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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29308 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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Personally my preferred gun regulation model is banned handguns and semi-autos, combined with unregulated ownership of bolt/lever action long guns.

  • -10

Your policy would likely result in a much larger number of dead criminals and/or people, and basically boils down to 'black plastic bad, wood good'.

Most bolt/lever action long guns use much heavier caliber cartridges than your typical AR platform.

I don't think so. It's certainly possible to use a bolt action rifle in a crime, but observationally it doesn't happen often.

Now you can argue that's because for any particular place either better options are available (USA) or all kinds of guns are unavailable (other countries), but I don't think that second part is true. Countries with gun control mostly don't have literal bans, but still allow these types of guns with licenses and storage regulations and so forth.

I'm pretty skeptical of the power of these sorts of regulatory hurdles - once people can get guns they can then be stolen or sold under the table or whatever. So I'm led to believe that the low prevalence of rifles in crime is because they're not really well suited for it.

Sigh.

The reason long guns are rarely used in crime is because the majority of documented crime is basically blacks shooting and killing one another with their handguns of choice. Funny, despite the prevalence of glock switches displayed on public forums like, say, youtube, you never hear about the ATF raiding and confiscating them.

This is one of those tells that people whom actually know anything about guns can sniff out - politicians always, always bang on about banning ar-style platforms and their ilk in the wake of their pet tragedy, despite, numbers and capita wise, they're never used in violent crime.

But that's not my point. I'm looking at the law of unintended consequences. Mauser-style and lever-action long guns tend to be hunting rifles, and despite the snide asertions from various political pundits about how 'deer don't wear body-armor' when it comes to critiquing ar-style rifles, the typical hunting round, such as, oh, say, 30-06, is a much, much more powerful round than 5.56.

5.56 puts holes in people's heads, 30-06 makes heads disappear.

People respond to incentives. You ban ar-style rifles(for some reason) and only allow hunting rifles, and suddenly people are defending themselves with said bolt rifles with much larger cartridges, likely ending up with alot more dead criminals.

And before you say 'Well, actually, bolt rifles are much more difficult to wield than ARs', no, I've handled both. They may weigh more, but that doesn't make them more difficult to handle, especially when you're defending yourself.

I don't think so. It's certainly possible to use a bolt action rifle in a crime, but observationally it doesn't happen often.

Tell it to John F. Kennedy.

Reaching back 60 years to find an example seems like strong (if unintended) support for both "certainly possible" and "it doesn't happen often".

And? I'm not arguing that it never happens.

Most bolt/lever action long guns use much heavier caliber cartridges than your typical AR platform.

And can be cut down to something bad for self-defense, but still acceptable for crime.

What about single action revolvers?

I lean against, but don't have strong opinions. Basically if I could be convinced one way or another what the likelihood is they would be used in a significant amount of crime, that would swing me.

Saturday Night Specials enabled a whole generation of criminals. Even with the limited capabilities a revolver provides, they're still extremely dangerous to civilian victims.

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