It seems to be hugely important to gun rights supporters that people understand the difference between fully automatic and semiautomatic weapons. And it appears to greatly irritate them when they hear people fail to accurately distinguish between the two. Now, at the risk of irritating them further, I am going to make an assertion.
I don’t remember a mass shooting incident in this country where fully automatic weapons were used. I haven’t studied them all, and maybe there have been some examples of people using fully automatic weapons to murder people. But certainly the most recent and notorious examples in this country have involved semiautomatic weapons. My understanding is that Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster M4 Type Carbine, which is basically a AR-15 semiautomatic. James Eagan Holmes used a Smith & Wesson M&P15, which is also basically an AR-15 semiautomatic. Jared Lee Loughner used a “9mm Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol with a 33-round magazine.” Eliott Rodger owned two SIG Sauer P226 pistols and a Glock 34, all semiautomatic pistols. Nidal Malik Hasan used a FN Five-seven semiautomatic pistol. Ivan Lopez used a Smith & Wesson M&P semiautomatic pistol. And so on.
What this ought to teach us is that semiautomatic pistols are just as lethal as semiautomatic rifles. What Charles C.W. Cooke of the National Review wants us to learn, however, is that semiautomatic weapons are nowhere near as lethal as fully automatic weapons.
The question then becomes, “Who gives a fuck?”
And that’s basically what CNN correspondent Don Lemon meant to say, in a more polite way, when he said, “For me, that’s an automatic weapon.”
Because most of us can’t imagine Adam Lanza doing any more damage with a fully automatic weapon than he managed to do with a semiautomatic one.
The first call to 911 was around 9:35 am. Newtown 911 police dispatch first broadcast that there was a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary (SHES) at 9:36 am, about thirty seconds after they received the first call. Connecticut State Police (CSP) were dispatched at 9:37 am. Newtown police arrived at the school street at 9:39 am, approximately four and a half minutes after the 911 call and Connecticut State Police arrived at the school street at 9:46 am. Newtown police first entered the school at 9:45 am, approximately ten minutes after the first 911 call and approximately fourteen minutes after the shooting had started. This was approximately five minutes after the last shot was heard.
The first police officer arrived at the Sandy Hook Elementary School a mere four minutes after the first 911 call. And everything was already over. Twenty-six people were dead, including 20 first graders. As the police arrived, Lanza made it twenty-seven when he took his own life. Are you going to tell me that things could have been substantially worse if he had had a fully automatic M-16?
Of course not.
Perhaps gun control advocates spend too much time worrying about “assault rifles” when you can buy a 33-round cartridge for your semiautomatic pistol, but the reason that they don’t give a shit about the difference between automatic and semiautomatic is because it’s a distinction without a practical difference if you are on the wrong end of the gun.
Gun control advocates don’t do themselves any favors when they demonstrate their ignorance about the nomenclature of guns, but their failure to understand the finer points of firearms doesn’t diminish the legitimacy of their desire to see ownership of semiautomatic weapons better regulated.
True, but any gun control legislation worth passing is “unconstitutional”.
well, it’s hard. People want semiautomatic pistols, especially.
I just think of the first season of the West Wing:
I always felt like the proper response to that fictional conversation was: “You take what you can get now, and then come back for more. We live in a Representative Democracy and we don’t have the votes for more. But this really is better than nothing. And don’t you dare tell me that it’s not worth saving even one life because there was ten less rounds in the clip, or that it’s not worth doing to save a life every so often because while we failed to keep the gun off the street that can shoot through one brownstone and hit people on the other side, but we kept the gun that can shoot through two brownstones and kill people on the other side off the streets. Don’t you dare try and tell me that we have some kind of moral authority to say, ‘We can’t save these lives, but we can save those lives. However we won’t do so, because spending those lives as some kind of political capital will make the situation bad enough that we might could save more lives later.’ Because if you tell me that you are a wing nut, and you look like a monster.”
Well if he was using full aitp maybe he would gave run out of bullets or something.
All of which avoids the culture and zeitgeist elements and the fact that there are more weapons circulating in this country than there are people.
I’m to the point that even making a legislative effort is pointless.
Dialing back the opprobrium so that the adolescent rebels of all ages don’t see buying and waving guns around as a means of acting out might be worth a try.
