Gun Control and Regulations

That's my point. You're the one insisting that regulating specific features or types of weapons is difficult. Automatic weapons don't count because... why? If it's possible to regulate automatic weapons, why can't we regulate things like high-capacity magazines?

1) I'm not attacking you, I'm disagreeing with your assertions.

2) Why is rate of fire any harder to regulate than automatic fire? You make it illegal to own a weapon capable of firing more than X rounds per minute, the same way we made it illegal to own a weapon capable of firing more than one round per trigger pull. It'd be harder to implement (you'd need a mechanical limiter that physically prevented the weapon from firing too quickly, rather than just "you can't sell Tommy guns anymore"), but the legislation itself isn't any more difficult than legislating any other complex topic. We legislate on complex topics all the time. What makes guns uniquely un-legislatable?

I certainly never suggested that gun legislation can't be done poorly. My point is that it can be done well. So the solution is "write good legislation", not "legislate something else entirely".

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Trying to restrict rate of fire de facto requires confiscating every gun that currently exists. Again, one of those theoretically possible but completely pointless to attempt exercises. Because in the end, if a gun has recoil and you aren't too fussed about aim, then by holding it the right way you can have the recoil reset the trigger without moving your finger—so you automatically fire again.

What bump stocks did is make it easy. The DoJ also said it was going to classify them as machine guns and the manufacturer stopped making them (no idea if either of those stuck,though)

Edited by RainehDaze on Nov 12th 2018 at 10:54:52 AM

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I kind of think arguments about gun control can't really get anywhere because we have so little concrete data about the issues thanks to the fucking NRA. Meaning a lot of the arguments are more emotional than centered on facts. And that is not a recipe for reasonable productive debates.

Before we can have any meaningful discussion about gun control and regulations, we need to a) remove the roadblock to research set up by the NRA and b) work up enough collective national interest to be willing to actually do something.

Personally I'd also suggest getting rid of the 2nd Amendment, but that's a huge can of worms and really unrealistic.

Disgusted, but not surprised

I’m not sure what point you’re even arguing now, you just seem to want to disagree with me.

Going down the list; I’m in support of automatic weapons bans, but again, that’s a feature that’s much easier to regulate than non-automatic fire rate. Not every feature is created equal, some are more complex or useful to regulators than others. To add to that, the ban on automatic weapons still actually did leave loopholes for simulations of automatic fire.

At no point have I claimed that guns are un-legislatable, in fact I’ve claimed the exact opposite several times which you seem to have missed entirely. What I have claimed is that guns are a uniquely difficult topic to legislate on, which is true.

Requiring all guns to have a mechanical limiter complex enough to bring the fire rate down any meaningful amount would be a frankly ridiculous and almost unenforceable law, which circles back to my main point that you continue to happily ignore. That point is that legislating by fire rate, or OAL, or cosmetic features like pistol grips is an overly complex solution that doesn’t work as well as a simpler one, like strict regulation and permitting at the point of sale. What you suggest basically boils down to “work harder”, my point is that we should be working smarter.

They should have sent a poet.

I'm trying to get you to make an argument in defense of your position rather than just insisting that your position is correct and leaving it at that. You're saying that regulating this would be less successful than regulating that, so I'm asking you what the difference is and why one is harder than the other.

For example:

This is not an argument, this is an assertion. You are not offering any reasoning for why this is true, you're merely saying "this is true" and acting like that settles the issue. It does not. I disagree that it's true, and I've offered counterexamples to your point as evidence that it's not true. Your response was to dismiss my example because it was a "notably easy feature to regulate"... which was my exact point. Why is that feature easy to regulate but other features are not?

Or this:

The claim that guns are a uniquely difficult topic to legislate on was what I meant by being "un-legislatible". Obviously, it's not literally impossible to write legislation on guns — we've done it before. But you're claiming that guns are harder to legislate on than a bunch of other complex topics, and I'm asking what makes you think that. Your response was "because it's true", which is entirely unhelpful.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I’d suggest you actually reply to what I’m saying, rather than what you’ve been doing which is consistently putting words in my mouth.

