How would you explain to somebody why semi-autos aren't evil?

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Ellie

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I'm avidly pro-RKBA, and can handle a firearm safely, but am not as well versed as most of you, and I'd like your advice in discussing RKBA.

I try to regularly voice my opinions about firearms in a reasonable manner, and one that people who disagree with me can understand. Rather than falling back on my a priori belief that to ban firearms is immoral and unconstitutional, I try to give reasoned arguments beyond that.

So, in a discussion with a pro-gun-control friend, I managed to get across to her the self-defense argument. She agrees with me that "simple guns for self-defense" are ok, but not semi-autos "which are only used to kill and maim large groups." When I pointed out that they are handy for defense from groups of people, she stated her belief that this is rare and the harm to society outweighs any good.

My sense is that a) she thinks that semi-auto means "machine gun" and b) that there probably are other good arguments for semi-auto (and full auto) firearms to be legal (other than the fact that they are fun to shoot, of course, which won't hold water) : )

So, given that this is a dear friend who held my hand while I cried over the death of my newborn son, and not somebody who I wish to cream, how would you answer her?
 
I think you need to start from the education standpoint; ask her what it is that makes a semi-auto different from any other firearm, and if she knows how they operate. From there, you can go on to the fact that semi-autos have been available to the civilian population for at least a full CENTURY now, and the only reason the gun control lobby is making any sort of deal over them is because they realize that most people don't know any more about firearms than they know about deep-sea diving, or speaking Nepalese (but the antis realize this, and can always use that lack of knowledge).
Show her something like a Ruger Mini-14, which is a gas-operated, semi-automatic rifle in 223 remington, and ask her if she knows what it is and how it operates. Then, show her a Colt AR-15, which is ALSO a gas-operated semi-automatic rifle in 223 Remington. If she's like many people, she'll say that the Mini-14 is "OK, because it looks normal", but that the AR-15 is one of those "Bad guns that should be banned because they look mean", and then ask her to look at her argument while substituting OTHER things for those guns. Should cars that "look fast", or that are painted red or black, be banned because they "look fast"? Of course not, and she should be able to recognize that; yet, that is EXACTLY what she's saying when it comes to firearms. You could also ask her to watch this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjM9fcEzSJ0 ), from a police officer who KNOWS there's no reason to treat them any differently. Probably the best antidote for this sort of nonsense is to take them shooting (hopefully, with someone who has a number of these firearms, and can show her exactly how to use them properly and safely; afterwards, ask her if the "evil mind control rays" have started to affect her yet. :)
 
Take the firearm, unload it, place the firearm on the table, place the bullets and mag. beside it and tell this person that if that firearm is evil then it will load it'self and shoot someone without any help from you or anyone else.

This next part is very important. Watch the firearm very closely since we know they are evil it won't take long before it attempts to load it'self and kill someone.

:banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead:
 
Well... Hard arguement to prove or disprove... or argue for that matter as evil is an emotional tag associated with whatever the individual feels the stimulus is. My Glock 23 / 1911 / etc semi-auto was made for one thing only such as any para-military, military, or service weapon.

John Moses Browning made the modern day firearm to fight wars with during the turn of the past century. So anyone that would do their research could easily prove 100% without a doubt that they were made to close with and destroy the enemy in combat :D Basically I am saying my Kel-Tec/Glock/Wilson Combat/ Berreta/ etc is not my Anschutz 1913 Supermatch .22 Olympic competition paper puncher.

So not hiding from that fact we can say that there are alot of competitions that require the 1911 style, combat pistol, or speed shooting competitions that require an Automatic. These are becoming rarer these days but they are still shot quite often. Camp Perry and PA matches use service rifles that are all Semi-Automatic. :D (In addition to smallbore matches which are single-shot bolt action).

So really I think the EVIL part is completely emotional and personal. If that individual feels that killing ANYTHING is bad (such as my wife who doesnt even like killing gnats) then really its a futile point to prove a semi-auto or any automatic anything is different than what it is.. a great instrument for hunting, sportshooting, plinking, defense, or collecting. Maybe take her to the range and set up some bowling pings for an easy shoot and let her see how fun it is... That just might swing it. Good Luck! :D
 
When I started shooting a Marlin 60 when I was fifteen,
one thing I noticed with a semi-auto action was that
I could devote attention to 1) the trigger and 2) the safety
and not be distracted by manually operating the action
between shots.

Keep It Simple and Safe is a good thing.

I will bet that your friend hears "semi-auto" but sees
a full auto Uzi or AK47 blazing away in her mind's eye.
Show her that semiauto does not mean military only.
Then show her that military guns are legitimate curios
and relics. Then the obvious: defending yourself with
a lethal weapon--baseball bat to double shotgun to
semi-automatic rifle--is justified by your right to live
not by the type of weapon you defend your life with.
 
