Can gun control laws be written in such a way...

[LAS14]

Last edited Thu Oct 5, 2017, 05:58 PM - Edit history (1)

... to prohibit the sale to non-military/law enforcement of guns that will shoot more than X bullets per minute/trigger pull? I frequently see references to the problem of manufacturers simply making new weapons that don't fit the description of legislation. Can legislation be written based on "behavior" of the gun, rather than its physical description?

To re-phrase... If they can be written this way, why aren't they?

[guillaumeb]

1. What about a limit on magazine capacity?

Perhaps 5 rounds for a long gun and 6 for a handgun, with exceptions only for the police. If larger magazines were made illegal, with a specified buy back period, there would be no legal sales of higher capacity magazines.

[Hoyt]

4. That's a good idea. Back when I was growing up, there were limits on the number of shells a shotgun

could hold when hunting. I think it was like three maximum.

Don't know what the rules are today, but why should the limits be greater for those hunting human prey?

Even most military rifles used in WWII only held 8 rounds or so.

[guillaumeb]

19. I believe it wasa 5 round limit for birds.

After the first shot they all fly.

And, speaking from experience, deer do not wait after hearing the first shot either.

[madokie]

30. It was and still is three for birds here

[oneshooter]

45. Five rounds for local birds. Three for migratory waterfowl. n/t

[mitch96]

27. Some states have that law

I think it's 5 rounds while hunting .. Even if it's an assault rifle used for hunting.. Some states ban assault rifles for hunting also..
m

[LAS14]

7. Yeah, but is there a legal reason why this kind of thing...

...isn't being done? And am I right in my impression that it is not being done?

[guillaumeb]

20. Money talks.

And it talks very loudly.

[Man_Bear_Pig]

23. If the reason you want to limit magazine size...

...is because they serve no self defense purpose and only make it easier to kill lots of people, why exactly does your suggestion allow the cops to have them?

[guillaumeb]

24. The police are charged with enforcing the law.

And the armed forces, or National Guard, is charged with defense of the country. So they could arguably be covered under a reading of the Second Amendment.

[Man_Bear_Pig]

25. And enforcing the law...

...requires items that "aren't good for self defense and only good for mass murder?" The same police we take a knee to protest their brutality?

[guillaumeb]

26. The police are, in many ways, a reflection of society.

But they do receive training. And more training is obviously needed.

[Towlie]

2. Here's an idea...

To test if a gun is legal, set up a mock school playground full of dummies representing children playing, and see how many of them can be blown away within a specified time limit. If that number doesn't exceed a certain maximum then the gun is legal.

[Hoyt]

3. I'm sure it could. Personally, they need to lift the law that prohibits a victim from suing

the manufacturer, dealer or other seller, advertising agencies, etc., such that if a manufacturer skirts the intent of the law, that could be used in a civil law-suit.



To gunners wishing to post NRA type BS -- I know that the manufacturers can be sued if their gun is defective right now. But that is just not good enough, and a manufacturer who skirts the intent of the law -- which is quite clear to anyone but the obtuse trying to protect their access to more and more guns -- should be held accountable.

[Act_of_Reparation]

5. Separating sporting guns from combat guns has historically been pretty tough.

If I had to define an assault rifle, it would be a semi-automatic rifle chambered for necked, centerfire cartridges, that fires from a detachable magazine, and that is derivative of current or recent military weapons systems. And I'm sure someone will find a gun that has all those qualities that would not (or should not) be considered an assault weapon.

[better]

6. Oh dear god how I wish they would.

I have long been opposed to the previous iterations of the assault weapons ban, not because I actually think the average civilian has any business owning an assault weapon, but because what counts as an assault weapon was legislated on the basis of appearance, rather than function, and so my .22 caliber 10 shot rifle would suddenly become an assault weapon if I swapped out the stock for one with a pistol grip, for example. Had they simply stuck to regulating things that actually have any bearing on how the weapon operates, I would have no objection at all.

I was just posting about this concept the other day, that yes legislation can be written this way, with specific respect to suppressors, along the lines of "a suppressed weapon may not produce less than x decibels at y distance", perhaps with the values indexed by caliber to take into account how loud various calibers are naturally and what their range is. That would allow people to use suppressors for things like not scaring the shit out of my neighbors when I'm out on my own land target shooting, yet at the same time make sure that bystanders would still be able to tell that someone was shooting nearby, and roughly where.

