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

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Hm. If you have to pull the trigger for each round (no bump fire), I can see maybe doubling my rate with the Beretta, maybe even up to 50 rounds. But 240? I'd be amazed. Hell, I'd do well just to flex my index finger that many times, that fast, with nothing in my hand. Try it! I got to 250 flexes, but my hand was cramping. For a trained and fit soldier in their 20s or 30s, maybe.

Regardless, your point's well taken. Even at 100 rpm, that's a lot more inter-person damage than my little gun could do. And given that most people are incompetent (or don't really, deep down, want to kill anyone), lowering the fire rate may have some impact. But it still seems like such a weak gesture, more like a campaign slogan than an effective way to lower deaths by gun (which are dominated by suicides anyway - a glacially slow revolver works well enough for suicide).

Waiting periods and mandatory background checks (for every sale) seem to have so much more bite. I'd like to see a licensing process. You have to take a test to drive, why not require competence tests for gun ownership?

On 3/28/21 2:41 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> 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.

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