I don't own an AR-15. I don't want an AR-15. I fully support civilians owning AR-15 guns.
I wish it was politically correct to come out and say "shit happens" when it comes to these things like Jeb! Bush said about another incident. Let's face it. Politicians on both sides of the gun issue are using this issue for nothing other than to advance their career or the party platform.
I think we need to move beyond mass shootings and get I to real reasons why we need gun reform and that is gun safety. I want people to not have accidents. However, we are not in a common sense world. Neither side can advocate proper gun training. The left can't legitimize guns by saying civilians with proper training can have guns. The right will kick out anyone who suggests recommend ding or requiring gun safety training to own a gun.
Nobody needs an AR-15. Not police officers, not civilians. That doesn't mean we should ban it though. Can you imagine if we started banning things because we didn't "need" them? Does anyone "need" television?
If you are talking about needs from a Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs perspective, the yes, we technically don't need many things at all.
I think that's just picking on the definition of one word. I don't think the argument to ban them stems from a lack of need, but rather, the negative use has so far unmeasurably outweighed the benefits. In which case, yes, I'd argue something so inherently negative should not be available.
The "need" from the article refers to why the AR-15 standard is the right one to own, compared to all of the other guns available. He meant that, assuming you are going to own a gun, you "need" to get something AR-15 compliant because it's the best engineered option.
It's analogous to someone saying that they "need" the right cocktail of drugs to execute a prisoner on death row, because assuming you're going to execute a prisoner you should do it with the best tools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection#Conventional_...
Not even remotely able to tip the balance towards "private gun ownership is good", in my opinion
Which goes along with one of his points. Outlawing all or nearly all guns is a coherent position (although very unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future); pretending there's a meaningful distinction between "weapons of war" and "legitimate defensive firearms" is not.
On Quora, the question "How many people are killed during home invasions every year?" produced an answer [1] that I think describes the difference between me and someone who feels the need to own an AR-15. I'm just not that worried about being killed by a home invader because chances of it happening are so low (94 in 2013 for the entire country for example) but any number higher than 0 is too many for some people to spend time and treasure preparing to defend themselves. Me, if I was that worried about dying, I'd buy a safer car.
Let me just stand here in your dark hallway with this knife, while I wait for you to wake up, find your keys and unlock your gun cabinet. Unless you're sitting on the end of your bed waiting for someone to jump in your window, a (legally/responsibly stored) firearm will not help you.
And if you are the sort of person who sits on their bed waiting to shoot someone... Then maybe guns aren't for you.
FYI - I'm sport/vermin shooter here in Australia. Literally everyone here who has any involvement with firearms will happily tell you why every conceivable argument about homeowners having access to high powered semi/automatics is totally and categorically wrong.
The article isn't about "the home invasion argument." Please read the article before posting.
Better yet, simply don't post. You're Australian and the article is about U.S. citizens living in the USA. Here we don't have to lock up our guns at night (and for that matter, some of us don't sleep either!8-)).
Finally plenty of the wrong people wander into the wrong homes in the USA (and many of them are armed).
lol, there's so many things I want to say back to you about telling me not to comment because I'm not American.
But you know... I won't.
By the way, the author begins comments about home defence about 1/3 of the way into the article, when you get up to that part. My comment was just touching on the point they just touched on.
I would never have an AR-15; an AK-47 would be a far better choice of semi-automatic rifle. However the AR-15 has become the best-selling rifle in the USA and there are so many AR-15 fanboys that they will almost certainly flood this forum with posts objecting to what I am about to say.
- The original cartridge (.223 caliber) that the AR-15 was based on was designed for shooting "varmints" (small- to medium-sized furry mammals): In Vietnam it was found that the M-16 tended to wound rather than kill the enemy, and a new doctrine was adopted to suit this fact. In contrast the AK-47 cartridge (7.62x39) was designed to _kill_ large hairless mammals (men) and does so with dispatch.
