-----Original Message----- >From: Henry E Schaffer <[email protected]> >Sent: Apr 17, 2009 8:58 PM >To: [email protected] >Cc: [email protected] >Subject: Re: Types of weapons protected by 2nd Amend. > >Ray writes, >> ... Yes there are civilian analogs of M-16's but, except in rare >> cases, civilians can buy only semi-automatics. > > Basically correct IMHO - I won't quibble.
Depends on how much money you've got. I think a legal, civilian, M-16 can be had for eight to ten thousand or so. >> Are semi-automatic "assault rifles," protected by the 2nd amendment? > > Here I will quibble - "assault rifles" are "select fire" according to >the usual military technical definition. That is, they can be switched >between semi- and full- auto modes - which makes them a "machinegun" >under the NFA. The "Assault Weapon Ban" was of "assault weapons" and >did not include any select-fire weapons. > > It is a common error - often unintentional - to call these "assault >rifles." The key to the whole assault weapon idea (term itself is a translation from the German, the Germans having invented it) was 1) The battlefield now (ca. 1943) is populated with full power rifles (2,000 ft/lb of energy, the German 8mm, American .30-06, British .303, Russian 7.62x54), bolt action or occasionally semiauto, designed for ranges out to 600 yds or so, and by submachineguns, firing pistol ammo full auto, and designed for ranges out to 50-100 yards. 2) Most infantry battles are occurring at 100-200 yards, quite rarely at 300. This is just out of submachinegun range, so the work is done by rifles, firing one shot at a time. 3) We could build a rifle firing full power rounds at full auto ... but no one can take that recoil, or control the gun. 4) If we don't need 600 yards' range, we can cut the power by about half, to around 1000 ft/lbs. Now we have a gun that can fire at full auto, and is just potent enough to control the real battlefield of 100-300 yards. So the whole idea of the real assault rifle presupposed that it'd be full auto. If it was made semi, it'd just be a semiauto with half the power that it could have had. >> I think there are enough in circulation to make an argument that >> they are in common use. > > I've seen numbers suggesting that there are perhaps a million or more >AR-15 type rifles in private ownership in the US. (According to >http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/archive/index.php?t-117927.html >there were a total of over 200,000 produced in 1999-2000.) The less >expensive (semi-auto) AK-47 very well may be more common. I dunno. AR-15 has some civilian appeal that that AK does not -- (1) it has varmint shooting capabilities and (2) it can be remarkably accurate for a semiauto. >> Do they play a large role in violent crime? No. >> Is there any good evidence that the temporary ban on them reduced gun >> violence? No. Most serious gang bangers have moved up to fully automatics >> like AK-47's. ... > > The name "AK-47" is ambiguous - it is manufactured in both semi-auto >and select-fire versions and they both are usually referred to by the >same name. (I.e., it is as if the M16 and the AR-15 had the same name.) >I think that the semi-auto AK-47 versions usually given somewhat >different names (e.g. MAK-90, M-76, SAR-1 and many others - see, e.g., >http://www.firearmsfirst.com/?p=16 for some discussion - this page uses >AK-47 generically and refers to the select-fire version as the "True >AK-47".) > >> My personal opinion, however, is that they are not a good choice for >> home defense. > > Again I'll quibble, because I think this blanket statement doesn't >take into account the many different living arrangements in our country. >A firearm unsuitable for defense of an apartment in a city may be very >suitable for defense of a home in a rural area where the next residence >may be a mile away. One of my clients is a rancher along the border, where encounters with armed drug runners are a constant concern. He carries a pistol on his hip and an AR-15 in his truck for just that reason. In certain areas, an encounter will be at close range. At others, it might be at upwards of a hundred yards. _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
