@panzade,
panzade wrote:
A man with a bullet-proof vest and bullet-proof leggings and an assault rifle will not be deterred by movie patrons who are armed with pistols.
We need less assault rifles out in the street. Period.
This may be redundant as I haven't made it through the entire thread, but from what I've read and heard of late, it seems that the so-called
Assault Rifle Holmes used was the least effective of the weapons he deployed.
Much has been made about the 100 round clip he had, but I've heard from several sources that it appears his
Assault Rifle jammed early on because of this clip.
I'm in no way an expert on guns, but I read that the AR-?
assault rifle he used fired .22 caliber bullets.
This may be nonsense for all I know, but there are enough gun fans in this forum to tell us if it is or isn't.
It seemed counter-intuitive to me, even when the person imparting the information explained that these guns are designed to incapacitate rather than kill the enemy.
That smelled a lot like bullshit except that I saw an interview with a HS senior who was one of the first people hit by a bullet fired by Holmes. She still has the bullet in her jaw, because the doctors were concerned about possible facial nerve damage if they tried to remove it.
I emphasize that the young lady was standing in the street, and not laying in a hospital bed, while she was being interviewed. She had what appeared to be a relatively small wound on her chin, but nothing resembling what I would have imagined an
assault rifle would do to her face.
I suppose it could have been buckshot and not a bullet, but if it was a bullet it sounds more like a small one than what you might expect from an
assault rifle.
The point being, that if his
assault rifle was shooting .22 caliber bullets and quickly jammed due to the horrendously huge 100 shot clip, then it wasn't as big a factor in the massacre as people might imagine and had there been a ban on it before his attack (and he abided by such a ban) it's likely the same number of people would have been killed or wounded...or arguably more.
The imagery that is conjured up by
assault weapon is one of prolific slaughter, whether or not the facts support the images. It's hardly an extremist position to decry the sale of weapons of prolific slaughter, but it's hardly all that sensibly righteous either if the weapon doesn't live up to the imagery.
As I've watched the numerous debates on gun control that have followed this horrendous incident, I've been struck by how those who argue against weapon bans seem to dodge the obvious.
The very passionate gun control advocates keep asking: "What does anyone need with an
assault weapon!"
I've only heard of one person properly respond to these questions and it was, of all people, Ice-T. He explained to a UK reporter that 2nd Amendment wasn't intended to assure people could hunt, but that they could defend themselves against a tyrannical government (which he happened to identify as "the police").
That's why anyone needs a military weapon...to fight the military.
I understand that this seems paranoid to a lot of people, but it's what the 2nd Amendment contemplated.
One can argue that ordinary citizens have no hope of defeating the US military if it turns on them, and maybe they don't, but in Syria, ordinary citizens have been taking on a very well armed military and now people are predicting the government will fall.
In any case, whatever decisions about guns are made as a result of this terrible event, they shouldn't be made on the basis of the imagery conjured by charged words.
