How significant would a new AWB and a 10 round limit be to rifle effectiveness?

[Trent]

North Hollywood.

Full auto weapons.

Over 1,100 rounds expended by the perpetrators.

Zero deaths other than the perpetrators.

It's statistically preferable to have bad guys OWN full auto weapons because they're more likely to expend their ammunition faster, miss more targets, and in general kill fewer people.

Truth be told, 10 round magazines will just make you aim better.

DC Snipers only needed one shot, in each instance, when they struck, despite having the capacity to put 29 or 99 more rounds in the weapon.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Yes, I'm aware that mass murder won't be [strike]noticeably[/strike] at all affected by this.

There.

Reducing magazine capacity or banning certain types of firearms is nothing more than a completely pointless act of expiation for a wrong that doesn't exist.

Moreover, it fixes nothing. If these bans actually reduced violent crime, I'd be open to discussion about their implementation. They DO NOT, and so I AM NOT.

 

[r1derbike]

Here we are arguing magazine capacity when it is the antis wish to disarm society completely. Complete world disarmament. The only people who will own firearms are politicians, police, murderous criminals, and the military, under the visions of the New World Order.

Do I hear a chisel and hammer chiseling away at our means to protect ourselves? How long will it take this to happen, a gulp at a time?

A few weeks ago, a female rang our doorbell, and asked if her crew could clean our carpets for free, as her corporation was doing a market survey in the area. My wife told her no thanks as we had them cleaned a month ago. That was one time that I wished I had more than my sidearm handy, while I listened to the exchange from my recliner.

We live in a retirement community, have few neighbors, but the breakins and home invasions have skyrocketed. The crime wave here has gone wild. Just like those angels of school children, we citizens are being murdered as well, with little coverage, except for local news.

I abhor comments from our own ranks that we may be part of the problem.

I will never be part of the problem, but I will be part of the solution, if we lose the ability to defend our person, family, and homes.

 

[David White]

It also doesn't help that the main stream media is clueless as to what they are talking about.
Here is an example of how miss informed some people are
This is meant as humor but I think it's pretty straight forward in they way the other side thinks...

 

[bassdogs]

Bassdogs, the Army still uses full-auto guns like the M4A1 and the M240/M249. The reason they selected burst fire is to curb spray-and-pray tactics.

Also, there is a difference between "assault weapon" and "assault rifle". A semi-automatic weapon cannot by definition be an assault rifle, because the technical definition includes burst or full-auto fire. "Assault weapon" is a non-technical term, which as I mentioned above includes terms that are either A) scary or B) a technical stat that in the end won't make much of a difference.

Take the term "flash hider" (to most laymen that means a suppressor), "pistol grip" (makes it sound like the gun is easier to conceal, even though most pistol grip weapons still have a stock and PGO weapons are much harder to use effectively), "high-capacity magazine" (in reality a standard capacity magazine that is higher than what the antis want us to have), or "bayonette lug" (okay...the military has actually taken out bayonettes for large part because a spare magazine is a better use of weight).

Not following your distinction between an assault rifle vs weapon. I also understand that the military still has full auto weapons. Again not my point. Boiling it down to the simplest term, a semi auto AR has very little difference to a full military assault rifle. Full auto or burst fire or civilian semi auto with a 30 round mag all pretty much accomplish the same thing. All this conversation has moved me closer to the belief that it is the hi cap mag that is the issue here not the look alike black "firearm". I own several hi cap [15 round] mags for my Glock 22 but would not feel under gunned if I could only have the 10 round mags. I'd just make sure I was packing an extra mag or two where now I tend not to worry about more than what is in the gun.

 

[MachIVshooter]

All this conversation has moved me closer to the belief that it is the hi cap mag that is the issue here not the look alike black "firearm". I own several hi cap [15 round] mags for my Glock 22 but would not feel under gunned if I could only have the 10 round mags.

I'm sure there are quite a few people here who would happily pay the shipping to exchange your 15 rounders for their 10 rounders, since you see no difference. Go ahead, be part of your own "solution". Giving up your "hi caps" seems like a good start......

 

[Zoogster]

My advice is don't accept a round limit.



