Concerning Full Auto Guns

[AndreusMaximus]

So, this issue came up in another thread, but it got me thinking, and I didn't want to thread-jack the OP's discussion, so I thought I'd start my own thread and see where it goes.

First off, I do NOT want to see full auto weapons banned or regulated, and fully support abolishing the NFA. My main reasoning is because it will always be extremely easy to convert semi-auto weapons to full auto, making any such ban effectively meaningless.

HOWEVER, I can kind of understand why, hypothetically, someone would want to ban full auto weapons, if there were an effective and reasonable means of doing so. Full auto, in my view, seems to give a disproportionate advantage so those who have no regard for innocent lives (or are deliberating trying to take as many innocent lives as possible) why providing a comparatively small advantage to self-defenders. Same thing seems to apply to weapons such as grenades.

So I guess I'm half playing devil's advocate here, and half looking for a more productive way to discuss with those who do want to continue the ban/regulation of full auto weapons, and also perhaps looking for a little education myself.

Okay. Roast me.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

There's a reason militaries adopted auto weapons--for both offensive and defensive measures, no doubt.

 

[Mongo59]

So, you would not want law abiding citizens to own them but it is ok for those who break the law to have them?

All the infringements to the second amendment came in the confusion of chaos, NFA during the Bonnie and Clyde/gangster era, 1968 GCA after the JFK assassination. Not the time for rational minds to prevail. Has it worked? No, so we double down on irrational stupidity.

The only people who think it has worked are the ones who have been told it works like some politician talking about the "eleventy million lives it has saved." Great statistic but no way to prove any of it.

In my mind I would present you with Washington DC, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans, cities with gun laws already on the books. Did it make the crime rate go down? No, but they want to double down on stupidity once again. Like Beetlejuice in Chicago crying that Indiana's 'lesser' gun laws are the reason we see so many guns and crime in Chicago. Then why don't we see more crime in Indiana than Chicago? We obviously have the guns. They have no reasons just opinions and blaming an inanimate object does not require them to be accountable and the object doesn't fight back in public forums...

 

[AndreusMaximus]

So, you would not want law abiding citizens to own them but it is ok for those who break the law to have them?

All the infringements to the second amendment came in the confusion of chaos, NFA during the Bonnie and Clyde/gangster era, 1968 GCA after the JFK assassination. Not the time for rational minds to prevail. Has it worked? No, so we double down on irrational stupidity.

The only people who think it has worked are the ones who have been told it works like some politician talking about the "eleventy million lives it has saved." Great statistic but no way to prove any of it.

In my mind I would present you with Washington DC, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans, cities with gun laws already on the books. Did it make the crime rate go down? No, but they want to double down on stupidity once again. Like Beetlejuice in Chicago crying that Indiana's 'lesser' gun laws are the reason we see so many guns and crime in Chicago. Then why don't we see more crime in Indiana than Chicago? We obviously have the guns. They have no reasons just opinions and blaming an inanimate object does not require them to be accountable and the object doesn't fight back in public forums...

I agree with everything you just said. I think the most powerful argument against any sort of gun control is that it just doesn't work; criminals who don't care about the law will always get their hands on illegal weapons no matter what.

But there are people out there who are dead set and convinced that the government can do anything if we just give it enough money and enough tries. How do you debate with those sort of people?

Or perhaps to put in another way, suppose some brilliant mind came up with a gun control measure that DID work, that could keep full auto weapons out of everyone's hands, and had been tried and proven to make it virtually impossible for anyone, law abiding or not, to get their hands on full auto guns. (Yes, I believe this is impossible too, but let's just pretend for moment, for the sake of discussion.) Are we effectively going to say to people, "Okay, in an alternative universe where gun control DID work, we'd be okay with it (at least as far as banning full auto goes, just for this case.)" Or is there a better reasoning we can use to explain why full auto should be allowed for everyone, regardless of talking about the lack of efficacy of gun laws?

Maybe I'm just being too hypothetical and overthinking the question, but it's interesting to me to go down these sort of lines of thought...

 

[Mongo59]

Just tell them to go get all the other violating devices and then come back and get mine last...

 

[AndreusMaximus]

There's a reason militaries adopted auto weapons--for both offensive and defensive measures, no doubt.

