Gun Bans

Gun bans of one model/kind of gun can't work. And gun bans of all kinds has never worked.

Gun bans of one model/kind of gun can't work because criminals just move to other models/kinds. And gun bans of all kinds has never worked, because like all prohibitions, it just creates a black market and incentives to smuggle, build, steal them. If gun prohibition would work, we should try it against drugs and crimes like rape and murder.

ℹ️ Info

~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2016-09-06

Gun bans of any one model/kind of gun can't work, because the next kind is still dangerous and usually upgradable, thus even if you could get compliance, you'd still get similar kill rates. And banning all guns can't work, because that would make guns too powerful a lure and too valuable not to create a great black market for smuggling or illegal manufacture. (Like happens in most places that have gun bans). Police states like Russia, or Islands with no history of guns (like Japan, Australia or the UK) have problems with illegal guns, shooting and mass murders: and their rates have been increasing while ours has been generally trending down. Let's break down why each type of gun ban can't work, and thus all of them together can't work.

💭 The long and short of it
This article is the longer version of Gun control or gun ban? and decomposes each point a lot more. If you want the summary, go to that one. There's also more info/videos on each of these points at Reload Times -- and I link to the correct area in many of the topic areas below.

Magazine Limits[edit source]

Main article: Magazine Limits

Magazine limits have never been shown to have any impact on gun crime, crime, or casualties in mass shootings. Democrats demand low capacity magazines either knowing that (and not caring), or being ignorant of the topic they're trying to legislate. Persecuting someone knowing that your law can't help is kinda the definition of asshole.

Watch either:

Removable Magazines to see how ineffective it is to limit people to only 10 rounds. They can reload so fast that it doesn't matter.
Then watch Fixed Magazines and Revolvers, to see how useless it is to ban removable magazines entirely: you can still reload fixed magazines or revolvers too fast too matter.

Magazine limits are the tools of the dishonest, the ignorant, or both. Those claiming they want to ban only removable magazines above a certain sizes, are liars or fools. Shooters will just go to speed loaders in fixed magazines (like we have had since WWI, and before), and won't change the rate of fire significantly, unless they ban assault weapons. So now what?

🗒️ Note:
Remember the basics: the average mass shooting is 10 rounds over 5 minutes: muskets can exceed that rate of fire. People freeze, hide, and wait for shooters to come to them.

Military Assault Weapons[edit | edit source]

There really is no such thing, it's a made up term by politicians. Virtually all guns can and have been used in war. But the implication that these are select fire Assault Rifles is completely dishonest, they may look similar but they don't act similar. See: "What is an assault rifle?" for more.

Modern assault weapons are: cheap, modular, low power, light, hunting rifles with accessory rails. They're made light and weak because that makes them easier to carry and easier to shoot. They have less push (kick) than hunting rifles, and are light so you can move and shoot them more: especially for sporting competitions, and the accessory rails make it easier to bolt extras on like flashlights, lasers, or rings to carry the gun with. In firepower, hunting pistols and rifles can easily exceed them and are more deadly. Which is why assault weapons bans are so silly: there is no such thing, and the alternatives are worse.

So it doesn't matter if you outlaw this class of rifle (or Pistol variants), there's no way banning just these would ever be enough for gun controllers in Dystopia, because all banning these can do is move criminals and mass shooters to other semi-automatic rifles and pistols, that have MORE firepower. Thus anyone that tells you they just want to ban magazines limits or military style assault rifles are liars (Politicians) or fools (their constituents), of course they won't stop there. What next?