She did admit to this, which is WAY good;
So, in a discussion with a pro-gun-control friend, I managed to get across to her the self-defense argument. She agrees with me that "simple guns for self-defense" are ok, but not semi-autos "which are only used to kill and maim large groups."
Click to expand...
In a self-defense situation, there are going to be times when immediate follow-up shots will be critical, a miss, off-target shot, drugged-up SOB that needs more convincing that his victim will NOT be made a statistic, mulitiple assailants. These are the times when semi-auto is your best friend in the world.

Sounds to me like you are working an anti to the real world workings, thank you, and keep it up. You're doing a great job!
 
Take



Her




Shooting.
Click to expand...

+1 what igpoobah said.

Ask her (without pressuring her) to go with you the next time you go to the range, which should be THIS WEEK!

TRY to go during a less crowded time though....as many anti-soon-to-be-newbies can be rather intimidated by crowds of shooters.

PS: my DEEPEST condolences and sympathy for the loss of your son. I know your pain...
 
There's an 8- or 10-minute video that shows a California (Sherrif? Deputy? I hope someone can help out here) who demonstrates at the firing range the similarity between a Mini-14 in wooden furniture (which looks arguably fairly innocent to those who think that 'simple' guns are OK) and one dressed up to look eeeevil with black furniture, folding stock, big magazine, etc.

I don't have a link handy, but perhaps someone else can point to it.

EDIT: While I was slowly typing, SDC beat me to it -- that's the video I was thinking of, linked from his post above.

IIRC, he also demonstrates and explains the diff. between semi-auto and full-auto.

I have a quibble with the choice of the Mini-14 as the "innocent" one, because to me, it looks like the Mini-Garand it's supposed to be :) A semi-auto hunting rifle with Monte Carlo stock, "elegant" scrollwork (bleeaaccgh!), and a long barrel would be a better example; the Mini-14 is chosen I think mostly because the change (from "normal" to "scary") can be done so quickly, right before your eyes, so the viewer knows that the differences in function are nil, only the aesthetics have changed.

I know what you mean about not wanting to "cream" someone, though -- most people I know are still stuck in the bog of cultivated fear when it comes to guns. The *best* way I think might be to take your friend shooting with a Ruger 22/45 or similar .22LR autopistol.

timothy
 
The autoloading design goes back 100 years.

They were invented to address well known shortcomings of designs older than that.


They are entirely ordinary and pedestrian, and were completely uncontroversial until the mid/late 80's, when they where singled out by political organizations for political purposes, which is pretty well documented.

Anything negative your friends "knows" about autoloaders descends directly from those events, which are still echoing today.

So, to wind it all up:

"How would you explain to somebody why semi-autos aren't evil?"

"They never where evil until recently designated as such for political reasons, and how does it feel to be a chump?"
 
thanks

Thanks - good ideas here.

I will pass the link to the video along.

Thanks for helping me to think through the emotional logic of the 'mean looking' firearm. I'm married to ArmedBear and I'm so used to his collection of various and sundry hunks of metal that they don't look mean to me any longer. I just see them as tools.

And yeah, we have a Ruger .22 and it's about as scary to look at and shoot as a staple gun . . .
 
Correct teminology

Pull up : Politically Corrected Glossary of Terms. That is a homeland security pistol, don't you want the right to be secure? Why we women have right not to be a victim. We just have to have better talking skills than the propaganda machine. Slowly .....:D
 
Last edited:
p.s.

That was an excellent video! Very straightforward and unemotional. And the man looked and behaved like a nice dad, not, you know Ted Nugent (who I love, but is a little, uh, agro to pass along to antis).
 
To the OP: Great topic! I know I struggle with this myself sometimes. All of the above are great suggestions. I find analogies and examples of other, non-gun situations to be more helpful since most people who are anti-gun are totally ignorant with respect to firearms and cannot relate to them. If you start spouting off about technical firearms jargon, you'll lose them and they'll label you an "extremist gun nut'.

There's always the argument that it's a Constitutional right. For example, one could argue that swear words and profanity have no useful purpose and that no good comes of their use. So why shouldn't we make it a crime to use those words? After all, we could still use all the other words, and profane words were only coined to do damage, hurt feelings, and offend people.

So why not ban profanity? Well, because free speech protects all speech--speech that does good and speech that does harm. Benjamin Franklin said that those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. I couldn't agree more. Do you make right-infringing rules for the 0.1% of society who commit crimes, or do you make them for the 99.9% of people who obey the law?

I always like the car analogy, too. Should we ban sports cars? No one can drive 140 mph anywhere in the U.S., anyway, so why should they even be allowed to be bought? They're just designed to be driven over the speed limit, which is dangerous. So if you go out and buy a Ferrari, then you're going to be out driving 140 mph on the expressway before you know it, right? The fact that you can means you will, right?

