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[BGuttman]

... Then we'd learn the hard way just how much violent crime civilian defensive gun use deters, stops and prevents.

True.  Right now we have one side claiming that it won't make much difference at all and the other claiming that their armories are virtually eliminating all violent crime.

[TillerTrom]

True.  Right now we have one side claiming that it won't make much difference at all and the other claiming that their armories are virtually eliminating all violent crime.

Hey now! My 20+ gun collection is not an armory, just an arsenal. 

[Baron von Bone]

True.  Right now we have one side claiming that it won't make much difference at all and the other claiming that their armories are virtually eliminating all violent crime.

Yeah. The range of criminologists' opinions is narrower, probably somewhere on the more effect side (rather than in the middle). It's more than likely significant in terms of effects on crime rates, but things that effect crime rates don't tend to effect them very much, so "significant" in that context is pretty marginal in terms of what we usually think of as significant. The bottom line is that most of us wouldn't notice anything unless we keep up with the statistics.

[Russ White]

True.  Right now we have one side claiming that it won't make much difference at all and the other claiming that their armories are virtually eliminating all violent crime.

And, Trayvon is still dead.

[Baron von Bone]

And, Trayvon is still dead.

Yeah, that's how it works--would still be true if we banned guns tomorrow too, so I guess either would be pointless ... or wrong ... or whatever point you were tying to make there.

[Russ White]

Yeah, that's how it works--would still be true if we banned guns tomorrow too, so I guess either would be pointless ... or wrong ... or whatever point you were tying to make there.

Don't really know if there is a point. I would like for there to be the possibility for rational discussion of guns and their place in our society, but that is impossible when you have one side that is more zealous than the right to lifers. Someone brought up automobile violence earlier. Every single automobile is registered, and every single driver ( except the criminals who drive without one) is licensed, but that is too much an infringement for gun owners. The shooter in the Gabbie Giffords massacre was stoped when he had to reload after empying a 30 round clip that would have been illigal, and, hopefully unavailable to the psycho who did the shooting, previously, but not anymore. Etc., etc., etc. Rational gun control laws wouldn't stop all gun violence, but there are enough countries that have them to show that it cut be cut WAY down.

[RedHotMama]

Don't really know if there is a point. I would like for there to be the possibility for rational discussion of guns and their place in our society, but that is impossible when you have one side that is more zealous than the right to lifers. Someone brought up automobile violence earlier. Every single automobile is registered, and every single driver ( except the criminals who drive without one) is licensed, but that is too much an infringement for gun owners. The shooter in the Gabbie Giffords massacre was stoped when he had to reload after empying a 30 round clip that would have been illigal, and, hopefully unavailable to the psycho who did the shooting, previously, but not anymore. Etc., etc., etc. Rational gun control laws wouldn't stop all gun violence, but there are enough countries that have them to show that it cut be cut WAY down.

Hear hear.

[TillerTrom]

The shooter in the Gabbie Giffords massacre was stoped when he had to reload after empying a 30 round clip that would have been illigal, and, hopefully unavailable to the psycho who did the shooting, previously, but not anymore.

This is a factually incorrect statement. The FAWB did not ban the ownership of hi-cap magizines, only stop the sale of new ones. The psycho killer could have legally owned one and bought one in a private sale even with the ban in place. Please understand the facts of the law and the situations before you post opinions on them.

I have taken tactical shooting courses and participated in speed shooting competitions. I have primarily shot 1911's and they only have a 8 round magazine. I can drop a mag, put the next one in and drop the slide very fast. The capacity of a magazine is not that much of a hindrance when you know what you are doing and practice.

As for Federal gun laws, the only part of a gun you need to go through an FFL for is the frame. The frame has the serial number and is considered the DD or "destructive device." A Glock G17 is made up of 33 parts, you can buy 32 of them online and shipped directly to you.