Black open carry would be worth a try if it caused a dialing back of the drive to race war instead of inflaming it. That might work, but it is a huge risk that did not work out well for the Black Panther Party 40 years ago.
A professor of philosophy from South Dakota advocates that patrons of restaurants who tolerate open carry in open carry states walk out without paying when an oopen carry advocate and his weapon come in. Enough instances of this and the restaurants get the message to the legislature. (Most legislatures are tightly wired into the hospitality industry lobby.)
A progressive ammo tax could reduce overly large purchases by individuals. It could test the absolute nature of NRA lobbying as well. So could a progressive tax on magazines over 10 rounds, maybe a $1 per round tax on magazine capacity over 10 rounds.
Ending US foreign wars and dialing back on military training would begin to transform the culture. And reduce the demand for latest military weapons.
But what would help more than anything else would be for one of the mass murderers to show up at an NRA Board of Directors meeting exercising their Second Amendment freedoms, as Sharon Angle put it. But that sort of poetic justice never happens.
“A professor of philosophy from South Dakota advocates that patrons of restaurants who tolerate open carry in open carry states walk out without paying when an oopen carry advocate and his weapon come in. Enough instances of this and the restaurants get the message to the legislature. (Most legislatures are tightly wired into the hospitality industry lobby.)”
I think it make perfect sense for the gun control to become criminals. Let them do such things and then round them up and throw away the key. The “Mommies Demand Action” already are best described as a hate organization, this would just about confirm that they could be shut down by the RICO laws.
Semi-automatic pistols used to be called automatics, to distinguish them from revolvers. Some could be converted to fully automatic operation, in which case they were called machine pistols. Fully automatic long weapons were generally called machine guns. I think the terminology changed within my lifetime.
Authoritarians routinely use ad hominem or tu quoque arguments because they regard truth as a matter of authority, not of fact or reason. They try to win by discrediting the other side: evolution is wrong because Darwin was a racist, Climategate disproves global warming.
I recall, from not too long ago, John Cole over at Balloon Juice catching flak from the ammosexuals regarding his use of the word “clip” to for a weapon’s magazine. That struck me as odd because when I fought in that other, other, counter insurgency war we called them clips. If you taped two of them together, one up and one down, the result was called a “jungle clip” not a “jungle magazine.” It only took me a few seconds’ thought to realize that the ammosexuals regard themselves as the keepers of the Sacred Lore of the Gun. There are a number of reasons for that which, I believe, all stem from the results of being deliberately and belligerently ignorant.
Yeah. The response is to deny legitimacy to critics if their terminology isn’t exact or up to date. It’s played as a game of “Simon says.”
The original assault weapons law included some odd features which didn’t affect the lethality of the products in question, like being able to add a bayonet or a grenade launcher. Banning them may have diminished the appeal of available products, which may not have been a bad thing.
Basically, the argument over the use of “correct” terminology is an effort to look more intelligent, to place “scholarship” in the conversation, and identify “ignorance” on the side of gun reporting or gun control advocates. Gun ownership Is an intelligence speciality, don’t you know.
It’s absolutely true that the gun nuts will zero in on trivialities to try and discredit a gun control proponent. No question about it.
However, the distinction between an automatic and a semi-automstic, at least at the level of discussion in that exchange between Lemon and the other guy, is NOT a triviality.
I look at the gun control side, and I often wonder whether they actually want to persuade anyone, or whether they’re just trying to talk to their own tribe. We all know how ridiculous the gun nuts get, but the gun control group really ought to stand back sometime and try to see themselves as so many people see them.
Not knowing the difference between a clip and a magazine is trivial, but to equate a semi-auto with an automatic is like treating a bicycle like a Harley. If you want people who otherwise might listen to you to take you seriously, you have to know the basics.
Clip vs Magazine
What about the rifles that use both? They server very different purposes. A clip is used to load a magazine and magazine presents the bullet for loading into the chamber.
Would you call a “speed loader” for a revolver the same as the cylinder? A speed loader serves the same function as a clip.
The difference is that someone that uses the term clip and magazine is like using the term rim and tire as the same.
When I read a posting from a person that claims to be trained, or “a hunter” or “having military training” and they miss use such terms, I assume that they are a liar.
