Right. And the difference between the width of a .22 long rifle round and a NATO 5.56 is also only a couple thousandths of an inch. If you think there’s not much difference between them in terms of stopping power, you’re out of your fucking mind. Ballistics doesn’t work that way- one round has a hell of a lot more powder behind it than the other just for starters. Anyway, the perfect defense weapon is obviously going to depend on what one is likely to be defending themselves against- this thread was just a an attempt to make the latest batch of gun control craziness not seem like it has an impact on home defense, and it was made by somebody who doesn’t know shit about firearms apparently, which pro-control arguments almost always are.
Of course! It just HAS to be either/or, doesn’t it? It’s us valiant Amurricans against the tyrannical, socialist, commie government! There is no grey, it’s all black and white. Fear is strength! War is peace! It’s us against them! Yup. That is the flag of rationality you fly. Pfft. Our government is way less than perfect, being a reflection of it’s people. But your assumptions and assertions are the fare of the Chicken Little people. The sky isn’t falling and even a child can see that.
You want proof that the government isn’t intent on taking away you AR15? You’re still alive aren’t you?
Who’s ready to put their lives on the line to defend the Constitution of the United States from traitors?? Seems like things can get real ugly, real fast this decade. Who knows what will happen next…
Some other considerations for a home-defense weapon beyond “Basing stopping power on bullet width is fucking stupid.”
1.) Long-barreled weapons (i.e., shotguns) are clumsy. If you are woken up by somebody kicking in your bedroom door, you might have a chance to get to the handgun in your nightstand. You will never get a shotgun lifted, racked, and pointed at somebody who doesn’t want you to in close quarters like that, especially if you’re not living a “I have have a shotgun just propped up on the wall next to me at all times” kind of lifestyle.
2.) Similarly, long-barreled weapons are easy to take away from you if the attacker gets close.
3.) One of the main reasons police encourage you to have a shotgun as a defense weapon is that the pellets aren’t powerful enough to go through the wall of your apartment and hurt the neighbors. This can be a good thing, it can also be a bad thing if you want to shoot through a door or other obstacle/cover.
4.) If you’re attacked somewhere other than your home, carrying a handgun around is superior for a whole bunch of other reasons.
And most importantly:
Even if all of the points above are wrong or have decent counters, the weapon I choose for home defense is none of your fucking business, and if I feel more comfortable with a handgun or something long-barreled other than a shotgun, then by God that’s what I’m going to have.
If you had read carefully, and you didn’t, I made a distinction between the rounds and effective range. I thought it rather useless to talk about ft/lbs of energy at the impact point with people very unlikely to understand. If you would rather take a few 00 buck pellets inside 50 ft as I described rather than that .223 round, be my guest. We’ll assume for argument’s sake that an untrained scared-to-death “patriot” could actually hit a vital area with their assault rifle. You don’t have to know shit about firearms to count bodies after some senseless rampage by a berserker. Restricting firearms to responsible ownership and use doesn’t require intimate knowledge of ballistics.
But just to clarify: It’s true that the .223 round has a lot more powder behind it. It wasn’t designed for close quarters work. It was designed as a military round capable of accuracy at 100-300 yards. 400 yards if you have familiarity with the weapon and the luxury of firing from a steady of some sort. In contrast, a 00 buck shell isn’t designed to have penetrating energy beyond 30-40 yards which is well within any defensive range. If you are familiar with reloading, there is more powder in that shotgun shell than in the .223 round. Why? Because it is thowing 9 “bullets”, not one. Again, ask any law enforcement officer which weapon they would like to have when the front door is being broken down. They’ll be happy to discuss ballistics - right after the coroners inquest.
I have no problem with whatever weapon you choose for defense. If you want a 50 cal Desert Eagle, that’s fine by me. But the current debate isn’t about defense. It is about restricting what is available to those who wish to use a firearm offensively. Granted, any weapon can be used either way, but unless you plan on carrying that weapon at the ready everywhere you go, some common sense restrictions would seem… well, common sense.
No, in fact it seems to require the opposite- massive ignorance. If there was a gun with the exact same capabilities as the AR-15, but it came in wood-finish instead of 'looking like something from an action movie' and was called a Winchester Varmint Rifle instead of having one of those scary 'letters and numbers' names, no liberal would give two shits about it. See, it's that you wanted to pass off something stupid like 'bullet width = stopping power' thing on somebody else because you didn't think they knew any better that makes gun control so problematic- it's completely arbitrary and decided by people who don't know what they're talking about. Of course, now that I pointed out how full of crap you were, you're revealing that you actually know (or can wiki) so much more about firearms...you think that makes your position stronger, but it just means you were KNOWINGLY making a bullshit argument instead of unknowingly!
