Thankfully this is illegal and will remain so in most of the rest of the world. 3% means there are more than 9.4 million assault rifles in US homes. Are they expecting an invasion?
How do you personally define "assault rifle" ?
I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
71–80 of 239 posts
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#72Speaking of loopholes, I find it amusing that HN has found a way to post articles that are ostensibly "interesting to hackers" which allow them to get into heated mainstream political discussion.
As it turns out, people who don't want to follow the rules, will find a way to not.
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#73Considering that rifles are used to kill fewer people in the United States than knives, fists, hammers, or bats, Mother Jones' attempt at scaring people about those who build their own guns rings a little hallow. But I get it, AK-47s look scary and so we should all be outraged. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...
AK-47s scare me about as much as any other gun. It's "good" that rifles are used to kill fewer people than other weapons, and we should choose our battles accordingly. That doesn't change the fact that I want to make it as hard as possible for crazy people or people on a power trip to be able to fashion machines designed to efficiently kill people like me. That seems like a simple principle. Maybe the best way to ach…
I want to make it as hard as possible for crazy people or people on a power trip to be able to fashion machines designed to efficiently kill people like me.
I would worry more about cars, corporations, and governments. :)
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#74This has been legal for a very long time, and is the cause of approximately no violence. Much as with the discussion of 3d printed firearms, it's not so much that the behaviors of gun owners and gun builders has changed as it is that the prevailing discourse in the political arena and the news is different. The author refrains from espousing an opinion in the piece, but only just, and frankly I disagree with him. The…
What? How is this not a disgrace? This article means that practically anyone anywhere in the US can have an AK-47 with no licensing. How is that supposed to make me feel safe? What if I sneak into my GF's house and her dad tries me right then and there, and decides that the punishment for fucking his daughter is death. Oh, and what do you know? He has an AK-47 for it so all my hopes of running away are dashed. People…
The difference between a military assault rifle and a normal gun is the selective fire which allows automatic fire and semi-automatic. In the military, the type of firing that does almost all the killing is semi-automatic, just like a consumer gun. There's really nothing special about an AK-47.
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely agree. Mother Jones is a known Liberal magazine and despite the approach to not insert the authors opinion, you can clearly see the point of the article is we need to have the ability to register guns with the government. I'm constantly shocked at how uninformed gun control advocates are.
@at-fates-hands I bet you didn't know 60 people were accidentally killed by firearms yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that. About 30 people are killed in attacks -- every day. And another thing, why is it gun patriots never give a fig about the other rights in the Constitution, like freedom of speech, religion, and assembly? I think you guys just like to play with guns. It takes a cold dead hand…
I don't believe your statement about "gun patriots" is based on reality. In my experience, gun rights, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are all bound up pretty tightly. A well-armed populace is often seen as a safeguard of those other rights.
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#76Considering that rifles are used to kill fewer people in the United States than knives, fists, hammers, or bats, Mother Jones' attempt at scaring people about those who build their own guns rings a little hallow. But I get it, AK-47s look scary and so we should all be outraged. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...
Note as well that, as far as I can tell, he did not build an AK-47. He built a copy of the semi-automatic version that is available to gun enthusiasts. He did not build what your average user of an AK would call an AK: a fully automatic machine gun.
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#77Does anyone know how much these kits costs?
The piece of sheetmetal likely costs $40-50, the parts kit a couple hundred.
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The full table for firearms (2011) is: Handguns 6220 Rifles 323 Shotguns 356 Other guns 97 Firearms, type not stated 1587 So, er, yeah. GP is correct in their statement that rifles (indeed, it would seem, all longarms) are less favored for homicide than sharp and blunt objects.
Not really, type not stated just means unknown some of those are clearly going to be Rifles. If 200 of those where Rifles then it would be more popular than blunt objects.
But with 1.5 orders of magnitude difference in the officially known enumerated types we can be pretty sure the officially unknowns don't wildly vary from knowns. Plus the number of rifles used is so small people who track of this sort of thing would likely have an idea if something weird was happening.
My only caveat is bodies found without a recovered bullet; almost all centerfire rifles have greater energies and sectional densities than normally used handguns, so the bullet is more likely to exit. To get a handle on this we'd need breakdowns on where they happened (e.g. city, almost certainly a handgun, rural, a rifle is more likely, if only because of concealment issues). Or talk to coroners, the wounds will be somewhat different.
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#79Thankfully this is illegal and will remain so in most of the rest of the world. 3% means there are more than 9.4 million assault rifles in US homes. Are they expecting an invasion?
Its actually not illegal... Anyone in the US is allowed to build their own firearm for personal use. They are not allowed to sell it or give it away, if they don't want it they have to destroy it.
Re: I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
They expect their government to fail them.
It already has, repeatedly - but that's totally orthogonal. To imply that gun owners are worried about systematic government oppression that would necessitate an uprising is not an accurate portrayal of conventional wisdom, it's a half-assed attempt at interpreting the Constitution and extrapolating gun ownership rationale. But most gun owners in the US (that I know - and I know quite a few) possess them for hunting,…
I know quite a few who own them for self defense / home defense, as well.