The place where this kind of thing would be most useful is integrated into a CROWS mount -- a fully automated turret which can be put on top of a vehicle, in static emplacements, etc. Being able to make single, aimed, highly accurate shots on vehicles approaching a checkpoint from a .50bmg mounted on an unattended vehicle up forward would be really nice, since you could then not put any of your own forces at risk, while taking single shots to the engine (to disable the vehicle) vs. unloading on the vehicle with multiple bursts (which would be highly likely to kill the occupants, who may not be "bad guys").
Deskilling the precision marksman job isn't as important -- a real sniper needs huge amounts of other training beyond precision shooting, so the shooting training isn't the biggest barrier there, and the level of skill required for ordinary police 100-200m designated marksman isn't really much for the shooting, so much as for shoot/no shoot, various intermediate/barrier materials, etc.
The only way to do police levels of accuracy at 1000m would be with some kind of actively guided round; they generally won't accept a shot a military sniper would consider acceptable, as it's usually for hostage rescue situations. A military sniper is probably ok with taking a shot where if he misses, another enemy beside the one he's trying to kill gets killed instead, most of the time, as long as his odds of hitting the target are high enough. So those shots can be in the 600-1500m range. I've never heard of police shots beyond 300m. They're usually 50-150m but often with glass or other barrier material between them and the target.
I evaluate military technology and I have shot the rifle myself. I think the rifle has a lot of potential, but I see this rifle as more of a technology demo than the future of marksmanship.
I was easily able to put rounds into a man sized target at long range despite less-than-ideal shooting conditions with a lot less concentration and effort than I would normally need.
I think this would make an excellent police marksman tool. It lowers the skill needed for a police sharpshooter to do his job without injuring anyone.
I don't see it being used by military snipers. It is big and heavy. It requires active ranging (two separate range finders) lighting up the location of the rifle for anyone with NVG (and the onboard electronics probably have a terrible heat signature). The "closed loop" (their words) of the system means that it requires everything, including ammunition, to come from the company who makes the rifle. Change one thing and the accuracy might be terrible. It is complex: you can diagnose and fix many problems with a normal rifle in the field. You can carry a spare optic in case your primary optic breaks.
Expect to see this technology integrated into fighting vehicles and static emplacements (like the parent suggested).
I don't think it would be too hard to have a "training mode" for something like this, where you bring it some new ammunition on a measured range, fire, and calibrate. In the police/military world, they generally only fire a couple types of ammunition anyway.
(I wanted to do a company making custom suppressors tuned for your own specific rifle, load, etc., but it turns out almost all of the people buying suppressors and shooting a lot of rounds suppressed are using an issued rifle and ammunition, not developing custom loads.)
> ...means that it requires everything, including ammunition, to come from the company who makes the rifle.
This is baffling... what on earth makes the ammunition proprietary? Does the chamber or priming system deviate from the SAAMI/CIP specifications for those cartridges?
> "The problem with hand loading is that you just have inconsistent results. Some people do it very good, and some don't. What I really want to avoid is the situation where someone says, 'Look, your gun doesn't work. I'm missing, and it's your fault.' And the real issue is, well, you're missing because you screwed up the ammunition—you have it loaded too hot and it's firing too high. But you're never going to believe me!" He laughed. "I'm really not trying to make a ton of money on ammo, but I want to control the outcome and I want people to have a good experience."
I don't think it is proprietary, rather than just very repeatable. Using the company made ammunition, they can (hopefully) ensure that every bullet has the same characteristics, so it can leave the barrel at the same velocity. From the quote above, I doubt the software can compensate for different grain bullets or different amounts of powder.
> The problem with hand loading is that you just have inconsistent results...
That's a pretty ridiculous statement for them to make. A person who drops $17K on a precision rifle (and you can drop a heck of a lot more than that on a quality rifle without all the electronic crap) damn well knows about consistency in ammunition, and most of them are going to be experienced handloaders as well.
The best shooters in the world handload, and that includes the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (who can certainly afford the most expensive factory ammo). They do so because you simply can't mass produce cartridges that are as accurate and consistent as handloads. You can't mass produce ammo tailored to the chamber tolerances of a specific rifle. You can't fire form enough brass at the factory to load a lifetime's worth of ammo for an individual rifle. Even if you tried, you're back to square one after you replace the barrel at 5K rounds.
As a result, you end up paying $17K for a rifle that cannot possibly be used to it's fullest potential.
> From the quote above, I doubt the software can compensate for different grain bullets or different amounts of powder.
This could be, but if so would destroy the premise that this computerized gizmo offers any improvement over a human calculator. Experienced shooters have no problem memorizing ballistics tables for their particular loads - that this computer could not would be, well, laughable.
I apologize if I'm being grumpy about all this. It's simply depressing to me that with all the challenges, intricacies and fascinating phenomena in the world of shooting folks here are so fixated on the little computer they strapped on top.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Good handloads are better than anything you can buy. However, I personally don't see extremely experienced shooters buying this rifle. It seem's to be more of a gun for the moderately experienced who want to have a high degree of accuracy with a minimum of practice. Maybe the assumption is that these buyers do not have the precision to create a repeatable handload? However, I completely agree with you. Did the article mention that handloads are not allowed? I can't imagine handloads not being made for this rifle.
The computerized gizmo does not offer any improvement over a highly experienced human calculator/shooter. What I see is a computerized gizmo that greatly simplifies the act of a 1000yd shot, not something to help out military trained snipers. They don't need it. A rich, casual hunter needs it.
I thought the point was that other mass-manufactured ammunition would be more likely to contain equally consistent loads that could be 'dialed in' and adjusted for.
That said, I don't have a problem with the 'proprietary' ammunition, but gun owners tend to be informed on that kind of purchase. It should be easy to match the load profile and come up with a "Surgeon-compatible" ammunition, should the tech ever catch on to that degree.
Completely agreed. Also worth noting is that a 338 lapua wouldn't get you much mileage in a military sniper situation, which is why God invented the Barrett M82 and its ilk.
I haven't ever seen anything resembling it in the hands of SWAT or urban-area police, which is probably for the better for exactly the reasons you mentioned.
The NYPD just tried to buy a Serbu .50bmg rifle (a half-price M82), and got denied (because of NYS gun laws, Serbu refused to sell, and lulz were had by all.) I personally do not want NYPD to have .50bmg except maybe harbor police for interdicting boats. Once they have stuff like that, they'll want to use it, and their record for use of firearms isn't particularly stellar.
I've seen plenty of .338 Lapua used in military anti-personnel applications, but by far the #1 is still .308 (168gr SMK type). .338 with 300gr VLD is essentially the same for range and enough ft-lbs to wound humans vs. .50bmg; it's just inferior for anti-materiel. The M82 is just way too big for anyone to carry.
OTOH, the whole "stalk for a week to take a single shot at the enemy" kind of never happens anymore, either -- if they're stalking like that, it's an air force FACP or CCT who is going to just use a laser and call in much more firepower without compromising his position. Most military sniping I saw involved being within friendly lines, or driving to/from in a low-profile or hmmwv and setting up in a building. In early 2003-2005 I guess there were "go out with a motorized patrol, drop off along their route, do it all night, and then get picked up the next evening", but I obviously never observed this. So "too big to carry" isn't a real showstopper.
I wasn't aware the Serbu was on the police loophole list[1], but I'm glad that they are.
I agree that I don't generally want metro-level police agencies having anti-materiel rounds in their arsenal, especially in places like California and New York. Still though, I'm building a 50 cal AR, so I don't see any reason they wouldn't be able to if they were so inclined, and Alexander Arms (makers of the .50 beowulf upper) have not declared for or against SAFE-act like legislation (probably because they haven't had to choose yet).
Agree that .338LM is similar in all aspects to .50BMG as far as lethality. You're talking about a round that has TWICE as much energy @ 1,500 yards as the widely used (by police) 124gr 9x19mm handgun load would have at the muzzle. Almost the same velocity and more than twice the mass.
Huh? The .338 Lapua is a heavily used military sniper caliber the last I checked. It's used by Navy SEALs, the Brits, the Dutch, and many other countries. It is the round that was used to achieve the current record of longest confirmed sniper kill in combat (by a British Army sniper in Afghanistan).
Ug. It was late last night, and I think I had mentally swapped out the 338 lapua for a 308 Winchester. Thanks for the correction. I dunno what was wrong with me.
Generally police sharpshooters don't train as much at sharpshooting as military do, but they're also fully trained police officers (in every case I'm aware of), so they know more than military snipers about chain of custody for evidence, general policing, etc. (and, less about final protective lines, indirect fires, etc., which military/infantry would need)
In a lot of departments, it's an extra duty -- it's a regular police officer who happens to ALSO be the department sniper. SWAT is also an extra duty (and snipers are usually SWAT). In some of the bigger departments SWAT becomes a primary duty, and sniper is probably a relatively dedicated role within the team.
