You could use it to shoot rioting homophobes.
And 100 round mags are iffy and prone to fail. Go with the 30rd mags.
I read that as “shoot rioting homophones”.
It’s not a joke in the vast stretches of the world where conflicts that can be boiled down in many cases to the classic issues of haves and have nots drove many to decide that, in fact, it is time for blood to be shed. I am not advocating it or suggesting it would be a fun or efficient decision in the case of the United States. I’m not in any way implying it is a likely outcome in the near future…generally speaking the rule of law and basic apathy as a result of most needs being met (relative to the whole world) have a strong hold here.
What I am saying is that even a poorly organized, badly led insurgency with shitty equipment can get a lot done against a first rate modern military that is nevertheless trapped in the paradigm of nation states. All an insurgency needs is a reason to exist. Once that is taken care of, the vast amounts of weapons in civilian hands, the uniquely civilian driven nature of our military, and the possibilities created by such a powerful yet needy military machine being fought against on its home turf are filled with compelling science fiction plots.
The number of people actually getting stuff done in the Iraqi occupation against Americans and each other is actually quite small…it does not take many to bring the giant to a sitting position if not actually his knees. All you need is a clear understanding of your enemy’s goals, how to manipulate them most effectively in keeping with a prolonged stalemate that favors you, and then let a smattering of guns and testosterone driven youths do the heavy lifting. I think Mao was one of the most articulate of 4th generation war* proponents, and what he said has never held more resonance than it does now. The biggest innovation is that his third stage (upgrading to conventional warfare when the opponent has been weakened) has been made largely obsolete, and the most fascinating thing about this is how uneducated (I mean that literally) military leaders in all kinds of places and situations arrive at the same conclusions largely independently, and are able to market it to their people with great effect.
Anyway, it’s a lot more complicated than that, and I’m mostly repeating myself in different words because I’m hoping that will clarify the disagreement we are actually having versus the one you seem to think you are having.
*the label of 4th generation war is very appropriate for American/European canonical military history, and inadequate for any kind of holistic survey of military strategy. But I like it anyway.
Your impressions seem accurate to me. Assault rifles are designed to be idiot proof as a general rule across the globe; in that sense the US messed it up with the M16 and its variants by introducing a generally higher performance weapon with a greater cost/maintenance/training tradeoff when ours was still largely a conscript military (hence the horror stories from Vietnam about the reliability). Worked out fine once we went full volunteer, for the most part, although there’s still an unseemly amount of bitching about one of the least problematic parts of our arsenal from armchair generals.
Damn, there’s to! And two, too!
Actually, no. It’s a pretty damn good introductory rifle for all sorts of things. It only sounds scary because some anti-gun advocates attached the word “assault” to the semi-automatic version of the military rifle.
Err, I just realized how dumb my thread title is. Retailers are doing good business but very busy; the election is hitting consumers with high prices and long delays!
Just to add to the gun wanking, the AR platform is now the long-range platform of choice, as well as the 90% most common platform in competitive shooting. It’s come a long way, baby.
H.
The election most definitely has hit firearm sellers. I’ve stopped by two different gun shows in the past few months and each one was filled with retailers pushing politically incorrect rifles, telling customers to buy now while they can. The firearm forums I visit are all saying that gun stores have been utterly swamped since the election, I’m sure there is panic buying going on.
For what its worth, I bought my first AR 15 this past summer partly in anticipation of this election. The rifle really is a fantastic introductory platform and I can see why it has become so popular with sport shooters. If I find the money, I hope to get a 9mm or an M1A early next year.
From http://www.change.gov/agenda/urbanpolicy/
Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn’t have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
Well, there you go. Buy your AR now.
Also, as I’ve said before repeatedly, the gun show ‘loop hole’ is bullshit.
All I want to know is: is there a place in this country for me, an extreme left-wing liberal, yellow-dog Democrat, who is on the liberal side of just about every single issue out there … but who still thinks that taking a fully automatic Thompson submachine gun into a national forest and emptying an entire drum clip into a paper target is possibly the most fun you can have while sober?
In other words, answering the question asked early in this thread: hell, yes some of us really do want to have weapons like these so we can use them at firing ranges. They are 16 kinds of awesome!
How so?
In one sense, a gun show is just a big flea market, and like flea markets, is no more heavily regulated than a yard sale. So the slippery slope applies that if you regulate gun shows, you are de facto regulating all private sales of firearms in any situation.
On the other hand, they are a good place to get a gun without the necessary credentials or legal standing.
H.
What Houngan said. You can’t buy from a dealer at a gunshow without all the normal background checks/etc and even buying from individuals without a background check is already illegal in most states. In the end, very few gun crimes are committed with gunshow guns (Less then 1%), so it’s simply an issue to grandstand on without any real merit.
Interesting. Where do the guns used to commit crimes come from? Stolen? Foreign?
Stolen, straw purchases or buying (nearly always stolen guns) from an unlicensed dealer.
In short, criminals get guns by breaking the laws that already exist.
There are also politically neutral gun blogs (being less preachy is always nice…)
The Firearm Blog is one I like.
They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
Fucking bullshit pandering. Yes, those drug dealers LOVE those hard-to-conceal semi-automatic military rifles, because they’re so great for close-quarters urban combat and spray-and-pray drive-bys.
Except the fact they don’t, and they aren’t, and these so-called ‘assault rifles’ aren’t what street criminals are packing, and any measure to limit their availability smacks of a complete ignorance of crime and its trappings.
So we’re headed to the most economically uncertain time in decades, it’s right after the world has undergone an increasing gap between rich and poor and we’re injecting a big pile of guns into the mix. What could go wrong here?
Who’s injecting what, where? Did Far Cry 2’s ‘the Jackal’ show up and dump a bunch of surplus weapons into the arms of low-level drug dealers or something?
Anyone who talks shit about lowering crime and mentions “gun violence” instead of “drug violence” as the root cause and the issue which is most important to deal with doesn’t truly understand the issue or is too much of a pussy to address it.