Semi-Auto Pistols[edit | edit source]

Removable Magazines
Marshall Luton doing speedy reloads and hitting multiple targets. More at: Removable Magazines

Most crime and shootings (quantity and death-count) are by pistol (not rifles or the dreaded "assault rifles"). Thus if we blame the guns for the actions of criminals, we must outlaw ALL semi-auto pistols too. In fact, they should have been first, since they're more popular. Poof, they're gone. Again, we're in Dystopia, where we just use the magic of tolerance to make them all disappear and we can ignore the complexities of real life where:

The semi-auto’s like the "1911" is the most popular pistol, and is so named because of the year it was released. It is considered a curio/antique because it is over 100 years old.
And we'll ignore that other "repeaters" go back to the 1600’s. We'll just try to turn back knowledge and manufacturing over 100 years, and pretend that nobody knows how to make them.
In Australia they had a 20% compliance rate after their gun ban, which means they turned at least 4 times as many people into felons as they got guns turned in. Now they have more illegal guns than before the bans (higher crime and gun crime too). And certainly ignore the 0.04% compliance rate that New Zealand has gotten since their more recent ban on assault weapons: or 2500 people turned into criminals for each gun turn-in. Let's just pretend that in Dystopia, everyone is compliant with the turn-in law.
Let's ignore the costs of door-to-door confiscation, and that there will be accidents and consequences. Not because people won't die, but because it hurts the gun grabbers feelings to think about it.
Let's also ignore basic economics and that scarcity would drive the price of these guns up, and incentivize many to make/smuggle/steal/trade them illegally for profit. Let's ignore that Prohibition has never worked before. This will be the first time it works and everyone in Dystopia is a good person. Wait, if that's true, then we don't need to ban guns. So let's pretend most are bad people, thus the need for gun control, but they're all dumb-bad and will ignore the opportunity to make money smuggling or making guns, because while they're all dangerous people with guns, none would try to profit from breaking the law.

Even with all those (bad) assumptions, all the semi-auto pistols are instantly off the streets tomorrow. But people just shift to semi-automatic rifles.

Now we know that those whole claimed all they wanted to ban were magazine limits, assault weapons, or semi-pistols are liars or fools. What happens next?

Semi-auto Rifles... and Shotguns[edit | edit source]

Fixed Magazines
Guy speed loading an antique weapon. Push the bullets in, and they're ready to fire: no removable magazine necessary. More at: Fixed Magazines

A rifle's firepower is based on rate of fire, and caliber (power of round). All semi-autos (Assault Weapons or hunting rifles) can sustain a rate of fire that is as fast as you can pull the trigger, the only thing that varies is the caliber. Taking away their light plastic, low caliber ones, means they go to slightly heavier wooden ones, and in bigger calibers. And it doesn't matter if it has a fixed magazine or removable one, the reload time is still fast enough for mass murders. Again, read/watch Reload Times if you think that limiting the size or style of magazine will matter: it won't.

Also, a rifle can be cut down to pistol size in about 15 minutes with a hacksaw. So if you want to ban semi-auto pistols, you have to ban semi-auto rifles as well: or criminals can convert. The same the other way: if you outlaw rifles but allow pistols, then criminals just put a stock on it and a longer barrel. Parts is parts. So if you want to outlaw semi-auto rifles, you have to outlaw semi-auto pistols. So you can't outlaw one, without outlawing the other. (Remember, there's a profit motive in converting, since scarcity drives up value). Thus you have to criminalize both.

So the Bennovolent progressive dictator of Dystopia MUST outlaw ALL semi-automatic weapons (pistols and rifles). Oh, and semi-automatic shotguns, because it's all the same problem, wether one bullet, or many pellets come out the business end of the boom-stick. Thus we use the magic of tolerance again, to make ALL the semi-automatic weapons go away too. Presumably this magic happens when people join hands and sing "Imagine" or their favorite coke commercial. Then the criminals and mass shooters go to revolvers which shoot at virtually the same rate. And what did we learn? Those claiming they just wanted magazine limits, to outlaw military style weapons, or just semi-auto pistols or rifles, are liars or fools. They need to ban all of them. So now what?

Revolvers[edit | edit source]

Revolvers
Watch World Record holder Jerry Miculek, reload, and fire. More at Revolvers

Ignoring the availability of illegal weapons, the thugs/psychos/bad guys would still use kill sticks, they will just move to revolvers: they’re still easy to conceal and carry. In fact more crimes are committed with them than semi-autos. 23 mass shootings in the last 25 years have used revolvers. More than that used them as a backup gun. And you can carry more than one.

