Can we please just admit that maybe gun control is a good idea finally?

So your boss is a professional sport shooter on his fourth outing, without mechanical aid achieving results just under double the time of a world record holder using a moonclip. Good to know.

Richard Dawkins is a fucking cunt, and even people who agree with his views think so.

Absolute bullshit. There is no way to put 6 rounds into a revolver in "3ish seconds." Was he The Flash, Superman, or some other similarly-fast superhero? Three seconds? No fucking way without a loader.

I was going to say, but didn't want to because I've never been near a revolver.

shift6 - I don't think he's that. The tweet can be taken as a parody of certain reactionary Southern gun owners, not all gun owners, and as such it's not far wrong.

Yeah, as Jon Stewart put it, clearly the standard for our laws should be "Will criminals follow it?" The suggestion that we shouldn't enact a law because lawless people might ignore it is, in a word, crazytown. By that standard, we shouldn't bother having any laws at all.

As Wall Street proved, laws are for losers.

No argument, but the wrinkle with guns is: gun ownership or lack thereof is the only instance where a criminal ignoring a law while a lawful citizen follows it results in a criminal possessing a deadly weapon with range and a tactical advantage over a civilian who would not have that. Compare to, whatever, katanas or drugs, where if a criminal possesses these it is not on the same level.

That is my understanding, however I do not remotely agree with it. If for no other reason, if it's not against the law, then you can't be prosecuted for it. Also background checks and licensing are how THE MAN TRACKS YOU and HOW THEY MAKE THE LIST OF WHO TO SEND THE OBAMA STORMTROOPERS AFTER first.

TL;DR yes, Crazytown.

But the head of the NRA was using it as an argument against background checks, and in that context the hypothetical justification makes no sense. Because background checks aren't a prohibition--lawful citizens can still own guns. So requiring background checks isn't giving criminals any sort of general tactical advantage in that sense.

I would also ask for proof of this, but I wouldn't want to be near enough to someone that makes that claim to see them try.

BECAUSE ARE FREEDOMS man I don't know, no one can logically explain the NRA except "the Spice^H^H^Hguns must flow."

There are a number of different reasons for the "pro-gun" arguments against seemingly reasonable restrictions that can be summarized as "Will criminals follow it" with a Jon Stewart sneer. And many gun advocates do themselves no favors by repeating the outlaws will have guns nonsense, and there is no question that in terms of soundbites and public rhetoric that's what it skews to. But here's why I think there might be more to it.

First, there are the many wide open loopholes in private/gun sale transactions. This is a thriving industry consisting, for once, of many actual small businessmen (as opposed to the GOP definition of millionaires), hobbyists, and then a bunch of people who are rather questionably "private" because they lack a storefront. The question is whether they are small businessmen in the way that society can tolerate (ie whether regulation can bring them in line while still preserving their ability to stay in business) or whether they are simply something that has to be eradicated in favor of retailers. This is exacerbated further by the online versions of these coming into being in a period of NRA madness/ATF weakness so that the "private sale" gets turned into a Frankenstein of zero accountability.

I would rank this under "a place ripe for conscientious gun owners to seize the ground before the data makes them look like complete assholes". Alternately, there is "gun control advocates put full weight behind data and analysis for now and act with no margin of error or compromise towards gun advocates when they look assholes". I think this is the main place where background checks are falling short, and this is also where you are going to see the greatest collision with paranoia about a "national gun registry" when what you really want to talk about is a safe, privacy-respecting form of national criminal database that small vendors can access cheaply.*

Second, there are some huge systemic problems with actual retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers in terms of their accountability for sales. These are not experienced by the typical gun owner who goes to the store and duly fills out his forms and waits for his guns to be legally processed. But the ATF, local authorities, and everyone in between is completely hamstrung in this capacity, and any move in this direction will be fought tooth and nail by the aforementioned groups in order to preserve profit margins and their implicit partnership as "deliverers" of a constitutional right. That is, you will see, even moreso than above, frankly offensive parallels to a poll tax or to 1st amendment restrictions, as well as a bunch of claims about the "costs" (of not acting like reckless criminals) being passed on to consumers, as well as endless slippery slopes


This, I think, is an extremely fruitful potential vector for gun control. The curbs on the ATF that are currently in place will not survive any degree of public scrutiny when compared to the norms that virtually any other industry has to operate under. The process of reform should involve carefully selected comparisons to specific industry norms and best practices correlated to data-based projections of the marginal costs and benefits. I suggest outright shamelessness in terms of linking the notion of shameless corporate irresponsibility that is at the heart of this conduct from people that do not hesitate to wrap themselves in the flag while they arm violent criminals and mentally unbalanced people.

