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Slide Guitar's avatar

I'm bookmarking this one for the next time David French, say, appears here to talk positively about gun culture. *This* is TX gun culture: someone shamelessly bragging that he's got an assassin-quality weapon in which he has no training. Normally he'd have to pretend to have a need to kill hogs, or defend his family, but the reality is that he's an atomized suburbanite using an AR-15 for a kind of TX virtue signaling.

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Dave Yell's avatar

With a bump stock, AR-15 is the choice of mass shooters. It is a machine gun that is very accurate.

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Sko Hayes's avatar

You don't need to be too accurate with a machine gun..

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Dave Yell's avatar

Precisely. And AR-15 with a bump stock is like a machine gun with deadly accuracy.

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Eva Seifert's avatar

From what I remember reading, machine guns are illegal for John/Mary Doe to own/buy. The argument I always see is that the AR-15 isn't technically a machine gun.

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Dave Yell's avatar

Eva, I looked up the firing rate per minute of an AR -15 with a bump stock. It is 400 to 800 per minute. Which is basically 13 to 26 per second. That sounds pretty potent to me. That is why they never should be allowed for civilians to have them legally. I didn't realized that rate would be that high.

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Eva Seifert's avatar

Yup, but that "wonderful" SC said bump stocks were okay. When Harris gets elected, along, I pray with a blue wave in both Houses, she increases the size of the SC to 13 (to match the district courts) and starts in on banning assault weapons as they had when Reagan was shot.

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Dave Yell's avatar

Why it was allowed to expire on assault rifles is puzzling.I always wondered why Democrats have never enlisted law enforcement. Not many police chiefs endorse civilians having them.

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Eva Seifert's avatar

Expired under Bush 2, apparently it had a sunset clause, which was stupid.

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Steve Spillette's avatar

I live here, and unless you're new to the state from somewhere that it's not common, no one will think it's abnormal to own an AR-type rifle. They also think that your level of training isn't anyone else's business. Not saying it's admirable or anything, it's just how it is.

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Slide Guitar's avatar

I grew up hunting pheasant and deer (never bagged one, but I had the rifle for it). I think it's abnormal to own an AR-type rifle (not statistically abnormal: abnormal in the sense of, "What the hell is wrong with you?").

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Steve Spillette's avatar

That's fine, I'm just reporting the predominant mentality I've experienced.

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Aileen Cheetham's avatar

Is it time America tighten its gun laws? How could the person having a gun be monitored for sanity?

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JL's avatar

Good question on sanity. Details of any tightening are helpful to advance the conversation.

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Larry Wegrzyn's avatar

Why not require insurance? And for automatic weapons - they must be kept at a gun club. Guns are toys to the rich and we can't take them away - but insurance requirements and making it expensive might do a lot to keep them from the less than sane.

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Sko Hayes's avatar

I think requiring insurance is an excellent idea.

But the conviction of the Crumbley's after they bought their obviously mentally ill son an AR-15 should wake some parents up.

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JL's avatar

If you are a homeowner and have shopped insurance you'll likely to have seen parts of the application inquiring if you own certain aggressive dog breeds or firearms, so there is that angle. Not all companies do that but some do.

I would not support the idea of firearms insurance having grown up with them, separate secure (hidden storage) of firearms and the ammunition was the order of the day and works well for the responsible. I submit that it would be the responsible owners that would secure said insurance whereas others would ignore a law requiring it. But that is the case with autos isn't it, that, and tags.

If any of you work in information security you are familiar with the APT (Advanced Persistent Threat), the attacker than never goes away. I will suggest that the similar mindset in humans, the highly motivated seeking to do harm, will find something beyond a firearm to do so and we have three examples: Mohammed Atta (and associates), Timothy McVey, and the Tsarnaev brothers.

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Sko Hayes's avatar

But if it's a run of the mill school shooter or some toddler that picked up a gun and killed his sister, we're not talking about "highly motivated attackers", we're talking every day gun owners.

Good drivers buy car insurance and carry the losers, the same could go for gun owners.

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JL's avatar
Jul 24Edited

Candidly, insurance cannot or will not prevent undesirable behaviors, only mitigate any financial impact resulting from those behaviors.

Firearms insurance won't address a home situation where the firearm and ammunition are not stored separately and securely such that a run-of-the-mill shooter or toddler can access them. Clearly the owner behaves in a less than responsible manner.

Auto insurance doesn't prevent a driver's behavior of looking at their phone while driving and clocking the car in front of them or the pedestrian crossing the street. And being honest, too many drive without auto insurance, or in my jurisdiction, the appropriate tag indicating proper registration.

If the conversation leads to highly restrictive firearms control in the general population, I submit those advocates need to do a deep dive into events in Northern Ireland from the 1960's to 1998. The highly motivated IRA were able to secure weaponry to fuel their terror campaign despite highly restrictive law intended to prevent such.

My point is that the one highly motivated to commit mayhem will find the means to do so.

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Sko Hayes's avatar

Insurance isn't meant to deter or prevent. Only to make sure the victims receive compensation for their injuries or losses.

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Tara's avatar

Insurance against what? Getting shot by your kid who could get to the gun? Having your arsenal stolen? For paying the lawyer when you are on trial for assault or murder?

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Sko Hayes's avatar

I guarantee you half the owners of high powered rifles have never shot them, unless they're a hunter.

I had an employee who brought his AR-15 to the farm to show it off and shoot it. For about an hour, that guy (an experienced deer hunter) could not hit the wide side of a barn.

Which may be why Donald Trump is still alive today.

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Harold Bonacquist's avatar

Someone with fairly limited experience firing a long gun will have no problem hitting a human-sized target from 130 yards, with any modern long gun. There's nothing about an AR-15 that makes it any more accurate than your average gun. It is more powerful than other small-caliber long guns, but at 130 yards that's irrelevant.

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Sko Hayes's avatar

I'm not sure we've established that the shooter was experienced. He had only just purchased 50 rounds of ammo a couple of days before and the gun was his father's.

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Harold Bonacquist's avatar

Well yeah a complete novice ain't hitting much, at that range.

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Eva Seifert's avatar

Still managed to kill someone, hurt 2 others and either hit Donald's ear or hit something that splintered and hit his ear.

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