It's crazy that DHS grants allow random minimal-threat small town, rural, or even medium sized town police departments to purchase essentially military capabilities for their SWAT teams, though. Armored cars, ~infinite weapons of every kind, endless training, etc. Because then they end up using SWAT to bust a person who was seen growing suspicious plants in his garage by an informant, which turns out to be a grandmother gardening to keep her prize tomato plants healthy in the winter. Or, a security expert who gets "SWATted" by Russian spammers after he exposes them.
A sharpshooter is not a sniper. Sharpshooting is one skill that a sniper must possess, however, police typically require the former whereas the military requires the later. Sniper training involves a great deal of field craft in covert operations beyond mere marksmanship.
I'll pass. I'd rather have my Accuracy International Arctic Warfare and my Schmidt und Bender scope and save the extra $10,000 for ammo. My rifle is a .308 Winchester but for that money, I could have easily bought the .338 Lapua version and still had several crates of match-grade ammo, a Bluetooth wind gauge, and a nice ballistics computer app for my iPhone.
I don't understand the point of this rifle. Is it to enable non-shooters to shoot? It's not hard to learn how to shoot. With an afternoon of instruction and a few practice sessions, you can hit 1000 yd targets with a normal scoped precision rifle without much difficulty.
> I don't understand the point of this rifle. Is it to enable non-shooters to shoot? It's not hard to learn how to shoot. With an afternoon of instruction and a few practice sessions, you can hit 1000 yd targets with a normal scoped precision rifle without much difficulty.
I gather that it must be more publicity stunt than anything; or perhaps at best a vehicle to a lucrative government R&D contract. Shooters don't need or want this and those who don't shoot because they think it's too hard won't pay for it (if such a person exists at all). The government has no possible use for it beyond automated weapons systems which they already operate, but I wouldn't put it past them to pay for additional development just for the hell of it.
The "point", I imagine, is that it is high-tech and fancy. People like that. It doesn't shoot for you; from what I can tell, it's basically just a step up from a traditional scope.
Modern cars electronically control the throttle plate based on your input on the throttle. Modern planes modulate ailerons in the same fashion. Do you consider the computer to be driving/flying for you?
I would consider an automatic transmission to be shifting for me.
I'm not trying to slight the gun or anything, it seems pretty cool. I'm just saying that "you tell the gun what you want to shoot and when to start, and then the gun decides when to shoot and promptly does so" is a straightforward description of what it is going on.
No, the gun doesn't shoot for you. It replaces the trigger with one with a solenoid behind it that it can dynamically change the pull of. It sets the trigger pull restrictively high until your reticle matches your tag, and then quickly drops it so you make the shot. You just hold the trigger down until it lets you shoot.
Having played with the iPad simulator for a few minutes - probably the best "feature" of this weapon, is the "Fire and Confirm" feature for hunting - that is, after you place a pip on your target, the weapon doesn't fire until you take the time to confirm your target. This gives you the opportunity to determine whether a heartbeat moved the gun a few millimeters (which, at 200 Yard+ range, could mean the difference between an immediate kill, and injuring the animal).
It will be interesting to see whether that ability to confirm a shot, is mitigated by hunters who would normally consider 200 yards to be the extreme end of their range, now taking 500 yard shots.
This is pretty fucked up. The author conveniently ignores the fact that sniper mass killings have already happened (e.g. the Washington sniper). The reason we do not get more sniper mass killings is that it takes a lot of skill to hit a target at a very long range with a sniper rifle.
This rifle of course removes the skill element and allows for shooting at an extremely long range.
The reason we don't get more mass killings is that most people aren't homicidally insane. Those that are seem to fall into either impulsive or relatively able to prepare.
Those able to prepare would be more than capable of becoming decent rifle shots already. Decent is Whitman/Texas Tower level, not Carlos Hathcock level.
That people don't do this now probably means it's somehow unappealing to most homicidal maniacs to go shoot people at "extreme" (100m) range with a rifle, rather than doing it up close. So this is probably not a huge risk.
If it makes the short-term killing spree guy more effective, then it's a problem, but I still don't see a short term killing spree person using something like this vs. a more up-close weapon where he gets to exert his power over people in immediate vicinity and dominate/kill them. Just pulling the trigger on people at range through a scope doesn't seem psychologically rewarding to most killers.
It would be appealing for terrorists, or maybe other brands of crazy, but not for your average spree killer. The Washington sniper was really amazingly unprecedented in the US, and hasn't been copied, and really was more terrorism than anything else I think.
Thanks for this, I think you've articulated it much better than I could have.
The Knee jerk reaction would be to see the 'evil' aspect of such a precision machine, but then again who would have thought of 747's as a WMD?
I frankly see no practical purpose for such a rifle. I'm surprised they've almost sold out, but with collectors and people who just have to have something for the sake or it, maybe I shouldn't be.
If shooting things were a chore to me (shooting wild pigs perhaps? A legitimate issue from what I've heard.) then this sort of thing might be appealing. If it were a hobby, then I think I'm with you.
With a $17,000+ price tag the person who can afford it will more than likely not have a practical use for it, but rather think of it as another "toy" in their collection. What may be the real test of how practical they are will be their availability in the secondary market in 1-2 years after the cost of ownership vs need/use is measured.
"The reason we don't get more mass killings is that most people aren't homicidally insane."
The average person isn't especially relevant, because all it's going to take is for one DC sniper incident with one of these before they get banned. Especially if someone starts using it to take out politicians, police officers, etc.
That's an interesting point, our homicidal mass killings have been directed towards innocent victims. If they were instead targeted killings of important people, I think a crackdown on high powered weapons would have been quick.
I have to apologize because I knee-jerk downvoted you because frankly, your position disagrees with my own. Had I waited half a second longer, I wouldn't have, because I don't believe that disagreement is a valid reason for downvoting, but my instinct took over apparently and got away from me. I'd reverse it if I could, though I don't believe that the potential for misuse should be a valid reason to prevent development of new technology.
I don't believe that the potential for misuse should be a valid reason to prevent development of new technology
It's a bit of a stretch to call this new technology. Aside from some clever trickery to get around remote firing laws, this is just a (maybe) novel assemblage of standard technology. The argument is obviously about its legality and its availability to consumers.
Given that, surely you can't stand by your statement if it's modified as follows:
I don't believe that the potential for misuse should be a valid reason to make something illegal
That statement's so clearly wrong to any reasonable person that it's simply not defendable.
I think you're not giving nearly enough credit to an automated, laser-guided range-finding and compensation device. I agree that it isn't nuclear fusion, or in any way related to the Higgs Boson, but that doesn't make this in any way less noteworthy.
Regarding ATF guidelines on remote firing, the wording of their rules seem geared towards actual remote firing, not aided or delayed firing, as this is. The difference is, I think, as large as the difference between a Google automated vehicle and a car with by-wire steering (or perhaps a better example is a drone to a traditional aircraft).
In cars with by-wire technology, I still have to steer, brake, accelerate, etc., but there are technologies in place that mean I am still physically driving it. There are assistive mechanisms in place that help me brake faster, or alert me when I'm crossing lanes and what have you, but I'm still driving, and presumably, still free to wreck the car, at least in most cars.
I don't believe that the potential for misuse should be a valid reason to make something illegal
That statement's so clearly wrong to any reasonable person that it's simply not defendable.
Why? Look at the dangerous potential of a baseball bat, or a crowbar, or a javelin. Should we not ban all those things? Cars? Airplanes? Ice Picks? By your argument, how are those things legal? Are you honestly suggesting that everything with dangerous potential should be legislated out of existence? Isn't that exactly what the DMCA and other digital legislation has tried to do with crypto?
> Look at the dangerous potential of a baseball bat, or a crowbar, or a javelin. Should we not ban all those things?
I can't speak for the person you're responding to, but which do you really think is more likely:
* he's arguing that "potential for misuse" may well be a legitimate reason for regulating some things (inside a larger cost-benefit analysis about danger vs beneficial use, both observed and potential), perhaps up to and including banning
* he's arguing that every single potentially dangerous thing should be banned (and also, believes in a flat equivalence between melee weapons, firearms, and motor vehicles)
> Should we not ban all those things? Cars? Airplanes?
Probably not ban outright. We do seem to have made some progress in automobile and air travel safety by enacting/tweaking requirements for manufacture, registration and insurance for ownership, training and licensing for operating various classes of vehicle, and regulations regarding operation.
Airplanes and automobiles are not fundamental rights enumerated by the Constitution. The president has balked at the notion of requiring licensure (or even having to present a license) to exercise the right to vote because it is sacrosanct in the bill of rights. So what is difference between the first amendment and the second?
While I obviously understand the difference in utility between a gun, an airplane and a hammer, the gun is only lacking utility to people that do not believe in the value of a right to prevent against tyranny. Neither a hammer or a car is particularly effective in that regard, though our fundamental rights are more specifically geared for that objective, however ugly some might find them.
It should not be assumed, for things that have valid, legal uses, that illegal uses will be the de facto use. That kind of thinking is a side-effect of the fear-driven society we are currently living in. Knee-jerk reactions are almost always wrong.