The reason limiting non-automatic fire rate is difficult has been explained to death and back in this thread, so your “I just want you to explain yourself” tack is odd. It’s almost entirely dependent on user skill, meaning that any mechanical limiter (for example, making all firearms single action) could still be operated in excess of the legally specified RPM. Even if a simple solution was found, enforcing it would be essentially impossible, similar to how difficult it is to enforce current OAL restrictions, and would require a bureaucratic expansion beyond anything the ATF could provide. That’s all on top of the fact that the technical language required for that regulation would almost inevitably leave loopholes that would be exploited in short order, and on top of the fact that fire rate isn’t really a factor in the severity of gun crime. Considering all these difficulties, why bother with legislation like that when there’s much simpler legislation that could achieve the same ultimate effect?

Your replies are disingenuous and you’re clearly not arguing in good faith.

They should have sent a poet.

Actually, you haven't. You just keep saying "you don't understand the technical aspects" and then distract by pointing out that one aspect in operating a gun is training. Well, yes, but no matter how much you train, you won't suddenly have more bullets in your magazine, and to act as if exchanging it or the weapon wouldn't cost time is just dishonest.

For the last time: magazine size is not fire rate. They’re completely different things. Top conflating the two.

I’m in support of magazine size caps.

They should have sent a poet.

What words did I put in your mouth?

My suggestion from the start has been to include a mechanism in the firearm itself that physically prevents the action from cycling faster than is legally allowed. This negates the problem of user skill entirely because the gun physically cannot fire faster than allowed. You've consistently ignored this suggestion.

The rate of fire thing is also a digression that you keep diving down for some reason. I don't think that rate of fire is particularly important — my suggestion was magazine capacity and the use of removable (rather than fixed) magazines.

So while we're changing laws, we improve enforcement capability. That's a challenge, but not one that can't be overcome.

These are assertions rather than arguments again.

I'm asking you to justify your claims rather than just making pronouncements. That's not disingenuous or bad faith.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Are you just going to ignore the point that a mechanism that would physically limit the fire rate would require confiscating every gun in existence right now? If you can do that, then you could ban guns outright and it's therefore not a practical regulation.

There's also the interesting question of how mechanically feasible it is to introduce some sort of time restriction into the part of the weapon that relies on smooth operation to reset (and in many cases clear the barrel, load another shot...)

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This is some “why don’t they build the whole plane out of the black box” level nonsense.

You’ve made zero effort to engage with my points.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 12th 2018 at 9:31:34 AM

They should have sent a poet.

Regulation of that sort typically grandfathers in existing models, it would just be illegal to make or buy a weapon that doesn't conform to the new standards after a certain date.

Fair point, but I'm not a gunsmith. I imagine that it would be possible, but I have no idea how hard it would be. Still, my point was never that regulating rate of fire is a good idea or something that I support, just that it's entirely possible to write legislation doing so in a clear and consistent manner.

Says the person who picked one part of my post to respond to, so you could dismiss it by calling it "nonsense" without making an argument for why it's nonsense, and ignored the rest of the post.

Your point, as I understand it, is that regulating specific types or features of firearms ineffective and unenforceable, so the only recourse is to regulate gun owners rather than guns. I gave an example (the National Firearms Act) where regulating specific features (automatic fire) worked quite well (automatic weapons are no longer used in any significant amount of gun crime). You dismissed that example as not counting without explaining why. I asked why. You ignored the question and accused me of bad faith. I asked what I had done in bad faith. You ignored the question again and called what I was saying "nonsense" without explaining why it was nonsense.

If you want to get the conversation back on track, I would suggest that you explain why you don't believe that the National Firearms Act is a valid example of effective legislation of a type or feature of firearm, and/or why we can't apply that type of legislation now when we could then.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Don't ban the gun. But, make it impossible to legally use any form of insanely unnecessary rapid-fire penis extension (with extra bling).

