I was talking to a left-wing friend of mine recently when he said, "No-one needs an assault weapon like an AR-15. You don't even need a round like 7.62 for hunting ... it's made for killing people. The most you might need for self defense is a .22 or something like that. And AR-15s are semi-automatic!"
[sigh]
I began to explain to him that:
- The majority of AR-15s are chambered in 5.56, not 7.62.
- 5.56 mm is literally .22 inches. (basically the same as .223)
- Granted, the cartridge of the 5.56 is much larger than e.g., a .22 LR and the bullet has slightly more mass, so it does have a higher muzzle velocity and more energy (~10x more).
- A .22, on the other hand, will almost certainly not stop a psychotic/drugged individual: the type of person likely to commit violent crimes.
- 7.62 is about .3 in., similar to .30-06, .308, .30-30, etc. and obviously bigger than 5.56.
- All of these 30 caliber rounds are widely used by hunters and have roughly twice the energy of a 5.56 fired from an AR-15.
- The .30-06 round was originally developed for the U.S. Army.
- Many hunters use semi-automatic rifles.
- Semi-automatic ≠ [fully] automatic.
- There is so little agreement on what an "assault weapon" even is that the only reliable traits seem to be "possibly used by a military" and "scary". The only common one that makes any sense is a high-capacity magazine.
- All of this is moot because: Second Amendment.
... but I didn't even get to #3 before he interrupted with some more nonsense. At that point, I said that it was probably best if we didn't talk about guns.
It has been my experience that the people who are the most vocal about banning guns of a particular sort are also the people who know little to nothing about them. Or worse: they "know" the
wrong things - and they want to tell you about it. Or worst of all: they know the wrong things, want to tell you about it, and are in a position to make laws.
And you can say whatever you want about the Second Amendment - it's right there in black and brown for anyone to read. It's not even complicated. It's literally one sentence. But just in case you need the "plain English" version, here you go: 'Americans will always have the right to own guns because they need to band together and train to protect their freedom.'
That's it. It really is that simple. Why people feel the need to debate its meaning is beyond me. So: if you want to
legally ban any gun, then you
must amend the Constitution.
To be clear: I am not saying that we shouldn't do everything in our power to keep atrocities like mass shootings from happening. But do you really think that banning this gun, that gun or even all guns will have any effect? We actually did amend the Constitution a while back to totally ban something nationwide. Remember how everybody went along with it, how it didn't help create an organized crime empire and how we didn't turn around and amend the Constitution
again to reverse the ban? Yeah, me neither.