant ‘walking down the sidewalk’ or ‘sitting in McDonalds’. No, an assault rifles will not come in handy there. Even if that was considered perfectly normal and didn’t cause any sort of problem with surrounding people…the only way to carry a *rifle* is strapped to your back, which renders it *much harder to use* than a handgun.

I'm talking about assailants in your home or on your property. Whether or not they're practicable in other situations is something that could be argued forever but carbines are built with close quarters in mind. Also this issue about other people in the area is hardly unique to these weapons so I don't know why you keep repeating that. Anyone can miss and harm a bystander with any gun. Just ask the police.

You’re only allowed to use deadly force when people are an actual threat, and you have to stop when they aren’t anymore.

Which means, yes, you’re *supposed* to actually judge if they are a threat *between* your use of force.

The question isn’t how having a slow rate of fire is legal to restrict people, the question is actually ‘How the hell is it legal for someone to unload an entire 10-bullet magazine into someone, even in self-defense?’. That is not how self-defense is supposed to work.

This is contrary to what any person trained in self defense will tell you. You shoot the assailant until the assailant is no longer a threat. There is a point under the law where it becomes illegal to continue to use force against a person who was a threat but is no longer. I am unaware of any law (at least in my home jurisdiction) that requires a person to pause and re-evaluate after every shot fired in self-defense.

…not sure why you’ve started talking about ‘semi-automatic weapons’ all the sudden. While revolvers (for some reason) are often excluded from being called semi-automatic, I did mention I don’t have a problem with rifles with internal, smallish magazines.

I'm talking about them because your original proposal (while admittedly leaving room for ambiguity on this point) suggested banning all handguns except for revolvers. Revolvers are not considered semi-automatic. My point was that signing legislation into law wouldn't make all of the semi-automatic handguns out there disappear. As for the 3D printing technology, give it some time. There already are weapons out there that are built largely from plastic.

No speed loader can *possibly* beat even slightly skilled people with quick-detach magazines. It’s like saying ‘If you ban cars, people will just get really good with bikes’. Well, yes, some people are *really* good with bikes…and any idiot who knows how to operate a car can still go faster.

I'm not talking about in a gun fight. I'm talking about a mass shooter, doing what mass shooters do. Go to places with large masses of unarmed people and start shooting them.

You may have noticed that large bombings have completely vanished. This is due to the BATFE doing their job, which they started doing in earnest after the bombings of the mid 90s. The last ‘successful’ bombing had to use dumbass pressure cookers, the shittiest bombs ever, but the only ones they could get, and they managed to kill just one and half person per bomb, despite the bombs being in a crowd of people. Those were, in terms of killing power, statically placed *grenades*, not ‘bombs’.

I think this assertion is meaningless because it's impossible to prove or disprove. It's like saying that we haven't had another 9/11 style attack involving commercial airliners because the TSA has really gotten their act together. No one knows that. It's entirely possible that the lack of bombings in the United States is a combination of the fact that there just aren't that many lunatics out there and blind luck.

The black market in weapons is not some magical place where weapons appear out of thin air. Most of them, in the US, are stolen, and thus the black market in the US consists of legal guns being sold illegally. Moreover, the black market gets rather tetchy about supporting obvious terrorists and mass shooters. Someone they don’t know shows up, they’re perfectly fine selling them some stolen, legal, handgun. They are somewhat more dubious about selling them an outright illegal weapon that is obviously going to be used to shoot up a place. Not out of any moral grounds, but because that risks their entire business.

In fact, looking at the evidence, this is obvious. Howso? Because there are almost no *fully automatic* weapons on the streets of the US. Those are illegal, so they don’t get stolen, and would have to be smuggled in or hacked from existing weapons, and being outright illegal, they are way hotter than the black market wants to deal with.

