this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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This kind of counteracts the "AR-15s aren't assault rifles" argument, no?
The right and contradiction are best of friends.
They don't care about logic, reason of reality. That's why they can scream about family values and support a degenerate rapist like Trump.
That's the appeal of conservativism. If you are a member of the in group, you are good, and anyone who isn't in the group is bad. That's all the justification a conservative needs to say or do anything that benefits the conservatives in the group.
It's not a contradiction at all. When it serves them to argue you need thirty 5.56 rounds, a silencer, and a bump stock to hunt quail or whatever, then that's the argument they make. When it is best to argue that their assault-themed hunting rifles will help them overthrow the government, that's the argument.
When it helps them to push moral wedge issues to lather up their small minded constituents, they will promote their credentials as the last bastion of moral authority in a world filled with demons. When one of those demons rises to be the leader of their party, they fall in line and claim he's the fucking messiah.
Those arguments aren't contradictory or hypocritical, because when they make them, they are benefitting themselves. Previous statements or positions are like farts in the wind. When they criticized government handouts, it was correct because the criticism helped them get elected, and spending less on social programs let them spend more on benefitting themselves. When they accepted government handouts, it was correct because it benefited themselves.
See how easy this is? Rational people are often confused, and assume there must be some Olympic level mental gymnastics going on inside of the mind of a conservative. It's not that complicated, and there isn't hardly anything going on. That's the appeal. You don't have to think, you don't have to remember, and you owe nobody an explanation. You are right because of who you are and therefore anything you want to do or say is righteous. Just don't go against the in-group.
It's worth pointing out that there's almost always some sort of intellectual bulldozer on their side who has to assemble a legal or logical explanation to bamboozle normies, and it's unfair to think of those folks as stupid per se... but they shouldn't be assumed to be intellectually honest, either. Your average Scalia or Buckley or Alito is very bright, but uses their intelligence to create post-hoc rationalizations in support of positions that are otherwise unsupportable. Underestimate them at your peril, but never give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to integrity.
It is contradictory, they just don't care about that. They lack the integrity to care about. It's still contradictory.
I don't think you understand. Let's say you prefer red wine over white wine. But you go to dinner, and maybe you feel like having fish and so you decide to have white wine. Have you contradicted yourself? Maybe tomorrow, you are in the mood for steak, and so you pick a full bodied red to go with it. This is also not a contradiction from the previous day's order.
This is how the conservative mind views political positions. They might have a loose sense of rules, but what is true on Tuesday is irrelevant on Wednesday. That's not contradiction, because what you wanted before may or may not be what you want later. For a conservative, hypocrisy isn't even a possibility, because nothing is set in stone.
They say that because “assault rifle” has a definition which the vast majority of citizen owned AR-15s do not meet.
Every time someone uses this term incorrectly, like now, it reinforces their perception that those opposed to gun ownership have no idea what they’re taking about regarding guns.
To avoid this, we should be willing to at least look up the simplest of definitions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
Then, usually, the response is “yeah well now we’re just splitting hairs/arguing about terms which doesn’t matter” to which I would respond “this thread started with arguing about terms”.
You're right, they have the same outer shell with a completely different firing mechanism. The best anyone can legally get (to my knowledge) is a binary trigger. It fires when pulled, fires when released.
That's fucking terrifying
Binary triggers are a drop in mod, as are rotary triggers that fire as long as you turn the crank. Forced reset triggers are another loophole that's become popular, they physically reset the trigger so that as long as you pull with the right amount of force, not too much not too little, the gun will continue to cycle. Its also not hard to adapt an ar-15 to have an autosear. They mostly use the same trigger configuration as a full auto assault rifle, just with the auto-sear and selector switch missing. Its as simple as drilling 2 holes and then adding the 2 parts and a spring.
A few years ago, maybe still, you could buy modified parts literally on Ebay to turn an AR-15 into a full auto, for really cheap. I have a family member who's a conservative gun nut and bought one, so I can personally confirm it is legit that easy. Probably suuuper illegal, but clearly no one was(is?) keeping an eye on that kind of shit to even catch it.
I always took it as the distinction between a moped and a motorcycle. Different even if a lot of the functionality is close.
I tend to agree. I wouldn't give a fuck if the weapon I'm currently being shot at with is considered an assault rifle or not. It's still just as capable of killing me.
I'm just frustrated at people unwilling to update their definitions when provided good evidence that theirs is wrong.