In California we got such a limit. The solution to me was to always use bigger more powerful rounds, so that 10 or less was still a normal amount.
That seemed logical.
If you can't have 30 .223 cartridges, have 10 .50 cartridges!


Well then the antis get around to banning powerful rounds, hence .50 BMG ban in California. Many other rounds have been proposed for banning in some other states too.

Once you got a capacity limit in place for awhile they go for a power limit. You know, nobody needs a rifle of X power, it takes out schools, knocks planes out of the sky, and all sorts of other things the military wishes they could actually do...
This is not new territory either, some other nations already have power limits on ammunition.




In the short term though I think it would be time to start moving away from 30 rounds in AR type guns and to magnum rifles with ~10 rounds.


However the moment the people most in favor of gun rights like those on boards such as this grudgingly accept a ban or restrictions the battle is lost.
If you can't fight it tooth and nail without already planning for defeat, then the average citizen is even less of a challenge.
The US is really pro-gun, the media just has a monopoly on public perception outside of the internet and convinces people the country feels a certain way.
Many politicians have always already been in favor of gun restrictions of effective arms (most governments have been since early history because they want centralized power) so they merely start to come out more when they think it is no longer politically dangerous.

 

[Skribs]

Bassdogs, the term "assault rifle" is a technical term, which refers to a rifle that meets certain criteria. I don't remember all of the criteria off-hand, but the two biggest criteria are intermediate rifle cartridge (like the 5.56x45, for example) and the capability of burst- or fully-automatic fire. Any semi-automatic rifle, a sub-machine gun (which uses pistol rounds, not intermediate rifle cartridges), or a pistol cannot, by definition, be an assault rifle. This term is as technical a term as calling a Ruger GP100 a revolver. A full-auto AK-47 is an assault rifle, that term will never change.

The term "assault weapon" was either come up with by the media or by politicians. It is a term with a loose definition which can be summed up as "whatever we think makes guns more dangerous, look more dangerous, or simply sounds scary." It is a term that is subjective to different jurisdictions and journalists. It could simply mean a rifle or shotgun with a pistol grip. It could mean a bolt-action rifle with a bayonette lug. It could mean a semi-auto pistol with more than 10 rounds capacity. It could mean everything but single-shot weapons. It all depends on who is defining it. My M&P, for example, is not an "assault weapon" but in CA it would be.

The term "assault weapon" was coined basically to make certain guns sound scarier to promote legislation against them.

 

[jmorris]

Depends on the rifle. This one, not so much.

 

[LemmyCaution]

I'll point out that Adam Lanza is estimated to have fired around 100 rounds last Friday.

Assuming standard capacity magazines, that's 3 mag changes in the course of the rampage. I'll wager he could have made 10 mag changes with very little extra difficulty, were he limited to 10 rounds per magazine.

The scale of his massacre was not an effect of the magical killing power of his firearm. The high death toll was a result of no one in the building having the means or will to mount an effective defense.

Additionally, let's assume worst case and suddenly deranged nuts are now limited to six shot revolvers. Are we, as a society, going to be satisfied that only 6 get killed in a massacre, instead of 26? Of course Lanza took four guns with him. With New York reloads, he'd have killed just as many.

This debate about magazine capacity is preposterous. It is not incumbent on us to justify why we 'need' 30 round magazines. It is incumbent upon those who would ban them to make a reasoned argument that such a ban would have positive effects.

I have not seen such an argument. I've merely seen the tautological insistence that such a ban makes 'common sense.'

 

[Zoogster]

I also heard that the killer fired something like around 3 shots at each victim.
So it would have been similar to 10 rounds of a more powerful gun.


Before the AR-15 became so popular in America the average gun was more powerful. AR popularity has actually reduced how powerful the cartridge of the average rifle is.

30-06 for example used to be very common.
Today the .223 is more of a standard.


An 8 round Garand for example is not that far from 10 rounds, and was quite popular goin back to ww2.
You can even own them in Canada!