Yes, this could make it easier to shoot a person (it makes it easier to shoot anything); but there is no evidence that it will make it more likely that a person will be shot. Even if this was used to facilitate a murder (unlikely, given the cost and the background checks for gun ownership), you have to prove that the murder would not have been committed if this technology didn't exist.
I've dabbled in BR (rimfire and airgun) and while yes, wind doping is quite challenging, a lot of the satisfaction behind a good shot still comes from the aggregate effort: breathing, trigger pull, muscle control. For me at least.
The guys with the rail guns tho, that's a whole 'nother level.
As a long distance shooter, and lover of technology, I would most assuredly get a lot of joy out of this.
Also, you'd be incorrect about this doing the hard work. They add the concept of "windage" almost as an afterthought, and I can tell you that at long distances, it is anything but.
In long distance shooting, pulling the trigger is the easy part.
Hunting is 99% spending time getting into a position to take a shot, and then dressing your kill (and, for larger animals, getting all that meat out of the woods) and less than 1% aiming and pulling the trigger. This weapon increases the chances of you accurately targeting the vitals on an animal at ranges from 100 to 200+ yards, which a lot of hunters would probably be nervous about trying to shoot at.
Ideally, this weapon would reduce the number of animal injuries, and increase the number of immediate kills.
[edit: Ah, I just re-read your comment - you are actually saying you understand the use of this weapon while hunting, but don't understand the purpose of target shooting with it. Perhaps to prepare for hunting?]
Except when there are really[1] fun[2] targets[3], I generally get bored too. I do love sporting clay, which is similar to trap and skeet, except you walk from one station to the next, and the patterns are different at each station.
Considering it's a killing machine designed to make it as easy as possible to kill something very far away from you with no skill, I think jumping to mass killings is the logical thing to do. There is no reason something like this needs to be sold to the public.
I'll wager this isn't a valid use case for you, but having worked with a number of disabled veterans who prefer the AR15 for its ease of use and modifiability to accomodate their physical injuries, something like this may accomodate their needs for hunting and such more easy.
It also potentially enables those with diminished eye sight or nearsightedness for greater accuracy.
On top of that, at least as it stands right now, it makes the operation of a long-range rifle safer and more effective. I don't know why that would be considered a negative.
There are lots of things to worry about in this world. Cars are dangerous. Gasoline is dangerous. Shotguns are dangerous. Swimming pools are inordinately dangerous.
Very, very far down on my list of things to worry about are $17,000 ultra-long range computer aided bolt-action trigger initiated rifles.
[edit - after thinking a bit, I believe I could come up with a list of 500 things that we should be more worried about than this weapon. Just the cost alone means that there will be very few of them in general circulation. In the next 20 years, I wager there will be less than 10 homicides in the United States resulting from this weapon. If you want to get up in arms about something - start with the likely 500,000+ automobile deaths that will occur in the same time period (I'm presuming automobile safety will bring the numbers down to those levels)]
As I just learned, the .50BMG has never been used in the commission of a homicide in the United States. Extrapolating from that, I would happily place a 'long bet' and take the over on your 20 year claim and spread the odds to zero homicides.
In short, if there is even one intentional homicide in 20 years resulting from this gun (or related technology) I would be extremely shocked.
My argument is more along the lines of, "There is a list of things we should worry about. Somewhere, on that list is Y. Ahead of Y, there are 250 other things, that, if we really wanted to change the world for the better, make it safer for ourselves, and our children, we would focus on.
If we wish to act rationally, and make the world a better place, there will be far greater return on our effort, lobbying, and resources, to worry about items higher up on that list, as opposed to some incredibly unlikely events that will occur because of Y.
For some reason, Y grabs our attention though - and I was just trying to pull us all back to realizing, that, in the grand scheme of things, Y is irrelevant to the safety of ourselves, our children, and our community. As such, little to no effort should be put towards worrying about, or legislating Y."
I'm saying "I should worry about X" does not mean "X should be illegal." Clearly everyone should worry more about cars than this firearm. But the usefulness of X has to be weighed against its potential misuse.
Without trying to sound condescending, a car is a far less useful tool for preventing invasion by an enemy nation-state or for defending against tyranny by our own government.
Just because you don't see the practical need for that utility does not negate that such utility exists and (in my opinion) is the express reason for the second amendment.
I notice you don't bother to argue with the parent's point -- that this weapon is a lot more dangerous than your average rifle since the level of skill required to use it effectively (and, equivalently, lethally) is much lower.
It seems a valid point to me. Maybe you could give share your viewpoint instead this silly red herring suggestion that the parent is deranged for bringing up the point.
I'm not the author, but I'll recap some of the points I've made all over this thread.
1) Where you claim it makes a more effective killing machine, another might easily say that it makes a much safer hunting weapon, or more easy to use for wounded, injured, disabled or handicapped hunters or veterans.
2) There are many, many ways that criminals could exploit even every day items to achieve extremely deadly results, and until we're ready to ban every single one of them (which admittedly, Mayor Bloomberg seems poised to do), we should not punish the majority for the very unlikely potential criminal use by a very small minority.
3) It's an advancement in technology that I worry may be stifled for private industry and instead hoarded for military application, which will almost certainly lead to slower development in the technology. Imagine further into the future, as the technology evolves, it might be able to distinguish between humans and potential prey. Or even perform sentiment analysis on humans to differentiate between humans at peace and humans that are actively trying to kill you.
Also, for the record, I'm not suggesting that being afraid of the potential for technology such as this is completely unreasonable, but I am arguing that in this country, at least for now, we do have a Bill of Rights that protects our right to bear arms and this, such as it is, classifies as such, and should not be bannable on the meritless assumption that every would-be shooter will now plunk down $17,000 and become a super-villain just because they can.
1) I agree you'd have to include that in the weighing of pros vs cons. I think many people who argue that this weapon should be illegal for the average person would concede that it would make sense to legalize it for people with a disability.
2) Come on, seriously? You say "even every day items". It makes less sense to ban every day items than it does to ban extravagant items that very few people, if any, need or even want. I can kill someone with a fork. More people have been killed with forks than with this weapon. Are you willing to (digitally) stand here and suggest to all of us that it doesn't make sense to ban this rifle until we ban forks?
And where is your line? Every rational person has a line at which they say "X weapon clearly should be illegal for every day people to own." So where's yours? Do you not feel high explosives should be regulated? If farmers decided sarin gas (since it was mentioned elsewhere in this conversation) was a good pesticide, would you be all for it? Wherever you draw your line, it's just as arbitrary as anyone else's.
3) I'm simply not seeing any novel technology here. Motion tracking? It's been done. Servos being controlled by a microprocessor? It's been done. Distance gauging? Trajectory adjustment? Where is the new technology that we'd all miss out on?
Regarding the note about the bill of rights, what a horribly conceived piece of writing is the second amendment. It asserts the right to "bear arms" but doesn't give any hint as to the definition of "arms". An H-bomb classifies as an "arm" just as perfectly as this firearm does. We've outgrown that short-sighted text.
You might feel that way, but I doubt if the Founders would, considering that the majority of firearms, munitions, warships and cannons used to win our independence were provided by civilians. In short though, I don't have to draw that line, as the Supreme Court has effectively already done so, as they define arms being man-portable and "in common use" as a protected class of firearms for the purposes of this debate, though as I recall, Atonin Scalia did make a casual reference to rocket launchers as being too exotic for protections to apply.
US v Miller, another landmark case regarding the second amendment, defines protected weapons as those being of use to a militia. Before we go down that rabbit hole, a milita is defined by 10 US Code § 311 as all men aged 17 to 45, and has been expanded by the Supreme Court to include women as well.
As for the tech, I agree that the individual components are nothing new, but the aggregate of the parts is something new and noteworthy. For what it's worth, I also consider the Gibson robot tuner as noteworthy, as well as the Raspberry Pi, though clearly neither was exactly groundbreaking on the grand order of things.
>You might feel that way, but I doubt if the Founders would, considering that the majority of firearms, munitions, warships and cannons used to win our independence were provided by civilians.
If by civilians you mean the French, you would be accurate. The idea of a civilian warship or artillery piece is as ludicrous then as now. It's not like people have this stuff just lying around the farmhouse. France spent billions of livres fighting the British in that period, more than 1 billion directly on the American conflict. It is entirely accurate to describe the Revolutionary War as a proxy war.
From the NRA's magazine[0]:
>The New Hampshire shipments equipped much of the Patriot army at Saratoga in October 1777, and, by 1778, the majority of Washington’s regiments had replaced their earlier disparate mix of arms with French ones.
There is a staggering amount of historical revisionism to minimize the role of France in this war, and to omit any context or ulterior motive for them doing so. France was the world's major military power, as well as the largest and most populous country in Europe, and had been for centuries. War between England and France was more often than not the case for nearly 500 years between 1337 and 1815. The American war was by no means the largest or most important of these conflicts.
