How does one now defend (in a nutshell) owning AR-15s?

[Fiv3r]

The AR-15 is probably the most polarizing firearm currently. I don't pretend to even understand the situation one half as well as experts, but a gun owner who enjoys the hobby but isn't a single issue 2nd amendment voter I struggle with the hard lines in the sand on both sides.

One one side, we have "No one needs a military assault weapon! Ban these offensive (not defensive) weapons!"

OK, well no one needs a car that goes over 60mph. Car crashes kill way more people than guns. No one needs a cheeseburger. Regulating fast-food would do a great deal to combat diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. The government telling me what I NEED doesn't sit right with me.

On the other side, folks that think a million semi automatic poodle shooters are going to keep an oppressive government from crushing our freedoms is not looking at the big picture. First of all, the legislative and executive branches can do more with the pen stroke to put you in figurative chains that are much more binding than literal ones. Leaning on that argument is folly. If .gov wanted to roll through the streets, we don't have the firepower to stop that. I put a lot more faith in young men like my nephew in the Marines saying "hell no!" If given such an order.

Now, at risk of being skewered, can we at least talk about the reason the gun has been used to such great effect? Yes another weapon could do such damage, but man is the AR easy to pack and load up for rapid sustained use. I'm not blaming the gun, but a magazine dump of 30 rounds of 5.56 into a crowd of kids is going to do more potential damage than 17 rounds out of a Glock. I don't know what to do to "fix" the issue, but there is no doubt that the Ar-15 is efficient and effective at the task of doing damage in short order.

I really like the rifle. I own one. It's what I protect my home with, but I will say it took me a long time to pick it back up after Sandy Hook. Like I said, it's not the guns fault. However, my daughter was in kindergarten at the time. The thought of the horror those kids felt at the end of their young lives sickened me beyond measure when I heard the distinctive report of a 5.56. I realize that is projecting, but that was how I felt. It wasn't fun shooting it for a long time.

I realize the genie is out of the bottle. I don't think it needs to go back in, but there needs to be something done to make it even harder for crazy folks to get their hands on these guns. I realize it's a bit knee jerk, but I'll be damned if "our thoughts and prayers are with your families, but..." would be a passable response if this happened to MY daughter, and to be honest and probably unpatriotic she is my number concern of anything in this universe.

Something needs to be done about this. I think it's a combination of hardware (maybe regulating high capacity 30 round and up magazines as we do purchasing the gun themselves) and software (actually following the laws on the books that would protect us from people getting these guns who shouldn't pass a BG check). There has to be something that will at least help.

tl;dr and to answer the topic:

I'm a law abiding citizen who appreciates punching paper with an Ar. However, if you told me I had to do it shooting 6 10 round mags instead of 2 30s, is be ok with that.

 

[Rembrandt]

When liberals are backed into a corner trying to defend something they have been pummeled with....they rename it or re-define it. Rename AR15's.

 

[Hokie_PhD]

Fiv3r you make great points except limiting STANDARD CAPACITY 30 round magazines.

The problem is WHAT DO WE DO? We have a government that can’t even agree that people who break the law and come here illegally should be punished. Worse we can’t even discuss that they’re harming those who are waiting to come illegally. If they can’t even agree on such a simple issue, do you think they can resolve the complex ones like gun safety, mental illness and school shootings?

I’m sorry but I have zero faith in our politicians.

As the survivor of a campus shooting the only solution I have is eliminate so called gun free zones. Unfortunately this easy and inexpensive solution isn’t an option given the shooting this week so I don’t know what we do except try to elect new people who care. In fact it’s imperative as our enemies are using that strategy and chipping away. See my posts on how my state of Va is close to becoming the next California.

 

[AlexanderA]

Well as we all know the underlying issue is mental health and how to keep ANY weapons away from them. Until we can effectively identify and restrict people with these "mental health issues" it's all just "lip service", because none of us are going to be willing to invest the amount of revenue it will take to address it. The government recognized it back in the 60's when they discontinued institutions set up for just these people.

Wait a minute. Disqualifying people from gun possession based on so-called "mental health issues" is a more insidious tactic of the antigunners than outright bans. First of all, who's to define what specific "mental health issues" would be disqualifying? The vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent; in fact they're more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Then there's the issue of due process. Do we exclude people who are adjudicated to be a danger to themselves or others (after having had an adequate opportunity to defend themselves), or do we exclude anyone who's ever seen a psychiatrist, for any reason?

