What is wrong with a bayonet lug?

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ol' scratch

ol' scratch

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Sorry if this appears to be a rant, but I don't get it. Why the heck do governments try and have the bayonet lugs cut off of rifles? I only mention this because I got an e-mail from a firearms enthusiast from Germany who said they forced owners of M1 Garands to grind the bayonet lugs off of the gas cylinders. He is trying to make his Winchester correct and wanted one of my gas cylinders. It was a while back that they forced the public to do this, but it is still stupid.

What the heck is the big deal with bayonet lugs? Is there something I am not seeing? Are there a lot of 'bayonet'-ings in this country or others? I may be asking a question for which there is no answer on this forum. Outside of the SHTF and sometimes zombie threads, I tend to think people have a brain on The High Road, I am just looking for some insight.
 
What makes you think there is any logic to the decisions our governments make.....? Pretty much isnt any, that sums up the answer.
 
Certainly the bayonet lug is gateway hardware to assault weapon violence. First the owner discovers that he HAS a bayonet lug.....then he escalates to owning the bayonet .....next it will be drive by bayoneting.

I never did understand how a lug made a gun more evil. Actually the bayonets used here in the US are rather tame compared to the "toad stickers" affixed to foreign military guns from past history. All in all it is a knife on a stick... Somehow that is a bad thing.

Cheers
Mac.
 
My guess is the anti-bayonet lug thing is a holdover from the old AWB law of 1994, and your answer lies somewhere in the minds of those that formulated said law.

I have a bunch of honeydo's this afternoon but you have me interested and I do some google-fu later on the subject.
 
I have to keep my pre-bans in the safe lest they go on a bloody rampage. Post-bans are very docile.
 
Governments do things that don't make a lot of sense past the surface concept.
 
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Politicians don't want people having "military" weapons, and a bayonet lug is a common feature of a military-style weapon. Basically, they're doing it in an attempt to outlaw entire styles of weapons.
 
It is quite simple - bayonet lugs lead to drive by bayonettings!!

Seriously bayonet lugs on guns make them more suitable for citizens to use them against oppressive governments.

When some anti 2A idiot wants to run their mouth the best reply is one name - Joseph Stalin. This man was a monster period he tortured and murdered more people than Hitler. If the people are disarmed the stage is set for the same thing to happen here. Every day it draws closer the US now has laws on the books that allow for anyone declared a "terrorist" to be inprisoned and executed in secret and without trial. During the Clinton administration Janet Reno and the justice department considered the John Burch Society a terrorist organization.
 
Of course a ban on bayonet lugs makes no sense.

That said, bayonets are a characteristic of military rifles. Removing them, I suppose, makes the rifles more "sporting." To this way of thinking, "sporting" rifles are more acceptable than "military" rifles. (Some countries even ban "military" calibers, such as 9mm Parabellum, for civilian use.)

The NRA, back in the 50's and 60's, used to publish a lot of articles and pamphlets on how to "sporterize" military rifles, including M1 Garands. Part of the process was removing the bayonet lugs (as well as handguards, sight protectors, etc.). Reading those NRA publications today is enough to make any collector cringe.

The "sporting use" fallacy, unfortunately, is something that the gun community has bought into in the past. When will we get it through our heads that the Second Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with "sporting use"?
 
There isn't a darned thing wrong with a bayonet lug on your rifle, as long as you accept the premise that the individual citizen has the right to keep and bear militarily credible arms for the serious purpose of individual and collective defense.

It's when people reject that premise that they start getting wrapped around the axle talking about sports and other trivial applications of the right of arms.
 
A long time ago, back in the matchlock era, hunters in the Pyranees mountains, on the border between France and Spain carried huge knives. There are bears in the Pyranees, and if you shot a bear and only wounded him, he would not stand still while you went through the 50 or so steps to reload your matchlock, hence the knife.

Then someone woke up and smelled the coffee, "If I'm close enough to the bear to stick him with my knife, he's close enough to me to . . . hmmm . . . this is not good."

This bright guy had a knifesmith make him up a new knife, with a handle that tapered from the cross guard to the pommel. With this knife, once he fired his match lock, he could ram the handle of the knife down the muzzle and he had a spear.

Other hunters saw it and liked it. Soon a lot of them were being made in a French town, Bayonne. And these knives were called "Bayonets."

Bayonets were developed for hunters, not soldiers.
 
The killer to the deal is that the Army is dropping bayonet training fro the Basic Markmanship Curriculum. I would guess that will make our soldiers less mean!
 
Bayonets are just about obsolete. They were a great idea back in the days of single shot muskets that could double as a pike after the one shot was fired but there has not been a recorded military bayonet charge in over a century. BTW the reason that the old musket bayonets wers so long was because in those days the primairy mode of transportation was the horse and they needed something long enough to penitrate the vitals of a 1500 pound animal. I personaly have no need for a bayonet. For its size, weight and expense I could carry another magazine, The lug is a different story. It is a very useful device for attatching bipods and other accessories.
 
Classic! But what about the dangers of The Mosin Nagant's bayonet? It's a WMD you can buy for only $69!
Click to expand...

Russian practice was to keep the Mosin Nagant's bayonet perpetually fixed. Most were not even issued with scabbards -- they were simply thrust through the belt, bare, on the rare occasions when they were not fixed.

So for historical accuracy a Mosin should always have a bayonet.

(BTW, the Americans carried this idea a step further, a century earlier, when some M1795 flintlock muskets had their bayonets permanently soldered to the barrels.)
 
xcgates said:
Bearcreek, I'm hoping my humor (humour?) meter is broken, because even for the UK that article seems, for lack of proper words, off.
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Crazy, isn't it? Far as I know it's an actual article. Here's another similar one from more recently. http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/8805022.Fossgate_bullet_find_mystery/ I think this was posted on THR not too long ago but I got it on another site. Seems like some mischievous person could keep the UK police and crime labs busy for a 100 years or better just with the ammo I've got in my closet.
 
Even though I am well aware of the lunacy behind the bayonet lug legislation, it does have to do with a making a rifle less "sporting"

(Yeah, to the one getting bayoneted) haha JK folks.

Who decides what makes a rifle less sporting? I have no clue.
 
Governments don't like their subjects to have the same capabilities as the militaries. Although during a civil war you would be able to shoot at the oppresive gov. you just shouldn't be able to bayonet them...that'd just be wrong.

Who knows. Maybe it's a good thing we don't understand crazy.
 
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