Sure, you can own it or inherit it. As long as it's stored properly and doesn't have ammo, you're golden. But, the minute you purchase ammo, take it out of storage and go out to use it... you'd better have the correct paperwork.

Licence guns. Licence accessories you can put on guns. Fine and imprison those who ignore licences, terms of use and insurance.

Make being Mr Tacticool bleeding expensive on top of almost impossible to do thanks to the number of licences just to have half the tat attached to the poor, innocent piece of engineering that never asked to be affiliated with the number of insecurity issues that wants to use it.

In time, people will get trained out of some horrible habits, simply because it's not worth the bother of owning a pure penis extension (and trying to justify the bump-stock, night-scope and gold plating to the insurance company as "a necessity during the boar hunts I almost never go on").

Those who can and do prove a need to have and own a carefully considered tool they regularly maintain and use responsibly: different story.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 12th 2018 at 7:07:47 PM

Probably the only way to do it would be the electronic triggers mentioned above. A mechanical method would be borderline impossible, and would likely fall victim to people just working it faster. Some countries have tried mandating single action only and things like that really just didn’t pan out. Usually the issue is that the letter of the law will be violated by someone simply operating their weapon quickly, which leads to litigation over the law.

I’ve explained the issue with the NFA a bunch of times so I’m not going to rehash it, but I think we should be going with something more like what Germany has where technical or “feature” restrictions are fewer but guns are harder to get to begin with.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 12th 2018 at 12:04:35 PM

They should have sent a poet.

That's more or less how it already works with automatic weapons. They're not straight-up banned, they just require a lot of expensive paperwork and licensing to legally own. You can get them, if you're really determined and have the cash to spare, but they're out of reach of most people — by design.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Interesting study that came out last month on the lack of effectiveness of California's gun control laws to reduce firearm homicide and suicide. Once again, it's lack of governmental enforcement and incompetence that ensures what we have isn't effective.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1047279718306161

That's actually one of the main issues with gun safety in the US: most gun parts aren't considered, well, guns. The only bit that really legally counts as a "gun" is the part that holds the serial number - usually the lower receiver. Everything else, from barrels to handguards to electronic sights, legally falls under "accessories". This means that you could go to online retailers to buy pretty much every part of the gun apart from the receiver, with zero paperwork, and use them to assemble your own boomstick at home. Even that can be worked around - there are companies that sell hunks of steel or aluminium that look suspiciously like AR-15 receivers, with just enough details missing that they don't legally have to be registered. Any enterprising collector could buy one of those, spend a few hours drilling a few extra holes, and end up with an unmarked gun that's very difficult to trace.

I think that as long as semi-automatic weapons are in wide circulation, there's no foolproof way to prevent some of them being used in ways that resemble automatics. Even though the ATF rejects designs that are too easily converted into automatic, you can craft or 3D print things like bump stocks very easily. Plus, it's not like semi-automatic pistols aren't incredibly lethal in civilian settings already. I believe that Canada has a magazine size restriction in place, though I don't know how effective such a measure would be in the US.

Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)

Thats why we should regulate not just the guns, but also ownership. Its not just what you can get, its who can get them.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Again, Massachusetts has the answer:

We treat it like you would treat a driver’s licence, and you know what? It works.

Edited by megaeliz on Nov 16th 2018 at 9:58:25 AM

That's awesome. I'm not even against gun ownership, per se, but I really wish the entire country did what Massachusetts is doing.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Trump Administration Is Set to Ban Bump Stock Devices on Guns [1]

I'll be honest, I'm pro-guns, but I expected a bump stock ban within at most a month of Vegas. I'm really surprised it took this long, it was getting to the point when I thought it was never going to happen.

Never expected a Republican president to be the one to stand up to the NRA on this issue, but unusual times I guess. Why didn't Obama do something like this if he apparently had the executove power to?

Life is unfair...

Because its a cosmetic change that that doesnt really solve very much.

Edited by DeMarquis on Nov 29th 2018 at 3:08:00 PM

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Basically this

You can actually bump fire a gun without the special stock just by bracing it a certain way against your arm.

They should have sent a poet.