Because a car, properly used, will never cause a death or injury. I’d say “save by accident,” but there really aren’t any accidents except the ones we make.

When a handgun is used strictly for the purpose for which it is designed, a human being dies.

The same is true for swords, but until I see a headline reading “Workplace Stabbing Kills 6″ I don’t think I’ll be calling for knife control.

I’m very impressed, by the way, with how the discussion has gone here. You and Ames seem to have managed to establish that most gun owners aren’t arguing for the freedom to lug a .50-cal machine gun around in their car, and that most gun control proponents aren’t arguing to ban ownership of anything bigger than a potato gun.

I wonder if we can narrow the commonalities further?

A glorious Fourth to all, eh? From a northern neighbour.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to respond. I’ve been busy at work, and I feel like I have to do posts, which makes me neglect comments… I’m bad.

No, I argue that it’s history and use is why people make the mistake of calling them ‘assault rifles’. the only guns i would argue have exclusively miltary applications would be fully-automatic weapons and high-powered sniper rifles in the .50 cal range. But these are already fiercely regulated and ownership is finite and requires a large investment of time and money. THAT program has been working for around 70 years.

While AKs are benign normally, I guess, as you said yourself, their susceptibility to modification towards full automatic is a problem, and, yes, their common use is a problem. But I’m having problems thinking up a good way to define that too. Clearly the right to bear arms stops short of the right to own nuclear submarines. But where does it stop, to you, viz. the guns one can permissibly own?

If you make the analogy of a car and a gun, we can substitute one for the other. Most people follow the law with regards to driving cars. Some though are going to drive drunk, without a license or without training. We don’t suggest taking cars off the street. What we gun proponents want desperately is to persuade rationale folks like yourself to not blame guns, but to blame those who would use them for crimes. Even if we took every gun off the street, American criminals would be killing rival gang members with swords. We all know that. It’s the culture, not the weapons.

I think that’s a good concern, but I think it’s one that we could get past. While AKs are benign normally, I guess, as you said yourself, their susceptibility to modification towards full automatic is a problem, and, yes, their common use is a problem. But I’m having problems thinking up a good way to define that too. Clearly the right to bear arms stops short of the right to own nuclear submarines. But where does it stop, to you, viz. the guns one can permissibly own?

And no, we haven’t been talking past each other. Election years are just kind of weird. i try hard to be non-partisan but it gets hard.

On the guns; Personally, I have no interest in AK’s. They are the most mass-produced gun in the world and the quality varies from country to country, so there are some lousy ones out there. And there’s so many better choices for a hunter. I think a lot of collectors like them because there’s a historical significance. (I would argue it is the most important weapon ever produced).

What you have to keep in mind though is that an AK, bought legally and unmodified, is just a rifle. It shoots a round as fast as you can pull the trigger. I had BB guns when I was 12 that did the same thing. If you want to argue that an AK is an ‘assault rifle’ based on the round it shoots, again, there are benign hunting rifles that shoot vastly superior rounds, also in semi-auto.

The ‘assault’ label comes from the fact that this gun was manufactured for the battlefield and is used by some bad people around the world. It’s been used to kill literally millions of people. But that is the use, not the gun itself. There’s simply nothing unique about an AK-47 that makes it more deadly than a decent marksman with any number of hunting rifles or even a good pistol.

You have to get past the ‘assault’ label and see guns for what they are. I’m willing to compromise on guns. I think certain ammo should be restricted to law enforcement. I like waiting periods and background checks. I like registering guns. But we don’t need any new ‘bans’. That is an overreach.

On that note, I’m set to agree with you on some points. I don’t think I’d classify semiautomatic pistols as “assault weapons.” If you really think they are that prevalent, and that innocent in common use, I think they’d be (1) protected by Heller, and (2) not bad for the reasons that I think assault weapons are bad.

Assault rifles like AK-47s et al are no essential part of any self-defense regime. While a ban may not pull them entirely from the illegal market, it also frustrates no legitimate purpose, so long as it’s narrowly tailored not to sweep in semiauto pistols like you point out. A ban also escalates sanctions against someone caught with the guns, and may promote deterrence, justify longer incarceration for particularly nasty criminals, or at least make someone think twice before (1) owning a weapon whose sole purpose is mass violence and (2) using it to that effect. While I admit that for some people no law is deterrent enough, that argument (“they’ll just build there one”) reduces to an argument to ban nothing. Besides, I don’t see anything wrong with making it harder for bad guys to get bad guns, or with making it harder for terrorists to get weapons of terror.

I also agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY that the secondary market and the black market trade is the real problem. I don’t think we should ignore that while going after assault weapons; I think we should do both. But I’m willing to agree that I should define “assault weapon” narrower, and I appreciate the thought you’ve obviously put into the issue.

As to how that ties to Heller, well, D. A. Clarke asked the rhetorical questions, ” If the State is not going to step in and enforce severe penalties for abusing and murdering women, then is it women’s responsibility to do so? When a woman’s dignity, honour, and physical person are assaulted or destroyed, how shall we get justice? How shall we prevent it from happening again? f the courtroom and the law are owned by men (if a Clarence Thomas, for example, can be appointed to the Supreme Court regardlesss of the evidence that he routinely insulted and harassed women) at what point are women entitled to take the law into their own hands?” As the death penalty is further suppressed within the legal system, extralegal systems can acquire the moral legitimacy that the legal system has abdicated, and privately born arms enable such systems to work. Granted, an unregulated system of vigilantism has a much greater risk of wrongful execution than a properly-regulated legal system, but elevated risk is still less risk than the certainty of wrongful non-execution in the legal system.