If he’d been using a hunting rifle with a basic 1-8 first focal plan optic that was zeroed at 100y, and had been using ammunition intended for hunting, one single shot to the center mass, and Trump’s aspirations for continuing to be alive would have ended.
Here’s the lovely thing: I don’t need to demonstrate a need in order to exercise a right. I don’t need to prove I need to vote in order to have the right to vote. I don’t have to prove I need religion in order to be permitted to be religious.
Do you think that there aren’t plenty of former military people that are on the political left?
By the FBI definition of a mass shooting–which is 4 or more people, not including the shooter, shot (but not necessarily killed) in a single incident–the overwhelming majority of mass shootings are committed with handguns, and most mass shootings are either ordinary crime (gang-related, robberies, etc.) or domestic violence murder-suicides. Of the 20,000 or so homicides that are committed with firearms in the US annually, around 5% overall–about 1000–are committed with anything other than a handgun. That includes all shotguns and long guns.
Here’s a list of all mass shootings in the US in 2023; from what I can find, 3-4 of the worst shootings used a rifle. The Baltimore shooting is questionable, as they note that it appeared to be a rifle-caliber pistol, which could mean an AR-15 pistol, or it could mean a PDW.
So no, AR-15 rifles are absolutely no used weekly in mass shootings. That’s just blatantly false.
Have they killed hundreds of children? If you’re going to look at all civilian shooting deaths in the US over the last 50 years, then yeah, almost certainly. But in 2023? Or 2022? No, not even close.
You’re assuming that people in the military are going to be just fine with bombing cities where their friends live, or where they have family. If you’re going to say that the US military, run by fascists, is just going to steamroll actual patriots, that’s what you’re talking about. But the problem is that those pilots, the drone operators, the guys running artillery batteries, they’re likely going to know people and have friends and family that live in blue cities and states, and once they find out that their own friends have been killed as ‘collateral damage’, they’re likely going to be having second thoughts.
Israel is able to level Gaza because there aren’t Israelis living in Gaza; how eager do you think members of the IDF would be to bomb the shit out of the Palestinians if they knew their own friends and family were getting killed with every bomb, and with every shell?
I’m not disarming, period. Fuck that noise.
…Does Pres. Biden really think that the assassination attempt would have gone less well if Crooks had been using a Ruger American bolt action rifle chambered in 6.5CM? Does he really think that?
Let’s be super-clear here, and AR-15 uses an intermediate cartridge. Most bolt action hunting rifles are going to use full-power cartridges, cartridges that have a longer range, may have a flatter trajectory, have less wind drift, and have a helluva lot more power when they hit their target. A center mass hit with an AR-15 at 150y is going to be bad; a center mass hit with a .308 or 6.5CM at 150y is going to be the end of someone’s world. Bear in mind that many hunters do not consider a .225/5.56x45mm bullet to be ethical for deer hunting because it’s lower power, while there’s very broad agreement that 6.5CM and .308 are just dandy.
Also, calling for banning guns in an election year where you’re already behind? When gun bans tend to galvanize Republicans and get them out to the polls? Incredibly dumb. Unbelievably dumb.
usually the underlying problems get solved.
That was not my experience. My experience is that I was hung out to dry and left to figure shit out on my own. I got hospitalized, released three days later, and then had two years of absolute hell. Most of the people I’ve known that were involuntarily held had much the same experience; as soon as the immediate crisis has passed, there’s no support.
But sure, tell me what it’s like being suicidal and how it’s so much better for everyone around me that I’m still here.
EDIT: I’ll keep my guns, thanks. Going out to shoot and compete is one of the few things that I have in my life that I really enjoy.
Different root cause, different way to correct the problem. Removing the tools doesn’t solve the underlying problem. Perhaps the suicides don’t happen; but that doesn’t reduce the misery that leads to someone killing themselves.
And, again, this is wildly different from the violence that Trump supporters are being called to.
You’re intentionally conflating suicides–which account for about 2/3 of gunshot deaths annually–and the violence that Trump has repeatedly called for. Both are concerning, but they’re not the same, and should not be considered as such. “Simply” banning the tools of suicide does nothing to reduce the misery.
Yeah, I can’t find much about them either. Only one other mention of them on Fivethirtyeight, so I’m leaning towards iffy.
Why not use a fiber that’s not not stretchy, and also not smooth? How would using a synthetic fiber affect the sound?
Can you explain that? With one fan pushing air in, and one fan pushing air out, you should be achieving higher airflow than you would with a single fan pushing air either in or out. Especially if you only have the one window open. I know that when I open windows on both sides of my house, I get better airflow than if I have windows on only one side open.
What’s fucking delusional is thinking that a bunch of civilians armed with handguns and rifles could ever match a modern military should it come to violent revolution
You just have to make it expensive enough that the military doesn’t want to fight, and you need to have enough of the civilian population on your side that the gov’t can’t control them, too. As the gov’t commits atrocities against its’ own people in an attempt to crush a rebellion, it ends up creating more ideological rebels.
And anyways, you’ll note that the US has tended to get pretty fucked up when dealing with insurgencies and guerilla warfare where it can’t leverage air superiority. How many, say, Air Force pilots do you think will start refusing orders when they find out that their last ‘precision bombing’ run killed 150 children in a hospital?
That depends on whether you value your own life more than you value the principles that we were led to believe America was founded on.
The discontent that led to the American Revolution didn’t start overnight, but someone fired the first shot when the British were coming to confiscate the cannon that the colonists had collected.
Don’t forget Warren and the rest of The Squad.
It looks like most Ipsos polls are a little over 1000, and most of them seem to use likely voters rather than registered voters.
I have edited my comment to reflect that I’m wrong.
You are correct, and I am not. I’ve edited my comment to reflect that.
EDIT: I am wrong about the sample size. Yes, the sample is a little small, but not too far off. They’re registered voters rather than likely voters, which is not quite as good, but, again, no terrible.
The poll surveyed 892 registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.2%.
As FiveThirtyEight would say, that’s a bad use of polling. That’s a very small sample size, and there’s no indication that it’s representative in any meaningful way.
Even more important, Obama has said she has no interest in being the president; she’s not willing to run.
“Well regulated” is understood to mean “trained”.
This is a settled question; 2a rights are individual rights, not hinging on whether or not I’m in a militia. They’ve been understood to be both an individual right and responsibility for nearly 250 years, despite attempts by fraudulent scholars to claim otherwise.