True, and I see your point, but just for the sake of discussion...

I think it can be argued that most militaries are likely to find themselves in combat against large numbers of enemies, with not innocent civilians in the line of fire, or in situations requiring an advance that must be covered with suppressive fire. I would think civilians are almost never going to be in this sort of situation while defending themselves against ordinary threats.

 

[AndreusMaximus]

Just tell them to go get all the other violating devices and then come back and get mine last...

So, not to press the point too hard, but I'm taking it that the answer is, "Yes"; that you would be okay with giving up full auto weapons in a hypothetical world where ALL full auto weapons were absolutely proven to have been confiscated from criminals?

 

[Mongo59]

I agree with everything you just said. I think the most powerful argument against any sort of gun control is that it just doesn't work; criminals who don't care about the law will always get their hands on illegal weapons no matter what.

But there are people out there who are dead set and convinced that the government can do anything if we just give it enough money and enough tries. How do you debate with those sort of people?

Or perhaps to put in another way, suppose some brilliant mind came up with a gun control measure that DID work, that could keep full auto weapons out of everyone's hands, and had been tried and proven to make it virtually impossible for anyone, law abiding or not, to get their hands on full auto guns. (Yes, I believe this is impossible too, but let's just pretend for moment, for the sake of discussion.) Are we effectively going to say to people, "Okay, in an alternative universe where gun control DID work, we'd be okay with it (at least as far as banning full auto goes, just for this case.)" Or is there a better reasoning we can use to explain why full auto should be allowed for everyone, regardless of talking about the lack of efficacy of gun laws?

Maybe I'm just being too hypothetical and overthinking the question, but it's interesting to me to go down these sort of lines of thought...

The problem with your argument is that you shouldn't have to be talking to the "other people" but to your representative. They are the ones who make/change laws, the others just try to cancel you...

 

[AndreusMaximus]

The problem with your argument is that you shouldn't have to be talking to the "other people" but to your representative. They are the ones who make/change laws, the others just try to cancel you...

Fair point.

 

[Mongo59]

So, not to press the point too hard, but I'm taking it that the answer is, "Yes"; that you would be okay with giving up full auto weapons in a hypothetical world where ALL full auto weapons were absolutely proven to have been confiscated from criminals?

No, I wouldn't. But if forced into a situation where I could try and keep them and end up loosing all my other weapons, I still know that not ALL military weapons are full auto and a healthy defense can be made with the proper training.

Never under estimate a pissed off Marine and his weapon...

 

[Ironhippie]

Problems not the laws and hoops we have to jump thru to own any NFA restricted firearm, its the ban on importation and manufacture here of new ones. The cost is more prohibitive than the laws you need to follow to own one.

 

[shibumiseeker]

I agree with everything you just said. I think the most powerful argument against any sort of gun control is that it just doesn't work; criminals who don't care about the law will always get their hands on illegal weapons no matter what.

But there are people out there who are dead set and convinced that the government can do anything if we just give it enough money and enough tries. How do you debate with those sort of people?

Or perhaps to put in another way, suppose some brilliant mind came up with a gun control measure that DID work, that could keep full auto weapons out of everyone's hands, and had been tried and proven to make it virtually impossible for anyone, law abiding or not, to get their hands on full auto guns. (Yes, I believe this is impossible too, but let's just pretend for moment, for the sake of discussion.) Are we effectively going to say to people, "Okay, in an alternative universe where gun control DID work, we'd be okay with it (at least as far as banning full auto goes, just for this case.)" Or is there a better reasoning we can use to explain why full auto should be allowed for everyone, regardless of talking about the lack of efficacy of gun laws?

Maybe I'm just being too hypothetical and overthinking the question, but it's interesting to me to go down these sort of lines of thought...

This begs the question though. The real question you must ask yourself is aren’t we willing to accept that some people will be harmed by other people who have ill intent, in order to ensure that a government, foreign or domestic, that has intent against the people in general, is held in check. One maniac with a full auto weapon can only do so much harm, even against a totally unarmed crowd. A government can kill millions of people with a stroke of a pen.

 

[Robert Richardson]

Totally ban full auto, semi auto would be next. Some of us can work a semiautomatic trigger pretty quick.