Wrong. You control how fast you drive and what you use your car for (drunk driving, etc.). If you want a Ferrari and can afford one, then why shouldn't you be able to have one? The semi-auto being used to kill as many people as possible analogy is like saying that Ferraris were designed for drunk driving. It's taking a HUGE leap between two things in society--guns and violence. Yet we don't draw an association between car subtypes and drunk driving. Red sports cars are no more able to kill someone than a Chevette or SmartCar. Do you think the pedestrian who gets run over by a Honda Civic going 50 mph cares that it wasn't a Corvette going 50 mph?

By that token, if someone is shot with a .22 LR bullet out of a bolt action rifle or a .22 LR bullet out of a Ruger 10/22, do you think they know the difference or care? What about the .50 BMG out of a semi-auto Barrett or it's bolt-action counterpart? Does it make a difference? Is the rate of fire what kills someone, or is it the bullet flying out of the muzzle that's aimed at them? Once someone has made the decision to kill someone (making them a seriously disturbed individual), they will find a way to do it one way or another--semi-auto, knife, baseball bat, or otherwise.

Then there's the argument that criminals disobey the law, so how will new laws stop them from doing so? It will clearly only disarm the law-abiding citizens (i.e. the victims). If criminals disobey the laws against violence and murder, why would they obey a firearm regulation? Moreover, even if all guns were banned tomorrow, criminals would still have them.

Look at drugs in the schools. Show me a high school that doesn't have drugs in it or at least a few kids who attend that school using them. How could they have gotten them? It's not like alcohol where they can just pay someone older to buy for them. Drugs are illegal everywhere and to everyone! So how could they possibly have permeated our society so easily?

It's the same reason Prohibition was unsuccessful at ridding the nation of alcohol. You cannot legislate morality, and banning inanimate objects will never substitute for personal responsibility. Banning and limiting things merely makes them profitable to criminals via laws of supply and demand.

As far as attack from multiple people being unlikely, so is needing life insurance or having your house burn down, yet you still keep a fire extinguisher and get a life insurance policy. Plus, why should you not be able to optimize your odds with a semi-auto in a life threatening situation? Is your life worth jeopardizing b/c of what Mr. Cho did at Virginia Tech? Are the two related at all? I don't think so. Who is the government to tell us how we can and can't defend our loved ones and ourselves when our lives are in danger? What if you were only allowed to have a life insurance policy for $10,000? Maybe you have a lot of debt, and that won't make a dent in it for your family. But the government tells you you're not likely to die, anyway, so it's limiting your policy to $10,000. Or maybe you're only allowed one smoke detector or fire extinguisher in your home. What if you have a 5000 sq ft home?

The list goes on and on. Stay calm in your discussion, as hard as that may be. I get so irritated by the paucity of logic in the anti-gun arguments sometimes that it can be hard to not get a little annoyed or fired up. Good luck in converting her or making her a little more well informed. Lastly--take her shooting! That may also help dispel some myths.
 
She has been so brain-washed (or brain damaged) by listening to idiots that there may be no hope of educating her.

How a tool operates is not really relevant: how it is used is.
 
Anybody who thinks an inanimate object is inherently good or evil has deeper issues than you can contend with.
Remain objective from their neurosis for your own sake sir.
 
update - progress

Well, turns out that my friend did not know the difference between full auto and semi-auto, so a short explanation and that video worked. Next, I will work on getting her to a range . . .

And, yes, I agree that it is neurotic to believe that an inanimate object is evil, approximately half of our country has that neurosis. I used to believe that I could do without lefties, but when our baby died, I discovered that I need people and sometimes have to look past some problems to get to what's good about them. I just do my best to witness a more objective reality.
 
Here is an additional argument to use:

Many semi-auto designs minimize felt recoil, so as to allow the infirm and disabled to exercise their right to self-defense. They also allow follow-up shots without manual intervention on the part of the shooter, also allowing the weak who would otherwise be victims to have a fighting chance against evil attackers.
 
Well, turns out that my friend did not know the difference between full auto and semi-auto,
Click to expand...


Capitalizing on this was an explicit, documented intention of those who demonized autoloaders for political purposes.


And in belaboring the difference, it puts us in the unfortunate position of giving the appearance of conceding fully automatic arms in civilian hands.
 
I thought civilians could obtain fully-automatic firearms. They just have to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops to obtain the proper licenses.
 
Well, turns out that my friend did not know the difference between full auto and semi-auto
Click to expand...

I have a feeling this applies to many people who support an assault weapons ban. They *think* the law bans fully automatic military hardware, when in reality it only bans semi automatic guns based on whether or not they look scary.

Its sad that people with such ignorance could be the ones supporting and holding up these gun laws.
 
I agree with you, Geek (about the political nature of the misguided belief and the unfortunate concession). But anyhow, it's some small progress. I'll take my small progresses where I can get them.
 
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