Ironically the military only went to the 5.56x45 round because it was expected to be used in selective fire roles where the reduced recoil was a bigger benefit , not because it was a better semi-auto round.
If the military had stuck with semi-auto rifles they would have never gone to 5.56 and stayed at .30 caliber or larger rifles.
Even more ironic is that today most soldiers are limited to using thier 5.56x45 rifles in semi-auto when the whole original reason for its adoption was being more suited to select fire use. Of course pinning the enemy down while artillery or air power, and support weapons like grenade launchers and mounted machineguns, actually does most of the killing is a bigger use of rifles in the military today, so a lot of little rounds can fill that role better than bigger rounds that actually would do a better job at killing the enemy.








However all of that is really missing the point as to why politicians and leaders want to ban rifles they feel are effective. The truth is a mass shooter with a common shotgun with 1/3 of the rounds could do just as much damage to civilians without body armor, with each round being more lethal. But would be much less effective against those in armor or protected vehicles etc
So such restrictions would do a lot less to change the lethality or number killed in mass shootings, but a lot to insure those working with the government come out on top easier. So when they see the opportunity to go after rifles they feel are effective they use mass shootings to do so. (Keep in mind the whole purpose of the 2nd Amendment being to provide a risk to government forces and act as a deterent to foreign and domestic governments, and that governments in the last 100 years have killed far far more of thier own people than all criminals combined.)

 

[Skribs]

Lemmy, you're assuming that he would just bring in a revolver. A revolver and a few speedloaders could have done the same thing. You're right on NY reloads.

 

[bassdogs]

Take this discussion back a few decades and the same arguments would be thrown out in the defense of full auto machine guns. I know many here think they ought to be civilian legal without a special license, but all we are doing now is going back to the same argument that was raised when machine guns were basically banned. I think the issue then and in my mind a very similar issue now is the amount of firepower that can be sent down range in a short amount of time. I agree that it is not the look that makes a difference between a typical semi auto carbine and a decked out AR, I think it is the firepower that can be unleashed from the large mags that are used in them. For some reason, these deranged killers are gravitated to the black assault like rifle. I have to go back to the ban on machine guns and say "we the people" were not infringed in our ability to defend ourselves then and I can see the argument being made for the hi capacity semi autos of today.

Oh I can hear the screams already. The "over my dead body" will they take my guns. etc etc etc. There are many other equally important issues that need to be looked at beyond the "gun"but to bury the question raised by this OP would be sticking our heads in the sand.

 

[Zoogster]

Bassdogs you know the 2nd Amendment was not about defense from common criminals, but enabling the population to actually be effective against military forces, like those of thier own government, and soldiers of invading armies.
It was really to insure that the potential of a strong effective insurgency was always present.


As to why people, not just those with bad intentions, are drawn to certain looking rifles, that is easy it looks scary and is the rifle associated with the military and the police. Being the standard arm, or at least looking like the standard arm of the military and police positions itself in the mind of the average person as the rifle the professionals use for killing, and hence the most effective.
However many of the deadly shootings in our history were done with pistols, or pistol caliber carbines, or shotguns. The Columbine massacre was mainly done with a pistol caliber carbine during the middle of the Federal AWB while a 10 round magazine capacity was in place for example.

 

[larryh1108]

We need to look at it this way. If we concede to 10 round mags to appease "them" and in a few years we still have these mass killings, they'll say the ban wasn't good enough and it needs to be cut to 3 rounds. The fact is the murderers will find ways to do their dirty deeds and each time the public will cry for more and more control. Once we concede even 1 round of less magazine capacity it will never end until they turn every rifle into a single shot rifle. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. It (more screaming) will never stop until every gun is outlawed. Even then they will cry because we have knives, axes and other evil tools. Some people will never be happy. They want it all their way. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I say let the squeaky wheel burn up and disintegrate into a pile of ashes because it got no grease from us.

 

[W.E.G.]

I don't think the 30-30 is a very good sniper rifle.

But if I got shot in the head with one I might change my mind.

 

[Skribs]

The same arguments were thrown out back then because they apply today. Please reread my post #6. Points 2 and 3 are especially salient: #2, the 30-round magazine does not allow significantly higher rate of fire over the course of a rampage, especially with someone who comes prepared. #3, set a 10-round limit, and criminals will still use 30 round magazines.

