?

Remember Ft Hood.

So what are your arguments as to why civilians don't need any training to own military assault weapons.

You need money to own something not training. You would need safety training to shoot a gun and those safety parameters would be the same for any gun.

Most civilians can not own "Military Assault Weapons". Most AR's look like their military counter part but do not allow "Fully Auto or burst" so in fact they are not a "Military Assault Weapon". Most the ones people buy are only semi-auto. So you want people to get training for a weapon based on what it looks like?

If someone knows what they are doing or has the money, they can have there 22 made to look like a military weapon but it is still a 22. The looks of the weapon have nothing to do with how deadly it is or can be.

Rocket launcher returned at California gun buyback

Solano County's first countywide gun buyback program today collected 344 weapons including a military rocket launcher and multiple assault rifles, according to Vallejo police Chief Joseph Kreins.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/...un-buyback?lite

Fishy

perfectly legal...

you should have correct military training on how to operate a launcher, even if the one you have is inert and usless, because it looks like one...

itll save lives...

I feel safer.

The goal of the operation was simple: We wanted to get as many illegal and unwanted guns off the streets of Solano County as possible," Kreins said in a statement today.

"We all know that these very firearms are often used to commit violent crimes against our fellow citizens and in a variety of tragic scenarios, including suicides," Kreins added.

LOL ....... and you can say that with a straight face, Jerry?

Suicide by rocket launcher... Happens all the time

not a straight face, pretty dumb.

As hopeless as discussions like this seem to be, they are as compelling as watching a train wreck in slow motion. I agree with the thread title, assault weapons should not be banned. (However we here are all informed and know that assault weapons aren't really assault weapons; they just look like their military counterparts that in fact are assault weapons. Just in the interest of keeping things clear in this sea of mud.)

I've been reading a lot these last two months about gun control, and most proposals are failures in the face of logic and information. Two potential measures have potential promise for reducing gun murders, which allegedly is supposed to be the purpose of this flurry of near-activity. One would never know it by critically reading some of the proposals, however. I read that an estimated 40% of firearm sales in the US are by private transaction that do not include the standard background check that occurs when guns are purchased from a FFL store or dealer. Closing that gap reduces the opportunity for ineligible persons to buy guns. It doesn't eliminate it, but would significantly reduce it. And ineligible people are the folks whose hands we want to keep guns out of, not legitimate purchasers.

How much this measure would reduce illegal purchases I cannot say because there are no statistics on how many people would just ignore such a law. It would foreclose transactions that occur at gunshows without background checks, but it would rely mostly on voluntary compliance with the remainder of private transactions. I can estimate that compliance between 51 and 64%, but that's only relevant if you agree with my choice of statistical models. Nonetheless, it points to a significant reduction of sales without background checks from the status quo. It's major weakness is the same as what Dogfish pointed out in one of his posts, that the government already fails to prosecute felons who fail background checks at FFL dealers/stores. Closing that gap would be necessary for expanded background checks to have its maximum effectiveness.

The second measure that would reduce gun murders is one that has been talked about, but no one that I am aware of has yet articulated how to go about collecting and then combining records of mental patients with the gun background check database, that really isn't a database because the 1968 gun control law prohibits it, etc., and I really don't understand enough about it, and apparently the pundits don't either, which is why a well articulated measure that would achieve the intended purpose hasn't yet been introduced.

Personally, I don't have much faith in any preventative measure intended to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable. Sure, some people who were known to be fruitcakes have committed gun murders. But it seems like far more people who commit murders and are mentally unstable, were stable enough a few months before the act to have passed any mental health evaluation. I don't think there is a way to predict that a person will be ineligible to own firearms 6 or 12 months from now and thereby prevent him from obtaining them today. I think this is one of those outcomes that no matter how desirable it is, just isn't going to be on the menu.

Another measure, that is not being seriously proposed as far as I know, is confiscation. I just read last week, and this was by a better statistician than I, is that banning all future manufacturing and sale of handguns and successfully confiscating 10% of existing handguns in the US could be expected to reduce handgun murders by, . . . 4%. Of course, the carnage resulting from attempting to confiscate even 10% of existing handguns would likely be much higher.

As for Illahee's suggestion to not ban assault weapons but to require training and certification, as appealing as that will sound to the uninformed, would not reduce gun murder by any statistically significant amount simply because such a low percentage of gun murders occur with "assault weapons," about 2%. If there is a reduction, it would be darn close to "not statistically different from zero." I realize, that if it were my child that was saved, it would be very significant, but on a national scale in a nation where killing people is as popular as it is in the US, the difference would be difficult, if not impossible, to measure.

When I went through training for the M16, very little time was devoted to the "rock and roll" feature of the weapon, in fact they emphasized that you not use that feature, because it wasted to much ammunition.
So saying it's not an assault weapon because it lacks a full auto mode is incorrect, it's still an assault weapon even in semi auto mode.
If more people had real certifiable weapons training there would in fact be fewer gun related deaths.

You are correct the M16, M4 the military uses are still an "Assault Weapon" regardless of what mode you put the selector switch in.

By definition an "Assault Weapon" allows the operator to choose from "Auto, Burst or Semi Auto". So most the ones the general public can purchase do not meet the definition, since they only allow the operator to choose semi-auto or safe.

Maybe your point would be better taken if you actually understood the weapon you talking about vice just going on looks alone.

In my book, its only an assault weapon if you commit an assault with it.

Lord knows the gang bangers , nut jobs, and criminals would be lining up around the corner for those classes.

FYI, accidental gun deaths nationwide average less than 1000 a year, which isn't enough to really worry about. Take out hunter accidents, which most have had firearm safety training in state mandated courses and you have 8-900 a year.

Which would be money better spent, national firearms training for 100 million people give or take or cancer research?

"If more people had training the accidental death rate might go down, but the murder rate would remain unchanged."

If Hank keeps saying stuff I agree with, I might have to change my mind.

The big problem with almost every single gun control proposal is that they would do little or nothing to reduce gun murders, which is supposed to be the objective, or so they say.

Sg

They could make a law that if a person (without proper training) commits a murder with an "assault style weapon" they would automatically receive jail time.