There is now a legal distinction based on the NFA. So, today, it is very important to make the distinction since to own a Class III weapon you need to have a tax stamp and background check (6 months or so) and the price (due to the NFA requirements) makes these automatic gun cost in the $30,000 to $100,000 range.
A bullet from an AR-15 Semi-automatic and one from an M16 full automatic will do exactly the same thing to the target. So, yes there is no difference in that sense, however, no military uses semi-automatic rifles since WWII as an assault weapon.
An automatic weapon at Aurora theater shooting could have been much worse in the total number of rounds shot and people hit.
Are you going yo tell me that things could have been substantially better if he had had a nine shot pump shotgun? As a matter of fact, the shotgun would have been substantially more reliable than the jam-prone AR-15.
The AR-15 might be jam prone, but it didn’t jam that time. And you’re not likely to be firing a pump shotgun with one hand, nor will you be firing it as fast.
Look, if you’re going to argue the gun control side, do try to make sense. Thank you.
Never heard before that the shooter was one-handed.
Never heard of a mass killer who had a gun in each hand?
Don’t need two guns with a street shooter.
However, you are missing the point which was that banning “bad” semi-automatic rifles while allowing “good” hunting weapons would not have made a single bit of difference at Newtown. It was the NUT that was dangerous, not the gun.
I don’t know how this all got turned around, but I think we agree. Look at my other comments. I’m not exactly warm ‘n fuzzy toward the gun control side.
OK. BTW, correction to my post. “Don’t need two guns with a street
shootersweeper.” I was typing fast while being called by “She who must be obeyed”.The only thing that would have stopped the 20 children dying at Sandy Hook would have been an armed teacher or staff member that could have stopped Adam when he shot out the school window to enter the building.
Police have no duty or responsibility to protect individuals. They can never arrive in time to stop such a violent event. Only the people present before it starts and affect the outcome.
Of course the armed teacher might be a homicidal nut, too. In eighth grade we had a shop teacher, Rollo Jones, who was a pedophile. Teachers are not saints.
P.S. That guy (and a friend that he molested and turned into another pedophile) had me hating gays until I met normal gay people on the Howard dean campaign.
Debating this point seems akin to arguing over the differences between an atomic weapon and a thermonuclear one. Yes, the thermonuclear one is easily more destructive. But in the end, regardless of which one is used, the people on the ground will be just as dead.
Thermonuclear weapons, aka hydrogen bombs or fusion bombs, have much bigger yields and therefore are capable of doing far more damage than atomic, or fission, bombs.
Except on a very real level the difference between an individual being able to take out a city, e.g. WWII-esque A-bombs, and individual being able to take out a state or larger, e.g. modern thermonuclear weapons, is well past the not esoteric line of “Way too much power in the hands of a single individual.”
Responding to that point by mocking someone because they called a WWII-esque A-bomb a nuke is a simple logical fallacy and defeats the argument of the mocker, not the person making the mistake of terminology.
Likewise if someone is attempting to make the case for modern semi-automatics to be heavily restricted because in most cases there is little to no difference in actual body counts, even though property damage and rounds expended will likely increase, mocking them and dismissing the argument as a whole for a misuse of terms is also a logical fallacy.
Are you going to tell me that things could have been substantially worse if he had had a fully automatic M-16?
Oh yes, it could have been much, much worse. But that too is totally beside the point. Just imagine how much more damage our unmanned drones could do in Afghanistan and Pakistan if they were allowed to carry small nukes. Not strategic nuclear weapons, mind you, just small tactical nukes.
But we’re not putting nukes on our drones. See? We’re exercising due restraint. No need to over-react and impose unfair and unjustifiable restraints on the use of drones. We’ve got this under control. Same thing with SEMI-automatic weapons. You’ve got to keep things in perspective here.
Actually there is probably a case for things being better in the event of the use of a full auto weapon: expending all their ammunition, firing wildly, jamming the weapon.
I believe current iterations of the M-16 no longer have a full-auto feature at all; the selector changes to a 3-round burst, for the above reasons.
Exactly. Arguments could be made that full auto is actually less lethal in a typical mass shooting situation.