- In Vietnam the M-16s (AR-15) jammed all the time. To unjam one you had to put a stick down the barrel and dislodge the jammed round, not an easy task when you're lying on your back and VC are shooting at you with ultra-reliable AK-47s. The M-16 is one of the reasons we lost that war. C. J. Chivers writes about the sordid history of the M-16's development and deployment in his book "The Gun" (link below)
I have often joked that the US government _wants_ their citizens to buy AR-15s because an AR-15-equipped citizenry is effectively disarmed.
I was astonished to hear that the Orlando shooter had an "AR-15" since those are usually "Jam-O-Matics". My astonishment vanished when it was revealed that the shooter used a Sig Sauer MCX, which has a better design and does not jam.
The entire point of the article was that "an AR-15" is a nonsense phrase. There isn't any such thing as "an AR-15." Today, the "AR-15" alphanumeric code refers to a set of modular standards for interoperable gun parts. Assembling a weapon out of AR-15 compliant parts allows a non-gunsmith to adapt to different goals.
So, not only are we way, way, way past Vietnam's M-16, but there isn't even an AR-15 you can point to today as the thing you don't want. The closest you could come to saying that in a sensible way is that you don't like any of the wide variety of options in the AR-15 standard.
OK. I'll use your terminology: "The 'AR-15 standard' jams frequently" and "I don't want a rifle that jams."
In the 1950's men customized their cars by "hot-rodding" the engines, transmissions, etc. They tested them by street racing.
Today the desire of men to fiddle with some sort of handy tech has, to some degree, been assumed by the "AR-15 standard". Like Legos, a buyer can mix and match, fiddle forever w/o actually shooting his rifle. Just as most hot-rodders never actually street-raced their Holley-carbureted Chevys or their Hurst-shifted Buicks in that era, most AR-15 fiddlers today have rarely, if at all, shot their jury-rigged AR-15s. And, except for those who have been in the military, virtually none have formal training and experience in the use of those weapons or even the simulation of their use (not that that is required, but it helps when the chips are down).
So the "AR-15 standard" is Pokemon or Lego for adults. Entertaining, costly, with unending variations, it is a "scissors, rock, paper" for AR-15 buffs. It has an associated symbolic status value among a limited group of people and is largely harmless (even in time of conflict, I would add), unless you're married to one of them and have a limited budget.
AR-15 is needed because that is what Second Amendment requires. Currently, police and military use them as the most common personal weapon, hence the militia (as defined as all the able bodied adult male citizen by law) needs to use the same. It's needed by civilian precisely because it is a weapon of war.
Read Washington DC. vs. Heller to understand this. Don't argue on the Internet.
For those who can't/won't read the article, basically what he's saying is that he "needs" the AR-15 standard because it's the best engineered gun. It's equivalent to saying that you "need" the LAMP stack because it's open source, modular, debugged, well supported, training is available, and everyone else knows how to use it.
15 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 45.2 ms ] threadNot even remotely able to tip the balance towards "private gun ownership is good", in my opinion, but definitely a high quality submission. Thanks!
I wish it was politically correct to come out and say "shit happens" when it comes to these things like Jeb! Bush said about another incident. Let's face it. Politicians on both sides of the gun issue are using this issue for nothing other than to advance their career or the party platform.
I think we need to move beyond mass shootings and get I to real reasons why we need gun reform and that is gun safety. I want people to not have accidents. However, we are not in a common sense world. Neither side can advocate proper gun training. The left can't legitimize guns by saying civilians with proper training can have guns. The right will kick out anyone who suggests recommend ding or requiring gun safety training to own a gun.
Nobody needs an AR-15. Not police officers, not civilians. That doesn't mean we should ban it though. Can you imagine if we started banning things because we didn't "need" them? Does anyone "need" television?
I think that's just picking on the definition of one word. I don't think the argument to ban them stems from a lack of need, but rather, the negative use has so far unmeasurably outweighed the benefits. In which case, yes, I'd argue something so inherently negative should not be available.
It's analogous to someone saying that they "need" the right cocktail of drugs to execute a prisoner on death row, because assuming you're going to execute a prisoner you should do it with the best tools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection#Conventional_...