🗒️ Note:
A "Chicago reload" is to just carry more than one gun: so you don't reload at all, you just pull out your backup gun and keep firing. Some cowboys wore two holsters. 10-12 round revolved means you can shoot 24 people with two guns... 36 with three... and so on.

A thug with a revolver is as dangerous as one with a semi-auto, so you didn't impact crime. Most mass shooters don’t even need to reload w/10 rounds. But a mass shooter with 4 revolvers can still kill 47 people and save the last bullet for himself. Which is a higher kill rate that even our top mass shootings have managed. Thus, we still haven't done a thing for stopping mass shootings: firepower is virtually unchanged. In fact, the higher reliability of revolvers would likely increase gun fatalities. Revolvers are cheaper than semi-autos (due to their simplicity), so you did lower the cost for the bad guys, but nothing really good happened.

There’s another delusion by denizens of Dystopia that you can charge a guy while reloading, or that time matters. Good shooters can reload a revolver in a fraction of a second and it takes longer than that to recognize that he's reloading (and most reload from a secured/obstructed position). There's a reason no one has successfully charged a mass shooter while they were reloading (even those with revolvers).

So what did we learn? Even if we could eliminate all semi-auto’s, it still wouldn’t matter, because revolvers are as effective (or more so, in unskilled hands). So we need to outlaw them through the same magic that got rid of all semi-auto's. Those we know that only liars and fools claimed that all they wanted was magazine limits, assault rifles and all semi-autos. And now what?

Pump and Lever action Rifles and Shotguns[edit | edit source]

Pump Action
Patrick Flanigan throwing 6 clay pigeons in the air, and hitting them before they hit the ground. More at Pump Action

There are guys that can throw up 6 clay pigeons and shoot them all before they hit the ground with a pump shotgun. Lever actions are the same. The Rate of fire is probably around 2-3 rounds per second. You have to be a moron to think you can charge someone with that kind of firepower. 22 mass shootings used pump action shotguns -- they don't break down the 29 rifles by action. An Edgewater (Annapolis Maryland) mass shooter with pump & lever action rifles was recently thwarted (12/2015) before he could execute his plan. No one doubts he could have been as effective, or more so, with these guns. You're no less dead because of the action the gun uses to reload, and the rate of fire is well beyond necessary in these cases. Do you really think if a shooter uses a pump or lever action gun, that the gun-grabbers are going to say, "It's OK, it wasn't a AR-15, so I'm good with it?" They will have to try to ban pump/lever action too.

So what did we learn? Even all semi-auto, rifles and pistols, magazine, and revolver bans don't work to stop or slow crime or mass shootings (and may make things worse), then they will go to pump and lever action rifles too. Only bolt and break actions should be allowed, then we'll be "safe". Or will we?

Bolt action guns[edit | edit source]

Bolt Action
Here's a guy just screwing with an 1890's enfield, showing how fast he can shoot. More at Bolt Action

World War I British Army infantrymen, shooting bolt-action .303 Enfield rifles (with much more muzzle energy and greater range than today’s so-called “assault weapons”), were known for their ability to put 15 rounds on a target at 300 yards in under 1 minute. The record for these "mad minute" competitions is 38 shots on target in one minute at 300 yards. The Americans of the era were equally proficient. Since it would take nearly a minute for the average group of people to sprint that far, that means you'd need a mob of at least 16-39 people to charge them to disarm them. The practicality of limiting firepower only exists in the minds of the clueless.