"Yeah man, I was going to kill 25 people, but I decided against it because I didn't want to get charged for having an illegal magazine," said no criminal ever.

 

[akodo]

As a tool for self defense, how significant would a new Assault Weapons Ban and a 10 round magazine limit be if applied to M-4 or AR-15 style rifles?

From the wiki, it states that the rifle has to have several features to qualify as an assault weapon. Specifically, it can't have a standard pistol grip AND a flash suppressor.

Well, how big a deal is the loss of the flash suppressor? What exactly does it do for you, anyway?

As for the 10 round limit : if you have to defend your life or your property with a rifle, say after a natural disaster when the looters are coming, how probable is it that you actually need more than 10 rounds? (between reloads)

I don't really have anything to compare to, I was in the Army but I never fired a weapon in combat. I do remember that 30 rounds doesn't seem like much, however, many U.S. soldiers in world war 2 had only 5-8.

Yes, I'm aware that mass murder won't be noticeably affected by this. There will be plenty of high cap mags left over for many years after the ban, and the next time a nut comes along and wants to do something bad, he has plenty of other options, anyway. A bomb would have killed far more people, and I think the right kind of fertilizer to make a bomb is still sold at agricultural supply places.

You are thinking of it backwards.

A flash suppressor, bayonet attachment point, and other features have ZERO impact on how effective the tool is in the hands of a madman. If that's the case, then why bother restricting them.

Yes the effectiveness of 3 separate 10 round magazines changed rapidly is pretty much equal to a single 30 round magazine, so why restrict the 30 rounder?

Finally, there are instances where is is actually nice to have a flash suppressor, a 30 round mag, and other 'naughty' features, but this is generally when doing something legal.

Hence restrictions like this only affect legal behavior and allow madmen to be just as deadly.

Truth of the matter is, this guy could have charged into the school with a bolt action hunting rifle and 2 boxes of cartridges and been just as deadly.

 

[mgmorden]

I'm absolutely shocked that another sub-100 post count member is posing as one of us and proposing so called "reasonable" restrictions.

 

[JustinJ]

Since nobody else wants to answer the question i will. 10 rounds is sufficient for self defense. Im not arguing for a mag cap but that is the case.

 

[Skribs]

JustinJ, 10 rounds is sufficient until that 10th round fails to stop the last BG. Home invasions are rarely one person, 2, 3 and 4 are common (sometimes even 5). If I had to defend against 4 people, I'd want more than 2-3 rounds per attacker. Assuming 100% hit rate that's still not a guarantee to stop the threat.

Another thing to consider is that in defensive use, you might have spare magazines loaded or you might not. If you have 10 spare magazines, but the only loaded magazine is the one in your gun, then you ARE limited to what is in the gun.

A person planning an attack goes in with his spares loaded and ready. So he's essentially limitted to what he can carry (arguably slightly less with more magazines, but also more if he's limited to internal magazines), but you're limited to what's in the gun.

Also, if there were a magic button that could eliminate all magazines over 10 rounds, these shooters will likely use higher-powered weapons, such as shotguns or .308s. That wouldn't really reduce the lethality of the attack.

 

[David White]

I'm absolutely shocked that another sub-100 post count member is posing as one of us and proposing so called "reasonable" restrictions.

I share your sentiment on that!

I am also shocked by the apparent lack of general firearms knowledge post on this thread as a whole!

 

[Vurtle]

I think we should start referring to the AR as the American Rifle. Then if you have a problem with the American Rifle you are anti-American.

 

[ShamboPyro]

Perhaps it wouldn't limit rifle effectiveness, however rifles aren't just for self defense. It WOULD however limit fun effectiveness.

 

[David White]

Perhaps it wouldn't limit rifle effectiveness, however rifles aren't just for self defense. It WOULD however limit fun effectiveness.

Here's a thought.... How about we don't allow them to limit ANYTHING?

I know, it's a crazy thought on my part but I say no to them altering my 2A rights period!

Why don't we limit how long these turkeys can keep their wide bottoms in office?
I like that idea much more!