No, he was responding to a top level comment about banning a style of weapons being ineffective, and essentially said that banning this particular platform of weapon will be effective because reasons.

That’s a pretty common perspective for anyone that’s never lived a life where you must hunt in order to put food on your family’s table, or you need to shoot coyotes or other pests that attach your livestock or crops that threaten your farm-to-table, or lived in an area where there’s literally no police for an hour or more and it’s just you if anyone comes knocking.

Poor rural folks don’t have a huge representation on Lemmy but there are plenty that live this way in the USA.

You don’t see it in the bigger cities and suburbs, rightfully so.

I don’t even live in a small town and there’s plenty of people I work with that drive in ~45 minutes and have livestock that have to worry about coyotes and other wild dogs attacking their livestock.

Guns are a tool. If you can’t imagine what they’re a tool for all it means is you lack perspective to see how - no judgment, just stating the fact. I mention all this because this misunderstanding is a huge reason for the divide between pro/anti gun crowds, and closing the gap can help set us up for better discussions about where we want to go in terms of gun legislation (assuming you’re in the USA - if not then all applies in general, not to you specifically)

My reply wasn’t in response to the law, but to the guy claiming that by removing AR-15s you increase the barrier to entry to mass shootings.

Read the federalist papers if you want to understand the 2nd amendment better. You’re just as wrong as the people who like to say that the 2nd amendment was just to protect having a militia.

Hand guns are so, so much more common in crime, rifles are barely a blip on the map. Also, handguns have almost no use other than killing humans/sport. (You can argue that they can offer some sort of protection from wild animals when you’re hiking, by scaring them away with noise… I can’t really think of much else)

Semi automatic rifles cover the gamut of utility. They’re not JUST for killing people and/or sport. Every reason you could legitimately need a gun for, the broad category “semi auto rifle” covers, so banning them has a disproportionate impact to people who use them legally and as tools vs banning handguns.

If people seriously want to make a dent in gun crime/accidental deaths/suicide we need to look at handguns, but they’re not scary looking enough so there’s no clout. Instead we get stupid laws that try to ban scary looking black guns or limit magazine sizes. Pisses off gun owners that know it’s useless and doesn’t actually get at anything that can make a difference. It’s all theater.

It really doesn’t. AR-15s are everything you said, but just because you take this one specific model rifle it off the market doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands of lightweight semi automatic rifles that are cheap and just as capable to buy instead. They might not be the gun owner’s version of LEGO, but they’re just as available and just as lethal.

If someone wants to be a mass shooter they have unlimited options in the USA. AR-15s are just so common you see them more. Starting this decade about 1/4 of the firearms produced in the USA are AR-15s.

If 1/4 the cars sold in the USA were Corollas because they’re cheap and easy to drive, would banning Corollas in Maryland reduce car wrecks? No, people would just drive Camrys or Civics or whatever and still drive like idiots.

Jesus, you really struggle with this don’t you

NK isn’t in Southeast Asia, but Southeast Asia is the geopolitically contested region that China cares the most about dominating (at this point in time).

Macron said “keep your dog from shitting in my yard or I’ll let mine loose in yours”