Gun possession and the Supreme Court. Where do we go from here?

1. I think this is a volatile subject.

2. I can't imagine politicians understanding what you have suggested.

3. Grandfathering is fraught with legal dynamite.

4. Criminals don't care about "serious additional penalties".

5. "Would modification to reduce the high fire rate of marginal modern semiautomatic guns in order to make them legal be practical?" You can't be serious.

6. You can't be serious.

No offense meant.

Lynlynch -- I'm serious. I'm hoping to find a few folks in a mechanical engineering forum who can be address the concept I'm suggesting with some objectivity.

About rate of fire ........ We are perfectly capable of making semiautomatic weapons that can produce a rate of fire in excess of 600 rounds per minute by a trained shooter. Is it really such a great idea to mass produce such weapons for anybody with minimal qualifications and background check to buy?

Ed Weldon

These are intriguing ideas, with what seems like a sound technical basis. However, they are a bit complex, and the decision tree for legit vs. not could be equally complicated. (Loopholes, exemptions, whatnot.)

I don't care if you own a bazooka, so long as you don't misuse it. But if a bunch of people own bazookas, the chances go up that somebody will misuse one. Should we wait until this happens, punishing it only after the fact, or should we cut this off at the pass by disallowing it in the first place?

I am neither a gun owner nor a prohibitionist, so I don't have much of a dog in this fight. I am not committed to any one approach, but tentatively I would favor requiring a competency and noncriminality test for obtaining a firearms license, striation testing of all weapons sold, and a subsequent tracking system like car registration. Together with this, I would want a provision that the database could be accessed ONLY by identifying an incorrectly fired bullet and backtracking to the gun's owner.

That exposition is admittedly brief, but I believe that such a scheme, or a similar one, could satisfy the legitimate concerns from various sides of the debate.

As someone outside the US I don't have all the bagage.
It seems glaringly obvious to me where to draw the line, but of course it is not worth making any suggestions because there are people in the US who want to be allowed to own ludicrouly powerfull rapid fire weapons.
Del
(Just for the record, I'd suggest a limit on magazine size and the weapons should only fire one shot per press of the trigger. The military/police etc, may have uses for more exotic stuff, but I can't see any rationale for joe public needing anything else, afterall it's a legacy from the 'wild west' and they couldn't blast off 600 rounds a minute)

Del,

We had a limit on mag size for 10 years and all that did was drive the price of high capacity magazines through the roof.

You must have a federal firearms license to legally posses a full automatic weapon. These, at least, require a background check.

I, like many others, believe that it is my right to own and responsibly use firearms for sport. I don't hunt any more. I have nothing against those who do, I just got old.

The fact is, we Americans have had guns forever and they are expensive enough without adding more regulations and restrictions to drive the cost up further.

I've mentioned this before, but here in Arizona, now, there are virtually no restrictions on carrying firearms, openly or even concealed. So you never know if the jerk who just cut you off in traffic is armed or not. Go figure.

I don't have the answers, but I'm keeping all my guns and may buy more.

The problem is that I think I can kill a person just fine with a .22 short. We killed a lot of hogs that way for butchering (OK, PETA people, I don't raise pigs anymore).

I grant you that .40 cal or 9 mm are the weapons of choice, but their muzzle energy is pretty low compared to what's available. So, I'm not sure about that avenue.

We've sort of got ourselves in a fine kettle of fish. I don't think there's a good engineering solution to what is primarily a political question.

Thanks, guys for keeping your objectivity here. This topic hopefully is not about one shot, one kill (or even 5 shots one kill). It's really about 50 shots 10 kills or 200 shots 10 kills and a lot of collateral damage. What's a reasonable standoff energy delivery capacity to put in the hands of a member of the general public? And this with a minimum of government intrusion both from a control and a revenue raising standpoint.

I have long been a proponent of the concept of "if I can measure it I can make it". So this prompts the question of how do I measure that performance of a weapon that does the killing, i.e. delivered energy and it's like? Given the creative minds of humans there needs to be some common denominator to the way we would score a given weapon and the projectile it can launch. So a quantitative measurement system is worth exploring. Another factor which likely complicates the issue has to do with the mass, shape and other characteristics of the projectile since guns do not kill, bullets are what kills. Guns are just efficient launch platforms.

