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If you're like me & you're a connoisseur of gun control falsehoods, cluelessness, & misdirection, then I have a small treat for you this morning. This editorial (found via @guntruth) is pretty special: fayobserver.com/opinion/201812…
It calls for a return to the assault weapon ban of the 90's. But the hero image shows three guns that, if you swapped the buttstocks out for fixed stocks (a few seconds' change requiring no special tools), they'd be perfectly legal under the 90's ban.
LOL no. Bump stocks do not do convert a semi-auto to a full-atuo. You still have to press the trigger once for each bullet fired, even with a bump stock. The bump stock just helps you press the trigger really fast. 
This study has a humdinger in it, but more on that in a sec. At close ranges & with similar calibers, semi-auto rifles are deadlier than non-semi-auto rifles (because of faster followup shots). This isn't really disputed by anyone, anywhere.
Rifles also have higher muzzle velocities than handguns (again, for similar ammo), & are deadlier. So yeah, the rank of deadliness goes roughly: semi-auto rifle > non-semi auto rifle > handgun.
Scholars who did this study, welcome to the past 100 years or more of gun knowledge.
Scholars who did this study, welcome to the past 100 years or more of gun knowledge.
But here's the thing. You'll notice that they did not compare the deadliness of semi-auto rifles to shotguns. Just semi-auto vs. everything else, and the vast majority of what's in that latter category are the far weaker handguns.
I would love to see the study's authors re-run the numbers with just semi-auto rifles vs. shotguns. I'd bet the shotgun wins. I say this, because I've read many of these studies & I can smell when people are playing games. Specifically, take a look at the last half of this:
Given that rifles are deadlier than handguns (typically larger bullets & higher muzzle velocities), how did a giant alarm not go off when they found that semi-auto rifle fatality rates were same as "everything else," where the latter pool includes a small fraction of rifles?
I think the answer has to be shotguns. Shotguns are deadlier in close quarters, & almost certainly jack up the fatality rates in the "everything else" category of shootings. I'm certain the authors know this, but it doesn't help the semi-auto ban case so they pass over it.
Jumping off of this point and returning to the editorial, the editorial goes on at great length re: muzzle velocity of "semi-auto rifles" (as if that number is somehow higher for non-semi-auto rifles as a class) & how much deadlier these guns are. But the study says otherwise lol
Anyway, I saved the best for last. Uh, guys, semi-auto rifles were not banned in 1994. Are you really so determined to conflate "assault weapon" with "semi-auto" that you'll just straight up, bald-faced lie in JAMA? Really?!
The claim that semi-auto rifles were banned in 1994 is a really spectacular falsehood. You don't even have to know anything about guns -- just have access to Google -- to know better. And yet this agenda-driven lie was printed in JAMA.
No wonder people don't vaccinate their kids
No wonder people don't vaccinate their kids
(Just to be clear: please vaccinate your kids. But if doctors and public health researchers are just making things up about firearms, it's hard to blame people who know better for wondering what else they're being lied to about by that same crowd.)
Ultimately, this editorial & the study it cites are sadly typical of gun controllers: arguing to bring back a law they can't be bothered to learn basic facts about in order to ban devices they can't be bothered to learn basic facts about.
Everything is about appearances & panic.
Everything is about appearances & panic.
The sentence wasn't unclear. It was wrong. And honestly the replacement is still not great, because it didn't ban weapons, really. It banned the import or sale of new guns with certain features.