As I noted above, the experience for the lawful citizen as it currently stands is not going to be one that seems like it needs a lot of reform; the shadow economy works all around most gun owners, and because of the restrictions on systemic analysis, it almost never gets linked to crimes directly. I think it's really important to look at the parts of the system that do work relatively well and make sure you are highlighting how those will remain unchanged or (perhaps) even become less cumbersome if the data supports such modifications. But you can't do that by handwaving at "more" background checks, which is why it's a tricky needle to thread.


*I think this is also an opportunity to talk about the incredibly unfair category of second-class citizen that *any* prior conviction puts you into, and much the same for how easily minor crimes can get upgraded into felonies where you are just a non-person. But I won't muddy the waters further, I just want to be clear that there are reasons why further entrenching the current standards for such segregation should not go unremarked in the context of the rights of former criminals, even when it comes guns scary guns.

I think you mistake what is going on here. This record is for a guy shooting off 6 rounds on target, and then unloading the weapon, and then reloading the weapon in under 3 seconds, and finally firing 6 more rounds onto a target. I never said anything about him firing the gun. It was simply him dropping the cases out of the revolver cylinder, and then replacing the rounds back in the firearm. He had the advantage of having a bench sitting in front of him at waist level, with the bullets face down in a case and easy to grab. But there are fanny pack type ammo cases that will do mostly the same for you.

Try this as a rudimentary exercise: Put your left hand out in front of you next to the desk you are probably sitting at on the computer, then put a couple of small objects on the table (some marbles, batteries, M&M's?). Then see how long it takes you to grab two at a time with your right hand, and place them into your left hand that is inches away and just sitting there. That's essentially it. This was a 6 round revolver, using .38SP rounds, and he was grabbing two rounds at a time and putting them in the chambers. If you watch that video again, I'd say it takes the guy 1 second to unload and reload the gun, most of that time is recorded of him actually firing it.

And have to say, I don't always agree with Bill Maher, but I think he and Sam Harris make some really good points.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/sam-harr...d-cory-booker-gun-nuts-have-many-good-points/

I didn't see one point that I haven't seen anywhere else and I hope this isn't one of those "good" points:

Whereas I will agree one of the biggest problems we face is that there are so many guns out there already.

Also wow sorry I really don't care about what your boss can or cannot do.

You really don't need to be. I'm more of a history guy than a gun guy, but it's hard to understand the last century of warfare unless you wrap your head around volume of fire and related concepts. So yeah, three seconds hand-loading a revolver: not happening; because you're no slouch if you can reload a magazine fed weapon in roughly that time.

EDIT:

These marines seem to be really excited about 2-3 second rifle reload drills. Maybe you should tell them how awesome your boss is.

And here they're selling speedloaders, with him loading the speedloader partway through (8 seconds, one at a time, with bullets in hand) and a full speed demonstration at the end: count how long it takes to go from "speedloader in the left hand" to "gun is ready to fire."



Man, Youtube is great.

It was to make a point about reloading firearms, where people think that magazine fed firearms are so crazy because of their ease to reload magazines no matter how much you cut down the magazine capacity. I wasn't trying to promote my coworker for cool points and show how cool he is and look for high fives in the thread, geeze lol.

Really, it was more of a surprise to me how quickly it could be done, as I figured manual reloading of a revolver to be extremely clumsy and slow. I had never thought of loading two rounds at a time.

But ah well, it was probably a dumb point to bring up, as then the argument just goes to someone carrying more than one gun, etc. I hadn't taken into consideration the time to bring the gun back up and ready to fire, just the time it took him to break open the cylinder, drop rounds out, put 6 new ones in, and close the cylinder. Felt like "3ish" seconds, but I wasn't timing him by any means.