There's a reason that the treaty ending the war was signed in Paris, and it's not because of their fabulous wine and cheese spread. Speeches from the British Parliament will attest that they knew their enemies were Bourbon, and not American. Which should surprise no one except, lamentably, most Americans.
Later on, yes, many of our weapons came from France and Spain. Before that though, almost all of the arms provided (including cannons and ships) were done so by either civilian owners or confiscation.
"Later on" being what? 1777 is year 2 of 8. All of the sources that I've been able to find give the number of foreign-supplied arms as being significantly greater than those of US manufacture. For example, the first shipment of French rifles was equal in number to more than half of the Kentucky Long Rifles ever produced, and I believe also greater than the number of rifles that the Continental Army possessed at the time. Perhaps you can supply some better numbers.
Few if any of the supplied ships were warships, fewer answered directly to the Continental Navy, and none were Ships of the Line, which meant their combat utility was, shall we say, limited. What I read here[0] about the supply of cannon is pretty dismal and does not really support your claim. It is rather abundantly clear that, to the degree that arms and equipment were contributed freely by private citizens, this happened very early in the war, and had no effect on the outcome. You may feel free to show otherwise.
So, this firearm and its particular technology not being "in common use", it would then seem reasonable to argue that it should be illegal.
You may not think the automation this gun provides is exotic enough to warrant being illegal, but surely you can agree that reasonable people could interpret "in common use" in that way?
I acknowledge that it very well could be read that way, but Alan Gura (the attorney of record in DC v Heller) held in his argument (which was confirmed by SCOTUS) that it can't be circular reasoning -- e.g., you can't ban a weapon to take it out of common use, then argue that it is not in common use because of the ban to prevent it from being unbanned.
That was, effectively the case in Heller, because DC had banned all handguns completely, making them clearly NOT in common use, which they felt allowed them to perpetuate their ban. DC's law was overturned on that logic.
That said, how do you prevent the banning of every new type of gun/handgun/rifle/taser/whatever if the claim is that "Well, it's never been sold, so it's obviously not in common use, so it can't be bannable?" In reality, this isn't even really a gun at all, but a complicated aiming system. The gun it's attached to is the Surgeon equivalent of a Robot tuner on a Gibson guitar (which is why I brought it up elsewhere). According to the ATF, the lower receiver of a gun like this is the only part that is the 'gun'. What this means is that I can buy the lower receiver by itself, with no firing group, no barrel, no butt stock, etc., and that constitutes the sale of a firearm. As such, as it seems that all the tech for this thing is basically in the reticle (except for the trigger group, which is still not technically part of the gun), this is really just an accessory.
How do I prevent the banning of every new type of gun/handgun/rifle/taser/whatever? Easy. If I'm the dictator the first thing I do is throw out that sad excuse for an amendment. It's much too vague to be useful.
People hold up the Bill of Rights as if the amendments were etched in stone by God.
Whether any given weapon should or shouldn't be legal depends on a lot of things, including the state of the country at any given time. The idea that the right to bear firearms (some arbitrary invention) belongs on the same document as eternally useful rights like the right of free speech is silly and was a huge mistake.
And that's probably why we don't allow for dictatorships in this country.
I think that the fact that the right to bear arms IS on the same document means that it was intended to be. You don't have to appreciate all the rights of Americans, but I really wish you wouldn't try to curtail them, especially as there are plenty of other places you could move that have, aside from the second amendment, similarish rights to those of America. (Not suggesting you GTFO or anything, but y'know, if you hate it that much, there are places you could go).
You were arguing so well, but then you sunk so low. "if you hate it that much, there are places you could go." ? Who implied I hate this place? I've suggested we should change it, in my opinion for the better. You've fallen squarely in line with those who would call me unpatriotic for not blindly marching along with your worldview.
I think for myself. You get your marching orders from some parchment. It's people like me who made this country. It's people like you who bowed to King George.
> I think for myself. You get your marching orders from some parchment. It's people like me who made this country. It's people like you who bowed to King George.
I won't speak for bmelton but it's disingenuous to label second amendment supporters as folks who "get [their] marching orders from some parchment". Most I know recognize the right to self-defense as merely being guaranteed by the constitution rather than granted by it. The confusion I suspect is from the "parchment" often being used as a convenient argument - many in this country take for granted uniform agreement that the document does in fact bind the government; ergo to them the argument is trivially won by quoting it.
They do not always realize that those they argue against view the constitution as a "living" document subject to interpretation, and may summarily discard arguments that appeal to it's guarantees. It is also damaging to their argument that so many are willing to to support the government's disregard of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th amendments while fervently supporting the 2nd.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I think that's kind of polarizing. I am (obviously) a supporter of the second amendment, but I and all my liberty-minded peers support the entirety of the Bill of Rights, even where we don't necessarily agree with it.
The main thing that's polarizing it though, is that the ACLU supports all of the bill of rights except for the second amendment, so those that support the second feel like they're the only ones that are.
To be clear, I was not referring to you in any way. I was just positing why the above poster may have concluded that those who speak out in support of the 2nd amendment are marching to the parchment.
Maybe it's polarizing, but there really are only two sides in this fight. There's no middle ground here - there is the ideal of freedom or there is "compromise". Not a compromise in the proper sense of the word, though. It is a pure loss, for you have less freedom than you started with and nothing in return. Votes cost nothing, so this compromise can be (and is) demanded over and over again. The end result is what we face in Maryland, never-ending iterations of legislation with no rational link to the real world, and thousands (like myself) who dream of moving to a state that is slightly more free.
Oh, I know. I thought your comments were poignant, and mine weren't meant as disagreement. I was just responding to the lsat part, "It is also damaging to their argument that so many are willing to to support the government's disregard of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th amendments while fervently supporting the 2nd."
It often seems like people that support the second amendment care about none of the others, and I'm sure in part that is true for a number of reasons, but that doesn't discount that there are many more "second amendment supporters" who are concerned with the broader spectrum of civil liberties, but whose views aren't necessarily represented because there are groups like the ACLU that represent "all civil rights except that one" and the like.
Are you also in Maryland? Have you considered (or are you already) joining Maryland Shall Issue?
I understand, and it's a good point. That statement was just a personal lament based on my observations of the community of 2nd amendment supporters over the last few years.
I am in Maryland, Carroll County specifically. I'm a member of MSI, SAF and the NRA and have been engaging as much as possible with our senators and delegates over the last few weeks.
I'll likely be retreating to Pennsylvania or Virginia in the next couple of years - I'm sure many others will be as well. In the meantime, keep your powder dry and perhaps we'll meet one day on the range. :)
I was speaking pragmatically of course. Maryland is on the precipice of banning "assault weapons" and "high capacity magazines", and as a result, I'm looking in to moving to another state that respects my rights more.
I wasn't implying that hated 'the place', but you clearly seem to have issues with the second amendment. You're of course welcome to try to change things, and I would argue in fact that it is your patriotic responsibility to work for the government you want. That said, a big distinction between America and most other first world countries is wrapped up in the second amendment, so if I were in your shoes, I would likely consider moving. As I said, I'm not telling you to get out, and I'm not calling you unpatriotic, I'm just suggesting that voting with your feet is an option available to you. As there aren't any first world countries that respect the right to bear arms for me to go to, that regrettably isn't an option for me. I'm jealous of your position, if anything.
I don't know how either of us "made this country", and surely neither of us are old enough to have bowed to any King, so I'm not really sure what your point is with your last sentence.
Fucked up or not. Who cares. It's a statistically challenged worry. You're more likely to die in a car accident. If you want to get all bent out of shape about something, get bent out of shape about humans operating motor vehicles in cities that prioritize motor vehicles over pedestrians.
His position simply means that for him (as for many others) the terrorists have won (with the help of psychopatic mass murderers): they're statistically negligible yet much more money and attention is spent on dealing with them than with car accidents and similar real threats.
Technology doesn't go away. In 10 years, you'll be able to build this rifle with a 3d printer, an arduino kit, and plans from the internet. However you feel about gun control, you've got to acknowledge that strict gun control will be unrealistic short of ridiculous, draconian measures.
The production and ownership of sarin gas is illegal. So you seem to be agreeing with the parent that things that are easy to kill with and that have (arguably) little other use should be illegal.
If you're not agreeing with the parent, care to explain your point a little more articulately, and without the smug and childish "Thanks for playing"?
The argument at hand is obviously whether a particular thing should be illegal because it is deadly.
rsync brought up sarin in some inexplicable attempt at getting the better of hristov. I pointed out that sarin gas is illegal specifically because it is deadly. If sarin has any bearing on the argument, it seems to back hristov's (unstated but obvious) point that this rifle should be illegal. So I asked rsync to clarify.
I never implied this gun ought to be illegal, or made any statement about it one way or another.
His snark aside, neither bleach nor ammonia are illegal, and require approximately zero skill to combine and deploy in confined spaces.