We are engineers by education and/or life experience and this issue is largely a mechanical engineering problem albeit with bits of other discussions sprinkled in.

BTW, economy here is a very important issue. I am 53 years an avid automotive hobbyist and have always had more vehicles than I could drive at one time. I have always chafed at having to pay registration, insurance and now smog testing fees on my small collection even though some get minimal use. The idea of gun ownership becoming another cash cow for a bunch of leaches who consider guns to be some kind of sin that can be taxed and "fee'ed" out of existence is abhorrent to me.

OK, I am a gun owner; but have not made a hobby out of it. Thus I am barely conversant with the numbers beyond some awareness of muzzle velocities and range. Can any of you guys who are into the actual numbers add some actual energy information in units I can understand?

Ed Weldon

Good morning Ed Weldon.

"What's a reasonable standoff energy delivery capacity to put in the hands of a member of the general public?"

Well, a 1,400 pound buffalo (American Bison) will succumb to a single shot from a .300 Winchester Magnum. This I know firsthand. The .300WM is great for elk, but a little heavy for deer. A .264WM goes on those trips. I still hunt game (less often than my younger days), and do a little varmint shooting. If a member of the general public goes buffalo hunting, he will need a pretty powerful shell. However, if I want to simply target shoot with the .300WM (or a .338, or a .460 Weatherby), I should be able to do so without somebody telling me it is too big a gun.

This is a hot potato issue for sure. Interesting to visit about, and see what the thoughts are from around the USA, as well as the rest of the world.

Doorman -- I'm figuring that your rifles are manual repeaters that likely require at least a couple of seconds for each reload, aim and fire cycle. This is an order of magnitude less than what can be fired by readily available modern semiautomatic assault type weapons. This is where I think we need to place some limits.

I readily admit the difficulty of enforcing such limits given the widespread acceptance of such weapons. But beyond that who knows when some clever new handgun design, perhaps with electronic assists of some sort will place something you can carry in your pocket at the same level as a light machine gun? Then along comes some publicity minded and technically stupid politician who looks at the new invention and then screams to ban visible features on a weapon that have little to do with how it can kill.

I guess I haven't made my point well enough. It's not about how much energy can be transmitted in a single shot. (though perhaps there should be some consideration here of AP and incendiary bullets of high caliber.) It's about how much can be transmitted in 15 or 30 seconds, the time it would take a large group of people to seek cover from an assassin trying to kill many and motivated by some need or insane behavior. Or perhaps one or a group who from similar motivations decides to compete with a legitimate law enforcement or personal protection effort.

Ed Weldon

Yes, Ed, the rifles I mentioned are the traditional bolt-action hunting rifles with a rate of fire of, I guess, 2 or 3 seconds per aimed shot, 4 rounds before reload. This hardly bears thinking about with the .300WM, that would be a shoulder buster for sure!

I have had a few Class III rifles, most notably an M14-E2, the automatic version of the M14 (caliber 7.62 X 51, or .308 Win). This was acquired by the payment of $200.00 for the SOT (Special Occupational Tax), which puts you on the radar with the US government. An FFL is not required for an individual to own a legal Class III weapon (but it does make the acquisition process a little smoother).

This rifle has a rate of fire around 600 rounds per minute, emptying the 20 round magazine in about 2 seconds. I firmly believe that this rifle in the hands of an individual with malice aforethought could be an EXTREMELY dangerous thing. Sudden death at the rate of 600 opportunities per minute.

One thing not yet discussed (I think lynlynch touched on it)... A pre-1986 Colt AR15 converted to E3 (making a civilian rifle into a legal select fire automatic rifle) automatic is selling today for about $15,000.00. I read somewhere the US government is paying about $900.00 for the comparable rifle. This thanks to red tape, plain and simple.

I will end this rambling post the same way I ended my last one: If I want to shoot my automatic rifle in a responsible manner, I should be able to do so without listening to a bunch of malarkey from someone who does not like it. Doesn't matter anyway, the rifles are pretty loud!