One of our deadliest shootings in history was Charles Whitman of UT Austin, used a bolt action Remington 700 hunting rifle to kill 11 of the 16 total fatalities there, and wounded 32 others, at ranges up to 500 yards. Then there was the D.C. / Beltway Sniper attackers that killed 17 people over a month. Now they used an AR-15 like Rifle, but in almost all the attacks, the victims were hit by a single bullet, then they moved locations. And there were at least 2 other mass shooters that used bolt action hunting rifles. Do you really want to convert mass shooters from close range weapons and tactics to longer range ones, as if this makes it better?

When paintball first started, they only made bolt action paint-guns. It took me and my friends about 10 minutes with a piece of PVC pipe to convert my bolt action gun into a pump action gun. It's not a complex process and would take about 15 minutes on the Internet to figure out. So Dystopia must outlaw bolt actions too, because they're still effective for mass shooting and crimes, and if you want, any idiot could convert them to pump action gun in half an hour or less.

So what did we learn? Even magazine limits and bans against semi-auto rifles and pistols, revolvers, pump and lever action guns won't work to stop or slow crime or mass shootings (and may make things worse), they will have to go to bolt action guns as well. Which leaves only break action guns and muzzle loaders... then we'll be "safe". Or will we?

Break action guns[edit | edit source]

Break Action
Here's a guy named Deuce putting 10 rounds in 10 seconds through a double barreled break-action shotgun. More at Break Action

If you think gun controllers are done, you haven't been paying attention. A mass shooter can easily use a break action guns: a top shooter can shoot about 1 round per second (60 rounds per minute), sustained fire, using a double barrel shotgun or rifle -- and that's without using his backup gun for charges. Remember scatter guns (shotguns) do MORE damage per shot and get more lethal the closer you get. Compared to the average mass murder incident 1-2 kills per minute, this is way more firepower than they need. So do you really think them only killed a dozen or so people is going to appease the gun grabbers?

One thing I can guarantee is that if the only guns legalized are break action guns, that there's a huge profit motive in figuring out how to make them quicker and easier to load -- thus they will figure out mechanisms to defeat the law, and more than that, criminals would smuggle, make and get around the law. They can just steal from the cops or military, if all else fails. In complete Police States like Russia, much of Europe and other places, where guns are virtually outlawed, mass shooters still get these guns. So you can raise the price, but you can't eliminate them.

Death by 1,000 cuts[edit | edit source]

Listen to gun controllers or their media and they will claim:, “Nobody wants to take away your guns… we just want reasonable controls. Why do you assume we want Gun Bans?”, and they get mad if you argue about gun bans, and they claim, “that’s not what I want”. They want to appear reasonable while stripping other people of their rights to self-defense. But even if you take them at their word, and pretend they don't ultimately want complete bans, what do they want in the meantime?

We just want to make you register them even though those aren't enforced
violate your privacy by publishing those lists (like NY/NJ did)
certify which guns you can buy/collect
require detrimental features they must have which drives up costs and down reliability/functionality
decide what beneficial or cosmetic features they can't have
limit magazine capacity even though this is completely ineffective at cutting down rate of fire or death rates
do background checks on you that have many false positives/negatives, and doesn't stop anyone since there's a black market
make you take safety tests every few years that waste time and money
make you get a note from me doctor and all your ex-partners saying that that you're fit to have one
add in “cooling off” periods no matter how many other guns you own
add complexity and cost to all transfers of ownership
arrest you if you loan your gun to anyone else (including family members)
punish you if you make any unauthorized modifications (and change what those are)
prohibit carrying in your car or on your person
micromanage how you store your guns “for the kids”, even if you don’t have kids
ban or limit or tax the ammo you can use
and of course charge you taxes and fees for doing all of this

Then if you break any of those rules (or any of the thousands of others) they'll throw you in prison and take away all your guns and liberty.

But they just want what's reasonable?

Those that haven't looked at the problem (or don't know guns and tactics) will come up with 1-10 simple "reasonable" ideas to make things better. Then you explain to them which ones have been implemented already, and why it didn’t work, and they don't get mad at themselves for not studying the topic before opining on something they know nothing about, they get mad at you for pointing out why their ideas didn't work. But either they're taking away all your rights at once, or one at a time (as listed above), is not reasonable: no matter which order you do it in. It is the incremental intolerance of gun controllers that has gun-rights advocates so dug in.

