When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Many of us already have more ammo than we can carry at any given time, which is more than enough for walking into your local elementary school cafeteria at lunch time and spraying - the bad guy only needs enough ammo on hand to commit a full auto "crowd control" once. Ammo affordability really isn't much of an argument.
I was referring more to the average joe that might want one, but shooting it FA regularly is not realistic. Anyone bent on destruction or criminal activity could certainly scrape up enough ammo to do lots of damage.
I'd love to have a select fire rifle, but I also admit that there isn't much purpose for it beyond "hold my beer" value.
The NFA needs to be repealed because it's no longer relevant... fact.
The problem is that the other laws that no politician who values the next election cycle is going anywhere near full-auto "on the streets". There's still the dozen other major gun-control legislation pieces out there. While there is a strong argument for removing suppressors via the HPA, and potentially getting the arbitrary definitions for handgun and rifle... and what constitutes a short-barrel removed so we don't have to navigate the depths of "if it starts out as a rifle, it can never be a pistol" bullshit that serves no purpose except to give more leverage to prosecutors if they happen to run across it as a byproduct of another crime. I have high hopes for HPA, and for the deregulation of SBR/SBS/AOW stuff to make that easier... but not on the cold tip of a witch's titty will full-auto ever be OTC to the public again in this country.
If the NFA got repealed, you still have the limited quantity of 180,000'ish transferable weapons in the country... whose overnight triple in price will make them even more removed from ownership by the common man. Can you imagine being able to buy an auto-sear at Gander Mountain for $40 when an M-16 is currently in the $30k range? How soon before every gang-banger in the whole country is spraying 100rd drums? That **** will never pass.
For now, concentrate on the HPA... low-hanging fruit that the ATF is clearly supporting.
The guy who wrote that white paper (Ronald Turk) is the Associate Deputy Director of the ATF, and the current Director is "acting", not permanent. That white paper is a bid for the permanent Director job, pure and simple. He sees supporting the HPA as a way to secure the Directorship, then he'll go right back to the bureaucratic morass that the ATF has always been. Without the swamp of contradictory opinion letters to decode with their magic ATF crystal ball, and endless wait times and paperwork lines, the ATF can't justify their existence as a suitably bloated government agency.
The federal appeals court – based in Richmond, Virginia, and known for its conservative bent – upheld a Maryland prohibition of assault weapons in unvarnished language, writing that "the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not constitutionally protected arms."
The Fourth Circuit ruling re-affirms previous court decisions that also placed assault weapons outside the scope of Second Amendment protections of gun ownership. But this ruling – decided 10-4 – goes further by addressing the AR-15 by name, tracing the weapon's military pedigree from the M-16 rifle and finding that the AR-15 can be banned based on the plain language of the Supreme Court's infamous Heller decision. (That ruling, written by the late activist conservative justice Antonin Scalia, discovered a constitutional right for individual gun ownership.)
The Heller Court had ruled that "weapons that are most useful in military service – M-16 rifles and the like – may be banned." The Fourth Circuit picks up that language and runs with it, judging that the semiautomatic AR-15 retains key military characteristics that make the M-16 a "devastating and lethal weapon of war" and that the AR-15 can likewise be banned. "Simply put," the Court ruled, "AR-15-type rifles are 'like' M16 rifles under any standard definition of that term."
The Fourth Circuit ruling tossed aside a distinction between automatic and semiautomatic fire that groups like the NRA have long underscored as being pivotal to the regulation of guns:
"Although an M16 rifle is capable of fully automatic fire and the AR-15 is limited to semiautomatic fire, their rates of fire (two seconds and as little as five seconds, respectively, to empty a thirty round magazine) are nearly identical. Moreover, in many situations, the semiautomatic fire of an AR-15 is more accurate and lethal than the automatic fire of an M16."
The Fourth Circuit judged that military-grade lethality, not capacity for automatic fire, is the key litmus test imposed by the Supreme Court. "We identify the line that Heller drew as not being between fully automatic and semiautomatic firearms, but between weapons that are most useful in military service and those that are not." Even though weapons like the AR-15 can be used for self-defense, the court concluded, they "are unquestionably most useful in military service." Therefore, the court declared, "we are compelled by Heller to recognize that those weapons and magazines are not constitutionally protected."