Don't really know if there is a point. I would like for there to be the possibility for rational discussion of guns and their place in our society, but that is impossible when you have one side that is more zealous than the right to lifers. Someone brought up automobile violence earlier. Every single automobile is registered, and every single driver ( except the criminals who drive without one) is licensed, but that is too much an infringement for gun owners. The shooter in the Gabbie Giffords massacre was stoped when he had to reload after empying a 30 round clip that would have been illigal, and, hopefully unavailable to the psycho who did the shooting, previously, but not anymore. Etc., etc., etc. Rational gun control laws wouldn't stop all gun violence, but there are enough countries that have them to show that it cut be cut WAY down.

Private gun ownership is virtually illegal in Mexico and their laws and they are far beyond "rational." So why is there more gun violence there than just about anywhere else in the world? Can you agree criminals who will break the law no matter what and passing more laws on things already illegal will do little to help?

How do you define "rational" gun control? I support rational gun control too! I do not think felons, people who are not citizens, adjudicated mentally ill or people dishonorably dischanged from the military should be allowed to own guns. I believe people should have background checks when buying a gun and should be licensed in order to carry concealed. What? Those are already laws? Sounds like rational gun control laws are already on the books and the NRA supports them.

[Baron von Bone]

Don't really know if there is a point. I would like for there to be the possibility for rational discussion of guns and their place in our society, but that is impossible when you have one side that is more zealous than the right to lifers.

I agree, but the real problem is that there are very few who aren't effectively wingnuts regarding gun control vs. gun rights. We see how dysfunctional discourse is in general when a significant part of one side and a small portion of the other are wingnuts, so the fact that the large majority are wingnuts regarding gun control makes it pretty impossible to do it rationally.

One of the indicators is when people opt for the "facts" that suit them and ignore others, and unfortunately the problem runs so deep people can go about finding "facts" in that manner. This happens as the norm on both sides on this issue, so very, very few are actually dealing honestly with any real facts.

Someone brought up automobile violence earlier. Every single automobile is registered, and every single driver ( except the criminals who drive without one) is licensed, but that is too much an infringement for gun owners.

Well, it's been used as a de-facto ban, so if the gun control wingnuts weren't deceptive about such things they might not give gun rights advocates reason to distrust them, and it might actually work ... dunno though, neither side is very rational. Gun rights advocates just happen to be right more often out of pure convenient chance for the most part (rather than actual intellectual responsibility).

The shooter in the Gabbie Giffords massacre was stoped when he had to reload after empying a 30 round clip that would have been illigal, and, hopefully unavailable to the psycho who did the shooting, previously, but not anymore. Etc., etc., etc.

Well, yeah, sure ... except that it's completely wrong on both counts, and it's plainly absurd to claim someone who shot up a public political event would have been deterred if he'd had to do something illegal in order to pull off the shooting.

Rational gun control laws wouldn't stop all gun violence, but there are enough countries that have them to show that it cut be cut WAY down.

Except that you have to presume a lot in order to conclude that the way a law works in one country would be the way it works in another. Canada comes relatively close to the US in terms of cultural comparability, but even there we have some major differences that make cross-cultural comparisons problematic. Also, when you're interested in understanding rather than affirmation you often find an appealing veneer surface is extremely thin.

[badger]

With all this attention on Florida, here is a glance at Chicago.
http://www.wbez.org/story/mccarthy-chicagos-rising-murder-rate-97446
How about the black kids that have been killed by other black kids in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago?

Cop blog (opinion):
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/

Here is a crime from Oklahoma:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117695/Brutal-home-invasion-Oklahoma-couple-ends-65-year-romance-meeting-blind-date.html
The OP pointed out an outcome different then this, the young lady protected herself and child.
If the elderly couple had used a firearm the outcome may have been different, perhaps.

The tragedy in Florida needs fact and not hyperbole. This is another of those incidents where I have heard various versions in the press. Where are the days of Who, What, Where, Why and How much and not pieces that are filled with opinion.
I  read that the gun, a Kel Tec semi auto 9mm was only fired once and that the empty case was still in the chamber. This would be consistent with someone holding onto the slide (a struggle?) and preventing it from cycling. I have no idea if that is true or not at this time, that is my point.

And, we certainly do not need this:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/black-panther-rage-10g-capture-trayvon-killer-article-1.1050370

There have been good points and facts mentioned in above posts, Thanks.

[badger]

The shooter in the Gabbie Giffords massacre was stoped when he had to reload after empying a 30 round clip that would have been illigal

The pistol holds a magazine, not a clip.

