1x08: We Don't Need Roads

One thing I’ve heard that contributes to mass shootings is the massive media explosion when one happens. When a socially outcast kid with mental issues sees just how much chaos another socially outcast kid did with just a gun.

When it comes to guns, it bugs me when people argue for keeping a gun in the house for defense. If an intruder enters your home with a gun how is another gun going to protect you? Can you shoot bullets out of the air? If anything, pulling a gun on someone with a gun encourages them to shoot first. Twice the number of guns in a situation maybe increases the chance that a gun will be fired and thus someone will be hit.

Prohibition has never worked but gun ownership should be a privilege not a right.

As an Australian,if you don’t have a criminal record, it is very easy to legitimately own a gun, even an automatic. I just need to provide a legitimate reason in my gun licence application,do a fire arm safety course,and wait the 28 days cooling off period.

What are the genuine reasons for obtaining a firearms licence?

There are eight genuine reasons for obtaining a firearms licence.

Sport/Target Shooting - target shooting activities as a club member on an approved target shooting range.

Recreational Hunting/Vermin Control - hunting and vermin control on rural land where the person is the owner/occupier or has permission to shoot from an owner/occupier or a Government Agency.

Primary Production - the business of Primary Production.

Vertebrate Pest Animal Control - Contract shooters or officers of prescribed government agencies needing to suppress vertebrate pest animals or primary producers participating in an authorised eradication scheme

Business or Employment - Security Business, security guards, commercial fisherman, or other businesses who can demonstrate a genuine need for a firearms licence.

Rural Occupation - a person employed or engaged in a rural occupation and who requires the use of firearms.

Animal Welfare - RSPCA or Animal Welfare League employees, Veterinary Practitioners, employees of the Department of Lands or Local Land Services, Owner, transporter, drover or other handler of animals which require the use of firearms.

Firearms Collection - a person who is a club member wishing to collect firearms or a genuine historic, thematic,financial or commemorative value.

It is estimated their are 10000 illegal hand guns and 250000 illegal long arms floating around Australia.A large proportion stolen from gun shops and the rest imported.

Because prohibition doesn’t work, despite customs and police best efforts, only increases the street price,you create an incredibly profitable black market where an imported $1000 US retail gun, becomes a $20000AU (street price) untraceable criminal weapon.Unaffordable to the mentally ill ready to go on a mass shooting and the school kid with a grudge.

I think what is different is cultural. An Australian armed robber with a gun or a knife is less likely to kill or even harm the victim they are robbing. Kids with a grudge are more likely to have a punch up than grab dads gun and go back and shoot everyone. We don’t have this great fear of folk breaking into our houses whilst home and some fruit loop torturing, raping, or killing us. A locked house is enough with no need to have a loaded weapon by the bed. Although responsible for a considerable amount of drive by shootings on one another i don’t see the brothers 4 life infighting as out of control Australian gun violence. Their are cultural differences with members of that chapter being Afghan born and their leader being an Islamic jihad extremist

The show talked about the freedom to own and use a gun but i think the freedoms being taken away from you are worse. An episode of COPS demonstrates to me, that you are guilty until proof innocent, cuffed,man handled,guns pointed to your head, then treated as a hostile weapon owner that is about to shoot the police officer until proof differently. I can imagine the outrage here if treated in such a way for simply running a red light. So the freedom to own a gun erodes other important freedoms.

I spent about 5 minutes vigorously swearing at Bryan’s attitude about the English versus American view on Gun Control.

It went something along the lines of (and I’m not downloading the podcast, listening again just to get the content exactly correct… but) “The American people want guns to ensure that the Americans can rise up against their oppressors, the English want guns removed to prevent the colonies from rising up”.

Well, that’s utter crap.

The British people, on the whole, were generally OK about guns until we had a school shooting in Dunblane (1996). This was several years after another incident in Hungerford(1987). While I wasn’t involved in any gun clubs or shooting (I was 9 for the Hungerford incident and 18 for Dunblane), my father, aunt and several of our family friends were heavily into shooting.

One family member stopped shooting after the Hungerford incident saying “Knowing what could have happened never stopped me before, knowing it has did.” A family friend openly wept while he handed in his cache of weapons after the laws were enacted to prevent the ownership of cartridge ammunition handguns, and while it was generally seen to be a knee-jerk reaction to the incident, general opinion since firearm control in the UK is positive.