Actually, I'll just shut up and let rsync respond if he chooses. I get a little excitable when things like this come up on HN because I love hearing the discussion of pragmatists (which I believe comprises much of HN) on the subject.
OP, of this comment thread, was clearly trying to make the point that removing the element of skill significantly increases the possibility for menace:
"The reason we do not get more sniper mass killings is that it takes a lot of skill to hit a target at a very long range with a sniper rifle ...
This rifle of course removes the skill element and allows for shooting at an extremely long range."
... in such a way as to suggest that the increased possibility for menace is so enhanced that it is irresponsible, nay, indefensible, for this to be available.
I was pointing out the fallacy of that line of reasoning. Skill requirements don't correlate with deadliness. I did not mention legality and neither did the OP, at least not in the way that other subcomments touched on.
edit: RE: The argument at hand is obviously whether a particular thing should be illegal because it is deadly.
No, that was not the argument at hand. The argument was whether high skill vs. low skill vectors of attack somehow change the ethical judgement involved in allowing something in the first place. I don't care that you hijacked the thread in this direction, but I do think it was a hijack.
No, that was not the argument at hand. The argument was whether high skill vs. low skill vectors of attack somehow change the ethical judgement involved in allowing something in the first place. I don't care that you hijacked the thread in this direction, but I do think it was a hijack.
How does bringing up Sarin gas help your argument here?
Sarin gas = illegal, low "skill vector"[1]
This firearm = legal, low "skill vector"
Unless you don't consider consistency important, you seem to be arguing that either sarin gas should be made legal or this firearm should be made illegal. I think you failed at making the point you were trying to make.
[1] I'm assuming here that sarin gas has a "low skill vector". That's obviously not true.
Regarding [1] - while you are 100% correct concerning the manufacture of sarin gas, you are almost certainly wrong in relation to the deployment and/or activation of sarin gas in a controlled space.
"Throwing a grenade" is generally considered 'low skill'. In the case of the Tokyo sarin gas incident, the gas was deployed in a plastic bag (I'm thinking zip loc) and was stabbed with a sharpened umbrella to deploy.
It seems disingenuous to compare sarin gas to bleach and ammonia. We all draw a line where we think something is too dangerous to be legal. And obviously the usefulness of something is to be weighed against its danger as well. As I asked elsewhere, I'd like to know where your line is. You keep on bringing up things like "baseball bats" as if they're the same thing as this rifle. You know they're not.
So where's your line? Are you claiming not to have a line?
I did reply in the other thread, and just now noticed that we're arguing in multiple threads, so in the interest of HN civility, I'll let that one be the conversation of record.
That said, I will acknowledge that I believe that the right to bear arms is meant to prevent against tyranny, and as such, my line is arguably going to be much higher than I sense yours is. I will go further to state that I disagree with the national firearms act of 1934, which bans new, fully automatic machine guns for sale and import to US citizens.
Could you explain to me the logic by which you suggest some things should be illegal and some things should not? That is, what logic do you use to categorize a weapon as being protected by the Second Amendment?
We know your line is not established law, since you disagree with the national firearms act of 1934.
Where is your logic? This is what frustrates me with the Second Amendment. No one seems to have any logic behind their categorizations.
At least my point of view is rational. Make all firearms illegal. It may get me downvoted in this intolerant place, but it's at least consistent. Could you explain to me what your method of categorization is and how it's rational?
I'll invariably make a few statements in this diatribe that I hope don't color my argument negatively, but I feel might help in clarifying my position.
1) I think that all arms that the government possesses ought to be allowable by the citizenry. That is my interpretation of the intent of the second amendment, though I do not necessarily discount other people's beliefs as wrong. I understand that the founders aren't still around to ask (regrettably), but given what I know of the times, and what I know of our war for independence, I see a couple of logical conclusions from that, and I have settled on the opinion I have because I believe it to be the most logical extrapolation.
I also acknowledge arguments that suggest that the second amendment was primarily meant to deter the ability of foreign invasion, as it has been proven to be effective for, and fits with the actions of the times (if not necessarily the 'off the record' statements of many of our founders), and I agree that it is not as effectively spelled out as I would like it to be. That said, none of the other rights enumerated by the Constitution are either, and people don't generally balk at them. Nowhere in the Bill of Rights is there any mention of Twitter, Facebook, email, megaphones, etc. I personally believe in the principle of liberty (and am in fact a Libertarian), and believe that people ought to be free, and that our country, as intended, does a better job of this than most others. That is not meant to believe that I think we are the best country, or that our people are in any way better than other people, but I think that, if our government works as it is supposed to, we have the greatest potential for freedom of any of the countries I am aware of.
As for where I set the lines, I believe that until its appointment process is somehow violated, the Supreme Court are the Constitutional authority of our nation. So, by that logic, I define my categorizations by what the Supreme Court has tested, and what they have remarked on. Regrettably, there hasn't ever actually been a test of the firearms act in the supreme court, so I am free to have a vaguely defined opinion of it because there hasn't been any opinion offered. Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently banned big gulps in the state of New York -- just because it's a law does not mean that I am obligated to agree with it. More importantly though, the courts recently struck down the ban as being arbitrary and capricious, which (thankfully) sides with my own personal opinion of it, so I believe that justice was done, however delayed.
I would happily keep going, but I think I've given enough to digest at least, and I hope I've explained my position well without completely convincing you that I'm one of those gun obsessed nuts you see on the news (I'm not).
I wouldn't assume you are a gun obsessed nut because you think differently from me. In fact, your ability to argue in a civil manner would cause me to bet that you were not a gun obsessed nut.
But I'd urge you to look deeper than the Constitution for the answers to questions about what's best for the country. It's just a piece of paper, written by men in a very different time than ours. Rather than abide by the dictum of that piece of paper, ask yourself how you'd shape a nation if you were starting one from scratch. Forget this idea that we're locked into these old, vague words and their interpretations by old, flawed men and women.
Who knows, maybe you'd include the Second Amendment word-for-word in your Constitution if you were creating one from scratch. But, when your colleagues asked you why you thought the "right to bear arms" was so important, I hope you could give a better answer than "Well, some old men thought it was important hundreds of years ago."
On that note, I'm going to bed! Thanks for the discussion.
I have researched this subject a lot, and I can assure that yes, I have far more reasons than just because the Founders intended it.
For 1, more armed populaces tend to be safer places to live. To quote Heinlein, "An armed society is a polite society", and there is evidence to that fact here in America. Of interest is a place called Kennesaw, GA which, in 1981 (I think) they enacted a law encouraging every head of household to own a firearm. In the year they enacted that law, burglaries in the town of Kennesaw dropped 80%. Since then, their crime rate has held at FAR below the national average, as well as the state of Georgia. Somewhat ironically, it obviously didn't "solve crime", but did displace it to areas outside of Kennesaw to a very large degree. Before the law was enacted, it seemed as though every media outlet in the nation was decrying the law as it would surely be "a wild west town" and "blood in the streets" and all that, but that never happened. What happened instead is that they effectively pushed crime (and presumably criminals) out of town. Since then, the population of Kennesaw has quintupled, but crime rates have stayed low.
Meanwhile, if you look to Morton Grove, IL, they enacted a gun ban at a similar time, and crime (of all types) went up across the charts. When they repealed their gun ban, crime went down. The data on Morton Grove isn't quite as marked as Kennesaw (e.g., only 17% difference instead of the more obvious 80%), so it's possibly attributable to other factors, but it's hard to explain away the results in Kennesaw.
Further, the state that has the highest concentration of "fully automatic" machine guns (e.g., already to buy new) is New Hampshire. They also have some of the most lax gun control in the nation. Open carrying firearms is fairly common place in New Hampshire, and if I recall correctly, the only thing you need a permit for is to concealed carry in a vehicle. On top of that, their state buildings don't even have metal detectors, and you're allowed to carry guns in there. Wild West sounding? Maybe, but it's the third safest state in the union.
Again, I have more data to support my position with better than "cause the Constitution said so", though I do obviously agree with my interpretation (which is also the Supreme Court's interpretation) of what it means.
> We all draw a line where we think something is too dangerous to be legal.
No, not everyone does. There are quite a few of us who conclude, as many of the Founders and their contemporaries did, that the government has no ethical authority to judge what the people are worthy of possessing, and more to the point, has absolutely no ability to do so without devolving into oppression.
There are regrettably far fewer of us than those who subscribe to the alternate view, but we do fortunately share rank with a large contingent of the second group who at least draw the line somewhere past firearms.
Yes. As someone from the UK, I find the brutish eagerness Americans tend to have about their guns to be pretty fucked up anyway, so this is just another level on top of that.
No doubt someone will trot out the old discredited "protecting our freedoms" argument, that somehow seems to apply both to personal gun ownership and invading foreign nations.
Even at $17,000, I give it less than a year before it's banned in California.
It seems as though it doesn't do on-the-fly wind calculations, as they (or at least the preface) mentions having to dial it in, but if they could a 360° wind sensor onboard, this will almost certainly eliminate the need for a spotter on sniper missions.