The practical effect of such a ban would be to discourage people from seeking mental health treatment. They wouldn't dare see a psychiatrist lest they lose their gun rights.

Furthermore, if you exclude such a "mentally ill" person from gun possession, you also exclude every member of his/her extended household, because guns in the home would be presumably accessible by everyone in that home. The universe of potentially disqualified people thus rises exponentially. The antigunners wouldn't need to ban guns if they could ban most people from owning them.

 

[feedthehogs]

Don't fall into the trap of having to defend anything. Once you do you already lost.

All one has to say when questioned about firearms is say: The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

After that just shut it.

If they want to discuss mental illness, break down of the family, failure of law enforcement to follow up on tips, politicians who care more about lining their pockets rather than solve social ills, then fine. But guns have zero place in these conversations.

 

[jmorris]

Pretty easy none of my AR’s have ever done anything to anyone.

I never understood why people have the “we have to do something” attitude after every time someone commits a crime with a firearm.

I feel one life lost is too many and I personally understand the feelings the families of the ones killed are going through and for that I pray strength for them. That said even if it were 100 dead it would be fairly small percentage of the number of people we loose each and every day. That said if I could go back in time and make it so the AR 15 was never invented, do you think people would no longer do bad things?

How about spending your energy attacking the leading causes of death.

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:

• Heart disease: 633,842
• Cancer: 595,930
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 155,041
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 146,571
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 140,323
• Alzheimer’s disease: 110,561
• Diabetes: 79,535
• Influenza and Pneumonia: 57,062
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 49,959
• Intentional self-harm (suicide): 44,193

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

No call to ban fast food restaurants, more and more people are actually making it “legal” to buy and smoke illegal drugs in more States, no one has to go through a back ground check to buy a car and every nut job in a large city thinks we need to give sanctuary to people breaking the laws we already have.

How about next time someone brings it up, just tell them to leave you alone.

 

[AlexanderA]

All one has to say when questioned about firearms is say: The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

I'm afraid that it's not enough to say that. Most people are not constitutional literalists. (And, btw, that includes most members of the Supreme Court.) You have to explain the rationale behind the 2nd Amendment. Even then you might not make much headway. That's why I always fall back on utilitarian arguments about how impractical a ban would be.

If you simply walk away from such arguments you are conceding the battle. Numbers are not on our side. You have to actually start convincing at least some people.

 

[jmorris]

You have to actually start convincing at least some people.

The only problem with that is it seems like the older I get, the more people seem like teenagers. They already know everything despite having little to no experience and won’t listen to anyone’s words that contradict what they want to do, be it destructive or otherwise.

I have sat down and talked to a few before. It’s pretty much like watching a dog chase it’s tail but not as much fun.

 

[PT92]

The Second Amendment.

 

[mstreddy]

Jmorris, I often use the CDC stats to bring the "gun deaths" argument into perspective. Events like this one, while horrific in nature, and make us feel impotent as there really isn't anything that could prevent it, are not even close to being statistically significant. And even then, the numbers of deaths by firearms won't even make it to the top 20 causes of death in America.
Another point I make when people start saying "we should make a law" is "Should killing people be against the law?" If they are anyway near to being intellectually honest, they will pause and think it through.

But, the simple facts is people think that we can DO SOMETHING. But, we can't stop it, as we can't stop the illegal and legal(abused) drug trade. Or people from getting obese, and developing heart disease or diabetes, or a host of other possibly preventable illnesses.

 

[chicharrones]

In light ofthis most recent event, and this may be unpopular in this venue, it may be time to classify the AR15 and similar platforms differently, and raise the minimum age to acquire one to 21. This may help, but the underlying issue is not the weapon used, but the person using it. Many aspects of our society failed allowing this event to happen, law enforcement, healthcare, civic and personal responsibility all failed.
The answer to solving these failures can not, and will not be solved by any single approach. It will require a change in the culture, which includes responsible gun owners.

While not law, there are a few gun shops around my area that haven't sold AR or MSR guns to anyone under 21 in many years. Store policy, for reasons unknown to me. While full of good intentions, I don't think most mass shooters were under 21.

 

[jmorris]

Another point I make when people start saying "we should make a law" is "Should killing people be against the law?"

Absolutely then we can get to the revolving door Justice system we have in place, recitisvism statistics and such.

Problem is you are talking to people that are ignorant about the subject. They think if we could just ban these AR’s, things like this will stop happening. Despite evidence to the contrary.