Like I said before, this is right down the rabbit hole of speculation. I guess no one knows what that black market would look like, and maybe you're right, there would be some sort of honor among illegal arms dealers regarding who they're willing to sell to. However that contradicts the experience other countries have with much stricter gun laws. All you have to do is google UK or Australia illegal arms trade. There are plenty of people in those countries who are willing to sell firearms that are completely illegal to whoever has the money. I don't see any reason to believe that they somehow know the intentions of every person they sell to, or that it would be different here.

First, I appreciate you laying that out and I think I see where you're coming from now. I'm going to start by saying I disagree with you on a fundamental principle; that being that mass shootings should be the basis for whatever regulatory scheme is put in place around firearm ownership. Despite the media attention they're still very rare, and very unrepresentative of what gun violence looks like in America. For me, you're already starting in the wrong place.

Regarding assault-style weapons, your opinion about its legitimacy for any given activity is just that, an opinion. I won't deny that there are people out there who fetishize guns positively who are particularly attracted to the aesthetic, just as I think there are people who fetishize guns negatively who are particularly repulsed by it.

The AR platform is popular because of its reliability and ease of customization. There are plenty of legitimate activities from target shooting to hunting small game you can use them for. I don't hunt but I have heard the same sentiment from old school hunters, that using those types of rifles is silly. They are entitled to their opinion but, again, I don't think any distaste that may or may not exist among a certain cohort of hunters is the sound basis for the policy.

Regarding self-defense, I would respectfully disagree that these rifles have no place in that role. Just over a year ago Baltimore was consumed in protests and riots due to the death of Freddie Grey (for what it's worth my sympathies were with the protesters but there were quite a few instances of random violence and destruction). In those types of situations an assault style weapon is well suited for defense of self, home, and property. Yes, civil unrest on that scale is very rare (and I don't think that's the only time an AR would be useful for self-defense), but then so are the mass shootings that you'd base your gun control regime around trying to prevent.

On the issue of rate of fire, I think your position contradicts your implicit belief that self defense is a legitimate reason for firearm ownership. I don't see how you can say it's legitimate for a person to have a weapon to defend themselves, but then also say that the only ones they should be able to legally obtain are those with slow rates of fire and minimal ammunition capacity, i.e. those that aren't necessarily best suited to the purpose. There's also the more basic issue, of how we get there from here given the large number of semi automatic weapons in circulation and the capacity to create semi automatic weapons using 3-D printing technology. To me, any regime that doesn't have a good answer for that, isn't workable, regardless of whether or not is constitutional.

On the issue of preventing mass shootings, and what might or might not have happened in a particular incident if we exchanged the weapons used by the killer for others, I see that as all speculation. Maybe the person only had revolvers but was able to do similar damage by becoming good with speed loaders. Maybe the person did something with explosives. Maybe there's no change at all because the person was able to obtain the exact same weapon on the black market (those AK-47's in the Paris attack last year came from somewhere, after all). This is already a huge post so I don't want to delve much further but I think we're barking up the wrong tree when we mistake the means of causing mass murder for the reason episodes of this nature occur.

I can only speak anecdotally on that. I would just say I find there is a difference between what gets said in debates about gun control and what's said after a day at the range or driving home from the gun show. The sentiment I run into most is that more court cases are at best, a very risky prospect.

Fair point. I was thinking in terms of power/shooting functionality. As I gather from your posts you know the magazine issue isn't just these types of rifles, since it includes most handguns. I look at those as separate matters for purposes of this discussion because they'd be separate laws or separate parts of the same law.

I'm not following you. My point was only that Heller probably isn't the watershed for gun rights its occasionally portrayed as, nothing more. Most intelligent gun owners have already caught on to that.

That there's no principled distinction between a 'hunting' weapon and an 'assault style' weapon was explored pretty thoroughly on the other thread. I also don't see what the proposed handgun trade in program would accomplish.

Our media does a very bad job at analyzing the experience in other countries. It trumpets the success of the measures in Australia and the UK without ever acknowledging the fact that these were countries that never had gun violence problems comparable to the US to begin with. They also seem to conveniently miss the stories you periodically see about how easy it remains to obtain an illegal firearm in major British cities. There was a story I recall from a few years ago where a British gun smith was converting replicas with relative ease then selling them for a few hundred pounds on the street.