Assault rifle refers to the calibre and application of a rifle.
The smaller 5.56 round is an assault rifle round, this is to distinguish it from the previous larger battle rifle rounds.
The AR-15 was designed with select fire. The ones sold to civilians don't have this capability because it's illegal.
The only people that define these in such a way as you have a gun nuts. Trying to hide the fact that people are selling and marketing a weapon of war to civilians in a peaceful country.
I gave the definition that excludes what the vast majority of civilians own and gave a source.
If you're claiming the round is the only consideration then please source your claim.
Also the US Army, which seems relevant.
And there it is. I'll refer you to the last part of my initial comment. I can't believe I pre-addressed this and it's still a thing.. lol.
Except that's not usually how this argument comes up. None of the nuts are saying, "but it's not an assault rifle" when others claim guns kill people. It's always a direct response to "AR'15's are assault rifles". My simple suggestion is to stop being incorrect about a simple term.
Similarly to the way I, a techy IT guy in the industry for ~15 years, don't want old farts who know fuck all about the internet to be regulating it or the way that women don't want old men who know fuck all about reproductive health to regulate their bodies - It's understandable for those who know what they're talking about to not want ignorant people regulating their shit.
But it's not hard to just be aware of simple definitions...
I’m always reminded of this loon when I hear well meaning idiots try to argue about assault rifles and magazine capacity:
Rep. Degette said "I will tell you these are ammunition, they're bullets, so the people who have those now they're going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more available."
It's literally a semantics argument while ignoring linguistics which allows the people who use words to change them over time.
It's also why they decry they aren't racist, just biased. They don't have stereotypes for no reason...
Yet when you ask them to use correct language like Mr. Ms. Mx. or not call someone by their dead name, they throw a fit. Even if we legally changed the definition right now through law, they still wouldn't agree it's an assault rifle because the military made use of them for war, but now it's not full auto. Just can be with small modifications. Because everyone at war always dumps their mag on full auto whenever they see anyone, right?
Right: It's a clip not a mag for a Mosin Ganant! See you don't know what you're talking about so you can't say take away the guns people use to go on terrorist murder sprees or threaten democracy with!
Left: ... We just want you to not be able to shoot through body armor, people, and others en masse, please? I don't really care that it's called an assault weapon.
Right: 2ND AMENDMENT.
Left: We already put restrictions on that and most of the right agrees with stuff like red flag laws and not letting violent criminals have them.
Right: SORRY EVERYONE SHOULD OWN A GUN EVEN IF THEY'RE AN ABUSER. 2ND AMENDMENT. ORIGINALIST. I SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MURDER ANYONE WHO STEPS FOOT ON MY PROPERTY.
Left: Doesn't the bank own your property, lifted truck, and a company own half your farm equipment and big rig?
You dismiss it as just semantics.
Semantics matter, especially in politics.
Sure, if you ignore any sense of context and appeal only to extreme nonsensical arguments made by WORMs (white old rich men) reinterpreting what other WORMs said 300 years ago.
This is a new one. I've never seen anyone but the least educated claim that ARs aren't assault rifles. Automatic, sure, but there's no definition of assault rifle that doesn't include an AR.
Assault rifles, by definition, have select fire capabilities. Commercially available civilian AR-15 is semi-auto single fire only. People are often confused by the AR designation, but that stands for Armalite, the original manufacturer of the rifles. They are officially called "assault-style" rifles, although that term isn't very popular because it seems like a minor quibble. In all other measures (shorter rifle, intermediate cartridge, detachable box magazine, range of 300 meters) the AR-15 meets the criteria to be called an "assault rifle," except for the select-fire.
It's worth mentioning that many popular models can be easily modified by a competent gunsmith to add burst and/or full auto firing. It's illegal, but that doesn't stop a terrorist who thinks they are going to need their rifle to join the insurrection. At that point it would be an assault rifle.
Internet comments are crazy. AR15s are semi auto. The first 3 definitions I found would not include an AR15.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
https://www.britannica.com/technology/assault-rifle
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assault%20rifle - this second definition includes semi auto rifles however
The AR-15 defined assault rifles in a way. Outside of experimental weapons. Most countries that use assault rifles are based on the AR-15, the cheaper to licence AR-18 or the Soviet response to the American AR-15/M16.
They're both assault rifles and weapons of war. So what's your point? Since the Revolution Americans have owned military-grade, and usually better grade, rifles.