There is no reason to believe that an M-16 in either three round burst mode or full auto would be less reliable that an AR-15, especially the ones without the gas piston option. In fact, it would probably the gas piston option on the M-16 the chamber would have stayed cooler and even cheap ammo would have done better.
Since the M-16, as with most machine guns, can be fired in semi-automatic mode, you may claim it is no more deadly but never can you claim it is less deadly.
Of course, if the courts would consider full automatic guns no more dangerous than semi-automatic, the NFA could be over turned on Constitutional grounds.
If the shooter ran out of bullets and half of them went into the ceiling you could suppose that it might be less deadly. Or if they tried to use a drum magazine like the Aurora shooter and had it jam. Yes, that was a semi auto, but wouldn’t that be tempting to use with full auto?
This is a pretty esoteric point; suffice to say that arguing full vs semi and pointing out that some journo doesn’t understand the difference is just a jackass ploy to distract from the issue. After all, didn’t the Virginia Tech shooter do it all with a single 9mm semi auto? Worst mass shooting in US history?
FYI Confirmed There was no Incident Report written for use of deadly force against Michael Brown
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word-with-lawrence-odonnell/watch/as-lawrence-predicted–no-incident-r
eport-320757827572
From Larry O:
St. Louis County prosecutors office confirmed that Ferguson PD didn’t file a report after the shooting death of Michael Brown. Our panel joins Lawrence.
http://on.msnbc.com/YGCb42
Yes. This is the story. The report came from the prosecutor, not from the Ferguson PD.
It’s the story because white mass murderers typically shoot themselves or are restrained by bystanders after they run out of ammunition. Occasionally cops bring down one of these guys.
The other story from yesterday of note was the study that showed that stop-and-frisk does not actually interdict that much crime, but more often results in secondary crimes (resisting arrest, assaulting an officer) that draw jail time and for some people eventually trigger three strikes rules. Essentially a way of manufacturing prison populations.
What the Saint Louis County Police Department sent the Missouri ACLU as the incident report. It is essentially an empty record of an event that says when and where Michael Brown was killed. Darren Wilson is listed as the referring officer.
St. Louis County Incident Report for Michael Brown homicide
The report was pulled in response to an ACLU FOIA request. There might be information on the event in the St. Louis County Police Department system that was suppressed in pulling the report. That is, it might not be complete.
I have trouble believing that the argument matters in the slightest. Gun rights are a totemic obsession, which means that attempts at reasonable argument are always going to be futile. I don’t know quite when they became an object of quasi-religious fanaticism, but the history is no doubt as long as America itself, with it’s long fascination with the cleansing power of violence.
I suspect that guns attained totemic status as a result of the outpouring of bullshit regarding the Old West. The quote, “God made man, But Samuel Colt made them equal,” (Itself an advertising slogan for Colt Patent Firearms) was woven into the bullshit. Firearms came to be seen as a means of asserting control in an otherwise chaotic situation. Parts of the Old West certainly qualified for some years. These days, I’d guess that the ammosexuals see government, the need to actually compete with gays, Blacks and women (Or even, gawdamighty, gay, Black, women.) as a chaotic situation so they go with the solution offered by our bullshit myths – encouraged and enabled in no small way by an NRA-dominated Congress.
So you’re right; if guns were anything but a totemic obsession then the mass shootings alone would have brought on rational discussion and effective legislation. They didn’t. The ammosexuals are awash with fear and fearful people aren’t very responsible to reason.
Why is it that gun control supports always resort to race or sexual organs to change the subject.
Using terms like ‘ammosexuals’ is not suitable to a rational discussion.
IIRC Vonnegut talked about re-visiting Dresden after the War. His cab driver showed him the destruction to the cathedral and went on at some length about the aircraft type and weapon caliber that shot out the stained glass window. Vonnegut realized this was a coping mechanism to help not think about it any more deeply.
To avoid this whole issue I’ve taken to calling Bushmasters and such “pretend assault rifles”. I feel this better captures the psychology as well as the technical details.
Perhaps the most lethal aspect of AR-15, M-4, and M-16 is the round that they use. the NATO 5.56 round in terms of mass, velocity and energy is specifically design to be highly lethal. In automatic setting they usually are set for a 3 round burst — which puts three highly lethal rounds on the target without putting out so much that the rifle is hard to hold on the target and without using a ton of ammo.