 

[GAF]

Well the Ar may be just like any other semi auto, but its magazine capacity it 2 1/2 time my Browning BAR.
Every one here is saying it is just another semi auto, but I have a question. Instead of arguing these points
which is preaching to the quire . The question is how do we keep guns out of the hands of people like this?
If the answer is we can`t then we are expected to accept more mass shootings and you all know this idea will
not fly much longer.

 

[armarsh]

For the "got to do something crowd":

As I understand this particular case, the police were called 39 times in the last few years and the FBI were notified twice. No one is going to think that police visit #40 would be the magic one, nor would the third FBI notification.

The leftist comedian Jon Stewart said it best. America has a crazy problem, not a gun problem.

When I was a kid crazy people got locked up. Nowadays locking up crazy people is thought to be too inhumane. Someday when we feel we have to do something we will have an adult conversation about restricting the rights of crazy people, since this is the cause rather than the symptom such as what tool a crazy person uses to kill with.

 

[mjsdwash]

AR's are used in these for only one reason, their price. It used to be AK's and before that it was SKS/M1Carbines used in crimes. It follows the price point. Same reason Mossy 500's outnumber all other shotguns, and lorcin/phoenix types and hipoints are still heavily used in drug crime. Ban AR, AK's will come back Ban AK's SKS's will come back. Ban enough and you'll see Rem742's. Its why you so rarely see Mini's in these shootings, or M1a's, or Fals. These people can only spend so much with what allowance their parents give them. The AR is not the issue so theres no need to defend it. Its just the cheapest option, and the cheapest option will always be the "deadly war weapon designed to inflict as much death as possible".

 

[MedWheeler]

The Second Amendment does indeed (for now) affirm the right to own an AR-15 rifle. However, its existence does not defend one's personal choice to exercise that right. Nearly all adult Americans have the right to own such a firearm, but an overwhelming majority of those Americans do not own one; they have not yet decided to exercise the right.

Those who have exercised that right have had one or more reasons for doing so. It's those reasons the OP is wanting to defend.

As an aside, it could also be suggested that, to prevent "rush-out-and-buy" increases in autoloading-rifle ownership among the population, anti-gun people should stop talking about banning them. Every time they bring it up with any prospect of following through, thousands more rifles leave the store shelves, headed into American homes around the country, many into the homes of people who had previously never even considered owning one. Magazine and ammunition sales rocket upward during such efforts, too. Stop talking about it, increase efforts on the other angles of the problem (the real angles), and the problem will finally see some direction toward resolution.

 

[buck460XVR]

In Oklahoma City, a rental truck carried the explosive and the building housed a day care center.

While they were not school children, a rented Home Depot truck was used to kill people in New York.

Seems more common in Europe, where they have fewer guns. The tool used changes but the result is the same--innocent people are killed.

This is the defense in a nutshell.

 

[Danoobie]

We're ALL taking the wrong tack, on this. Let's steal a page from the Democrat's immigration textbook, here.
Take a noob shooting. Bring 22LRs, mostly. Let them shoot fun things like milk jugs filled with water, steel gongs,
etc. Show them a good time. Avoid heavy, high recoil calibers. Let THEM see for themselves the AR is just a 22,
just another rifle.

Arguing with antis, unless you can take them shooting, at the range, to see for themselves how much fun it is, is just
shouting at the rain. But imagine if we all
took just ten noobs shooting every year. That's less than one a month. If we could take an immigrant voter shooting,
we might also wind up with a REPUBLICAN for life.

 

[Browning]

I compare the US with Mexico.

All of the measures that the anti-gun/anti-freedom crowd wants are already in place there. Ordinary citizens that aren't influential or wealthy aren't able to travel to the one gunshop in the country (located in Mexico City on an army base) and buy a gun. They're unable to navigate their way through the permit process and so they're stuck without a means of defending themselves.

That hasn't stopped the cartels from importing guns by the shipload from Asia, the Middle East, Israel, Africa, Russia and South America.

That also doesn't stop people from making Sten or Luty sub-guns in their own garages. Or pipe shotguns being made with 2 pieces of pipe and a nail. Or zip guns.

It also doesn't magically do away with the 350 million guns that are estimated to be in the hands of American gun owners.

So bad guys will get guns if they want them.

