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ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Glen Beck and rush Limbaugh. (9/30/2009 12:11:16 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen
quote:
ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda
I'm not planning any bank robberies in the foreseeable future, but I do enjoy shooting an AR-15. It's a fun gun on the range. Functionally, it's no different than my dad's 40-year old deer rifle - a .308 semi-automatic is a .308 semi-automatic. Assault-style weapons are used in only a tiny percentage of violent crime, and there's no sensible reason to ban them.
If you mean semi automatic weapons with assault rifle stylings, there is a single reason. Too often the weapon is made almost identically to the automatic capable military version and it is a fairly simple matter to convert it to selective fire.
That's a popular myth, Ken, but it's just not true. It's almost impossible for anyone but a highly skilled gunsmith to convert a semi-auto assault-style weapon without the manufacturer's parts, which are illegal under the same statute that makes it illegal to possess fully-automatic weapons in the first place. It's not like you can just walk into WalMart and buy a kit - the only people allowed to own or purchase this equipment are people who are already allowed to own or purchase machine guns anyway.
And even at that, many - if not most - AR-15 style weapons cannot be converted to full auto at all, because they were never designed in a full-auto version. My own LR-308C, from Panther Arms, is an example. I'm on vacation at the moment, so I don't have my Panther catalog to consult, but if I had to guess I would speculate that out of the 40 or 50 models of assault-style rifles they manufacture, less than 4 or 5 are capable of firing fully auto. I suppose that technically speaking, a highly skilled gunsmith could engineer the weapon to fire full auto, but anyone who could do that is capable of building his own machine gun from scratch to begin with, so the point is moot.
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