 

[MCgrease08]

But there are people out there who are dead set and convinced that the government can do anything if we just give it enough money and enough tries. How do you debate with those sort of people?

You don't debate them or try to convince them. You show that their ideas are garbage and work on convincing the next person, the bystander, who isn't dug in and convinced of their own false ideas.

 

[Mongo59]

If you want to get into a pointless argument with the masses then ask them what other "right" guaranteed us by the bill of rights requires them to obtain a license and pay other financial penalties to be able to exercise?

Say they want to rebut your statement using their 1st amendment rights and you tell them "On no, first you have to go get a lic and then attend some classes and then come back..."

Or if the .gov comes into your house to take whatever they want and you site your 4th amendment rights and they ask, "Yes, but have you paid for this protection?" And then have them answer how 'red flag laws' aren't a violation of this amendment.

Then illustrate that their desire to relieve you from the public good, like red flag laws, aren't also a violation of your 5th, 6th and 7th amendments and how any of this got past the 9th and 10th amendment.

But don't be surprised when there answer is, "Screw that! We want what we want now!"

 

[Creedmoor]

True, and I see your point, but just for the sake of discussion...

I think it can be argued that most militaries are likely to find themselves in combat against large numbers of enemies, with not innocent civilians in the line of fire, or in situations requiring an advance that must be covered with suppressive fire. I would think civilians are almost never going to be in this sort of situation while defending themselves against ordinary threats.

Look no farther than whats happening in Ukraine on the national news today.

 

[Mongo59]

Totally ban full auto, semi auto would be next. Some of us can work a semiautomatic trigger pretty quick.

Then the pump because they have been fired faster than a semi...

 

[flightsimmer]

One thing in particular bugs the hell out of me. Every day I hear about getting illegal guns off the street, there are no illegal guns, the guns for the most part are legal, only the criminal use of guns/firearms are illegal.

Now that we have Constitutional carry the guns are legal. Now let's start blaming the criminal use of guns.

 

[BJHay]

The problem isn't the NFA but rather the Hughes amendment. It was passed on a very sketchy voice vote in 1968. That law bans civilian ownership of new full-autos. The vote recording is available online and it doesn't sound like it passed to me yet the democratic leader of the vote (Charlie Wrangle???) said it did....so it did. That amendment cut off supply and drove prices to the level we see today.

Arguing against the Hughes amendment is probably an easier sell because it wouldn't make a difference in what or who could own over the current situation.

Even if the Hughes amendment could be repealed politically there would be huge pushback back from some of our own. Full-auto owners today have spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on their firearms. The value of those very expensive items would drop to nearly zero overnight. If faced with a six figure loss some current owners would not be happy with the change.

 

[Tombs]

So, this issue came up in another thread, but it got me thinking, and I didn't want to thread-jack the OP's discussion, so I thought I'd start my own thread and see where it goes.

First off, I do NOT want to see full auto weapons banned or regulated, and fully support abolishing the NFA. My main reasoning is because it will always be extremely easy to convert semi-auto weapons to full auto, making any such ban effectively meaningless.

HOWEVER, I can kind of understand why, hypothetically, someone would want to ban full auto weapons, if there were an effective and reasonable means of doing so. Full auto, in my view, seems to give a disproportionate advantage so those who have no regard for innocent lives (or are deliberating trying to take as many innocent lives as possible) why providing a comparatively small advantage to self-defenders. Same thing seems to apply to weapons such as grenades.

So I guess I'm half playing devil's advocate here, and half looking for a more productive way to discuss with those who do want to continue the ban/regulation of full auto weapons, and also perhaps looking for a little education myself.

Okay. Roast me.

You need to shoot a full auto before you really pass judgements.

Semi-automatic fire is more effective for causing mass harm in a target rich and defenseless environment.
Automatic fire is very capable of being very well aimed and deliberate, it is not an indiscriminate weapon.

After shooting some, I see no intellectually honest way to consider it more of a risk to society than semi-automatic fire. It's actually lower risk, as it's giving you 1-2 seconds of fire before you're having to reload.

The only danger I see would be present on shooting ranges with people who are less responsible, shooting automatic handguns. But the reality is that they'd be a greater risk to themselves than anyone around them. (Or any very low flying aircraft, lol)