It's easy enough to write legislation this way, but it does require that the people writing it understand the basic operation of firearms well enough to know the difference between a pistol grip and a bump fire device, and how each affects the behavior of the weapon. One makes no sense to ban, while the other makes no sense not to ban (or at least regulate the same way we do actual machine guns). Entirely because one changes the way the gun behaves, while the other does not.

Please, by all means do keep pressing this idea, as I will. If we can get our lawmakers to stop banning things that don't make guns any more dangerous, we could get a lot more support for actual common-sense laws from the gun rights crowd. A lot of us don't at all mind regulation of things that improve public safety. We just oppose banning things that don't improve public safety, like purely ergonomic features.

[LAS14]

8. Thanks!!! Super informative for a gun ignoramus like myself.

Yes, indeed, gun legislation should be written by people that thoroughly understand guns. Any senator or representative diving into this fight should make sure they have such a person on their staff.

[better]

13. Glad I could be of assistance.

I try really hard to bridge the divide, and you are right that our reps should make sure they have a true ally who understands these things, not just a lobbyist or model language, but I also think we need to go beyond that and say that everyday voters on the gun control side would be well served by paying a little closer attention to the arguments reasonable gun owners make against proposals like banning semi-automatics, and make a point of hearing where they are eager to join us. We miss a lot of opportunities when we fail to do that.

DU is replete with threads right now with sentiments like "anyone who opposes banning semi-automatics supports mass murder".

Unfortunately, many also do not understand what opposing banning semi-automatics actually means, because they misunderstand what semi-automatic means, to illustrate which I commonly point out that semi-automatic simply means that the next round is made ready to be fired by harnessing the energy expended by the previous shot, rather than by you manually cycling the action after firing.

When one understands this, it is easy to see that in essence, a revolver is a semi-automatic, in terms of practical result. It just loads the next round before it is fired, as part of the mechanical process of pulling the trigger, instead of after and as a result of the previous round being fired. But the end result is the same.

Pull trigger, round fires. Keeps working as long as there are rounds.

What I think most people actually object to civilians being allowed to own are weapons that fire hundreds of rounds per minute, but that's the product of things other than them just being semi-automatic. An AR-15 with a 100 round magazine and a bump stock can fire 100 rounds in maybe 7-10 seconds. The same gun with a 10 round magazine and without a bump stock can fire 10 rounds in maybe 8-10 seconds. Arguably, those two capabilities should be regulated quite differently.

And thus, we determine that rate of fire and magazine capacity are the things we need to be focusing on.

[LAS14]

15. Facts are so important. Especially in this era of disdain for facts.

DU is replete with threads right now with sentiments like "anyone who opposes banning semi-automatics supports mass murder".

[Amishman]

11. Lots of good ideas there but I really like the minimum decibel rating for silencers

Something like minimum 100 decibels sounds reasonable.

Better written gun law proposals could help get things done. As I've said in other threads, I've been talking to my brother-in-law a lot this week on this topic. He's a serious gun guy (has to have over 100), and he said he has mixed feelings on Senator Feinstein's proposal. He doesn't care about bumpfire (calls them stupid gimmicks) but says the vague wording and ?construction possession? (I should have asked him what that meant) could mean someone could.be guilty for having a rifle and wearing shoes as a shoe lace can be creatively used to connect the bolt handle to the trigger, making it effectively full auto.

[better]

14. Yeah, we do need to be careful about inadequately crafted language

especially when it comes to things like "can be modified to", which encompasses pretty much everything. To recap a post from another thread, I find myself on the fence about bump stocks. As a general rule, I favor very strict regulation over outright bans. But I have concerns about bump fire stocks related to the ability to operate the weapon safely, completely independent of the implications of the vastly increased rate of fire.

It just seems to me that by transitioning firing control from the trailing hand pulling the trigger toward you to the leading hand pulling the rifle away from you, it is inherently more difficult to maintain proper control of the weapon, and that doesn't sit right with me. Enough so that I really wouldn't have much to say about banning them rather than regulating them.

What I hope lawmakers will take from arguments like your BIL seems to be making is that the message is not "don't do it".
It's "don't do it sloppily".

[hack89]

9. Sure. Perfectly constitutional

not realistic but constitutional.