Unless and until the Supreme Court intervenes, the fight over the AR-15 and similar assault rifles is now purely a question of politics. The NRA can yell and scream about the Second Amendment all it wants, but the constitutional trump card is – at least for now – out of play.
I think the courts have held for the right of the states to restrict guns in some fashion for some time which is a problem for the right. I mean when is it "state rights" blah blah blah.
That's an awfully slippery slope. An AR15 is no more deadly than... most modern rifles. Are bolt action rifles going to be judged by the same standard?
Towards the end of 2012, SIG SAUER had a quandary. The Air Force had ordered a number of M11s but decided to close the purchase order out about 50 units short. SIG SAUER wound up with about 50 M11s on their hands that no one wanted. As these pistols retail for close to $1,000 (although the military probably pays a lot less), there was close to $50,000 of unsaleable inventory. Under contract with Uncle Sam, SIG cannot sell M11s to civilians. The frames had already been etched with the model and serial numbers, so what was SIG to do? Well, some bright person on marketing realized that the contract with the government stated only that no M11 pistols could be sold to the public. If the gun had a different marking, there would be no problem. The simple solution was to add one additional character to the model designation and the guns would no longer be M11’s. Since the letter A had been used already, the letter B was chosen. 50 odd guns went to the engraving department.
If there's no real distinction between semi- and full-auto, why has there been a special, highly restrictive licensing process, and additional tax in place on full auto firearms since 1933?
Another nonsense ruling that ignores the entire rationale behind the 2nd Amendment as expressed by the Founders in their contemporary writings.
Okay, sounds good. The military can take my AR-15 since it's more accurate and lethal, and I'll accept a select-fire M4 in return.
This seems like an unlikely exchange.
To quote the ruling, the tests applied by the court in Kolbe v Maryland were: "firearms designed for the battlefield, for the soldier to be able to shoot a large number of rounds across a battlefield at a high rate of speed.”and“a capability for lethality — more wounds, more serious, in more victims — far beyond that of other firearms in general, including other semiautomatic guns.”
On the first test, the M4 is a direct descendant of, and is intended as a replacement for, the M16 as the primary infantry rifle in many branches of the Armed Forces. (see Heller, 554 U.S. at 627)
On the second test, the M4 is no less capable than the AR-15 at delivering a large volume of fire accurately.
If there's no real distinction between semi- and full-auto, why has there been a special, highly restrictive licensing process, and additional tax in place on full auto firearms since 1933?
Because of the close association between fully-automatic rifles such as the Thompson submachine gun and the organized crime syndicates, which favored their use both against the police and in inter-clan warfare, during their rise to power in the era of prohibition.
What if I approach a local military base with my AR in hand, stop a safe distance away, and then yell "COME AND TAKE IT" at them?
I encourage this.
Please have someone else, standing a reasonable distance away (300 meters or so should be adequate) with a good zoom lens and a parabolic mic, record it and post the results on Youtube.
^ It's important to remember that the data in the graph above represents ONLY those which actually go before the US supreme court for review. Unlike most appellate courts, the US Supreme Court gets to pick and choose which cases it feels are worthy of its attention.
In a typical year, fewer than ten-thousand petitions for certiorari are made to the court, and of those, the court grants around 1% (meaning that they agree to hear the appeal.)
So if we assume that the court does overturn 80% of the rulings in the Ninth Circuit which it hears, that means that the SCOTUS overturns approximately 0.08% of the rulings of the Ninth Circuit.
The apparent turnover rate for the Supreme Court is comparatively high, simply because they get to pre-select which appeals they choose to hear, while remanding the majority back down to the lower courts. As such, there has to be something interesting or unusual (from a legal / procedural perspective) in order for the court to agree to hear the case in the first place- the vast majority of appeals to the court are simply rejected after a cursory review, which is functionally the same as the court upholding the decision (it's the equivalent of the court itself pleading nolo contendere.)
States that have Constitutional carry in some form:
Alaska Arizona Arkansas Idaho Kansas Maine Mississippi Missouri New Hampshire Vermont West Virginia Wyoming
With exceptions: Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma
Both North Dakota and South Dakota currently have bills waiting for the Governors signature.
Several states enact Const Carry every year... if ND and SD get it, that's 17. Might see half the country in Trumps first tour... not that he had anything to do with it, but getting elected certainly hasn't hurt the pro-gun rights agenda.
Now if Ginsburg will go away, we'll get the rest of the ball rolling.
02-11-2017, 09:45 AM
0