I was mostly with you until you brought the NRA into it. They have powerful influence on the hill but I don't think it has much to do with why sales spike or even why it's a cultural issue. Sales spike because people who see firearm ownership as a right are worried it's about to be taken away or greatly restricted. GCAs may in some instances pay lip service to the right to bear arms but I think it's clear that most don't really believe it or are so ignorant about firearms and related policy that their intentions don't really matter.

The problem is a trust deficit. I've said before that their are new restrictions I'd be willing to live with but I find it impossible to distinguish between GCAs who really believe there's an important political right at stake and those who see every regulation as a means of frustrating the exercise of a right that they don't believe anyone should actually have. I mean, would you say NARAL's cavalier attitude about the poorly run abortion clinics that are out there is somehow related to the pro choice movement's hostility to new regulation on clinics that provide abortions? I think you'd rightly say such a claim is absurd.

It doesn't need to overturn itself. Scalia's opinion leaves plenty of room for all manner of burdensome regulations. I think Heller was probably a high water mark for the 2nd Amendment in constitutional jurisprudence that can ultimately be read very narrowly (i.e. the state cannot completely ban possession of handguns for self defense in one's own home). The real fight will always be in state legislatures.

No idea what the police can or can't access in the street but when Maryland law changed and I got my HQL I had to identify a regulated firearm purchased under the old regime to be grandfathered out of the training requirements. That supports the assertion that there is some list out there, though I'd imagine it's kept by the state police. I share your worries that whatever it is could easily be abused.

Who knows what will happen over the next two years but I wonder how history books will look at Brexit. Western democracies are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy due to decades of serving the elites at the expense of everyone else. I'd be surprised if voters dont find more ways to send the establishment the middle finger here and in Europe in the near future. Maybe this is the first piece of good news Donald Trump has had in the last couple weeks.

I don't think it's that weird at this point. After 8 years of Obama it's been made crystal clear that Democratic opposition to Bush era security policies was purely opportunistic and unprincipled.

@kazzy a little late to the party but I'd sign on to that.

I hadn't heard of Alex Jones before but I just looked him up. I do not in any way subscribe to those types of conspiracy theories. That said I don't think the two issues are unrelated. We could list numerous factors that have gotten us where we are with the police. The biggest ones in my opinion have been legal (chipping away at the 4th Amendment in the name of fighting the drug war, LEO bill of rights, qualified immunity, deferential judges, etc.) but there are also a lot of cultural attitudes in play.

I think many progressives are quick to identify the dominant conservative narrative of the police as Jack Bauer or other fictional characters, bravely crossing the lines for the greater good as the silliness that it is. What I think urbane, middle class progressives (the types most interested in more gun laws) fail to identify is their own weird cultural view of law enforcement. It's one where the police act as a sort of separate species of citizen, doing the type of dirty work and handling moral quandaries about use of force that they would never do themselves, but which they absolutely rely on. Both views in my mind are equally pernicious and have helped get us to a place where the police are corrupt at a systemic level, regardless of how many good cops are out there.

This comment is just plain blind to history. There are numerous examples of black people exercising their second amendment rights to protect themselves from racist vigilantes and violent crime when the authorities couldn't be counted on to do so. The fact that there are a lot of conservatives out there who support gun rights but also believe that the way law enforcement is currently undertaken in poor, minority communities is justified is not an argument for curtailing rights. I mean, where do you think the hammer will really fall with the creation of new criminal laws related to firearms? I'm pretty sure it won't be on those who the armed agents of the state already treat with kid gloves for fear that they might one day demand greater accountability.

