The truth about 'assault weapons' - 5-2-2019 update

This is an update for my previously updated post from January 2019 to include the period from 1-1-1982 to 5-2-2019
http://www.politicalforum.com/index...-weapons-and-mass-shootings-un-the-us.548710/

-According to Mother Jones (link below), from 1982 thru 5-2-2019 'assault weapons' accounted for 375 deaths in mass shootings; handguns accounted for 448 such deaths.
This works out to 10.05 and 12.00 deaths per year, respectively.

-The 375 total deaths by 'assault weapons' in mass shootings 1982 thru 5-2-2019 represent 42.33% of total deaths in mass shootings; the 448 deaths from handguns represent 50.56% of total death in mass shootings

-10.05 deaths/year in mass shootings with ‘assault weapons’ represents 0.064835% of all murders
-10.05 deaths/year in mass shootings with ‘assault weapons’ represents 0.094579% of all firearm-related murders

In addition:
-1982-5-2-2019, there were 16 mass school shootings of all kinds, resulting in 142 deaths for an average of 3.80 deaths per year.
-73 of these deaths, 51.41%, involved the use of an ‘assault weapon’, for an average of 1.97 deaths per year.

And so, with tens of millions of 'assault weapons' in the US, slightly over 10 people per year are murdered with an ‘assault weapon’; these murders represent <0.1% of all firearm related murders.

Thus, further proof there is no sound argument, practically or constitutionally, for banning 'assault weapons'.

Source:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
In compiling this information from the MJ spreadsheet, I was as inclusive as I could be - for instance, some events involved the use of a Mini-14/30 and M1 carbine which are not necessarily 'assault weapons' while others included the TEC-9 and MAC-11, which are oversized handguns rather than rifles. I included them in the total.

 

It would be interesting to do similar statistics to calculate what percentage of mass shooting deaths come from semi automatic guns.... and for that matter, what number of mass shooting deaths result from the muskets that were the gun of choice when the 2nd amendment was written.

 

Funny how the anti-gun left has moved from "assault weapons' to 'military style assault weapons' to 'weapons of war' and now to 'semi-automatics'
That said: The information is in the link I provided.

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment . We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997) , and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001) , the Second Amendment extends, prima facie,to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html

 

Why do you think that is?

Some may, i am not

I am not making the argument that you impute to me

I am simply pointing out that the text of the 2nd amendment was written in the context of a very different environment.... just as was the case for the text of the constitution which allocated votes to states based on blacks being 2/5 of a person.

 

You don't get it yet do you? The gun grabbers don't give a damn about any of that. They want your guns and they also want your speech. Open oppression can only be implemented when those rights are taken. It is pretty damn clear that they are perfectly aware that most gun owners are conservative and it is also clear that they consider conservatives as less than human. Even with no gun murders at all they would be coming for the guns.

 

The repeated failure of their rhetoric to invoke the emotional response necessary for a sufficient number of people to back their agenda.

You tried.

Even if true, it is completely irrelevant.

 

All true.

 

My guess is that more semi-automatics have been built in the U.S. than muskets. It's not a real valid comparison.

 

because it's about gun control. Which is political and it has nothing to do with anything else

 

Yeah, and the only journalists recognized in America all work for paper and ink newspapers, right? Unless of course you are holding firearms to hypocritical standards...

 

Thank you for the update. Living in Los Angeles, I see the results of anti-second amendment politicians pushing gun control. Currently, only police, judges, politicians, and gang members carry guns in LA. Sad.

 

Unfortunately the DOJ in U.S. vs. Distributed Defense has conceded that all semi-automatic long guns are not assault weapons, as they are not suitable for military use.

 

Semi auto rifles have been with us for a long time. Mass school shootings are a recent phenomenon. We should work on the cause of that and guns are not the cause. They are the tool.

 

I have been saying that for decades now, gun control is akin to prescribing pain meds to cure cancer.

 

As was the entire bill of rights.
So what?

 

One thing a person learns in life is the appreciation of a good tool

 

And if mass shooters had any brains they would select a shotgun for committing such crimes.

The carnage that could be produced with a shotgun would make using a semi-auto rifle pale in comparison.

 

I guess we need smarter mass killers

Btw, when ever any sort of gun regulation is proposed concerning so called assault weapons.... their effectiveness for self defense is commonly brought up. If such( weapons are not necessary for self defense..., what is the big deal about limited access to such an ineffective weapon

 

Because the AR has some very good uses when it comes to self-defense once of them being barrier penetration.

 

It seems that you agree with the army
It is well suited to killing people

I note that no army is equipped with shotguns
Depite your claim that it is a superior killing instrument

 

That's a major part of self defense, if someone with criminal intent is shooting at an innocent why would killing them be a bad idea?

Totally false, the U.S. Marine Corps fields both the Mossberg 500 series pump shotgun, 590 series shotgun, and M1014 semi-automatic shotguns. The U.S. Army, is replacing Mossberg 500 series shotguns with the new M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun System, or MASS.

Military shotguns are an invaluable part of twenty-first century arsenals. As limited as the shotgun is, it can do things traditional military firearms cannot. The military shotgun can bust doors, destroy obstacles, cow prisoners of war, deploy tear gas, and unleash a devastating pattern of lead shot with a single pull of the trigger. Until the day these missions go away, shotguns are here to stay.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/yes-us-military-loves-shotguns-27897

 

The constitution protects all bearable arms with equal efficacy -- thus,there's no reason to cede 'assault weapons' to the anti-gun left.

 

A common tactic among those in the left is singling out a class of guns and suggesting restricting that class of guns doesn’t prevent the use of other guns to fill the role of self defense. Once that idea is normalized, they expand definitions to other classes of guns that share some elements of design with the restricted version hoping to normalize acceptance of their definitions so they can expand restrictions. It was how Britain gradually increased firearm restrictions and public acceptance of those restrictions over about 100 years... the very model of the slippery slope strategy.
That we are calling some weapons assault weapons that don’t fit the actual definition of an assault rifle (a selective fire carbine length firearm shooting intermediate length cartridges) to encompass weapons of similar appearance such that the ‘assault weapon’ label was normalized to represent look-alike weapons in public discourse was one step. The next phases of expansion to encompass other classes of weapons was slowly introduced by demonizing other features of the ‘assault weapons’ normalized image, like magazine size, semi-auto design, cartridge type to classes of guns with those features. The goal, is to follow Britain’s model and the ‘slippery slope’ strategy was initially outlined by Pete Shields in 1976 in the New Yorker publication
https://books.google.com/books?id=4...&q=pete shields quote new yorker guns&f=false
That strategy, of incrementalism, is what gun rights advocates resist and is pervasive in the various tactics of GCA advocates and politicians and has been captured in hidden camera videos of various Dem candidates (including the HRC campaign) yet in recent years.
The framers of the Constitution build several mechanisms in it to separate powers and limit the potential for a tyranny to be developed and one of the ideas behind the 2A was was an armed population as another check on the government, by the People, themselves, who would have the arms effective to that purpose. Modern semi auto guns like civilian ARs and AKs may not be comparable weapons to the military ‘assault weapons’, but they do fill a role beyond their sporting, hunting, criminal self defense uses, to one giving citizens weapons suited for one of the original intents behind the 2A.
It’s no coincidence as the Dems swing to the far left advocating socialism, mob think, subversion of the Constitution and Civil Rights, that most of their favored candidates are becoming stronger advocates for greater fire arms restrictions and out right bans on civilian gun ownership.

 

Yes. A semi automatic is a good tool for a lot of things, including mass school shootings. The shooters are at fault for how the tool is used.

 

You have to get a lot closer to the target with a shotgun.