Gun ownership poll

[Steve D]

Originally Posted by steve B

You've fallen into a common misconception. One which is easy to fall into.

It conflates three different things.

Rate of fire - Rounds per minute
Capacity- how many the gun holds
Full vs semi-automatic.

Easiest one first.
Fully automatic=Pull the trigger it shoots till you stop or the ammo runs out.
Semi Automatic= One pull one shot, but you have to pull the trigger for each one. A large percentage of guns are this type. The shotgun my friend has me use for trap shooing is. I just load one at a time to stay within the rules.

Fully automatic - "machine guns" have been heavily controlled since the mid 1930's. Full registration, $200 tax to transfer, very serious background check, some serious legal trouble for not doing things properly. Since those controls were put in place, last I checked there have only been 2-3 incidents involving a legally owned full auto weapon.

And that moves right into the "police don't have machine guns"...One of those incidents was a law officer using a department machine gun that he was legally allowed to use. Just not at all the way he used it.

Most guns, depending on how they were made and local laws hold less than 10 rounds. If you're in a place that allows higher capacity maybe as many as 30. Much more isn't common, but is possible.

So yes, you may be able to fire hundreds of rounds a minute, but you'll be out in a few seconds. And usually anything past the first one isn't going where you want it to go. (Yes, I've tried, shot 1 was pretty good. They said I did well to get number 2 on the paper, and the backstop fortunately caught number 3 - It was good that was all I was allowed for that exercise. Could I have done better with practice? sure. But anything outside the target is pretty much a fail.

Oh, and a huge percentage of regular hunting rifles are semi-auto. They just don't look "tactical" so the crazy people don't usually buy them. In some cases they have the exact same inner machinery as the ones everyone wants to ban.

Also, pertaining to semi-automatic pistols:

The way gun-controllers term it, a double-action revolver (the common, every-day revolver), is a semi-automatic weapon. Think about it; one pull of the trigger, one shot out of the barrel. You pull the trigger again, another bullet comes out of the barrel (each time you pull the trigger, the cylinder automatically rotates until another round is lined up with the barrel). Nothing else needs to be done; you just keep pulling the trigger until the cylinder is empty. Current revolvers hold up to eight rounds, the same as a Colt M1911 .45 caliber semi-auto (there are some that hold even more). Current semi-automatics, like a Glock-17 (the first Glock ever made in the 1980s), holds a standard capacity of 17 rounds. The Left wants to ban all magazines that hold more than 10 rounds; that would effectively ban nearly all Glock handguns, along with many others that hold more than 10 rounds as the standard capacity.

Also, The Left wants to ban the AR-15. Guess what round the AR-15 shoots.....the .22 caliber; a round that Pres Biden apparently has no problem with. He just wants to ban the AR-15 because it looks dangerous. Then, he wants to ban the 9mm (NATO standard) round, that the vast majority of common, every-day pistols (in the world) shoots, because it, in his words "blows the lung out of the body." I guess he's never heard of a .357 magnum, or .44 magnum (think Dirty Harry), or a 10mm (will take down a bear, or even a .50 caliber Desert Eagle. All of those are handguns, and the first two (magnums) are revolvers. It just all proves that The Left doesn't have a clue of what they're talking about!

Steve