Someday, I’ll meet the one person that really wants just one type of gun, and will be completely satisfied when it does absolutely nothing to help with crime or mass shooting. But I’ll probably meet the Easter Bunny riding on a Unicorn first.

The Truth: Bans or Liars[edit | edit source]

However, we know that gun controllers come in a few flavors: those that admit they want complete bans, and liars.

I'm sure there are also fools that think the next ban will be the one that makes a difference, even if all the others didn't -- but they can be discounted because they can't do basic cause and effect. It is guaranteed that no matter what they get as far as laws/regulations/bans, crazies will still shoot people, and they’ll move to banning the next thing, and the next, until they get to their ideal: a police state where only the government (cops and military) have guns, and ruthlessly use them to make sure no one else does. What could go wrong?

We know the others are liars because of the following:

If you're so misinformed on the statistics/history to to believe that guns are responsible for killing people and eliminating guns would save lives, then OF COURSE they think the more they eliminate, then the more good they will do. It pretty much means with their premise, the only effective “gun control” would be a full banning of all guns -- and everything else is a lie (as shown above).
When they think the other side isn't listening (at their rally's and in their op-eds) they all talk about Utopia. “Why can’t we be like Australia, Japan or the UK? And eliminate all guns like they did.” They will attack you for pointing out that they do want gun bans, or for wanting to discuss the first thing about the tradeoffs made, or those countries real problems like crime, murder or illegal gun rates.
If you believe guns will be the only product in history that prohibition works again, and the allure won't create a black market, then you'll chase the dream. Of course life doesn't work that way, so as people don't comply and the black market flourishes they will keep pushing us towards stronger punishment, more police power, and more tyranny. But denial isn't just a river in Egypt, if they could be reasoned with, most already would have. Gun grabbers ability to deny reality far exceeds societies ability to dissuade them.
Remember what else this means. They not only need to ban the guns, they need to ban the knowledge and tools to make them. 3D printing must be stopped. Home machine tools, must be banned. Guns aren't hard to make: people can make guns out of $20 in Home Depot parts. Many of these gun designs go back to the 1800's: far easier than a meth lab or even pot farm. Banning the guns will drive up the demand (and profit) in making or smuggling them, so like prohibition everywhere it's tried, it will incentivize the behavior they're trying to discourage. Thus they need to control the tools to make the tools and even the knowledge of how to make the guns and the tools. You can't give up the 2nd, without giving up the 1st as well.

If you point out then when only the police/government has guns, then you live in a police state, or you point out what happened in most other countries that did that (remove limits on government, criminals and police), or even point out the massacres that happened in the U.S. by government or were stopped by civilians, and they just get madder. Stop interrupting me with facts.

Conclusion[edit | edit source]

If you think limiting liberty makes the world better/safer, then there's no end to the rationalization required to protect the children. A single gun control won't work, as proven by the 20,000+ gun control laws that still aren't enough. Why does anyone think that 20,001 is the magic number that will finally assuage their addiction for telling others what to do? So gun advocates know more about the intent of gun controllers than gun controllers will admit to, as proven by history. The only thing that will satisfy them is a police state: where only the police and government have guns, and the public is fully safe: just like Germany, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, and so on.

Which is why I ask (and never get an answer), "how many people would you like killed for your agenda?" It's not rhetorical, or offensive attack, it's just a logical thought-problem:

If the only way to get what you want, is gun-confiscation (which is what they want when they compare us to UK, Australia or Japan)
Gun confiscation would violate the constitution, that some will fight and die to protect
Thus at least it will get many killed going door-to-door, and will certainly get us an insurrection and maybe civil war: there's no way it doesn't destroy the America (as we know it) and remake it into something else.
So I ask, "what price are they willing to pay?" How many graves would be their limit before they would rethink their views?

