Senate Gun Control

the delta force series in the late 90s/early 2000s taught me that burst is more effective than full auto

 

I thought it was to provide covering fire. I'm sure I read some statistic that 99% of bullets fired in war are used in that way.

 

Prediction: The list of items handed out by the White House tomorrow will be sensible though perhaps debatable but the far right wing of Beck and Limbaugh and the NRA and Nugent and Nugent fans will oppose it out of pure insanity because Obama will somehow turn the United States into a liberal dystopia because he is a secret muslim born in Kenya out to show that evil Pinky who is really gonna take over the world.

 

First gun control measure since Newtown passes NY legislature.

Gov. Cumo is expected to sign it into law.

 

DarthBoba. I'll let you handle this.

 

I don't mean to be a stickler here, well yes I do...But seriously, say what?

First off, what's a "rapid fire assault rifle?" because here we go again. Is that like saying "medical treatment center Hospital?"


"High Volume of Fire" alone doesn't really inflict any casualties, because it doesn't hit anything. In fact, in the 1980's, the reason why the US military went with a 3 round burst feature on the M16A2 instead of full auto was due to lessons learned in Vietnam, when troops would expend 50,000-80,000+ bullets for every kill, a ratio that reflects the difficulties of combat. The US military has since moved back toward full auto again, but with specific training programs to counter the "spray and pray" effect. But there are also things called Squad Automatic Weapons which act as suppressive fire, and machine guns, which are support weapons. In Western militaries, the trend is to also use various dedicated marksmen within a squad or platoon. It's a position which could be thought of as "sniper lite." But basically, the dedicated marksman uses a semi-auto rifle to fire at deliberate targets. But the tactics are integrated and support every other section. But since a regular person can't get any of these guns, it's a moot point. In a nutshell, it's folly to try and use full military doctrine to make a civilian gun argument, precisely because the realities are so different.

(if you're interested, the primary cause of casualties in combat has been by artillery. Going back to the Civil War, when records started to be kept, through the present day, artillery and bursting devices (ie bombs) causes somewhere between 43% and 55% of all casualties in any specific war. It's a reality which was illustrated in the recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, where "stand-off" IED's were used. Historically, direct rifle fire only accounts for about 10-20% of the casualties.)

 

Alpha-Red
Yeah, um, that's wrong.

Civilians may get the perception that all we do is unload magazines in the general direction of the enemy. In reality, infantry and all other rifle-dominated MOS's (including Special Forces) prize fire conservation and making individual shots count-this is why the M16 series has had no capacity for full-automatic fire since the M16A2, which was introduced in the 1980s. There are still full-automatic weapons in the inventory of course, but those are not the focus-rifles are.

Infantry in particular is highly stylized in employment of fire, primarily because soldiers do not carry limitless amounts of ammunition-the most I've seen is about 420 rounds. This might seem like a lot, but in reality it isn't-420 rounds at a sustained semiautomatic rate is about 8 minutes of continual firing. The standard combat load of 210 rounds is about half that. We employ fire commands (directed by team leaders at the most basic, 4-soldier level) to sustain that, and one round equalling one target is heavily emphasized in rifle marksmanship.

 

I'm not a military buff, but what Mr44 says seems to confirm what little I know about machine guns. The news videos I've seen of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to bear out the tactical shooters + full auto support model, I've seen quite a few where soldiers have been spraying bullets from behind walls (with practically no chance of hitting their unseen target) while their buddies cut off other exits and set up snipers etc.

 

^That'd be correct. It's much more maneuver-based than it is firepower-based; yeah, you use firepower, but you use it to facilitate maneuvering on the enemy.

 

It might also be important to point out that for about 4 decades, the British version of the FN FAL battle rifle (called the L1A1 in the UK) was semi-auto only. While the FN FAL had the capability for automatic fire, and as other nations were moving toward selective fire assault rifles, the UK Ministry of Defense didn't give the capability for automatic fire to its standard rifleman at all until the 1990's. I'm not sure if other Commonwealth nations-namely Australia or Canada followed this limitation with their FAL's. Now, the Commonwealth nations did end up adopting various assault rifles for their militaries, but as part of a larger doctrine.

There really isn't a point here, just a bit of trivia with regard to such things.

 

The Gun Lobby will proclaim that any gun control legislation is both draconian and overreaching while at the same time ineffective and worthless.

 

Hey Boba, it was Alpha-Red, not OZK who made the wild claim about the military's shooting habits.

Mr44 - the ADF's SLR (our version of the L1A1) was identical to the British in terms of the RoF options. We switched to the Austeyr (localised version of the AUG) in 1988 and I believe we did something to the full-auto functionality that the standard AUG has.

 

Oh. sorry OZK

 

Remember the "press conference" with the NRA a week after the shooting?

When, somtime during that ramble, the NRA spokesman blamed violent video games?


On the exact 1-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings, the NRA has released a new video game... said to be suitable for ages "4 and up"... that involves shooting people-shaped coffins, teaching kids to aim for the chest or head.



http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/15/tech/gaming-gadgets/nra-shooting-game/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

Yeah, I think somebody posted a similar link a few pages back (I'm not looking through this monster of a thread to dig it out though). My mind boggles at the disconnect between the NRA and a good majority of the public right now.

 

Just re-joined the NRA.

EDIT -- At least until just before the next election cycle when I start screening my calls.

 

So you'll be with them for just about a year huh? (Mid - terms are in 2014.)

 

So Brave

 

I expect you will wait until yet another disaster befalls, say, the black community before joining the Klan?

 

The President is an elitist hypocrite because his kids go to school with armed guards

This is not limited to the NRA. All the right wing media outlets are calling Obama a hypocrite because he has the Secret Servive protecting him but he "wants to take all our guns".

 

Yeah, well I get the feeling a few of those Right Wing idiots would be only too happy if the Secret Service failed to protect him and Biden once. Then they'd have their puppet Bohner in the White House.

 

Apology accepted.

I was going to come in and argue as to why fully automatic weapons aren't that dangerous but you guys have done a better job than I could have.

I kinda wish these mass shooters could use fully automatic weapons because I think it might make the shootings safer.

 

I'm a gun ban advocate, so I don't give a **** about magazine capacity or "scary-looking" firearms or bolt-action/semi-automatic/automatic/whatever. Most victims of guns in the United States are hit by bullets fired from semi-automatic handguns (and are many times more likely to be black than white, but we don't care about that because blacks are criminals), so I rightly think that any realistic goals that President Obama will set for gun control are going to be tepid and ineffectual.

EDIT (added after OZK "liked" this post): I don't think that law enforcement should have the freedom to possess and use any firearms they want either. With the U.S. gun laws the way they are, police can easily argue a "fight fire with fire" mindset and most people eat that up. If this country went toward a ban for civilian possession of guns, however, I think that's even more reason to scale down the militarized and heavily armed police forces.

 

The problem there is that only the law abiding citizens would disarm -- criminals (having a general disregard for the law; any law at all) wouldn't; neither would terrorists -- and I add that because our Police over here have military-style weaponry for airport security (not sure if that is a more general issue). I think that the weapons are H&K (possibly MP series).

 

Yes, criminals, by definition, would be the only ones in possession of firearms if possession of firearms were made a crime. Thanks for the insight.