 

[ofitg]

Some people here might remember the media's non-stop propaganda blitz which began with Patrick Purdy's schoolyard shooting rampage in 1989, and culminated with the 1994 "assault weapons" ban. Scarcely a day went by that the news & entertainment industry didn't lecture us on those "evil semiautomatics".

It appears that public attitudes have shifted since those days, in spite of some notable massacres in 1999 (Columbine), 2007 (Virgina Tech), and 2012 (Sandy Hook and Aurora CO) -



http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/now-oppose-assault-weapons-ban-doubts-stopping-lone/story?id=35778846

To be sure, the Talking Heads will bang on the same old drum whenever one of these tragedies occur - and we must argue against their so-called "solution" - but now is not the time to panic.

 

[FROGO207]

I got raged upon by an anitgun "friend" after the FL shooting, and after listening to a 10 minute diatribe I politely said "Come and take all the guns everywhere or shut up and go away with your got to do something attitude" and then walked away. She may never talk to me again. Not in any way shape or form a loss IMHO.

 

[wally]

What part of "Shall not be infringed" are you (and they) not understanding? An attack on the AR-15 is an attack on our rights under the Constitution

 

[Shootr56]

The first thing is to convince them that the AR's they see people own are NOT machine guns. Most gun grabbers know very little about guns. They see AR's on TV and they are always full auto. They hear the newsman describe AR's as "automatic" pretty much every time there's one of these shootings. They totally ignore the fact that less than 1% of murders with guns are done by rifles of any kind.

In a nutshell we have to go after the media that the do-gooders bow down and worship. If they saw it on TV it must be true. Wrong. A full auto AR will run about $35,000 according to people I've known that actually owned them. You can't buy a new one. It has to have been built before 1986 because that's the year Reagen signed the Firearm Owners Protection Act which made it illegal to sell any full auto made after the law went into effect.

There is a very limited number of full auto AR's or M-16's available in this country. The approval process to get one is time consuming and expensive and it creates undue hardships on your life. It just isn't worth the trouble for many people. Many others just can't afford it. And the laws you must deal with after you happen to buy a full auto will make you pull your hair out.

The second point I'd like to make is that the AR is NOT the most dangerous killing machine in America. An M1 Garrand could kill more people and almost as fast. The bullets are far more powerfull which means more of the people who are shot will actually die. Then there's the AK-47's which BTW are also NOT full auto. They shoot more powerful rounds than the AR also unless you are shooting an AR-10 or possibly a Blackout. I don't know which is more powerful between a Blackout and a 7.62 X 39. But I have heard of zero mass killings done with either an AR-10 or a Blackout round. I would just about bet that a person could kill more people with an AK or even an SKS than with a AR especially if using modern ammo. I hope I never find that out for certain but the rounds are more powerful.

The media has made the AR the boogey man with their propaganda. To reach the gun grabbers we have to deal with their god which is TV most of the time. The education system is another big source of lies about guns. Gun grabbers will not listen to us because we aren't celebrities. And they tend to do what they are told by the Oprah's of the world. We should make a massive push to invade the media world and put out some common sense facts for a change.

I was talking through Facebook to a friend I've had since I was 7. He started going on about how he and a friend had sat down on a bar stool (there' a great place to "think") and worked out that whole business of mass killings. Of course they decided that all AR's should be collected and turned to scrap. I mentioned very politely that an M1 was more dangerous than an AR and he hasn't spoken to me since and that was several years ago. This guy grew up around guns as much as I did. It's a sickness of the mind we are dealing with and it comes from the media mostly.

 

[jmorris]

We're ALL taking the wrong tack, on this. Let's steal a page from the Democrat's immigration textbook, here.
Take a noob shooting.

That’s what I do. I don’t know anyone that has shot a machine gun that didn’t smile.

One year we had a bunch of folks down for the 4th of July and the next day had a machine gun shoot. My Mother in law came along and asked “What are those good for?” I told her to watch how much fun everyone was having and pointed out the ammunition hey were going through was a fraction of the cost we burned up in fireworks the night before, in a much shorter amount of time.

 

[Walkalong]

I'm a law abiding citizen who appreciates punching paper with an Ar. However, if you told me I had to do it shooting 6 10 round mags instead of 2 30s, is be ok with that.

Then you are part of the problem. Regulating items like magazines or one type of gun won't make any difference. To pass legislation we know won't help the issue but makes us feel all warm and fuzzy is insanity. But it is exactly what some folks would have us believe we need to do. The antis don't have facts so they use emotions to get support.