Couple this with a .50 cal Barrett (instead of a .338 lapua) and I'm guessing there will be a huge military contract, but it looks like the 338 is the biggest round a Surgeon will fire (though I admittedly know nothing about the 6.5 creedmoor.)
I believe there are already ATF issues with remote firing, and they could make an argument that this supports remote firing and heavily restrict it, if they want. There were target (pistols? rifles? I forget) with electronic triggers for a while, but they got banned in competition. The Remington 700 EtronX was essentially stillborn in 2004 too.
The spotter in a 2-man (or for some ops, 3-man) team provides a lot of value beyond just wind -- both local security and usually being the senior person, command (and communication with those beyond the team). It's kind of the same thing as with tanks -- we can autoload the main gun, going from a 4-man to 3-man crew, but a 4-man tank can generally be self sufficient on the battlefield; a 3-man tank crew really has a hard time.
It would be maybe more meaningful for a police or other static precision marksman situation, where it usually is a one-man sniper deployment in radio contact with command. But most police shots are very short range (100-200 meter), where .308 or .300winmag are less affected by most wind.
This isn't remote firing though. At least if I read it correctly, this just moves all the functions of a spotter into the reticle itself, where it automatically does calculations. You still have to aim, pull the trigger, etc.
Otherwise, I don't disagree with anything you've said, except to perhaps posit that despite the general utility of a 4-man tank, how much combat is going to be offloaded to drones that can be just as lethal without putting any men in harm's way whatsoever?
Edit: It's also probably worth noting that with a few more iterations of the tech, they can do away with the pin-blocking technique they're using and just calculate more in realtime, perhaps with a secondary trigger or button to initiate 'live-targeting' so that the trigger can be manually activated by the trigger pull instead of on a delayed mechanical system.
I think the largest application would be making a sniper out of a non-sniper. The guy in the video had never fired a rifle before and was able to hit the target dead center at 1,000 yards. If you can lower the costs enough, everyone would be a sniper.
It would work for "turn a Rifleman into a Designated Marksman", but turning a random person into a great 1000 yard shot is not going to turn them into a conventional sniper (which implies a huge array of other skills beyond shooting).
Turning the DM in a squad into someone who can go from 400-600m to 1000m would be pretty useful, though.
He's not arguing for it to be legal, he's making a jab at California gun legislation, which many people believe wastes time banning things that seem frightening but in actuality are not much of a threat.
Such rifles are, as one result on Google put it, "the Rolls-Royce of rifles", and as my wiki link puts it:
not only has the .50 BMG never been used to harm or kill anyone in California, there is no record of a .50 BMG rifle ever being used in the United States to commit a crime.
One particularly choice comment from the time the subject was being discussed:
we certainly don't want to wait until a terrorist buys one before we ban it
Just think of all the things we could ban with that kind of logic.
Honestly, I don't think I was making a jab at anything in particular, just observing that it likely would be banned soon given California's gun politics. That said, I am politically biased in favor of the Bill of Rights, so I probably couldn't swear that my bias wasn't showing -- but at least consciously I didn't intend anything more than what was said.
Regardless, you bring up some interesting points -- specifically that the 50 cal has never been used in a crime, but at least in today's political climate, the least criminally used guns are the most targeted by gun control legislation. I guess that logically, if the 50 BMG has never been used in a crime, then it should be obvious that it's already banned.
I know that you can reload "California Fifties", which are just slightly shorter, which I think does point out the ridiculousness of the ban, but that's probably digressing.
You might just be the "Obama Translator" of my own personal subconscious. I had to be careful about the way I refuted what you wrote because I might very well have been thinking exactly that, and it looks exactly like the sort of thing I might have said.
You raise an interesting point, and honestly, one I just realized a few nights ago.
The legislation around gun bans seems to based on what could possibly happen, and not what's been demonstrated to happen. There seems to a be a "scary" factor, or maybe a public appeal, or maybe even just a future politicking angle when it comes to weapon bans. (i.e. what if the terrorists get 'em!?)
I had a "let's get caught up on current events" night last week, and decided to dig into the proposed rifle ban (of which I hear about constantly from my family). So I read through Obama's Now is the Time plan, and the only thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was the ban on Assault Rifles (Barring that, and two of the other items, I actually think it's a pretty good approach).
I remember when Clinton's ban was set to expire, and the media exclaimed that it would be like the "Wild West," and then it happened, the bill expired, and rifles went on sale.. and.. everything was exactly the same. It was actually reminiscent of Bill Hicks' bit:
>Then you look out your window it's just: (Birds chirping)
>Where is all this shit happening, man? Ted Turner is making this shit up!
This fear of these weapons seems based on, well, a characterization that doesn't line up with reality. Yes, they have great lethality, but when you look at the stats, the data that you would need to see to justify a ban just isn't there.
* Of the total gun related felonies, only 3.8% of them involved rifles. One unfortunate bit about the available info, is that all rifle types are lumped together. So there's no way to tell if the weapon used was of the "assault" class, or a simple hunting rifle. However, I'd wager, that "assault" rifles make up only a small proportion of the rifle category -- but that's pure assumption; back to the data!
* You're actually slightly more likely to be murdered with someone wielding a shotgun, than one wielding a rifle (though only marginally so at 4.1%)
* You're 2.3 times as likely to be punched or kicked to death than to meet the same fate by riles.
* You're Five times as likely to be stabbed to death than to meet the same fate by rifles.
So, as I looked through all the stats, I was left with this feeling of "What the F* is the point?" Banning rifles just seems based on terrible, fear based, reactionary logic.
Without trying to come off as a paranoiac, my genuine suspicion is that banning these 'scary rifles' that, by your own admission, you didn't know much about until you performed a LOT more research than the average person is likely to ever do, that it's the first step in eventually banning more and more categories of guns until eventually, they're all banned.
The other points I'd like to make that I feel are somewhat relevant is that you should very much read up on DC v Heller, which is the most recent Supreme Court decision on the matter (except for Heller II) that specifies weapons "in common use" as a protected class of weapon from government bans.
I would go further to suggest that I honestly believe (though I cannot substantiate) that the AR15 is able to be categorized as 'evil' because of its use in some of these high profile, but otherwise unlikely mass shootings, but what I really think is that they're most likely being used because they are just so popular. The AR15 is the most popular rifle being sold in the United States, and has been since 1994.
Just a quick note on your last paragraph, because that reminded me of the other data I looked at. I don't have the exact data handy (I'm doing some before bed hacker news browsing on my tablet), but I think it was assembled by, I want to say, a site called Mother Jones..? It was a google spread sheet of some kind. Anyway, it was a table with every mass shooting in the history of the US, the number of fatalities, and the weapon types used.
After I finished playing with the FBI's data, I started to wonder if the ban was not to stop the kind of day-to-day gun crime, but to prevent the mass shooting, High profile, high fatality events like the recent school shooting, or the Aurora movie theater shooting, or any similar event.
So, I pulled the data from that collection, and could find absolutely no correlation between rifle involvement in a mass shooting and the number of fatalities. Our worst shooting, with (going from memory here) 33 fatalities was the Virginia tech masacre. It involved absolutely no rifles, or shotguns, just the lowly handgun. I'll have to double check all the numbers tomorrow, but if I believe that in the 10 most dealy mass shootings in our history, of the 22 or so weapons used, only 4 or 5 of the were rifles. To my number crunching, rifle usage was pretty inconsequential in the number of fatalities -- which I'll admit was pretty damn unintuitive. But that's what the data shows, so given all that information, it's tough for me to figure out a reason for the administration pushing for the ban.
I have a hard time swallowing the Mother Jones data whole, because I know on issues that I am very informed on, their data has shown to be misleading in the past.
Here's a fun statistic though, since you're in the process of number crunching -- every mass shooting in the US since 1950 (except for perhaps that Gabby Gifford shooting in Arizona) has occurred in a 'gun free zone', where the shooters had the highest probability of completing their shooting sprees with the least fear of being stopped.
Of those, most telling (to me at least) is the Aurora, CO shooting, because while Colorado is generally a fairly well armed state, the shooter bypassed six other theaters that were closer to his home, including the largest theater, where he could have done the most damage, in lieu of taking his gun into the one nearby theater that specifically disallowed guns from being carried inside.
That's a myth. Consider the Clackamas Town Center shooting: Nick Meli had a concealed carry permit and was carrying a weapon, although he correctly didn't take a shot. We could argue about whether or not the shooter saw Meli and committed suicide as a result, but that's irrelevant: the shooter didn't choose a gun free zone.
It depends on how you characterize "gun free." In many states signs prohibiting firearms don't carry the weight of the law. That is, if you are found to be carrying you can be asked to leave (and charged with trespassing if you refuse), but that's it.
From my understanding the mall in Clackamas is a posted "gun free zone," but the posted signs don't actually carry any legal weight.