[BGuttman]

Question for some of you experts in armaments.

Aren't you somewhat limited in how fast you can fire by the heat buildup in the barrel?

The early machine guns had an operating procedure where you shot off a few rounds and would then have to give the gun a smack. The smack was not really necessary, but it allowed a small break where the barrel could cool down enough so that the next round didn't jam.

Most of the movie pictures of characters like Rambo shooting off a hundred rounds in one burst have been debunked on Stupid Movie Physics for this reason.  Maybe that's an advantage: the Yahoo who is trying to be a one man Expeditionary Force will shoot off 10 or 15 rounds and then have to discard his weapon because it no longer shoots

[Baron von Bone]

Aren't you somewhat limited in how fast you can fire by the heat buildup in the barrel?

In a conventional warfare context (when facing a large enough force such that you're firing a lot on full auto), yeah.
 

The early machine guns had an operating procedure where you shot off a few rounds and would then have to give the gun a smack. The smack was not really necessary, but it allowed a small break where the barrel could cool down enough so that the next round didn't jam.

I was an M60 (7.62 mm/.308 cal) rather than an M2 (.50 cal) gunner for a while. With an M60 jamming isn't the problem so much as a "cook-off". If the barrel gets hot enough the next round that chambers will fire immediately, so you're effectively forced to fire all of your ammo in one long spray of fire as if you're just holding the trigger down, if you don't take care of it. You can twist the belt so it either breaks or the round you're twisting won't feed. Either way you have to open the feed tray and reload, and if you do it too soon you're libel to just immediately start cooking off again. That's why M60 gunners had a "crew", which is just another troop who hauls a spare barrel (or the gunner carried the barrel and the "crew" hauled the bi-pod if you were moving between bivouac sites--the bi-pod was generally set up in a defensive position and stayed there until you left the site).
 

Most of the movie pictures of characters like Rambo shooting off a hundred rounds in one burst have been debunked on Stupid Movie Physics for this reason.  Maybe that's an advantage: the Yahoo who is trying to be a one man Expeditionary Force will shoot off 10 or 15 rounds and then have to discard his weapon because it no longer shoots

10 or 15? No. 100-150 overzealous rounds (without giving the gun repeated, short breaks at the very least), sure. We used to have to switch M60 barrels out when we were using them for company training (6 M60s and ~150 troops, if I recall) probably after about 3/4 of the troops had fired on the order of 100 rounds down range. That would include breaks of maybe 30 seconds to a minute or two in-between gunners. That's going by memories of a handful of M60 range training days over 20 years ago though. Maybe someone has more recent experience, but I don't think they've been using M60s for a while now. I think the M2's primary barrel overheating issue is basically the same.

[Najataagihe]

Question for some of you experts in armaments.

Aren't you somewhat limited in how fast you can fire by the heat buildup in the barrel?

Yes and no.

Yes, you can fire that thing until the barrel melts.

No, you can't hit diddly once the barrel starts to bend.

The early machine guns had an operating procedure where you shot off a few rounds and would then have to give the gun a smack.

One design, not all.

Belt-feed links tend to jam when the links get a little corrosion on them because the folds of the belt (because of the way you load a belt into a box) cause too great an angle feeding into the loading mechanism.

The links stick to the cartridge casings and you smack the belt to unlock any frozen links.

The smack was not really necessary, but it allowed a small break where the barrel could cool down enough so that the next round didn't jam.

The smack is necessary if you don't want the belt to stop feeding cartridges into the gun.


The time it takes to smack a belt is nowhere near long enough to allow the barrel to cool.

This is why the M-60 was issued with two barrels and an asbestos glove.

When one barrel gets too hot, you change barrels as soon as you can.


If the firefight intensity precludes you from changing barrels (a process that takes about fifteen seconds on an M-60, about a minute on an M-2), the assistant gunner would pour motor oil on the hot barrel.

Chairborne Rangers condemned the practice, as they felt the smoke would "give away the machine gun position".

Anybody with half a brain would realize that if you have been in sustained-fire mode long enough to overheat the barrel, your opponent would have to be deaf, blind and stupid to not know where you were.

