SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Center for American Progress reports
Before Stephen Paddock opened fire at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip last October, killing 58 and wounding hundreds, most Americans probably hadn't heard of bump-fire stocks--add-ons that lets a semiautomatic rifle fire as quickly as a machine gun. Until that mass shooting, they were a novelty known only among firing-range enthusiasts and Cool Gun YouTube.
Within months of Las Vegas, lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation[1] to outlaw the devices, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF, announced plans to ban them through regulation.[2]
But gun control advocates warn bump stocks are just one part of a much bigger problem. A flood of new gun technologies is pushing the envelope on what a civilian can legally own, skirting laws that have kept the most dangerous weapons off the street for decades.
[...] Weapons like machine guns, silencers, and short-barreled rifles and shotguns are regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934 and subsequent amendments. To own one of those weapons, a civilian has to go through a lengthy approval process and pay a special tax. The job of deciding whether a gun falls under NFA's restrictions falls to ATF.
Gun manufacturers have used the law's technicalities to create guns that are just as powerful, and deadly, as restricted weapons but without the added tax and strict regulations.
Take the SAINT, by Springfield Armory. It's an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine and a 7.5-inch barrel. That's shorter than the legal rifle length under federal law. But instead of a shoulder stock, the SAINT has a "stabilizing brace" or "forearm brace"--a device designed to attach to a shooter's forearm for one-handed firing rather than resting against their shoulder. By ATF's definition, the SAINT is a pistol, not a rifle, because it isn't meant to be fired from the shoulder. So anyone who can pass a federal background check can buy one online for $989.
[...] Stabilizing braces aren't the only new gun tech to skirt around the National Firearms Act. Franklin Armory's Binary Trigger System fires two rounds with every shot--one when the trigger is depressed and one when it's released, doubling the rate of fire. Like bump stocks and stabilizing braces, binary triggers aren't currently regulated under the National Firearms Act.
In one YouTube video, a man uses a binary trigger to fire a 30-round magazine in less than five seconds. In another, a binary trigger beats out a fully-automatic weapon.
[1] Bogus link in TFA. Fixed in TFS.
[2] Content is behind scripts.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday June 24 2018, @04:17PM (4 children)
I've spent a great deal of time studying this topic. Here is some data that often gets lost in the noise.
HTH.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:16PM (1 child)
Doesn't matter. None of it does. Bearing arms is a right. There is no justification required. None.
For those that fear guns and want them all gone, stats only will confuse them, or they will ignore them, or use them against you later
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:23PM
Rights come and go. It's an amendment in itself. A right also does not need to be compulsorily exercised by every person.
The justification required is not a legal one. It's a moral one.
Do you have the right to seek an abortion?
Do you have the right to sleep with others of the same sex?
Do you have the right to access free medical treatment?
All rights like that, and many more, DID NOT EXIST IN LAW in many countries all over the world. Often, the exact opposite was stated to be the law. And then the moral imperative overrode the law and changed it.
You're so attached to a right to bear arms (that's badly worded and desperately in need of some clarifying parentheses) that you are unthinking of the consequences in its exercise for yourself and others. I have friends who tell me they kept guns, in the UK, before laws changed. Then we had a school shooting (Dunblane) that shocked the country. And literally people who were so enamoured with their weapons fought to change the law so they didn't have to deal with the consequences of everyone having that same right. They sacrificed it for a moral argument. In doing so, they cut crime rates and they ENDED school shootings. There hasn't been another since.
Whether or not you're ALLOWED is unquestionable. It's your country. And if it wasn't allowed, you wouldn't be able to freely admit to doing so on the Internet.
What other countries are trying to show you is that it's both unnecessary, and unthinking, and are urging change. With facts. Look.. we know... we had the same... we sacrificed it... and it worked. The same story, over and over and over in so many countries that still have active military (nobody is saying let's scrap the military), some of which have compulsory military service for every adult (nobody is saying they need to scrap that), some of which just have strict licensing (technically the UK doesn't have a gun ban as such, you just have to have a fuckton of regulations and a licence - farmers still have shotguns to kill pests, hunts still take place, etc.).
You're doing things because your grandpa said so. That's your argument, basically. If we all stuck to that line of thinking, progress would be hard and an awful lot of people would be extremely paranoid throughout their entire life about being "found out".
What we're saying is "Hi, welcome to the 21st Century. If you're ever invaded by a hostile foreign (or domestic) power those weapons are going to do shit (proven by every battle America fights in against armed 'organised militia' rather than a professional military). As such they're just a risk lying around. And they're killing your kids. Every day. And every few weeks or so, DOZENS of your kids die in a single incident. Not because you have nutters, we all have nutters. But because you have guns everywhere without proper control. Control your guns, those deaths go away and live carries on just the same, but with less kid-massacres. Here's the evidence..."
I don't fear guns. I've never been close enough to one to need to. I literally can't fear them as they aren't around to fear.
I don't want all guns gone. Do that and you'll be a Russian annexe by next week.
But I'd much rather try to convince you - not for you, seriously, fuck you, I don't care you're an adult, but for your children and your friend's children - that other countries DO NOT HAVE THIS. It's like looking into the Dark Ages watching the US news sometimes. It's like people in the US still dying of polio/smallpox/etc. while the rest of the world are going "Here, look, there's a vaccine... look how many we've saved. It works. We promise you, it works. Please just save your kids".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:48PM (1 child)
I would be interested to know if you had a political position on gun control before you looked into the statistics and if your research changed your position any?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Monday June 25 2018, @02:37AM
My position on gun control has changed over time.
My father and brother hunted. They taught me to shoot and were extremely pro-gun. Despite that, I was amiable to the idea of additional restrictions if they would reduce needless deaths.
Three things changed that.
1. Understanding the history of the restrictions already in place, their enforcement, and effectiveness.
2. Koreatown in the LA riots.
3. The anti-gun lobby
These bear some elaboration.
First, the restrictions. Looking at this history, one can make an argument that we are approaching nearly a century of incremental steps towards eliminating widespread gun ownership. One easily overlooked point stands out. The $200 transfer tax on NFA firearms in 1934 was $3755 in 2018 dollars. (usinflationcalculator.com). Ouch. Regarding enforcement, the vast majority of BATFE enforcement actions are for what should be trivial paperwork violations. A dealer is not allowed to assist their customers in filling out the 4473 form, but if a customer mis-checks a box or misses a field (i.e. gender, zip code, or phone number) then the dealer gets flagged and fined for a violation. These violations add up quickly. Combined with requirements for inspection and insurance 80% of gun dealers have gone out of business since 1990. This isn't the only questionable way dealers are attacked. Operation Chokepoint (See Wikipedia) cut off gun dealers from banking services, and a recent tweak to how ITAR is interpreted means that gunsmiths and ammunition reloaders now have to register as arms dealers. I came to understand that the impact of these actions is vanishingly small. It isn't zero, but it is too small to measure.
Next, Koreatown. I watched the LA Riots on CNN. I saw a man pulled from his truck and nearly beaten to death for the color of his skin. I saw the police pull back and let the mob rule. It was chaos. The unedited footage of this is on Youtube and is quite moving. After the fact I learned that a small number of businesses survived unscathed. Their owners stood on the roof with rifles, pistols, and shotguns. They protected themselves and their property when the police would or could not.
The final straw was seeing the overt dishonesty of gun control proponents. That brought me to where I am today.
I am of the opinion that no additional gun restrictions should be put in place without a ratified amendment to the Constitution or a Constitutional convention. I would like to see a nationwide unified concealed carry permit program, and there are states (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, or DC) I will not visit for work or pleasure because they do not honor my concealed carry permit.