But aren't we walking a fairly narrow line here? In order for this to be a meaningful distinction, we have to assume that mass shooters a) plan their attacks, b) are smart enough to choose gun free zones, and c) are dumb enough not to know that a gun free zone isn't necessarily free from guns?
I think that in many cases, we would find that yes, mass shooters do plan their attacks (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora) and actually have long fantasies about them.
Calling mass shooters stupid is, I think, a naive assertion. They're obviously flawed, but not necessarily in a way that makes them less effective at planning or committing violence.
And while 'c' is potentially valid, I think that what you'd find is that, as most citizens tend to fall into the 'law abiding' category, where there are signs posted disallowing guns, you'd find that most citizens won't carry them. So even if the 'gun free zone' is not found to be 100% devoid of guns, you are almost certain to find it less armed than if signs weren't posted.
We've slipped from "every mass shooting" to "in many cases." I thought your comment was worth researching, and I should note that I found more mass shootings taking place in gun-free zones than I'd expected -- I'm glad you made the point. But I would also suggest that you may be accepting the research done by gun rights partisans with less skepticism than it deserves.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?398679-62-Mass-S... is I think my final point here; it's a sympathetic gun rights advocate who went to the trouble of tracking and linking local ordinances where possible. He's only proven the case in about half the incidents. I know John Lott claims he researched all of them. If you happen to know where his supporting documentation is I'd be sincerely interested.
You may be right. I'm looking at an MAIG report, and while I trust their analysis even less, it clearly points to newer incidents that I was previously unaware of. This may be an overlap on the data, as I'm quoting a fairly old study, or it may be that the study was incomplete.
I might be looking at a full on amendment here, or there may have been more statistical jiggery pokery that somehow excludes findings incongruent with the expected results. Either way, I'll do more research and get back. Thanks for the correction -- while the link you posted isn't necessarily conclusive, it did spur me to freshen my data sets at the very least.
In regards to your last point, it would be like saying, "The Honda Civic is the most used getaway car". What is the takeaway? The Honda Civic is the most useful car to criminals and the best getaway car, or just one of those cars that is everywhere?
That, due to its popularity, it is likely to be used in a greater-than-average commission of crimes.
If we looked at drunk driving incidents, and from those, were somehow able to determine that the Honda Civic was used in a higher percentage of them than other cars, it would be a mistake to conclude that Honda Civics were in some way more appealing to drunk drivers, or that they more easily facilitated drunk driving, while excluding overall ownership on the whole.
Further, much of the legislation being considered (at least in Feinstein's bill) is akin to saying "Okay, the Honda Civic is used by drunk drivers. The Honda Civic has 17" tires and cup holders. Let's ban cup holders and 17" tires. No, let's ban all cars that have some combination of 17" tires and cup holders."
It's the only way to go about this sort of thing. ;)
It only took about 5 minutes of googling the gun debate before I gave up and started googling for actual statistics. Some of the blogs that google returned were just biased in either direction to an amount that was almost parody.
Give me the numbers. I'll sort it out myself, ya biased lot!
Problem is, you really don't want to wait until terrorists or other baddies actually use some capability to kill people until you do something about it. Even so, banning should not be a reflex like it seems to be here in CA. It's a hard problem.
More accurate hunting results in a cleaner kill for the animal being hunted, as well as keeps missed shots from potentially ricocheting to unexpected places. Further, missed shots potentially contaminate water supplies (lead bullets).
Otherwise, defense of one's home / ranch? I know that there are routinely horrible instances of drug cartels trespassing during the commission of drug or people smuggling across private property and literally killing anyone that gets in their way. Also, a more accurate rifle provides better defense against coyotes, bears, predatory animals.
I know that there are routinely horrible instances of drug cartels trespassing during the commission of drug or people smuggling across private property and literally killing anyone that gets in their way.
You know of this routinely happening? In the US? I'd like to see some sources for that.
Also, a more accurate rifle provides better defense against coyotes, bears, predatory animals.
You need to tag the animal, then keep the sight on the reticule for up to a few seconds before the weapon will even fire. I'm pretty sure if your 1000 yards away from a coyote or bear you're already safe. And if not, this thing is going to be far less useful then a regular firearm.
edit: removed snarky question about whether the parent read the article. my b.
I did read the article, thank you very much. If you look elsewhere in this thread you'll see that I remarked that after a few more iterations of the technology, they'll likely be able to sort out the delay from being necessary. Regardless, I think you're overlooking that the animal doesn't need to be 1,000 away for the technology to be effective. It also doesn't seem to indicate whether or not weapon need engage the targeting computer for each trigger pull either, but I think that, at least in future iterations if not right now, I would likely be able to manually fire via the trigger where it wasn't necessary.
> I'd argue that it's far more likely a mass shooting event would take place with conventional firearms than with a PGF; a bolt-action hunting rifle isn't exactly the quickest method of getting a lot of lead on a lot of different targets. The very nature of the PGF's "Tag-Track-Xact" scope encourages methodical target selection at range, and hauling even a hypothetical smaller PGF into a crowded place and letting loose would be enormously difficult. It's not a close-quarters weapon by any stretch of the imagination.
Sure it's not a close-quarters weapon, but a imagine a mass shooting where the shooter was a mile from the deaths: almost untraceable, and very hard to stop in a short time, so the shooter could sit and pick off targets for twenty minutes.
Both of the cartridges mentioned in the article are going to be quite loud; combined with the relatively low rate of fire, it would be fairly tractable to track someone down who is firing multiple shots. Someone setting up, firing a single shot and then waiting a week could be a bit more difficult, but then there are many more opportunities for them to get seen lugging around an 18lb rifle.
While I think that the notion of banning something on the potential for misuse is absurd, it is possible to suppress the shot-noise as well as suppress the muzzle flash somewhat to make it harder to locate.
It's still not going to be foolproof, especially as the range of a 338 lapua is going to put you in relative sight distance, vs a more traditional sniper rifle which has an effective range of a mile, mile and a half.
Also it's worth noting that the DC sniper used a very pedestrian AR15 for his sniping, and just hid himself in a trunk to keep things hidden, which would work well for pretty much any kind of gun (except if anybody was very near it and saw the muzzle blast).
Wow, that's a biased article. "Two cautionary tales", one being that of Australia. Note the conclusion: Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres.
I'd like to know what all these massacres in Australia are, because it's been nearly 20 years since the gun buyback, and there's been no massacres that grab headlines and make people fearful. There was one mass murder by arson, but it's not like that's a common event here.
In reference to her other points, assault has indeed been on the rise recently in Australia, but it's due to some complex factors independent of guns, and sexual assault is up largely because of improved reporting.
It is a bit sad that the article is dated Dec 26 2012, yet the author can't find a more recent peer-reviewed study than 2003 for one of her "Two cautionary tales".
But even though they may have gone down, they haven't been eliminated.
It's also worth noting that at least for the data I've seen, since the gun ban, assault crime has gone up, and as a result I am apparently 5 times more likely to be raped, beaten or mugged in the UK than I am in the United States.
I can't make any claims or assertions to your murder rates as you guys don't count a murder as a murder until and unless a conviction is made (and I can't speak to the effectiveness of your justice system with any degree of knowledge), but on the whole, Britain isn't objectively better because of the gun ban.
I'm also not saying that it is objectively worse, as it is a very hard issue to quantify on the whole, but one of the things that makes the United States special (at least at its formation) is that it specifically allows for an armed civilian population to keep its government honest. I don't know of (probably due to ignorance, because I haven't looked for) another country that has done the same.
is that it specifically allows for an armed civilian population to keep its government honest.
This is a canard - where have all the second amendment activists been for this century so far? They don't seem to be doing a very good job of it, and don't seem particularly interested in protecting any amendment other than the second.
Times have changed, and it's time to move on from the fantasy that 'guns in the hands of civilians keeps the US government honest'.
I'm also not saying that it is objectively worse, as it is a very hard issue to quantify on the whole
It's not a hard issue to quantify at all. The UK doesn't have a gun-carrying culture. A gun ban there doesn't really affect much in either direction; rises in crime are due to other things. It's not like criminals are out there mugging people because 'now we know they can't carry guns'. They never did.
We went through the same thing here in Australia when we brought in greater restrictions in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre. Despite ridicule and predictions of impending Wild West-ness by the US pro-gun lobby, life went on as usual - because we never really strongly identified with guns, and don't carry them around much. Crime went down, but again, not because of the gun ban - because we entered an economic boom, and when the public is in boom times, crime drops because people are more contented.
Finally, you have to be very careful when you compare non-murder violent crime between nations because of vastly different reporting defintions. The FBI doesn't even bother reporting regular assaults, it's aggravated assaults only. Whereas in Australia (and I believe the UK as well), you get a few charges for a fistfight, which inflates the stats. The prosecutor will bring in a scaled series of charges, they all get counted in the stats, but the defendent is sentenced on the severest one only. In short, unless you're being careful to note the reporting differences, it's apples and oranges. Murders are easier because there's not much in the way of subjective wiggle-room.