I think it’s a little bit weird that American’s still think of the UK as the oppressive force who wanted to clamp down on the colonies (somewhat strangely, always with “bad teeth”???), whereas mostly to us Brits, Americans are those weird people who can’t pronounce the names of our cities correctly (can Bryan please try to pronounce Worcestershire for me :slight_smile: ) and seem to think that because we’re such a small country, do we know, or are related to, everyone else in the UK…

Hmm, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate our position on the global stage, and TAKE BACK THE COLONIES!!! :smiley:

The Joe Nocera NY Times blog The Gun Report has been out for about a year. The author posted a retrospective just today that I think is relevant to this discussion: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/opinion/nocera-the-gun-report-1-year-later.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

The TL;DR: “There are an estimated 300 million guns in America, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. But to read The Gun Report is to be struck anew at the reality that most of the people who die from guns would still be alive if we just had fewer of them. The guys in the movie theater would have had a fistfight instead of a shooting. The momentary flush of anger would pass. The suicidal person might have taken a pause if taking one’s life were more difficult. And on, and on. The idea that guns, on balance, save lives — which is one of the most common sentiments expressed in the pro-gun comments posted to The Gun Report — is ludicrous.

True @sil, however, you also have marauding gangs running around hacking people up with machetes, like happened last year or the year before in London. I would maintain that in English cities, as with American cities, violence is more prevalent than in the rural areas.

If you look at the countries with the lowest crime rate, Switzerland comes in at #1. In Switzerland, where every adult is a member of the miitary reserves, and has at least one fully automatic in their home (and many have their adult child’s, plus their parents’ plus their grandparent’s). Where the government has “training days” where you bring your rifle to the range, and the government pays for the ammunition.

Given this type of data, I don’t think guns are the problem. Gun violence has the same roots as, for instance, road rage. Except instead of using a gun as a weapon, people are using their vehicles. It’s a lack of civility that is a huge part of the problem.

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One of the points that the presenters (and many people on this discussion) are tending to forget is that there are two classes of guns. Those in the hands of criminals and those in the hands of law-abiding citizens. All discussions of reducing or limiting guns is only going to affect the law-abiding citizens. If you look at places like New York or Chicago or Washington, DC or Maryland, places where guns are severely limited, the gun violence rate is far higher than in other areas of the country which are gun-friendly. Why? Because those restrictions only apply to those who are law abiding. Criminals, by definition, are those who are break the law. If they would consider gun violence, then they would not even blink at having an illegal gun. Violent crime increases when the “good guys” are unarmed and the “bad guys” are not. If you look at the mass shootings over the past couple of years, they always occurred in “gun free” zones. The Aurora movie theater had a posted No Gun policy, as did the mall in Oregon. Sandy Hook was a school, and by definition, a gun free zone, as was (unless I’m mistaken) the Columbia mall in Maryland. If you look at the statistics on gun violence, murder rates increase when restrictive gun policies are put in place, while they drop when states allow right to carry.

DC has such restrictive gun laws that a spent cartridge (for instance on a keyring or my son sometimes wears it in his gauged ear) without a DC gun permit can put you in jail for a year and up to a $1000 fine. Because DC considers a spent round as “ammunition” (in much the same way as an empty soup can can be considered “food”), a tourist who, by definition, does not have a DC gun permit, can and will be arrested.

So back to your original point, @aukondk, I do want guns in my house, because if I don’t have them, and the bad guy does, it is more likely that Bad Things will happen. Because if someone is willing to intrude on my home, and especially if they are willing to do so with a gun, then you have to assume that they were willing/wanting to use it. Being armed levels the playing field and turns the homeowner from a victim to someone with a fighting chance. There was an incident in Georgia last year of a woman at home with her two kids. A large intruder broke into her house in the middle of the day. You can imagine what might have happened if she was not armed.

Here is an interesting fact sheet on gun control that has quite a bit of information and extensive bibliography. It appears to be agenda neutral as well.

I disagree with this point on so many levels. First, remember that NYTimes is decidedly anti-gun. Secondly, this guy does not understand the gun culture. Legal gun owners who carry generally assume the role of sheepdogs or protectors. It isn’t the wild west times in the mind of someone who carries. Yes, there are exceptions to the rules, but it is the exception, not the rule. If someone cuts me off in traffic, my first instinct is not to start shooting. Far from it. You always find yourself trying to diffuse the situation, not escalating it dangerously. Shooting someone is the last thing I want to do. Would I to protect my family or innocents? Absolutely.

