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this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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Which, as usual, goes a long way towards illustrating how effective propaganda and manipulation of people's opinions can be. Not just on this specific topic either, but in this case I guess that's what we're talking about. Despite its scientific dressings, what this study is exploring isn't actually any mechanical factor, it is measuring people's perceptions which are not guaranteed to be reflected by reality. (And again, this is true of many other topics as well...)
The AR-15 platform does the same damn thing and shoots the same damn bullet in the same damn way as numerous other firearms, and yet just the name itself has a bad rap from being incessantly repeated in the news and social media.
Here's this old chestnut. It's still true.
Why's the one on top "scarier?"
Tl;dr: Own, store, and handle your gun responsibly. Don't be a paranoid loon. Don't believe in whatever boogeyman Fox News is pushing this week. Don't hyperventilate about fictional distinctions.
Partly because the AR-15 is lighter than the Mini 14, is easier to reload, and is generally designed to meet the modern needs of armies killin' humans better. Then there's the incessant marketing, the huge number of manufacturers at multiple price points (the Mini 14 being a Ruger exclusive), the aftermarket of optics and tacticool accessories, and the general cultural impact. How many Mini 14s have actually been involved in mass shootings and gun-nerd intimidation exercises? It's almost like the least stable assholes are interested in a "badass" gun.
But okay, fine. There's a not-insignificant amount of truth to the graphic. By all means, the gun nerds should put it everywhere and inform the previously ignorant public. I don't think the result will be to convince people the AR-15 is actually useful, just that the Mini-14 is equally unnecessary as a civilian tool or hunting rifle, and they shouldn't assume a wooden-stock rifle is inherently less dangerous than a plastic one.
And, for the record, I am tediously, annoyingly aware of current second-amendment jurisprudence and the lack of sufficient political will to change the constitution, and while I don't think the former is well considered, the situation is what it is. It just sucks. It leaves America unique among stable democracies in having gun violence anywhere near the top of the list of causes of death.
The problem is how rude so many of them are about it.
Instead of "there is no such thing as an 'assault rifle' and here's how that myth got started," it's "define assault rifle." It's this weird assumption that everyone knows as much about guns as they do and it really doesn't help them. I get that it can be a knee-jerk reaction to people who have issues with guns (as is assuming anyone who has issues with guns wants a blanket ban on them), but it really does not help.
Not to go off on a tangent, but it's "assault weapon" that's the boogeyman term, meant to confuse the uninformed with assault rifles. Assault rifles are select fire, full auto and burst fire capable rifles. Assault weapons are semi-automatic rifles that have the same or similar cosmetics as assault rifles.
The trick is a person latches onto the adjective, not the noun, and a rifle is a kind of weapon, so it makes it seem like assault rifles fit under assault weapons, when I'm fact it's the opposite.
Thank you for correcting me politely! This is the sort of thing that needs to be done more! I did mean to write 'assault weapon,' my apologies.
You're good! In many ways that's exactly what the marketing people on the anti-gun side wanted to happen. They knew that psychologically the two terms would become synonymous with each other. Unfortunately the attitude problem you highlighted in the loud minority of gun owners only helped that advertising campaign.
It's a distinction without much of a difference, though. Apart from auto and burst fire, a modern AR-15 does everything an M4A1 does. The Marines' M4 and M16A4 models don't even go past burst.
If semi-auto rifles are going to be legal at all, they should have a small integral magazine that's non-trivial to modify. The sheer efficiency of these rifles makes them really good for assaulting humans, because that's what they were designed for.
The brass took away the giggle switch from the crayon eaters to save on their ammo bill. There's a reason "marining" is a verb, after all.
But every gun is designed to kill people, all the way back to the musket. And your suggestion of an integral magazine doesn't do much, even if you could somehow round up all the ARs with detachable mags and "fix" them. The M1 Garand and it's stripper clips are a historic example, and the modern ejection port mag loaders the neutered California ARs have to use make it trivial to reload.
You want to tackle this issue? Safe storage laws, building a culture around free, government-provided training and safety, and harsher punishments for NDs are a place to start. That's not even getting into the quagmire that is our terrible healthcare system, and law enforcement that on average can't do their jobs and act on tips that would stop many of the recent big mass shootings.