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Old 01-23-2013, 04:25 PM
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Default The Facts About Assault Weapons and Crime

Warning about "weapons designed for the theater of war," President Obama on Wednesday called for immediate action on a new Federal Assault Weapons Ban. He said that "more of our fellow Americans might still be alive" if the original assault weapons ban, passed in 1994, had not expired in 2004. Last month, in the wake of the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) promised to introduce an updated version of the ban. She too warned of the threat posed by "military weapons."

After the nightmare of Newtown, their concern is understandable. Yet despite being at the center of the gun-control debate for decades, neither President Obama nor Ms. Feinstein (the author of the 1994 legislation) seems to understand the leading research on the effects of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. In addition, they continue to mislabel the weapons they seek to ban.

Ms. Feinstein points to two studies by criminology professors Chris Koper and Jeff Roth for the National Institute of Justice to back up her contention that the ban reduced crime. She claims that their first study in 1997 showed that the ban decreased "total gun murders." In fact, the authors wrote: "the evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect (i.e., that the effect was different from zero)."

Messrs. Koper and Roth suggested that after the ban had been in effect for more years it might be possible to find a benefit. Seven years later, in 2004, they published a follow-up study for the National Institute of Justice with fellow criminologist Dan Woods that concluded, "we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence."

Moreover, none of the weapons banned under the 1994 legislation or the updated version are "military" weapons. The killer in Newtown used a Bushmaster .223. This weapon bears a cosmetic resemblance to the M-16, which has been used by the U.S. military since the Vietnam War. The call has frequently been made that there is "no reason" for such "military-style weapons" to be available to civilians.

Yes, the Bushmaster and the AK-47 are "military-style weapons." But the key word is "style"—they are similar to military guns in their cosmetics, not in the way they operate. The guns covered by the original were not the fully automatic machine guns used by the military, but semiautomatic versions of those guns.

The civilian version of the Bushmaster uses essentially the same sorts of bullets as small game-hunting rifles, fires at the same rapidity (one bullet per pull of the trigger), and does the same damage. The civilian version of the AK-47 is similar, though it fires a much larger bullet—.30 inches in diameter, as opposed to the .223 inch rounds used by the Bushmaster. No self-respecting military in the world would use the civilian version of these guns.

A common question is: "Why do people need a semiautomatic Bushmaster to go out and kill deer?" The answer is simple: It is a hunting rifle. It has just been made to look like a military weapon.

But the point isn't to help hunters. Semiautomatic weapons also protect people and save lives. Single-shot rifles that require you to physically reload the gun may not do people a lot of good when they are facing multiple criminals or when their first shot misses or fails to stop an attacker.

Since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in September 2004, murder and overall violent-crime rates have fallen. In 2003, the last full year before the law expired, the U.S. murder rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report. By 2011, the murder rate fell to 4.7 per 100,000 people. One should also bear in mind that just 2.6% of all murders are committed using any type of rifle.

The large-capacity ammunition magazines used by some of these killers are also misunderstood. The common perception that so-called "assault weapons" can hold larger magazines than hunting rifles is simply wrong. Any gun that can hold a magazine can hold one of any size. That is true for handguns as well as rifles. A magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining. The 1994 legislation banned magazines holding more than 10 bullets yet had no effect on crime rates.

Ms. Feinstein's new proposal also calls for gun registration, and the reasoning is straightforward: If a gun has been left at a crime scene and it was registered to the person who committed the crime, the registry will link the crime gun back to the criminal.

Nice logic, but in reality it hardly ever works that way. Guns are very rarely left behind at a crime scene. When they are, they're usually stolen or unregistered. Criminals are not stupid enough to leave behind guns that are registered to them. Even in the few cases where registered guns are left at crime scenes, it is usually because the criminal has been seriously injured or killed, so these crimes would have been solved even without registration.

Canada recently got rid of its costly "long-gun" registry for rifles in part because the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police could not provide a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a gun murder.

If we finally want to deal seriously with multiple-victim public shootings, it's time that we acknowledge a common feature of these attacks: With just a single exception, the attack in Tucson last year, every public shooting in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed since at least 1950 has occurred in a place where citizens are not allowed to carry their own firearms. Had some citizens been armed, they might have been able to stop the killings before the police got to the scene. In the Newtown attack, it took police 20 minutes to arrive at the school after the first calls for help.

The Bushmaster, like any gun, is indeed very dangerous, but it is not a weapon "designed for the theater of war." Banning assault weapons will not make Americans safer.

Mr. Lott is a former chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission and the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press, third edition, 2010).


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj
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Old 01-23-2013, 04:36 PM
HunterDave HunterDave is offline
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Oh for goodness sakes....

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Old 01-23-2013, 04:55 PM
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an economi....... zzzzzzzz zzzzzzz zzzz... baton down the hatch on your bunker rocky I think I saw a liberal heading south on qe2, lol.
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Old 01-23-2013, 04:56 PM
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It has been proven that no rifle was used in the newtown shootings, the moron that did the shootings used 4 handguns. Aside from that no matter the weapon of choice, whether it be a 6 shooter or an m-16, if a crazy wants to kill they will find a way to do it. we need a crazy person ban not a gun ban
my .02
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Old 01-23-2013, 05:10 PM
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Rocky7 Rocky7 is offline
 
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Even if he did use the Bushmaster - and I think he did - the FACTS prove that an "Assault Rifle" ban does not work.

Why?

Because, in addition to being wrong-headed for many reasons, it's already been tried. It did not work. For those at the back of the class: It....did.....not.....work.