I fully recognize that systems of crime reporting are dramatically different, which I did (at least attempt to) clarify going into it early. I understand that it is a complicated mess, and there is no apples to apples comparison.
Regarding your other statement:
This is a canard - where have all the second amendment activists been for this century so far? They don't seem to be doing a very good job of it, and don't seem particularly interested in protecting any amendment other than the second.
I have to confess that I take a certain amount of offense to that, though I'm not exactly sure what you're implying (I'm just vaguely offended at this point. ;-).
Are you trying to assert that people who care about the second amendment only care about the second amendment? Or are you trying to assert that people who care about the second amendment have been complacent for the past decade? Both? Some combination thereof?
At least personally, I've been politically active in a number of civil rights issues including those on the first and fourth amendments. I've testified before state Senate and my House of Representatives on civil liberties and the potential incursion of those liberties for some time now. (Thereby disproving that all gun nuts only care about the second amendment.)
As for the second, at least in Maryland, we've been fighting our 'May Issue' statutes here in Maryland, and I was personally a part of the case that got our state laws overturned (at least temporarily) to 'Shall Issue' status (though it's currently back in legal flux, but that should disprove that all second amendment advocates have been complacent).
Knowing that your statements weren't a Boolean, I'll wait for clarification as to what you actually meant, but I think that it's perhaps only as visible lately because the second amendment is in such peril. In the past decade though, there have been nearly a dozen high profile cases in defense of the second amendment in DC, Illinois, Chicago and Maryland at the least.
Also, oddly enough, the American Civil Liberties Union doesn't recognize that the right to bear arms is an individual right (and they believe that the ruling in DC v Heller, which specifically states that it is an individual right is wrong), so second amendment advocates tend to clump together into one of two groups, where you either are or aren't in support of the ACLU.
You've got to admit though, that it is uncommon to testify before state (or federal) government at all. But it goes along with what I'm saying: you're trying to sway your government by using words and politics, not by joining a militia and violently opposing it. Whether you're armed or not has zero effect on speaking on the record. You're not trying to keep your government honest by virtue of your firearm, you're trying to keep it honest by virtue of your words. The government as an entity is more scared of your vote than your firearm.
Some things aren't relevant anymore, such as the whole third amendment. And one of those things is the slogan that it's firearms in the hands of the citizens that keeps a government honest - because it's clearly not. The US government is not more honest than its unarmed-citizen contemporaries.
Edit: To be clearer, in reference to 'not doing a good job of it', I mean that there hasn't been a lot of change brought about by threatening the government with force of arms, despite the last decade containing a lot of incursions to civil rights or things like gerrymandering.
The point isn't that we should take up arms and champion our causes with bullets over every perceived slight. The point is that when all those other recourses fail us, the right to bear arms is the last defense against tyranny. As for joining a militia, I need not bother... I am the militia. All able-bodied men in the United States are (and arguably women too), as defined by US Code.
Still though, there have been cases where guns were brandished to prevent tyranny. The Battle of Athens, in 1946 (admittedly not this decade, but thank god for that too) was such a case where state officials were committing voter fraud against the populace, so that they could continue committing civil rights violations against them -- apparently their pay was tied to numbers of arrests, citations, etc., so they were literally just arresting and citing people without cause. They would pull over tour buses passing through the area and cite bus riders for drunkenness, however ridiculous.
The result was an armed march on the courthouse where the ballots were being cast, a brief 'war' where custody of the ballots was fought for, and recovered, a fair election was had, and political change was enacted.
Saying it isn't relevant any more is, I suspect, short sighted. Too many acts of tyranny have been committed after disarming the population for me to blindly concede that the right is no longer 'relevant'. While I agree that there are portions of the Constitution that may not be relevant in the United States right now, that doesn't discount the possibility that they would ever be necessary again. We have a hard enough time defending our rights for the first, fourth and other amendments that are arguably more relevant than ever, while the state wishes to further strip us of those rights.
It's easy to conclude that some rights are irrelevant because it is unlikely that any foreign attackers would dare take on the US on American soil. But that's only true for now. What if the dollar collapses? What if we default on debt? What if our military forces are pared back to a hundredth of what they are now? What if these things happen in the next 50 to 100 years? Countries rise and fall over time, and historically, rights that are once restricted are never restored.
The concept that 'everyone is in the militia' is not the intent of the second amendment. 'everyone is in the militia' is legislation from 1903, a hundred years after the second amendment was framed.
The Battle of Athens could easily have played out without firearms. Angry mobs marching on courthouses have been around forever. Firearms just makes the process shorter if you start using them.
and historically, rights that are once restricted are never restored.
Like the end of Prohibition? Smoking marijuana? Women's vote? Equal rights for minorities? Gay marriage?
(have to be brief... running late for work as usual...)
"The concept that 'everyone is in the militia' is not the intent of the second amendment."
I didn't actually suggest that it was. My statement is that the second amendment is an individual right, not confined to the members of a militia, but that even if it were, you needn't be currently involved in a militia to be eligible.
"The Battle of Athens could easily have played out without firearms. Angry mobs marching on courthouses have been around forever. Firearms just makes the process shorter if you start using them."
Maybe. They could have petitioned the state legislature and, assuming they weren't complicit, would have gotten action in as little as a couple of months, during which time the ballots would have been destroyed and the damage done, and the illegal elections may or may not have been ultimately overturned.
"Like the end of Prohibition? Smoking marijuana? Women's vote? Equal rights for minorities? Gay marriage?"
Very good points actually, and it is generally why I believe so strongly in our political system, even when it sometimes fails us. I should amend my statement to "seldom" restored, for greater accuracy.
If you suppress a .338 Lapua or other serious, loud, supersonic rifle, you can usually get a fair number of shots off before humans can figure out your direction/range. It's still really loud, but makes localization much harder. I'm not sure how it affects shotspotter/boomerang, though. (Now that WA allows suppressor use, I'm totally getting a 20" bbl folding stock TRG-42 .338 Lapua and can once I move up there).
Having been (accidentally) downrange of a suppressed AR (556), I'd say I localized the direction of fire within a few seconds. Granted I knew the terrain and probably had an idea where shooters would be set up, so that probably helped.
I've worked with suppressed PCP's a lot (legal where I was), and it does affect shot dynamics. I'm guessing one could hack this monster scope to reflect that. I just don't really see anyone, good intentioned or not, going through all that trouble.
I don't have the table in front of me, but you give up 10-20% (mainly from going to a 20" from a 27"). It reduces range, but using e.g. 300gr Lapua Scenar, it retains plenty of terminal energy and is above 1400fps for >1200m (vs. 1600m otherwise).
I've never had access to a range beyond 1000 yards, anyway.
There could be all kinds of reasons not to do that. Just for example, suppose the shooter has a specific grievance against black people, or some form of local backing to eliminate certain classes of individuals, rather than just generically being angry at society.
Such things have been known to happen in the history of South America, for example.
So then it should be banned not because of the extremely unlikely possibility that it could be used criminally, but the infinitesimally unlikely possibility that it could be used for crime of an extremely specific purpose?
Doesn't this apply to any long-range rifle? Or do you mean that the specific technology here makes it feasible where it's not feasible with an ordinary rifle? I can see how the latter might be true.
What this tech does isn't something a competent shooter couldn't do anyway with a high degree of accuracy, it just lowers the bar on who can do it, and eliminates much of the need for many hours of practice before hand.
So, in short, yes, this already applies to any long range rifle, and a rifle capable of this degree of accuracy (though not auto-aiming) can be had, just about everywhere, as a cash and carry item for a retail price of under $500.
The more distant a man is from his quarry, the less compunction he feels. One bad consequence of this technology is that by permitting accuracy from a much longer range, it thereby further lowers barriers to homicidally bad behavior.
The place where this kind of thing would be most useful is integrated into a CROWS mount -- a fully automated turret which can be put on top of a vehicle, in static emplacements, etc. Being able to make single, aimed, highly accurate shots on vehicles approaching a checkpoint from a .50bmg mounted on an unattended vehicle up forward would be really nice, since you could then not put any of your own forces at risk, while taking single shots to the engine (to disable the vehicle) vs. unloading on the vehicle with multiple bursts (which would be highly likely to kill the occupants, who may not be "bad guys").
Deskilling the precision marksman job isn't as important -- a real sniper needs huge amounts of other training beyond precision shooting, so the shooting training isn't the biggest barrier there, and the level of skill required for ordinary police 100-200m designated marksman isn't really much for the shooting, so much as for shoot/no shoot, various intermediate/barrier materials, etc.
The only way to do police levels of accuracy at 1000m would be with some kind of actively guided round; they generally won't accept a shot a military sniper would consider acceptable, as it's usually for hostage rescue situations. A military sniper is probably ok with taking a shot where if he misses, another enemy beside the one he's trying to kill gets killed instead, most of the time, as long as his odds of hitting the target are high enough. So those shots can be in the 600-1500m range. I've never heard of police shots beyond 300m. They're usually 50-150m but often with glass or other barrier material between them and the target.