Yes, ban the AR-15 and people will use another gun. That is exactly WHY we need to ban them. And yes, it is not rocket science, the damage inflicted by the AR-15 is absolutely devastating. I have mentioned the word more than once in this thread, "cavitation".
What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns
They weren’t the first mass-shooting victims the Florida radiologist saw—but their wounds were radically different.www.theatlantic.com
Routine handgun injuries leave entry and exit wounds and linear tracks through the victim’s body that are roughly the size of the bullet. If the bullet does not directly hit something crucial like the heart or the aorta, and the victim does not bleed to death before being transported to our care at the trauma center, chances are that we can save him. The bullets fired by an AR-15 are different: They travel at a higher velocity and are far more lethal than routine bullets fired from a handgun. The damage they cause is a function of the energy they impart as they pass through the body. A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than—and imparting more than three times the energy of—a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun.
This thread is at almost 500 posts. I jumped in early. The debate, or the "question" is really very simple. Does the AR-15, and its assault rifle variants, provide any unique, UNIQUE meaning can't be replicated by another gun, advantage in any area--self-defense, hunting, target shooting, that outweighs the DAMAGE caused by AR-15 used in mass shootings?
This ain't about stopping mass shootings. This ain't about stopping gun crimes. This is about improving the odds of survival of a victim of a mass shooting, PERIOD.
I was looking at a CT scan of one of the mass-shooting victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, and was bleeding extensively. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?
The reaction in the emergency room was the same. One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle that delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. Nothing was left to repair—and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.
Not a single poster has even attempted to make the argument. No one has listed a single unique advantage of the AR-15. Instead, all we get is worthless blathering about the second amendment as if it some magic amendment that precludes the banning of a single type of weapon, it is not, and Scalia in Heller said as much. All we get is the slippery slope argument, oh, they ban the AR-15 it will just be a beginning. No, that was not the case in the previous ban, nor will it be this time. Or my personal favorite, a ban would be ineffective because there are so many AR's already in the hands of gun owners. So what?
Here is the deal, if we ban the AR-15, ban assault rifles just like we did before, with the same definition of an assault rifle that we had before. Then, just like in the past, if just one mass shooter has to purchase a Glock, instead of an AR, to use in his murderous spree, more people will survive his shooting spree than would survive if he used an AR. Columbine resulted in 13 deaths, not counting the shooters themselves. But an additional 21 people were shot and injured. That is a better than 60% survival rate. In the Stoneman Douglas shooting there were 17 killed and 17 injured, a 50% survival rate, and 12 of the deaths occurred inside the building. And that was ONE person, not two. Although few people know, two of those survivors committed suicide within 13 months, which brings us to a 45% survival rate.
But there is one UNIQUE advantage of the AR-15 and other assault rifles. They are, by far, the most profitable gun sold in America. You gun nuts all screaming and hollering against an assault weapons ban are little more than useful idiots for the gun lobby. They play all of you for fools, hell, they are the ones that teach you how to make these illogical arguments, how to avoid the real "question" that I have put forth. And while at least ten percent of the deaths in mass shootings are directly attributable to that gun lobby, you guys are enabling them.
Don't ban, regulate. Banning won't stand up in court but regulating will because that's the traditional way of handling it.