Yes, and assuming they aren’t starting in a ready position with the gun already loaded and aimed, they’ll choose a handgun every damned time if they’re smart. Sure, if the attacker says “Raararrgh, I’m coming through the front door on the count of 10, you better get ready!” then go grab your giant awkward shotgun.
But you know what would be even better than a standard shotgun or a handgun? A sawed-off. But the Gov’t already fucking banned those.
The current debate is about whether or not the shotgun is the Perfect Defense Weapon. I just gave a bunch of reasons why it might not be, and you’re suddenly declaring that that’s not what we’re talking about anymore.
That's just asinine. You were shown that banning assault weapons would have almost no impact on firearms deaths. It's true. Your response is "Oh yeah? Well, banning assault weapons WOULD have prevented that one extremely high-profile crime that everybody is talking about this month, so let's just fucking do it anyway even if it doesn't accomplish anything". Sounds like you're railing against people using statistics because they're getting in the way of your emotional opportunism.
Like this ucc? These can have flush mounted 10rd clips as pictured, or you can get 20s and 30s. I’ve had both the 7.62 and the .223 versions. I think ruger calls it a ranch rifle.
Just so. I bet you dollars to donuts that your typical gunshy liberal would declare "Nobody needs one of those" when looking at the Stainless Steel/Black Synthetic version, but declare the hardwood to be a perfectly reasonable hunting rifle. Hell, assault rifles are already illegal in this country, the U.S. had to make up the term 'assault weapon' to basically mean 'guns that look scary to a liberal' so they could still seem reasonable.
The typical scenario of home defense is a sitload of noise as the intruders attempt to break in. That’s more than enough time to grab the shotgun, cycle in a round, and aim it in the general direction of the intruder. I still say it’s the perfect defense weapon because it requires no skill to use it. After all the macho bullshit talk. 99% of the people couldn’t hit a fucking elephant at ten feet with a handgun. with that spray gun, they have a chance. It goes without saying that if the agressor get’s the jump on you, the chances are very good you’re dead. But if you have a few seconds…
Uhhh… there was a reason I titled the thread DEFENSE. The AR is great if I’m trained and familiar with the weapon and I’m trying to stop aggression 50 yards away firing at targets not tearing the front door down. You don’t like a shotgun for defense? Fine by me. If you can handle a handgun like breathing then that’s a fine defense weapon. I keep a 690 S&W within easy reach as well, but after 8 years of shooting combat, I’m reasonably confident in my ability to use it in any emergency setting.
Just for more clarification, I’ve handled guns my whole life. I’ve hunted, cut paper for practice, plinked, and held an FFL licence for 20 years. I’ve bought, sold, shot every conceivable firearm out there in any caliber you’d care to discuss. I’ve handloaded all my ammunition for over 50 years. If you’d like to discuss firearms or ballistics, bring it on.
The reason for this particular thread was brought on by the ignorance of weaponry I saw in some of the other threads. Most of these people would get killed by their own weapons in a real fire fight. The shotgun, like any other weapon has it’s strengths and weaknesses, but it’s primary virtue is that it requires no skill to be effective. Just point it in the general direction and light it off. Granted, it doesn’t have the romance of camo and the AR, but the average unskilled untrained “patriot” might survive.
Oh for hells sake, Ucc. The statistics lie all over the place and soooo miss the point. Scenario: You and I decide to shoot up a mall or movie theatre, or a school. We have AR’s with hundred round drums. We’re whacked out, so we have all the body armor, extra drums, and look like a couple of fucking Ninjas. We go into wherever we’re going to shoot the place up, and we manage to kill 75 people before we’re taken down. Statistically, 75 people is just a small percentage of overall gun deaths in the country. Does that really matter to the dead and their families? Restrictions on hi cap weapons won’t stop all the killing of the above scenario, but it would sure as hell slow them down if we couldn’t order those weapons and drums on the fucking internet. If THAT is emotionalism, I’ll own it. The anything I want gun lobby flies in the face of anything common sensical. You don’t see that? OK.
Desperate times call for desperate maneuvers.
We’ve been heading in an extremely negative direction for quite some time now (since 1913, but things have really accelerated in the last decade, it’d be nice just to have them back the way the were when Reagan or even Clinton was in charge (not saying I’m a Reaganite for the record, far from it).
When driving, if one veers far too far to the left, then one must veer far to the right in order to compensate and get the vehicle back on track.
