• macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    he took like 3 shots before getting pincushioned, he could have done that with a bolt-action rifle. the fact that it was an “assault weapon” didn’t help him much.

    Outside of Pennsylvania, other states have successfully passed bans on assault weapons like automatic rifles.

    Automatic rifles were effectively federally banned in 1986. Another gun article by an author who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

    The AR-15 is a common weapon of choice for mass shooters in the United States: the 2016 anti-LGBT Pulse nightclub shooting, the 2017 shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, and the mass shooting at the 2017 Sutherland Springs church massacre all involved this semiautomatic rifle.

    This is because the AR-15 is the most common rifle, not because of any special deadliness. Literally a quarter of all firearms made each year are AR-15s. You have four choices when buying a firearm:

    • AR platform (ubiquitous)
    • AK platform (for combloc larpers, I say this lovingly)
    • a 9mm pistol, likely a Glock
    • oddball shit

    People do mass shootings with guns they already own. Crooks used his dad’s rifle. Banning “assault rifles” (a nonsense category btw, it means a long list of particularly scary-looking semiautomatic rifles rather than any particular characteristic they share) would just mean that mass shootings are carried out with non-“assault” rifles. If you want to reduce mass shootings by bans, you gotta substantially reduce gun ownership in general. The only liberal plans to do this are ones that make gun ownership more expensive, allowing suburban fascists to keep their toys and criminalizing poor gas station clerks who can’t afford 16 hours of CCL training for the pistol they carry.

  • PowerCrazy
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    2 months ago

    The deadly Assault Rifle Fifteen trikes again. Thanks Jacobin.