Nightline on Obama, gun control

[unixronin]

Nightline broadcast a good and pretty balanced segment last night, discussing Barak Obama's gun control position and the massive gun buying rush that's going on across the US now by people concerned that if they don't buy them now, they won't be able to.

Particular points to note:

• The customer who keeps repeating to the reporter, "Never mind Obama's words, look at his actions."¹
• The gunshop owner reporting Obama supporters coming into his store wearing their Obama buttons, who just voted for him but are still afraid he'll ban guns.

[1]  You might have seen me say this once or twice.  Assuming you've been paying attention.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

OK. I started working on this, then realized I was going to have to split it for length because LiveJournal will only allow 4300 characters in a comment, then realized it was growing to the point where I was going to have to split it into a ridiculous number of parts. So I've made it a separate post.

A short answer to your question is that for many purposes, a semi-automatic pistol can be more compact than a revolver of equivalent firepower, and in general a semi-automatic pistol or rifle can be easier to learn to shoot well than other comparable repeating arms. In addition, it is very much easier to build a semi-automatic pistol or rifle with a large ammunition capacity than it is to do so with, for example, a revolver or a lever-action rifle. (It is perfectly feasible to build a bolt-action rifle having a large-capacity magazine, but in practice it has never to my knowledge been done because no-one has managed to come up with a good reason to do so.)

These factors make them extremely good police duty sidearms or personal protection weapons. Semi-automatics have also become popular for many types of target shooting, as there is less disturbance to the shooter between shots than with many other types of repeating action (again, this returns to "easier to learn to shoot well"), although the most exacting precision target shooters still use almost exclusively bolt-action or single-shot rifles.

(Also see lonewolf545's excellent short answer, above.)


The long answer involves a fairly involved discussion of the ways in which semi-automatic firearms differ from other repeating firearms, and the ways in which they are the same. You can find that post here. (http://unixronin.livejournal.com/609834.html)