I totally do not count Norway. Norway is weird. :slight_smile:

*I disagree with this point on so many levels. First, remember that NYTimes is decidedly anti-gun.

Source, please. The NY Times tagline is All the News that’s Fit to Print. Not “We hate guns”. Rejecting an argument outright because you don’t like the messenger does not further the discussion.

Secondly, this guy does not understand the gun culture.

Joe Nocera admits as much. He lays out his methods in the article. He and an assistant do a google news search for gun violence and reports on that. Take that for what it’s worth.

To your point about gun culture - There may well be an established culture of responsible gun owners in this country. But there is a solid core of crazy mo-fo’s too. Whether that group is getting larger or smaller I do not know.

The US doesn’t just lead the world in gun deaths. It totally dominates all other countries put together. In accidental shootings, in intentional shootings (murder and suicide) and in mass shootings. I have a tough time believing this is because our people are just that much crazier than, say, the good people in Canada who also have lots of guns but very few gun-related deaths.

I’m a big proponent of mental health care but I don’t see pressing for this to the exclusion of any other means to reign in gun violence is in the long-term best interest of this country.
EB

@jeremy, I think you should also look at the media’s uneven reporting of the gun issue. How they report Sandy Hook or Aurora for weeks, yet they don’t report issues like New Orleans, where at the Mother’s Day parade, 19 people were shot during the parade, with police everywhere…But the body count was too low, and it was in the inner city, so it didn’t make headlines.

Or how they bang on about gun violence, and how we need to take guns away, but then they ignore reports like the one from Harvard or the Centers for Disease Control that both state that gun control is counterproductive, and that taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens actually increases crime. And that where guns are restricted, other weapons are used.

The last item is how the first weapon they attack is so-called assault weapons…Even though military-style rifles are used in an extremely small percentage (2 - 8% according to the DoJ) of all gun crime. So if the point is to reduce gun crime, why focus on those?

Well, there is this article, which points out how many of the mainstream media outlets tend to subtly spin the stories to fit the agenda…It focuses on the Columbia, MD mall, but they called it a mass shooting, instead of a jealous ex-boyfriend committing a murder-suicide.

Right. But those crazy mo-fos would a) ignore gun restriction laws, like they do every day in DC, Chicago, New Orleans, etc, and/or they would (and many do) find another weapon…Guns are a tool, a specialized tool, to be sure, but a tool nonetheless. Like a car or a table saw or whatever. Blaming the gun for violence is like blaming your keyboard for typos.

I understand what you’re saying, however, the Harvard report shows that if you look at “intentional deaths,” or murder, on an international scope, the U.S. falls behind Russia, Estonia, and four other countries, ranking it seventh. More specifically, data shows that in Russia, where guns are banned, the murder rate is significantly higher than in the U.S in comparison. And I saw another report a few months ago (I’m still looking for it), says that if you exclude the cities with the highest murder rate, which also happen to be the ones with the most draconian gun laws, the US murder rate drops to as low or lower than Europe’s.

I believe we need to do something about mental health care as well. Unfortunately, on that front, I believe our society is driven by The Jetsons. They had a pill for everything. Hungry? There’s a pill for that. Sleepy? Here, take a pill. Need to wake up? Yup, one for that too.

Look at our advertisements on TV. There’s a pill for everything. They are advertising pills for major diseases and conditions that only your doctor should be deciding on. Diet pills. super diet pills. Your antidepressant isn’t working? Take this pill on top of your antidepressant. The problem with mental health these days is that person X goes to doctor (and i have even had a GP do this), is given a prescription for some medication. While they are on their meds, they are “cured”. The problem is that the doctors give them their pills and send them on their way. Some percentage of the time, they stop taking their meds and relapse or have an episode. I was talking to one of my neighbors who is a police officer, and he says that is the bulk of the calls they get. The problem is that they are not tracked until they appear on the radar, say, for a domestic. It has become politically incorrect to hospitalize people for mental issues. But on the other hand, we have to be careful not to let the pendulum swing the other way. If you have been watching the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, they are trying to categorize everything as a mental disorder, up to and including biting one’s fingernails.

To be fair, we didn’t miss this. I explicitly said there were two distinct discussions to be had. Because of time restrains, we really only covered the first of the two.

