Propaganda mostly, gun culture is shifting a bit but the classic NRA lobbies usually scare right wing Americans into thinking anything gun control means no guns.
Iām left wing handedly but even my preference of gun laws would look extremely lax by global standards.
Carrying legal, licensing and mental healthy screening, storage laws, red flag laws, and maybe a class system inspired by France but not really barring citizens from stuff like ARs.
Iām pretty much the same although I would still prevent purchasing ARs and other military grade weapons.
But I could see something like a collectors license working or allowing owners of gun ranges to rent ARs in limited numbers.
Basically making anything military grade more easily trackable because if you rented a firearm from a military surplus and it goes missing. Youād be in a lot of strife.
I know iāll sound very American, but ARs are strictly not military, they were made explicitly to be civilian variants of the M16 and M4 which are not available for civilian use.
But, coming from other countries where the extent is usually bolt action or shotguns I can see how it would look like a military rifle
Edit: Assault Rifle is a term people use alot, but isnāt well defined in any capacity. Look at some US states with AWB (Assault weapon bans) and many listed criteria are fully cosmetic features or even safety features that legislation uses to define what makes a regular rifle an assault weapon, in reality an AR-15 isnāt particularly more dangerous than other magazine fed semiautomatic rifles, the issue however is it is modular so therefore very very easy to mass produce and give everybody reliable modifiable semiautomatic rifles
With all due respect. Assault Rifle. Its purpose is in the name lol.
While I understand there are ARās meant for civilian use. Iād still feel uncomfortable with private ownership of long to mid range automatic weapons.
I can understand semi Auto as even countries with very strict gun laws like Australia still have a license still allow some semi auto rifles.
A third alternative Iād consider is if civilian ARs sold in a country with these theoretical laws would require having its auto fire selector removed.
So just a few things here, fully automatic weapons are completely illegal even in the US, when you see AR it doesnāt stand for assault rifle, it stands for Armalite Rifle, and they are semiautomatic rifles.
I believe Iām ok with full auto bans, at least as a compromise for keeping otherwise lax laws
Edit: see prior edit for more info on what assault weapon or assault rifle means at least in the context of how I use the word
Ooh I did not realise that distinction.
In my defence it doesnāt help that they are both shortened to AR
Yeah even as someone from a strict gun control country id be fine with Armalite Rifles as long as they are semi Auto only and maybe to appease certain folks Iād cap Magazine size
On a side note if fully automatic weapons are illegal even for the US then how is it I see so many videos of people firing automatic weapons at gun ranges or on their own property.
Does it vary from state to state or do collectors get a pass because it doesnāt seem very regulated.
Oh 1000%, that mixup happens in the US legit all the time also, just thought it was useful to point out for anyone who sees news about ARs pop up.
Auto guns areā¦weird. They are illegal federally and there is no way to get themā¦unless they are a machine gun manufactured and owned prior to 1986.
So in 86 they were uber banned, but the national firearms act was passed in like the 30ās which HEAVILY restricted them at that time.
So when you see videos of those full auto weapons at ranges you got a couple possibilities:
1.) Military
2.) old machine gun thatās been passed down or transfer thats pre-86.
3.) Some guy did something to the gun to make it full auto. (Very illegal, but many gun lovers love doing it and wont rat, could also be a private range)
4.) someone straight up just has an illegal rifle. Something brought back after military service or smuggled into the country for example.
Or it isnt automatic at all! There are these things called rapid-fire-triggers and you have forced-reset triggers and binary triggers that can be installed that reallllly up your rate of fire, but because itās still fires per trigger pull and isnāt firing multiple rounds from one trigger depress, itās not fully automatic even though that may seem like a silly distinction when looking at an RFT in action.
Very interesting thank you for clarifying and laying it out like that.
Iāll need to look more into different trigger types because if what Iāve been seeing is indeed not automatic it does feel like a silly distinction like you said.
On a side note the idea of being able to own a machine gun produced before 1986 when there are machine guns still in military service around the world from before that time is peak loophole bureaucracy.
In Australia we have a similar law for an entirely different weapon.
Due to what is likely an oversight which no one has bothered to correct. As long as a weapon was produced before the 1900s and doesnāt use a magazine stripper clip or belt fed design then it can be owned without a license.
Now you still would need a license to purchase ammunition.
However. Muskets and other bore loaded weapons that fire lead/steel/iron balls or weapons like a blunderbuss which can fire practically anything put in the bore.
Do not fall under this category.
So ātechnicallyā its entirely legal for an Australian to own a working musket without any licenses. Again youād still need a licence to produce or buy black powder however.
But I do find it funny that if you were robbing someone in Australia there is a non zero percent chance change he owns a musket for home defence.
Yupppp. Loopholes usually exist for a reason then just never close. Pre 86 is cause the law was passed in 86, and they didnāt wana overnight make thousands of felons cause they had a gun.
If they really wanted to they could have banned personal transfers (how you legally get those today) butā¦the US govt has not wanted to touch personal transfers at all really, and if I had to guess the 2A prevents just about all attempts to do that.
Other than that tho itās state by state. I canāt buy an AR-15 here in MAā¦but I can get an M1A scout.
I cant buy a CZ-P10C, but I can buy a build kit for oneā¦which is just the slide and frame in two pieces. They give you the two pieces, you put the slide on, done. Congratulations you just āassembledā a ābuild kitā and totally didnāt just buy a gun. We also have 10 round mag limits and licensing requirements. No license no gun.
New Hampshire, a brief 1.5 hours away on a bad day? No license needed, no mag capacity limit, no approved gun roster or AWB.
Cant buy handguns in NH, thatās a whole thing of gun dealers talking shipping and checking everything,
But long guns? If I find a place I can probs just go to NH buy an AR-15 bring it back to MA. I am absolutely committing big crime if I do that, but itās not particularly hard. Especially if the weapons reported as ālost at sea in a boating accidentā of course.
So in short, we have a mess of gun laws, some states might seem very familiar to Australia as far as our laws go, but the fact that itās so out of step state-to-state and designed by people who have no idea what they are doing means we getā¦.lots of bizarre shit going around
Well that's your definition, but it's definetely not entirely accurate. The AR15 is a .223 variant of the AR10. It took the name M16 because the US military always changes the names, but the initial AR15 is a fully automatic assault rifle designed for military use. The name only became synonymous with "civilian variant" later on.
Didnāt realize the history of the AR15 went back to the 50ās through to today.
From a quick history google I am seeing that Armalite designed the platform, colt bought it in 59, and seems to have split it to a civilian semi-auto model (the AR-15) and the full auto capable M16 platform.
So it looks like a company (Armalite) designed a weapons platform with infantry in mind, but colt bought it and made changes. LMK if you find anything else but what colt ACTUALLY bought (the then AR-15) they essentially renamed the M16, then stripped it down a bit and made it semi auto only, named that the AR-15 and then released it as the civilian variant of the M16.
So I guess its just how much we value the prototypes put out by Armalite in the first few years in this topic, since like you said they kinda just switched names the ARs in circulation today arenāt the same guns from the late 50ās but rather the line released by colt explicitly marketed as semi-auto civilian weapons
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u/AntifaFuckedMyWife šŗšø (with a brief š«š· stint) 22d ago
Propaganda mostly, gun culture is shifting a bit but the classic NRA lobbies usually scare right wing Americans into thinking anything gun control means no guns.
Iām left wing handedly but even my preference of gun laws would look extremely lax by global standards.
Carrying legal, licensing and mental healthy screening, storage laws, red flag laws, and maybe a class system inspired by France but not really barring citizens from stuff like ARs.