Which goes along with one of his points. Outlawing all or nearly all guns is a coherent position (although very unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future); pretending there's a meaningful distinction between "weapons of war" and "legitimate defensive firearms" is not.
[1] https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-are-killed-during-home...
Let me just stand here in your dark hallway with this knife, while I wait for you to wake up, find your keys and unlock your gun cabinet. Unless you're sitting on the end of your bed waiting for someone to jump in your window, a (legally/responsibly stored) firearm will not help you.
And if you are the sort of person who sits on their bed waiting to shoot someone... Then maybe guns aren't for you.
FYI - I'm sport/vermin shooter here in Australia. Literally everyone here who has any involvement with firearms will happily tell you why every conceivable argument about homeowners having access to high powered semi/automatics is totally and categorically wrong.
The article isn't about "the home invasion argument." Please read the article before posting.
Better yet, simply don't post. You're Australian and the article is about U.S. citizens living in the USA. Here we don't have to lock up our guns at night (and for that matter, some of us don't sleep either!8-)).
Finally plenty of the wrong people wander into the wrong homes in the USA (and many of them are armed).
But you know... I won't.
By the way, the author begins comments about home defence about 1/3 of the way into the article, when you get up to that part. My comment was just touching on the point they just touched on.
That crosses the line into incivility. Please don't do that, especially not based on nationality.
- The original cartridge (.223 caliber) that the AR-15 was based on was designed for shooting "varmints" (small- to medium-sized furry mammals): In Vietnam it was found that the M-16 tended to wound rather than kill the enemy, and a new doctrine was adopted to suit this fact. In contrast the AK-47 cartridge (7.62x39) was designed to _kill_ large hairless mammals (men) and does so with dispatch.
- In Vietnam the M-16s (AR-15) jammed all the time. To unjam one you had to put a stick down the barrel and dislodge the jammed round, not an easy task when you're lying on your back and VC are shooting at you with ultra-reliable AK-47s. The M-16 is one of the reasons we lost that war. C. J. Chivers writes about the sordid history of the M-16's development and deployment in his book "The Gun" (link below)
I have often joked that the US government _wants_ their citizens to buy AR-15s because an AR-15-equipped citizenry is effectively disarmed.
I was astonished to hear that the Orlando shooter had an "AR-15" since those are usually "Jam-O-Matics". My astonishment vanished when it was revealed that the shooter used a Sig Sauer MCX, which has a better design and does not jam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Remington
https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734/ref=sr_...
You can read an excerpt from "The Gun" at Esquire's site:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25677/ak-47-history-11...
And here's Mikhail Kalashnikov's 2006 take on the M-16 vs AK in Vietnam and other wars:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/ak-47-inventor-u-s-troops-in-ira...
So, not only are we way, way, way past Vietnam's M-16, but there isn't even an AR-15 you can point to today as the thing you don't want. The closest you could come to saying that in a sensible way is that you don't like any of the wide variety of options in the AR-15 standard.
In the 1950's men customized their cars by "hot-rodding" the engines, transmissions, etc. They tested them by street racing.
Today the desire of men to fiddle with some sort of handy tech has, to some degree, been assumed by the "AR-15 standard". Like Legos, a buyer can mix and match, fiddle forever w/o actually shooting his rifle. Just as most hot-rodders never actually street-raced their Holley-carbureted Chevys or their Hurst-shifted Buicks in that era, most AR-15 fiddlers today have rarely, if at all, shot their jury-rigged AR-15s. And, except for those who have been in the military, virtually none have formal training and experience in the use of those weapons or even the simulation of their use (not that that is required, but it helps when the chips are down).
So the "AR-15 standard" is Pokemon or Lego for adults. Entertaining, costly, with unending variations, it is a "scissors, rock, paper" for AR-15 buffs. It has an associated symbolic status value among a limited group of people and is largely harmless (even in time of conflict, I would add), unless you're married to one of them and have a limited budget.
Read Washington DC. vs. Heller to understand this. Don't argue on the Internet.