[LAS14]

10. Why not realistic? Can you give me a specific example?

I'm assuming that's why laws are not currently written this way.... If, indeed, they are not. So what's the specific "not realistic" argument?

[hack89]

12. Referring more to the political climate and lack of public support

you are not going to see another AWB, much less a broader ban on semi-automatic weapons.

[MyNameGoesHere]

16. We only need to do one thing

and some nice folk already gave us a guideline on what needs to be done. And it isn't impossible.
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution

[hack89]

32. If you can't pass an AWB you can't change the Constitution

Basic math.

[MyNameGoesHere]

36. The constitution has never been amended?

It's not impossible. Only people who love the current gun culture think things are impossible. Aren't you better than that? I don't know if you love the current gun culture but you do defend it every time. To me that's just odd.

[hack89]

38. An AWB is technically not impossible either.

My point is if you can't regulate guns the easy way why do you think you can change the 2A? You need more votes in Congress plus you need two thirds of the states to ratify it

[Lord_at_War]

46. Two thirds of both the House and Senate

And three fourths of the states.

Good luck with that (on ANY issue) these days.

[LAS14]

17. I edited the OP...

To re-phrase... If they can be written this way, why aren't they?

[NutmegYankee]

22. Probably just hadn't been an issue until now.

Most mass shootings are problems with bullet capacity and power, not speed. So laws to date have focused on capacity and power.

[IronLionZion]

18. Of course it can, but NRA lobbyists deliberately muddy the language to weaken it

Lawmakers are not quite as incompetent as they appear.

These assholes have their experts run circles around our congressional staffers. And I can't stress enough how much they do this on purpose, knowing about the loopholes.

They also derail and tank bills by deliberately widening the scope to cover so much stuff that enough politicians will say it's overreaching and vote against it.

They are funded by the people who profit from selling this stuff. Big gun is stealthy and powerful like that.

[NutmegYankee]

21. Yes.

A state can also ban the rifles. Connecticut did.

[Skittles]

28. I doubt they could ever be written in a way gun humpers could understand

they are not known for their intellect

[LAS14]

34. It's the manufacturers that would have to understand. Right?

If not, please explain.

[Skittles]

39. hello, manufacturers are GUN HUMPERS

[LAS14]

40. Manufacturers are big business with highly paid lawyers. They'd understand. nt

[Skittles]

41. with the GOP BOUGHT AND PAID FOR

[Lee-Lee]

29. More than one round per trigger pull is already illegal

Outside very expensive and highly regulated machine guns.

As for magazine bans, technology has reached a point where they are pretty well pointless at stopping criminals- because 3D printers exist and are cheap now. Where 20 years ago if you couldn't buy a magazine off the shelf making your own was damm near impossible for the typical person. Not you but a 3D printer online and print them out. The only part you can't print is the spring, but instead you print a mold that you wrap the spring wire around to form one.

So a magazine ban would be pointless at this point because anyone with criminal intent could bypass it with an inexpensive 3D printer.

[IronLionZion]

31. Making things a little bit harder

would deter many of the lazier ones

[LAS14]

33. If it's already illegal, was the Las Vegas shooter using illegal weapons? If not...

... how do you reconcile what happened with your statement? Not being antagonistic here. Just wanting to understand.

[hack89]

35. Bump fire is still one shot per trigger pull

It just allows you to do it faster.

[LAS14]

37. Oh... He could pull a trigger that fast???

Alright... then someone needs to come up with better language that focuses on functionality, not physical design. Any takers?

[oneshooter]

42. Every thing he used was/is legal, at this time.

He did walk right by a " No Firearms" sign, probably several times.

[LAS14]

43. Exactly! And I'm hoping someone can come up...

... with legislation based on function, not physical description, that would make such mass assaults illegal to SELL (at the manufacturer's level) to anyone but the military or law enforcement. And that could not be made obsolete by tickling the physical description.

Do you think this is possible? If not, why not?

[oneshooter]

44. Not really.

If it can be built, then it can be changed. Either by modifying the original design, or adding something.

There are a lot of very smart people in the world.

[LAS14]

47. That's why the law needs to be written addressing the functionality, not the design.

Your response sounds like you think I'm advocating a law targeting the design. I just want to outlaw too many bullets flying out of a gun in too short a time span. Not by describing the mechanism, but by naming the number that is "too many." Does this explain it better?