
The Acceptable Cost of the Right to Bear Arms - fogus
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-acceptable-cost-of-the-right-to-bear-arms-warren-ellis?utm_source=vicetwitter
======
hga
A bit late to the party, but since I respect you in things programming I
should point out:

The author is _dreadfully_ ignorant. He calls AR-15 pattern rifles "a style of
assault rifle preferred by special forces teams around the world" which is not
true except in the broadest of senses because this particular design is the
least reliable of any fielded (direct impingement vs. piston; besides us on
Canada uses it by choice for obvious reasons, every other user gets them
donated).

In calling it "a special forces weapon" he's trying to imply its use as rare,
when the military version was adopted by the US _a half century ago_. Since
the '60s, _everyone_ who goes through Army basic training learns how to shoot
one, and we've been able to buy semi-automatic versions since the '60s I
think, certainly since the '70s. There are well more than 4 million copies of
this particular design in US civilian hands to date.

The more general style of assault rifles with intermediate power cartridges,
which which the AR-15/M16 are but one example started with the Nazi "StG 44
(Sturmgewehr 44, literally "storm (or assault) rifle (model of 19)44")"
(Wikipedia), includes the AK-47 and its descendants, and practically every
modern army issues something like it. The British Army switched to one in
1994, before that they used a select-fire (semi- and full-auto) "battle rifle"
with a normal, traditional more powerful cartridge.

I don't know if he realizes it, but he's comparing US murders and suicides
with U.K. murders with a gun (and ignoring population sizes); this also
ignores the minor detail that we're fundamentally different peoples. In our
case a more lethally violent one, the US specified in method but not a gun
murder rate is almost the total U.K. murder rate
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935644>).

On the other hand, in the last century which just happens to coincide with the
U.K. gun banning, violent crimes have skyrocketed to the point that outside of
murder it's more violent than the US (!). According to historian Joyce Lee
Malcolm in about 90 years the nation reversed a steady trend since the 13th
Century of decreasing interpersonal violence.

Anyway, for some obscure reason, I'm not interested in advice from people this
ignorant, who are also generations removed from even being able to use guns in
self-defense (how long depends on which metric you use, there's the early _de
jure_ bans through registration, the courts in the '50s and then Parliament in
'67 outlawing using effective means in self-defense, to the total ban on
handguns in '97).