Most of the movie pictures of characters like Rambo shooting off a hundred rounds in one burst have been debunked on Stupid Movie Physics for this reason.

A 100-round burst through an M-60 is no problem.

At about 50-75 rounds, the barrel starts to glow a dull red but you don't bend the barrel until it gets bright red.

An M-2 will blow through a hundred rounds without melting, too.


I would question the validity of the folks at Stupid Movie Physics, as they have obviously never tried it.

It is not recommended on a regular basis, because you will end up warping the barrel, but if the choice is your life or a bent barrel, you will melt that sucker down to slag.


What happens when you get too much heat is the barrel turns bright cherry red and starts to bend - blowing accuracy out the window, but this is an area fire weapon, anyway.

Maybe that's an advantage: the Yahoo who is trying to be a one man Expeditionary Force will shoot off 10 or 15 rounds and then have to discard his weapon because it no longer shoots

Spare me.

 


By the way, Byron, the assistant gunner for an M-60 carried the tripod, traverse and elevation mechanism (T&E), the spare barrel and at least 500 rounds of ammo in addition to the 100 rounds the gunner had hanging out of the feed tray.

A bipod is permanently affixed to each barrel.

 

[Baron von Bone]

By the way, Byron, the assistant gunner for an M-60 carried the tripod, traverse and elevation mechanism (T&E), the spare barrel and at least 500 rounds of ammo in addition to the 100 rounds the gunner had hanging out of the feed tray.

A bipod is permanently affixed to each barrel.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant ... tripod. Dunno why I was calling it the bipod. And I guess I was too nice to my assistant gunners, though we were never hauling the tripod around after we'd set up a bivouac site, at least not until we moved ... and I wanted all the ammo with me. I think keeping my ammo with me was the only deviation from standard policy though. I think my people were okay with it because I was pretty aggressive about covering my own movement, and that can become problematic if you're separated from your ammo ... and, I'm sure, because we were never doing the real thing, just playing with MILES gear.

[Najataagihe]

 

[SensitiveJohn]

How is chasing someone down and shooting him because he's black and wears a hoodie, "standing one's ground?"  Was it the very last bag of skittles in Florida?  He wouldn't share the skittles?  Florida is in need of tougher gun control legislation, especially if this guy, Zimmerman, can use the "stand your ground" law like it is a permission to go out lynching license.

[Baron von Bone]

How is chasing someone down and shooting him because he's black and wears a hoodie, "standing one's ground?"

You're a bit late--look back about a page or two.
 
 ...
 
Maybe three.

[TillerTrom]

How is chasing someone down and shooting him because he's black and wears a hoodie, "standing one's ground?"  Was it the very last bag of skittles in Florida?  He wouldn't share the skittles?  Florida is in need of tougher gun control legislation, especially if this guy, Zimmerman, can use the "stand your ground" law like it is a permission to go out lynching license.

The stand your ground law is not a law about guns. Is about your right as a citizen to not have to flee before defending yourself. It can include the use of firearms, but extends to all other legal weapons such as knives, tasers, mace, pepper spray, your hands, and your feet. The law is about your right to defend yourself in a situation that otherwise forces you to either face death or defending a felony assault charge. It is not a pro or anti gun law.

Let me ask, what "gun control" law would have prevented this tragedy? Do you know for certain that if the stand your ground law was not in place, it would have stopped this guy from still being a vigilante? ****** will still do moronic things thing even if it is illegal.

If simply passing a new law was the answer to all problems, why don't we just pass a law that makes all bad things that happen in life a crime and mandates that we all must be happy! That's the ticket!

[sly fox]

the stand your ground law was/is passed b/c of the "common law" or existing statutory duty to avoid conflict before using force to defend yourself.

If you were in a "public space" and could safely retreat from the "situation" without unreasonably exposing yourself or another to the likelyhood of bodily harm or worse, you were to retreat.

the "stand your ground" laws removed that duty to attempt to retreat.  it relieves the person threatened from relying on a jury/prosecutor from agreeing with the decision to act.

even under "stand your ground", force must be met with like force, it isn't supposed to be a "license" to start shooting.