[FRIAM] is "assault rifle" a red herring?

[Prof David West]

Granting all you say, there is one other aspect — rate of discharge. You can empty your Beretta in the time it takes my to fire 3-4 shots from my 357 revolver. A legal AR can probably discharge a full 250 round mega-clip in the time it takes you to empty, reload, and empty your Beretta. An illegal, full-auto, AR can get close to a single instance of your pistol being emptied.

Mr Macho would eschew most long guns for the same reason as most pistols — too slow to fill the air with lead. Also does not need to worry about skill. In WWII the ration of bullets to causalities was 25,000/1. Because of closed and highly compacted spaces your average mass shooter does better 200-500/1 but still relies on luck rather than skill.

Assassins (mob hit men, etc) prefer a 22 and achieve pretty much a 1/1 ratio. Effectiveness, not posturing, is what matters to them.

davew


On Thu, Mar 25, 2021, at 9:28 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/24/boulder-ban-assault-rifles-mass-shooting
> 
> https://www.vice.com/en/article/7k9njz/atlanta-shooting-suspect-bought-his-gun-the-same-day-he-allegedly-killed-8-people
> 
> According to the Vice article, the massage parlor shooter used a 9mm 
> handgun. I have a 9mm Beretta and I can fit 10 rounds in the mag. It 
> seems rifles can be unwieldy at close range. The only benefit I can 
> see, if you want to murder lots of people, is the rifle has some 
> stability that helps with targeting. So my question is whether banning 
> "assault" rifles is of any use at all?
> 
> I do get that the styling appeals to machismo. But so do handguns. We 
> met a guy at the pub last weekend who brought his dog. A friend wanted 
> to take the dog inside to visit another dog who'd just arrived. The dog 
> owner nearly shouted at the friend: "Left side!", meaning the leash 
> should be held in the left hand. I asked, "Why?". The dog owner 
> explained that he always carries his handgun on the right hand side and 
> wants to train the dog to stay on the left, you know, so he can always 
> be ready to whip out his gun and kill people.
> 
> That macho paramilitary, camo-wearing, pseudo-tough, stockpiles of 
> Mountain Dew in the basement [⛧] attitude seems to play some role in 
> those to whom the AR-15 appeals. I suppose the trick is teasing out 
> which ones are actually dangerous from those simply LARPing. Removing 
> the macho styling also, I suppose, targets the material cause. But it 
> seems too weak to matter much.
> 
> 
> [⛧] https://youtu.be/QUHoFotHj9k?t=225
> 
> -- 
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
> 
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