And this guy pretty much goes from break open and reload with a speed loader to reacquiring target in 3 seconds at 19-22secs and 57-60secs.



The Bill Maher video I think makes good points about this current "gun ban" (not the EO list) being a total waste and not really solving much of anything when it comes to gun murder rate in the U.S., and I thought that's the majority of what we are talking about here.

Also the bit about "thank god the shooter is the only one here with a gun here" has some merit. Again, I don't believe in the arm the masses, everyone should have a gun rhetoric.

The impression I get from you (and people who make similar arguments) Pacodeth is that you're essentially arguing that the type of gun, and said gun's capacities, are simply irrelevant when talking about murders / mass killings. It doesn't matter if you have a revolver, because you can reload in a few seconds anyway, so it's no different from a magazine-fed handgun. And a magazine-fed handgun is no different from a military-style rifle, because you can reload a pistol in a few seconds anyway regardless of magazine size. And at close range it doesn't matter about the calibre anyway.

I can't help but be suspicious of this reasoning. I don't have very firm opinions about magazine size restrictions, other than being unimpressed by the arguments which claim they will harm the "good guys", but coming from people who claim to know a great deal about firearms this can seem like obfuscation. They are the same people who go on at length about the ideal weapons for home defence, the different killing capabilities of various firearms, and so on, and yet when it comes to mass shootings suddenly a 6-shot revolver is as good as a 30-round AR-15.

EDIT: Oh and to liven up the thread, I present to you.....

TYRANNY IN AMERICA!

The skeet-birthers are going to go nuts over that photo.

SHOPPED.

That's because it's not designed to solve the murder rate, it's designed to ameliorate the problem of dudes with AR-15's shooting up schools and campuses, because dudes who collect AR-15's and high capacity mags are a different breed of gun owner and the public at large doesn't care too much about curtailing their rights to own weaponry within reasonable limits.

Here's a thought experiment for you:

An average person can fire up to 5 shots a second with a semiautomatic weapon (assume 3).
Thus a 30 round magazine lasts 6-15 seconds (assume 10), and a 10 round magazine lasts 2-5 (assume 3.33).
As demonstrated, a person can reload a rifle in 2-3 seconds during a speed drill (assume 4 seconds for an untrained person not focusing solely on speed).
Assume just above two shots per person, 50-60 shots fired per classroom.
It will take cops 10 minutes to arrive; but realistically an active shooter probably only has about 2 minutes of time shooting at large groups of people, the rest spent moving around, trying to break down doors, et cetera.

So, a guy with a 30 round magazine shoots up a classroom, reloads, continues shooting, then reloads the second magazine while walking to the next classroom: net downtime 4 seconds for 20 seconds of shooting.
The guy with 10 round magazines reloads five times during the shooting, and reloads the sixth magazine while moving to the next classroom: net downtime 20 seconds for 20 seconds of shooting.

Meaning that 30 round magazine guy can shoot up 5 classrooms to the 10 round magazine guy's 3; for the cost of you being mildly inconvenienced at the range.

And it all brings us round circle to the worst shooting, the Virginia Tech shooter which only utilized pistols and had 19 magazines on him. Mind you some of those were 15rd magazines, but there were also 10rd magazines. Not to mention his two pistols were a 9mm and a .22lr. In this situation, Police arrived within 3 minutes.

Now you can argue the lethality of a rifle round or the .223 round, but have you all seen a .38 round? A .357? How about a .45? These are all pistol rounds, which have a wealth of self-defense style ammunition that is designed to mushroom out and be as lethal as possible. You want to see what a .45 ACP round would do to a body?


I don't think the type of gun is completely irrelevant, I just want to point out that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't permanently infringe upon the rights of over 300 million Americans, because of the sheer possibility that one of these guns might possibly be used by a crazed shooter. Especially given the fact that they could indeed be just as lethal, if not more lethal with a non "assault-weapon" style weapon.

Shopped/All black people look like the president. SHOW US THE FACE PHOTO!

Oh don't worry, this is already making the rounds.