Now I agree that a lot of the stuff coming from certain political corners about resisting the government is fantastical hogwash and any government will always have a substantial advantage in arms and the means to do violence. However there's nothing liberal about pretending that providing the government as it currently exists with a monopoly on arms would be an unmitigated good. Jaybird's point as I understand it is perfectly reasonable in this context. It's not about some bullshit ultra-right fantasy where a bunch of Clint Eastwoods defeat a corrupt government with AR-15s and glocks. It's about whether or not you want everyone forced to rely on institutions that protect people like these officers to maintain order, and whether or not it's reasonable to believe they can be trusted to use their power in a manner that is fair and just for everyone.

@kazzy and that's exactly why I think the debate is so intractable. The way I try to present my perspective to people who disagree with me is to compare it to abortion. When conservative politicians talk about safety regulations on abortion clinics those, including myself, who are pro-choice are rightly suspicious of what the intent really is.

One thing that I think your waive the magic wand hypothetical needs to include for it to be something I'd consider would be equally large scale disarmament of law enforcement and maybe even to some degree the military. There's something very ironic to me about watching Obama's calls for gun control as though the chief executive of our government has any sort of moral standing to solemnly condemn armed violence.

What you're saying is in many respects true. In addition to what Oscar said, another issue is being able to wield the weapon effectively. Rifles built for bringing down large game are typically bigger, heavier, and, in my experience, take more practice to be able to use effectively. They are not built for defending yourself from an assailant in close quarters.

I think you have to keep in mind what getting unreasonable would look like in this country. We aren't only talking about regulating here, we'd be creating a new series of criminal offenses and incarcerating even more people. I see no reason to think that repeal of the 2nd Amendment and replacement with a large number of new criminal offenses wouldn't play itself out along the same class and racial lines our current criminal justice system does, replete with violence and new reasons to curb civil liberties.

The types of gun control proposals out there I think put far too much faith in well-meaning legislation and take too little consideration of what law enforcement actually looks like in America. In addition to putting the guy on the corner of the ghetto who sells weed because there arent many other options in jail we'd now be adding the single mother who keeps a firearm in her nightstand because she lives in a bad part of town where the cops won't come, even if they're called. Much like prohibition if drugs we're trying to treat the symptom (gun violence) instead of the cause (generational poverty and economic exclusion).

I will say I'd be open to certain new regulations (I am a firearm owner) but I think that the gun control crowd is largely arguing in bad faith. It makes it very hard to compromise.

The probation report I think is the big missing fact in the discussions I've seen of the case. The sentence was consistent with that recommendation which, as I understand it, was based at least in some part on statements made by the victim during her interview which seemed to oppose substantial jail time.

I still see plenty of room to disagree with the sentence and criticize the arbitrariness of the system but it provides important context for why the judge sentenced the way he did.

Changing the subject is exactly the point of the accusation. You don't even need to be an anti-Zionist to wonder why it's in the interest of American citizens for our government to give cover for Israel's construction projects in the West Bank.

I think that sentiment is well intentioned and see utility in it to a point. It'd be impossible to try to address the racial disparities in this country without listening to the people who are most often victims of them. However youre also assuming that black people arent just as capable as everyone else of holding irrational fears or other misconceptions about where threats lie.

You're absolutely right about where they got it from. Whenever this topic comes up, as frustrating as I find the college kids themselves, I think the real culprits are the people who raised them to be both so afraid and so narcissistic. The administrators who cater to it are just doing what all the other authority figures in their lives have always done.

Maybe it's just those memories of seeing self proclaimed members of the KKK brawling it out on Jerry Springer back in the 90s but I had a similar reaction to the IU story. Given the reality of what the Klan is now I struggle to see how anyone could see those few remaining adherents as anything other than absurd.

I don't endorse any conspiracy theories either but I do think this idea of learned helplessness doesn't serve anyone well except those with power. Why people who claim to speak for the marginalized are so eager to play into narratives of fear and danger is baffling to me.

I'm sure they'll start policing their side for anti-semitism the same day the Israel can do no wrong side starts policing their own for making spurious accusations of anti-semitism to stifle legitimate policy debate. That is to say, never.

I actually think that, absent a major and unforeseen shift in how America views it's relationship with Israel, this will not hurt either Cuomo or Schumer much politically (if at all) on any stage.