That's why you now see lame attempts at censorship. They lost the debate. Facts are against them and they have only emotion left.
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Old 01-23-2013, 05:17 PM
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Seeing that emotion a LOT, aren't we
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Old 01-23-2013, 05:19 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocky7 View Post
That's why you now see lame attempts at censorship. They lost the debate. Facts are against them and they have only emotion left.
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Old 01-23-2013, 05:21 PM
MtnGiant MtnGiant is offline
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Dear Mr Dave......

YOUR AWESOME DUDE!!!!!!!!!.........

I had no words for this post.....but you nailed it my friend.
  #9  
Old 01-23-2013, 06:44 PM
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ROTFLMAO. Dave... I am bowing. Hands down you made my day with this post. It was a close one with Rocky7's post coming in second. The post were he finally admits that the AR15 killed all the children.

Based on these new stats...Rocky will finally realize he is completely wrong by the time he has posted another 34 lame gun politico threads.
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Old 01-23-2013, 07:26 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocky7 View Post
Even if he did use the Bushmaster - and I think he did - the FACTS prove that an "Assault Rifle" ban does not work.

Why?

Because, in addition to being wrong-headed for many reasons, it's already been tried. It did not work. For those at the back of the class: It....did.....not.....work.

That's why you now see lame attempts at censorship. They lost the debate. Facts are against them and they have only emotion left.
I don't care what the misguided kid used. Banning AR-15's is a useless gesture. And why is there some kind of thing going on as if "Bushmaster" is the only maker of AR-15's? I'd wager that most people who want to ban them wouldn't even recognize this R-15 (Remington) as being an AR-15.

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Old 01-23-2013, 07:32 PM
rwm1273 rwm1273 is offline
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Default New info about school shooting. No AR15 used.

So they finally had to come out and admit it, now that the Coroner has released some info along with police.

An AR-15, or the so-called "Assault Weapon", was not used in the school shooting. The shooter even tried weeks earlier to buy a rifle but was turned down in the background check. So he had to kill his Mother to steal her rifle. There were initial reports, right after the shooting, that police found the AR-15 in his car, NOT IN THE SCHOOL. The rifle was not used. The shooter went into the school with 4 handguns, NOT an Assault Rifle as the media has charged. I remember in the initial hours of this shooting, the Police said they found the rifle in the car. But the Administration-controlled MSM had a pre-planned attack already waiting, to ban so-called assault weapons and jumped on that line of reporting, knowing it was a lie, which included people like Piers Morgan who said the shooter used an AR-15 that shoots hundreds of rounds per minute, as if it were a machine gun. Could it be that the Democrat Liberals and THEIR MEDIA were pushing for the new law, hoping they could do it, before the Coroner released the info? Absolutely.

VIDEO: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/tod...08495#50208495
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Old 01-29-2013, 07:35 AM
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Default gun law

:
Quote:
Originally Posted by winger7mm View Post
It has been proven that no rifle was used in the newtown shootings, the moron that did the shootings used 4 handguns. Aside from that no matter the weapon of choice, whether it be a 6 shooter or an m-16, if a crazy wants to kill they will find a way to do it. we need a crazy person ban not a gun ban
my .02
here here,i agree,but why do honest law abiding citizens need assault rifles for anyway?
  #13  
Old 01-29-2013, 07:49 AM
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: here here,i agree,but why do honest law abiding citizens need assault rifles for anyway?
Welcome to Canada.

If you think that your freedom is limited to what you "need", then you need to study your own history.
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  #14  
Old 01-29-2013, 08:08 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocky7 View Post
Welcome to Canada.

If you think that your freedom is limited to what you "need", then you need to study your own history.
Rocky already agreed to the fact a bushmaster WAS used to kill the kids in the school. He won't correct anyone because misinformation continues to assist his opinion.
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Old 01-29-2013, 07:55 AM
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Originally Posted by Bazz View Post
: here here,i agree,but why do honest law abiding citizens need assault rifles for anyway?
Law abiding citizens are not allowed to have "assault rifles". They are deemed "assault weapons".

Why they would like to own one isn't the question. One of my best friends is ex-military and owns one. She loves it. She doesn't need to answer to anyone why she owns one. I would love to have one myself.

You would do well to follow Rocky's suggestion
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  #16  
Old 01-29-2013, 09:43 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bazz View Post
: here here,i agree,but why do honest law abiding citizens need assault rifles for anyway?
I am so burdened by these responses..ok, well then why does any law abiding citizen need a labourgini? a 1300cc suzuki? shall i go on? I don't own no AR-15,BUT would love to because they ARE a beautiful piece of art!! However all these DRUGGED up & stupid mental cased teeny boppers &Co/Piers Morgan types are doing their damnest to make me believe they are the most ugly violent pieces of fabricated shaped metal..heck if everyone started messing with their natural gas pipes in their houses as weapons that blow up their neighbourhoods..are we then gonna start see piers morgan ranting every other night to "banning all multi-roomed houses over 1000 SQ feet" too!?
The root to All these gun shootings is simply found right here:

> Inside the absent minded parents and their keyless and carelessly unlocked cabinets and gun keeping skills and the absolute UNinterest in what their nutcased offspring are up to everyday<!
These are teenager-parental issues NOT not lawful abiding adult issues with their assault collections!!
Please get this straight!(it is like banning ALL 40% alcohol beverages because so many college students are binge drinkers)

Last edited by tri777; 01-29-2013 at 09:54 AM.
  #17  
Old 01-30-2013, 11:03 AM
1Heavyhitr 1Heavyhitr is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by winger7mm View Post
It has been proven that no rifle was used in the newtown shootings, the moron that did the shootings used 4 handguns. Aside from that no matter the weapon of choice, whether it be a 6 shooter or an m-16, if a crazy wants to kill they will find a way to do it. we need a crazy person ban not a gun ban
my .02
this guy gets it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ld24k9p90w
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