OBAMA CAN ONLY DO ONE THING IN A DAY HE ISN'T SUPERMAN

ALSO GUNS ARE LOUD

I can tell by some of the pixels and having seen a few scary black people in my time.

Are you sure?

1. The worst shooting was Utøya, carried out with a Mini-14.
2. The second worst shooting was in Uiryeong, committed with a pair of M2 carbines.
3. The third worst shooting was Port Arthur, carried out with an AR-15 and an L1A1.
4. The fourth worst shooting was Mikenskaya, carried out with a Kalishnakov.
5. The fifth worst shooting is Virginia Tech.

Hey, it's almost like fairly modern rifles designed for military purposes are disproportionately good for shooting people in a target rich environment, or something. Can't imagine why that would be.

Hey, it's almost like when people initially started talking about magazine sizes pages and pages ago I decided to go digging and profile spree shooting a little so that I could draw some not completely pulled out of my ass conclusions about the topic.

Well it's true that they were both not born in America... you may have a point!

That's pretty cool, Superman imitating the President Obama pose!

I forgot that picture. Our President is such a dork. It's awesome.

Here in Canada the magazine capacity limit is 10 rounds for pistols (the government initially wanted a 5-round limit but the International Practical Shooting Confederation complained and it was bumped up to 10 rounds) and 5 rounds for magazines. Since most rifle magazines have a 30-round capacity and pistol magazines have a 15-round (or more) capacity the government said that in order for the magazines to be legal they can just be pinned. The government's thinking behind reducing the magazine capacity is to "slow down" a deranged shooter so less people will be killed in a mass shooting even though there are (currently) no laws limiting the number of magazines one can own and carry. I have tactical vest that can carry 10 AR-15 magazines (I have AR-pistol magazines that have 10-round capacity so with a clip I can bind two together to have 20-rounds legally).

With our gun laws, the RCMP does a background check (criminal, mental problem, domestic abuse, and substance abuse history) before approving a gun license. This weeds out people who shouldn't have legal access to guns. It works out fine for the most part but there's not much the law can do if the person years later develops problems like getting depressed and/or using drugs and uses their legally obtained firearms to something violent. Back in 2006, Kimveer Gill brought a carbine, pistol and a shotgun to Dawson College and shot at students, killing one. He had a gun license and his three firearms were legally purchased (the carbine and pistol are Restricted firearms and can only be used at a government sanctioned range). A deranged person could simply pull out the pins in the magazine to get their full capacity.

Note: The Dawson College shooter committed suicide after a cop shot him in the arm instead of confronting the police. This continues the pattern that the mass shooting killers are cowards and tend to commit suicide when confronted with force, which may explain why they go after soft targets where they know there is no resistance (eg. schools, movie theatres).

The law works as long as people abide by them. Laws can't prevent crimes but they can deter them as long as people fear punishment for breaking the law.

Sorry, my worst shooting was in reference to the school shootings in America, since that is what we are talking about here. Of course the worst school massacre if I am remembering correctly was done with explosives at Bath School, 44 dead, including 38 children.

The Bath School bombing involved about a year of gradually planting explosives in the school before the vindictive bastard set his plan into motion. He also killed a few people with firearms. It was certainly a massacre, but on a different level than someone buying/stealing/borrowing guns and going on a shooting spree.

Without a background check how would a firearms seller know if the potential buy is a felon, who is prohibited from legally buying and possessing firearms?

Why? They never seen a black man from Chicago shooting a gun before...?

Speaking of speed loaders for revolvers, there are speed loaders for shotguns.

Because a potential spree shooter will never get his hands on an assault rifle in America? Because assault rifles are less deadly in America?

Here's the scary part: 33 states currently allow private sellers to sell at gun shows, without requiring background checks from buyers. Only seven states require them for all purchases. The rest are somewhere in the middle.

So the answer is, they don't know, but the NRA would rather help sell more guns than prevent criminals from getting ahold of them. If they can legally get guns into the hands of more people through the gun show loophole (and other similar gaping holes in current US gun laws), then by golly they'll oppose any measures that would seek to stop up any gaps that result in a fall in sales.

Aren't assault rifles next to impossible to get due to the 1986 ban of machine guns?