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Spengo's comments:
on The Reality of Guns
My guns were made with many purposes. My scary black modern rifles were put together, by me, for competition. They were not made with killing people in mind.
My concealed carry handgun on the other hand, was made to shoot people and I train so as to be very effective at it. I would submit that you are thinking about this the wrong way around though. This pistol is not for taking lives as much as it is for saving them. If I am ever in a situation where I have to use it for self defense, I am going to shoot until the threat is stopped. When the bad guy falls down or is otherwise no longer a threat, I stop shooting. Whether he lives or dies is much less important to me than my own life or the lives of my loved ones. The goal is not to kill the bad guy, the goal is to stop him.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on The Reality of Guns
It's not just non-gun fans that would hate that. As a firearms enthusiast, if someone did that to me, I would punch them in the face and get them kicked off the shooting range for life. That's breaking at least two and probably all of the cardinal rules of safe firearms handling.
1) always treat your weapon as if it is loaded
2) always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction
3) keep your booger hook of the bang switch until you are ready to fire
4) always be sure of your target and what is behind it
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on The Reality of Guns
Well first off, to own an assault rifle you have to pay a $200 tax to the ATF and wait 3 months for background checks and because you cannot have one made before 1986 they each cost in excess of $10,000 apiece. If you can afford that, I rather doubt you are the type to go crazy and shoot a bunch of people.
The technical term "assault rifle" specifically refers to select-fire rifles chambered in an intermediate cartridge. The scary black modern rifles you see in gun stores everywhere are not assault rifles, they are semi-auto only.
As for the 30 round magazines, banning them would be very silly. All a magazine is, is a box with a spring and a follower. Anyone with a dremel and some sheet metal can build a bigger box pretty easily. Another thing that makes this silly, is if you look at states where regular capacity magazines are banned like California, you will see magazines that are the normal 30 round magazines but pinned so the follower can only go down so far as to hold 10 rounds. If a bad guy wanted his mag to hold 30 rounds all he has to do is remove the pin. As such, banning 30 round magazines affects no one but law-abiding gun owners.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on The Reality of Guns
That bothered me too actually. I went ahead and got an NRA membership because it was worth it to be able to go to a private range where I can get an entire pistol bay to myself. I can drag out the barrels and IPSC targets and practice running my own stages and stuff. Public ranges always have annoying range officers that don't let you draw from a holster or don't let you fire more than one shot every 3 seconds or something like that. Fortunately NRA membership is inexpensive so it isn't a big deal, I just kind of hate all the junk mail they send.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on The Reality of Guns
Hi, I am a gun owner, but I'm not the average gun nut you guys probably think of. I'm a mid-20s software engineer who has lived in cities all his life. I was introduced to firearms in college when some of my friends bought some old surplus rifles from WWII and I was like "hey, guns are cool!" Ever since then I have been collecting firearms, mostly ones that are either used by militaries today or have been used by militaries in the past.
I am not a hunter or anything, but I compete in practical shooting competitions almost every weekend. This involves pistols, shotguns, and those scary black modern rifles. I also enjoy taking tactical or defensive shooting classes to increase my skill and learn new methods.
In addition to competition, I have a concealed carry permit and carry a pistol almost everywhere I go for self defense.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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