I usually get attacked, called names, claims of being melodramatic, by just doing what they can't: cause and effect, actions and consequences.

Their choice is:

(a) grow, accept the reality that in America the price for gun bans is too high
(b) give up the fraud and accept that the road to gun-control utopia will be paved with the bodies of those that disagree with them. Accept that truth. And decide how many lives they'll sacrifice for their cause.
(c) deny reality, attack the sage offering them a chance at looking wisdom in the face, and ad hominem, change the subject, run-away.

Someday, I'll meet a gun grabber that won't choose (c), ignore the consequences of their actions, and continue down the path to mutually assured destruction.

At the heart of it, many gun-controllers are emotionally stunted control-freaks that don’t trust their neighbors with "a tool of death". And thus they'll start trying to take away those tools and liberties, one at a time, until they get to their end game: which they think is utopia, but is ultimately going to be murdering everyone that disagreed with them and resists. They’ll compromise only as long as you’re giving up your rights, one step at a time, but never on their own agenda. They're like the rapist demanding his victim compromise and just give him a blow-job, then pretending the victim is unreasonable for not going along with the rape. The reasonable ones are the civil libertarians who know the victim has inalienable rights, and those should not be negotiable or compromised away to begin with.

💭 The final solution
We know this would tear the nation apart, and start an insurrection/civil war, so I often ask, "how many people are you prepared to kill to get what you want?" They wave it off as melodramatic, or me being unreasonable, but it is they who are not thinking it through: “From my cold dead hands” is not just a metaphor. Guns are a way of life for way too many people in the U.S., even if provincial coastal liberals haven’t experienced it. There are people that would die to defend the constitution and their rights, and trying to take their guns would trigger some of them into action. McVeigh bombed IRS over Ruby Ridge and Waco (illegal overreach by the government). That's not to justify his actions (or anyone like him), but how many more of them do you think would come out of the woodwork, if you tried to take away the inalienable right to self defense, as recognized by the constitution? Gun-controllers may not have any clue about history, but the rest of us do: we're not the UK, Germany, or Japan. We fought the revolutionary war over gun control, "the British were coming [to lock up the guns]" is what got the shot heard around the World. I'm not eager to repeat that. Math says that with 330M people, even if only the 3rd standard deviation (which is way on the edge of a bell curve) means there's 891,000 people that would fight an insurrection against their government over this, even the 4th is 33,000 people, if you tried to take away their civil liberties (guns). These numbers are math's way of saying, "gun bans are a dumb fucking idea". When people try prohibitions, they fail at doing anything but turning otherwise law abiding citizens into criminals. And then many sympathizers start rooting and supporting the criminals over the government. If you could rewrite (or ignore) the Constitution, with a few hundred million guns on the street it would take a century of voluntary turn-ins to do anything good (if you assume removing liberty is good). And if you're too impatient for that (and progressive are), assuming people are too stupid to catch on and bury them, you would HAVE to create a police state, go door to door, force compliance, and deal with the blowback for these policies. And that's a lot of death just to get your way. There's no practical way that the ramifications of trying to take away guns wouldn't end in far more death and violence than leaving the people alone would. So while I have no idea how large it would be, whole countries and civilizations have fallen into generations of chaos for less. But best case, in a country of 330M, it would be significant and many more thousands would die to progressives ideas than the alternative. Thus the point is Gun control advocates are fooling themselves on, or being fooled by the politicians. They can divide the nation with their unreasonableness, but the only positive difference they can make, is to stop being so negative about their neighbors intent.

🔗 More

Guns
Guns are a tool. Gun prohibition is like the prohibition on drugs, alcohol or crime.

Gun control or gun ban?
If we assume guns are the problem, why would you tolerate a little murder (control), if you could get rid of it all (ban)?

Reload Times
There's a fallacy amongst the ignorant that limiting magazines to 10 rounds will help against mass shooters. If only.

🔗 Links

Tags: Guns Gun control or gun ban? Reload Times