The M-4 is a lighter, shorter version on the M16 designed for easier use in close quarters.
In other words the round and the gun form a system specifically designed to kill humans and more specifically humans who are armed, shooting back and need to be stopped dead and stopped instantly. (and BTW the M16 and M$ are now designed to be highly reliable and not jam)
The AK47 is the same deal, but just a cruder system.
And automatic pistol is actually a semi automatic requiring repeated trigger pulls but that matters little if you have an extended clip and can dump dozens of rounds in seconds. The issue here again is the round used. Cops tend to use rounds that are underpowered so they aren’t likely as lethal once they go through a wall and such. But rounds are available that will defeat vests and explode organs. Nice.
But to your point Boo, yes, it is a stupid argument because the entire system is design to be lethal to the maximum degree. And that badassness is exactly why the public (and cops) want them.
And so long as some confuse a constitutional right with a God given right to own, carry and use any sort of gun there will be no talking them off the ledge.
The .223 (and 5.56) are very light fast bullets. One of the design features is that they tumble when they hit something. The idea is that if the bullet hits a target it will stay inside the body of the target. If the bullet misses and hits a wall it is less likely to pass though and hit an innocent person on the other side of the wall. This is one reason that experts consider the AR-15 safer to of urban usage than say a 12ga or even powerful revolvers. (The FN 5.7X28 would be even better for both pistol and rifle)
The AK-47 uses a much heavier round (7.62×39) at about 2300 ft/sec more like a hunter would use to kill large game.
The equivalent AK would be the AK-74.
So, when talking about AR-15 or M-16 think medium range and medium power.
The AK47 may be cruder but it is way more reliable.
Okay, then a bicycle is a semitruck. A city street is an Interstate highway. A city council is Congress. Sandals are boots. Let’s do away with all language and just assume that everyone knows what everyone else is thinking.
The difference is important since fully automatic weapons are in fact illegal for civilians.
On the other hand, when I was a lad and people sold guns on the backs of comic books, my Dad called the Nazi FN 9 mm he brought back from WW2 “an automatic,” though of course it was a semi-automatic pistol.
At that time, the distinction was not politically interesting and even crime writers regularly confused the characteristics of revolvers and pistols.
O tempora! O mores!
most of us can’t imagine Adam Lanza doing any more damage with a fully automatic weapon than he managed to do with a semiautomatic one
Oh, he waaaaaaay could do more damage.
Hence the law.
Actually, no. He really couldn’t have made those people any more dead.
He could have killed more with pressure cooker bombs?
The Boston bomber guys were not very good and making effective bombs, I suspect most high school chemistry students could have made bombs with more yield.
Whoops. Sorry about that.
You’ve got to realize you’re referring to a vewy, vewy pwecious part of their anatomy. Then you’ll understand why they get so angwy when you call it “Blam-Blam” instead of “Boom-Boom.”
Yeah, now just let someone confuse a Mac with a PC, or an iPsd with a Samsung, or an iPhone with an Android. All while ordering an “expresso.”
The distinction between semi-automatic and automatic is fundamental. Automatic weapons are heavily regulated. Don Leon said he walked in off the street in Colorado and bought an automatic. No, he didn’t.
Semi-automatics comprise about 70% of the guns sold in this country for the last 100 years. People who want to ban semi-automatic guns make about as much practical sense as people who want to ban multiple-geared bicycles.
It really does help to know what you’re talking about. Honest.
Perhaps oblique to this but still relevant to a certain mindset; I’ve become vaguely aware of the “bump slide” or bump stock? Some prepper relatives of a friend of mine have these for their ar15s and it allows more rapid firing but makes it harder to hold the weapon on target. I guess it uses the recoil somehow.
I’ve seen a video from some of these and they’re pretty damn fast. So it seems it’s mostly an ego addition to your weapon to imagine yourself rambo with an automatic, even though they’re less accurate?
There’s a lot to say about bump firing. But if the gun control side decides that the details don’t matter and therefore has lost credibility, that significant issue won’t get addressed because the gun control side has already shown itself not credible.
These “bump slide” stocks have been around for many years and are considered not equivalent to being automatic since you finger actually pulls the trigger back for each round fired.
People buy these mainly for the fun factor and to make fun of the NFA laws.