What you call extreme is more than a little aribtrary, if one broadens his historical, sociopolitical perspective, one could say libertarianism is more/less the middle ground between anarchism on the one hand and fascism/communism on the other, for example government can be privatized, or anrachy can be collectivized, which would make such a government or society half way between anarchy and libertarianism.
In any case, it’s important not to take balanced, normal, the ‘middle’ path (10 pints of beer may be balanced for a drunkard as opposed to his usual 20, but is it really so?) for the truth and for health, wellbeing. Such is an irrational, trendy sort of approach. Arguably this forum ought to be above and beyond such an approach.
I can’t help it if there happens to be good reasons why we should never deprive another man of his life, liberty or property, except in the most perilous of predicaments where thousands or millions of lives are at stake, like if a man is trying to acquire plutonium and uranium without a license for no apparent reason.
But why should we deprive a man of his property, his rifle, a rifle he may require to hunt, to protect and defend his flocks from wild animals, to defend himself, his family and and his neighbours from criminals or a criminal government, or for fun and games, or to keep as a seuvenier, a heirloom, or what have you?
Because there’s a 1 out of 100 thousand chance he might use it to kill someone, bearing in mind he could just as easily kill that someone with a knife or a baseball bat if we deprived him of it? Again, obviously it’s easier to kill someone with a gun than a knife or a baseball bat, but that’s not the point.
It’s also more difficult to get away with mass murder, burglary or armed robbery if everyone’s armed. If you deprive everyone, the majority or even a significan minority of people from their guns, or you restrict them to only being able to use them at home and at certain designated areas, you take away that balance of power, allowing the lawless to obtain guns illegally and get away with murder.
Why not arm the teachers like they do in Israel, wouldn’t that be easier, or ban psychotropic drugs?
If we’re talking restrictions, can we trust government, particularly our government, to tell us who is and is not a terrorist, who may or may not be a psychopath? Are we even capable of reliably determining who is and isn’t a psychopath, might we restrict the wrong people from purchasing firearms? Think of how much money all this would cost us during an economic crisis, millions, billions?, and regardless of how you feeling about all this, think of the hostility this is bound to arouse and provoke in constitutionalists, conservatives, libertarians, truthers, preppers and birthers, how it could lead to disaster if such bills were to be passed and enforced.
Think of all the implications this has for all sorts of things. Do we start screening people on the basis of psychopathy before they work with children, before they’re allowed to cross the boarder, I mean, where does it all end, where do you draw the line and why?
Do we ban refined sugar next, why not? It’s a useless activity that offers people some pleasure in the here and now at the expense of their health? Not ban it, regulate it then? After all sugar kills 100s of more people than do guns, 100s of thousands more people than do semiautos. So surely it needs to be regulated. Do we restrict swimming, swimming kills 600 people a year, that’s 4 times as many deaths as assault rifles kill (and like I said, those mass murderers might kill less without semiautos, but they’d still kill many, so what’re we talking about, 25, 50 additional deaths max, is that worth a costly ban/restictions, millions, billions of dollars during an economic crisis, more criminals, more jails and prisons, more police, more checks and balances, potential for civil war/unrest (more deaths leading to more restrictions, more restriction leading to more deaths, an endless, vicious cycle of escalating government controls and civil unrest until the nation’s transformed beyond recognition from a largely free one to a largely enslaved one, I mean this is an a potential scenario worth considering, perhaps Rahm Emanuel and his controllers are counting on just such a scenario), abuses/misuses of power, setting a precedent for more banishments/restrictions further down the line, violating our property rights, our constitution, our right to defend ourselves, our family and neighbours from rogue elements within and without of government as we see fit, and so on, all for a measly 25 or 50 people out of 300 000 000, isn’t this the last thing on earth we need to be worried about)?
Are psychopaths bad, can many not function reasonably well without harming people in society? Are many presidents and politicians not psychopaths? Perhaps we should be screening presidents and politicians for psychopathy and terrorist links (the Bushs with Al Qaeda, anyone?) before the american people, and we should do so publicly in front of everyone, afterall, Joe 6 pack can only kill a few with his gun, a president could kill thousands, millions, and has, he could annihilate the world, so perhaps we should begin our psych evalutations with congressman, senators and presidents?