–jeremy

Fair play, as @sil would say, but I thought you were talking about mass shootings versus individual shootings of the crime of passion/gang crime/etc that don’t fall into the “mass” shooting category. I apparently misunderstood your take on it.

Unfortunately, with the breadth of this topic, you could probably dedicate four or five shows to it.

[quote=“VulcanRidr, post:30, topic:130”]
Well, there is [this article][1], which points out how many of the mainstream media outlets tend to subtly spin the stories to fit the agenda…It focuses on the Columbia, MD mall, but they called it a mass shooting, instead of a jealous ex-boyfriend committing a murder-suicide. [/quote]

I apologize, but if it is your contention that breitbart.com is a news outlet that purports to report objectively, then the bridge between us may be too far. They are, by their own admission, reporting from right of center.

But I need to honor my earlier point about considering the message and not the messenger. From the article you cite:

Turning all firearm-related murders into “shootings” is a subtle change that then increases the number of “shootings” gun control proponents can point to when they demand more gun laws.

That’s a fair point. Media outlets tend to report murders committed with guns “shootings”; as opposed to murders. If the murder had been committed with a large knife, would the lemmings in the media labelled them as “knifings” (or “stabbings”; or with poison, “poisonings”? Would that be evidence, then, of systemic media bias against the knife and poison industries? Maybe that sounds obnoxious - and if so, I apologize - but my point is that sometimes the most descriptive word is one that might sound pejorative from a particular point of view. If you were the editor at the NY Times, and were looking at a gun-related murder-suicide in the city, what words would you choose?

Because criminals don’t obey laws, passing laws is a waste of time?

Groping about for good sources to share, I came across a link to a report on gun ownership and deaths by country: Gun crime statistics by US state | US gun control | The Guardian

The US is #1 in gun ownership per 100 people, with #2 being Yemen. Interestingly, Iraq is way down on the top 10. Afghanistan is not on the list. We’re also #1 in terms of gun-related deaths (or, “shootings”). #2 is Uruguay. Canada is not on either top 10.

[quote=“VulcanRidr, post:30, topic:130”]
I understand what you’re saying, however, the [Harvard report][2] shows that if you look at “intentional deaths,” or murder, on an international scope, the U.S. falls behind Russia, Estonia, and four other countries, ranking it seventh. More specifically, data shows that in Russia, where guns are banned, the murder rate is significantly higher than in the U.S in comparison. And I saw another report a few months ago (I’m still looking for it), says that if you exclude the cities with the highest murder rate, which also happen to be the ones with the most draconian gun laws, the US murder rate drops to as low or lower than Europe’s.[/quote]

The Harvard study is interesting and raises a few points. In addition to what you are saying, it found that more stringent rules in Massachusetts led to fewer homicides (http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/08/30/harvard-gun-study-no-decrease-in-violence-with-ban/) and that guns in the home increase the risk of suicide (http://www.boston.com/news/science/blogs/science-in-mind/2013/09/06/harvard-study-finds-gun-the-home-increases-risk-suicide/Ab0CurEcKHhPm7clW9NIPO/blog.html). Lastly, ignoring cities doesn’t solve the problem because many (most?) of our people live in them.

[quote=“VulcanRidr, post:30, topic:130”]
I believe we need to do something about mental health care as well. Unfortunately, on that front, I believe our society is driven by The Jetsons. They had a pill for everything. Hungry? There’s a pill for that. Sleepy? Here, take a pill. Need to wake up? Yup, one for that too.[/quote]

That’s more of a personal belief than an argument. Mood disorders are real. Suicidality is real. Proper therapy, and yes, medication, saves lives and not necessarily by those directly afflicted.

Well, if it weren’t a fits the narrative story, I would say murder-suicide, which is what it was. I know they want the page clicks, and the entire “fits the narrative” is a thing, but using the buzzword “mass shooting” is meant to garner headlines. Now having said that, the NYT is not nearly as bad as the NY daily news…Their front page was heavy handed on the mantra and light on the facts. (the Navy yard shooter brought his own shotgun, then took pistols of the guards he shot), and there was also no AR-15 used at Newtown. But the whole “big black scary rifle” aims at that visceral reaction from the uninformed.

Not at all. In fact, I maintain that the government should enforce the laws that are already on the books. Don’t try to restrict or limit guns, but rather impose mandatory additional punishment if a gun was involved. Give 'em extra time in the pen if they used a gun. But taking away my ability to defend myself is not the answer either. Especially when it will have next to zero effect on the number of illegal guns out there.