How reliable are psych evaluations? People could just lie on the tests. Do we hook electrodes up to their brains? Who determines who’s a terrorist and who’s not? Shouldn’t you have to take someone to court before you put them on a “no fly/no buy” list, otherwise you could just put anybody on that list arbitrarily for no reason or little reason or malicious reasons? If you have a set of criteria, who qualifies? Do conspiracy theorists qualify, do patriots, do constitutionalists? Rahm Emanuel says he and his goons’ll put whomever they feel like on that list and they don’t have to prove a damn thing, because he’s part of the American family and you’re not, not if you’re on that list, apparently. Apparently, violating the constitution and puting multinational corporations ahead of American interests and going along to get along is how you become a part of the American family. This is Obama’s New America, this is exactly the kind of change I was hoping for. What’s next, maybe we should put no cross list (no crossing state borders), how 'bout a no child list, can we trust these - “maybe possible terrorists” with children, or how 'bout we detain them for 10 or 20 years until Rahm Emanuel’s satisfied they no longer pose a threat to this once great nation of ours?, that’s already in one of the bills they’ve passed.
I’ll put the “Red Dawn” scenario on hold for a moment to appease and placate you, but at this point you have absolutely nothing to go on. Switzerland has comparatively many guns and few restrictions, yet they kill less people than they do in the UK, which has few guns and many restrictions. Likewise Mexico has comparatively many restrictions, yet they kill far more people than they do in the US, which has few restrictions.
All the emotions when properly checked by reason are strong.
No, that’s your line.
I see you’ve been sleeping comfortably under a rock for the last decade and a half.
But isn’t that what you’re calling for, banning/restricting firearms?
Is that not what Rahm Emanuel is calling for?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJBZZKlvrP4[/youtube]
"Because you’re known as maybe a possible terrorist, you cannot buy a handgun in Ameria ". 
That’s what Rahm Emanuel is calling for, not a few reasonable restrictions on assault rifles, but if they think you’re maybe a possible terrorist, or they don’t like you, they can deprive you of your right to keep and bear arms period. No checks and balances, no trial, no jury, no appeal, they don’t have to prove anything, is that what you support, is that what’s going to bring this country together during a political and economic recession?
Yes I am still here, I take that as proof firearms have served to deter government from enslaving us.
Thank you Tentative for this thread, which does a solid job illustrating the differences between the thought processes of sensible gun owners on the one hand and paranoid gun-nuts who pose a danger to us all on the other.
It’s funny watching Liberals trying to push “gun control” while on the other hand, claiming that they abide by and respect the u.s. constitution.
How can you be a liberal for “gun control” without tripping over the Second Amendment, immediately? You can’t, because it’s simple words with simple meaning. Citizens are armed to protect ourselves from government corruption, encroachment, and bloating. Citizens are armed to protect against government tyranny.
And what’s tent’s message been all along: “If you’re not a liberal like me, then the government is going to mow you and your family down with apache helicopters.”
Nevermind that Americans are killing Americans, and tent wants to use this as a threat for his liberal agenda.
“You’re either with my liberal agenda, or the attack choppers are coming for you and your family, bitch!!!”
Typical liberals, threatening to kill fellow Americans, just because not everybody is on board with their fear mongering about gun control…tent is too obvious.
It will be a scary world indeed when tent and his Cronyism comes to power. If you’re pro-Constitutionalist and pro American, then tent is going to shut you the fuck up with apache attack helicopters. You dare speak against the liberal agenda?! Time to die!!!
What do people think Liberals are going to do after they get down ramming “gun control” down everybody’s throats? Except, go after the First Amendment, and Freedom of Speech next?? I bet you all a hundred bucks that tent would love nothing mor than to shut his opponents up with gags and blindfolds, and sending liberal dissidents off to a gulag.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, the AR15 is the perfect defense weapon.
I recommend everybody have one for home defense, just in case the liberal anti Constitutionalists get anymore funny ideas. People better buy them before the liberals take them off the shelves. It wouldn’t surprise me if liberals start knocking on people’s doors “asking” for their guns, next.
Step by step, the u.s. constitution is under attack and eroding. If this document is unsecure, then what laws are we following in the united states, except complete anarchy?
Laws which actually make sense in the context of the time and place where they take effect. The second amendment is the product of a bygone world, it made sense at the time, but America was a different country then. In any case, the Constitution is a far from perfect document, and it is simply not true that anarchy is the only alternative.
Any others willing to commit treason to the United States Republic and our Constitution which is the source of our Law and Order? Speak up, because now is your chance.
The problem is, who are the “domestic terrorists” these days? Are they the liberals attempting to overthrow the Constitution? Or are they the Constitutionalists defending the Second Amendment???
Who are the domestic terrorists? Let’s get this figured out for the NSA…
Who are the names going on the “No fly, lock up in prison, throw away the key without a trial, list”???
Will it be the conservatives holding the guns and the NRA members?
Or will it be the liberal fascists and tyrants overthrowing the constitution and going to war to take guns away from the NRA???
Which ones are the domestic terrorists, guys? Make your choice.