The average response time, depending on where you are, is in the 10 minute range. (the Department of Justice gives a range from 4 minutes to over an hour.) How much mayhem can occur while you are waiting for the police to arrive? And I live in a rural area, so that time is likely at least 15-20 minutes. And consider people on the border with Mexico, who have to deal with the cartels bringing drugs into the US…Armed to the teeth. Are you going to tell that person that they can’t be armed?

I wonder what is different then…Because in most areas with restrictive gun laws end up being a free pass for crimals with illegal guns.

I also disagree with the point about suicide risk increases. After all, a gun is nothing but a tool. If someone were to contemplate suicide, they are just as likely to take a handful of pills or slitting their wrists.

Now having said that, I think that use of a gun is a cause for more successful suicides.

I am not ignoring the cities. But most of them already have draconian gun control in place, and still have higher gun and violent crime rates in general. Part of it is that everyone is stacked up on top of each other.

Wonder what ever happened to the $100 3D printer? They made their kickstarter goal by more than an order of magnitude…

I just want to see, I am blown away by the level of detail and respect in the discussion around gun control. We always want respectful discussion to be a key part of the Bad Voltage community, and I think it has been well articulated in this thread. Thanks, everyone!

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I wanted to drop my thoughts here as well, as a BV listener, as well as a gun owner and enjoyer (and no, I don’t care that that isn’t really a word).
Several points I’d like to make, in the order they come out of my head.

  • In the US in the last 100 years its been consistently proven that the government putting in place prohibitions on things that people want to have doesn’t really stop them from being obtainable. We’ve failed (thankfully) to remove alcohol, failed to remove weed, and failed to remove automatic weapons.

  • Most (legal) gun owners (my self and friends included) know and respect gun safety. While I respect the folks that feel they have a right to own a gun to defend themselves from the government (or the Brits) I personally don’t really find that effective at this point. Even with an AK-47, I’ve got nothing on a tank. I own and shoot guns because I enjoy them, safely. Would I use them to defend my family from home intruders, yes. Do I want that to happen. very much no. Is that why I own my guns, nope.

My, I rambled there. Love the show, even, and almost especially, when I feel you are dead wrong about something. I appreciate the humor, respect (and lack there of), attention to audio quality. Observation/Suggestion. I can (do) listen to all my other podcasts at at least 2x speed. If I do that with BV, I basically loose @sil to ragey Brittish mumble. Everyone else sounds fine.

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Actually, @jonobacon, I was pleasantly surprised. A lot of the internet is a bit on the liberal side, so in a lot of places, this discussion would have gone very, very differently.

As an aside, I respect those that choose not to own guns. And maybe @sil was correct in saying that many Americans see it as the taking away of a freedom, because I have thought about the dichotomy of the debate. Many of the more militant “anti-gunners” not only choose not to own guns, but also wish to make that decision for everyone, without the least concern for the circumstances that others may be in. I believe this is why the discussion is so much more…energetic…in other venues.

There is a faction of the anti-gun group, and I believe the media could be included in this group, as well as Hollywood, who try to paint legal gun owners (like myself) as the types who would draw a gun over a being cut off in traffic or other minor dispute (like in Joe Nocera’s blog), when that just is not the case. Note that I said legal gun owner, not criminals. Because criminal behavior trumps “normal” behavior whether you are talking gun rights or not. They also make certain guns (e.g. ARs, AKs, etc) seem more nefarious than other guns, even though they operate in exactly the same manner as any other semi-automatic pistol or rifle in existence.

And in the case of Hollywood, it falls squarely into the realm of hypocrisy. Immediately after Sandy Hook, actors and actresses who have made millions of dollars on movies that glorify gun violence got together and made the Demand a Plan video. A guy on youtube did a mash-up[NSFW] of this ad interspersed with scenes from the individual actors’ movies.

I’m glad that Bad Voltage is discussing this emotionally charged subject, and I’m also glad that the discussion has remained as civil as it has.

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I’m a brit that has grown up watching hollywood movies and playing computer games where guns are ‘cool’ yet I was physically scared to hold a real 9mm pistol upon my visit to the USA in my mid 20’s. It felt perverse to me to hold such a powerful death machine and I guess part of me was scared that I was going to like that feeling of empowerment. When someone says the word ‘Guns’ to me, my instinctual reaction is to flex my biceps and say ‘yeah baby’… and I want my word association to stay that way :wink:

I often hear us brits use similar arguments to Stu saying ‘well if you get rid of the guns this won’t be a problem’ but I think we come across a bit like a non smoker trying to explain the ridiculousness of smoking to a smoker. On a philosophical level of course we are right but as Jeremy was saying its not pragmatic. I also think its too late because the US government would have to be perceived as great moral arbiters to persuade the people to give up their arms. It seems to me that they have a bit too much stink on them to be asking the peeps to give up another freedom.

I concur with the pragmatic solutions raised and agree that mental health and conditions of poverty play a LARGE part in the current rise but I would also like to add a few more things that I think the States could do.

A close American friend of mine lost her teenage son who unfortunately shot himself in the head one night in a drunken moment of stupor because he got dumped by his girlfriend. When I was told this news I was in a fit of anger about U.S. gun laws. To me it was a fucking RETARDED scenario that someone of sound mind can loose control for a few seconds while drunk and in under 1 minute he was able to go and get a machine capable of blowing his brains out and do it in the heat of the moment. The unfortunate truth is that he would be alive today if his parents’ firearms were harder to access.

I note that my example is a bit of an edge case and that mass killings at schools are more pre-meditated but I think restricted access to guns at a young age will have a large net positive affect. This means parents need incentives to not own a gun and I think education systems need to have mandatory gun education/safety and shooting. (things done at school instantly makes said thing un-cool) I am an example of a child turned adult that used to dream of holding a real gun as a kid yet flat turned it down later on in life. I think I would be a different person if I so much as HELD a gun as a kid.

TL; DR - I think something has to be done about the childhood experience of guns as well as the ease of access to guns without taking the freedom of owning guns away. That last one is a bit of a contradiction of terms so I’m thinking more along the lines of campaigns/ grass roots education and people saying ‘hey y’all, stow those motherfucking guns away from your kids!’ hmmm maybe some three letter campaign would fair better in the States :stuck_out_tongue: insert three letter mind-controling acronym here.

One thing you have to remember is that Hollywood’s view on guns and gun use is horrendously skewed, in terms of gun use, not to mention body counts and the number of rounds that good guy can take and still walk away, but especially in terms of gun safety.

[quote=“cedeon, post:39, topic:130”]
I think something has to be done about the childhood experience of guns as well as the ease of access to guns without taking the freedom of owning guns away.[/quote]

Actually, some. like my ex-brother-in-law would say that the approach to children and guns would be to expose your kids to it and teach them to respect them and use them properly. There are many in the midwestern US that start their kids hunting young, teach them proper gun safety and handling. I’m not sure how I feel about that, and I didn’t do that with my kids. That said, my nephew is now 33 and a well-adjusted member of society, married with kids of his own.

I also had a chance to re-listen to the discussion in 1x08 again, and something that @sil said that I disagree with. He said that “a redneck in his durango with his AR is no match for a government with Stealth bombers…” I disagree, from a matter of perspective. Even in a general insurrection, they are not going to be carpet bombing entire neighborhoods to get rid of a handful of dissidents. They are going to put boots on the ground. Boots that are probably armed much the same way as that person in the Durango, AK or AR, pistols, something much more of a level playing field than you may envision.

I also believe this is why any gun bans focus first on so-called “assault weapons.” They claim it is to lower gun crime, but these “assault weapons,” e.g. AR-15a, AK-47s, and similar, are used in, depending on source, anywhere between 0.5% to 2-8% of all gun crimes, which means a gun ban of “assault weapons” would have a negligible effect on gun crime. The most common weapon used in a gun crime is the .38 revolver, the so-called “Saturday Night Special” from when I was growing up, followed by the 9mm semi-automatic pistol. So from that perspective, I agree that the anti-gun forces are a bit disingenuous from that perspective. Even calling them assault weapons is a duplicitous term. There is no such thing as an assault weapon. Or more accurately, anything used to attack another person is defined as an assault weapon, whether a fist, a rock, your car or whatever. But they apply it to guns because it sounds like an assault rifle, which is a military rifle that is selectable to semi-automatic (single shot) or fully automatic (multiple rounds from one trigger press). Here is a good video that explains the difference between an assault rifle like you would find in the military and a semi-automatic hunting rifle like most of us have. It is possible to own a fully automatic rifle or machine gun in the US, but they are very expensive and you have to get licenses out the wazoo to buy one. Thus, people with a license to own one are few and far between.