Who are you and what have you done with the real d33zY?

I locked him away in the left half of my brain.

lol...now that's funny

For the record, the reason the second ammendment is in the constitution is not so the people could kill deer really fast, It's so we have the ability to overthrow the government if the government becomes tyrannical or oppressive.

Yeah, I'm aware of the reason.

If the military has machine guns and the populace has nothing but barrel loaded black powder muskets, where do you think the odds lie?

About the same as they are now -- 0%.

However, If we BOTH have machine guns, and the problem is big enough for the people to mount a resistance to the military in significant numbers, things can be different.

That's just it -- if we BOTH have machine guns, and nothing BUT machine guns, things can be different. However, the general populace does NOT have: anti-personnel mines; anti-tank mines; cruise missiles; drone planes; fighter jets; smart bombs; nuclear weapons; tanks; howitzers; Patriot missiles; etc. Look how well the machine-gun totin' Taliban did against the US military. Do you honestly believe that an insurrection by the citizenry would fare any better? The only way that the US government can ever be overthrown through the use of force is if it's a military coup, in which case, they already have machine guns (and better).

If you are going to look at the historical record about why the second amendment exists, you also have to remember that at the time it was written, there wasn't such a disparity between the government/military and what the average shmuck could get his hands on (cannonnade not withstanding).

That leads me back to my previous argument, which is that the only other use I've heard for these weapons is hunting. Neither of the two uses stand up to any valid reasoning that I can find, and, as such, have no need to be in the hands of the general populace.

cannonnade not withstanding

And it's not like the cannon is a good anti-personnel weapon, anyway. They're useful for destroying infrastructure like forts and ships, but it's unlikely that a guerilla army is going to have such things anyway (in their time or ours).

And it's not like the cannon is a good anti-personnel weapon

Oh yeah? You'd better talk to Napoleon about that. Or Henry Shrapnel.

Once again I have learned something interesting from this forum. I never realised Shrapnel was actually named after a person. Although, I have to admit I never really thought about the origin of the word, other than it maybe sounded a bit French

Hmmm. Good point. I was thinking about the sea-defense mortars that I see around here more than anything else.

Just FYI:

During the Napoleonic conflict, to use a cannon in an anti-personnel role, you'd generally fire "grapeshot". In essence, you'd stick some gunpowder in the cannon, and then stuff a load of crap (metal shards, pebbles) down the barrel. When you fire the cannon, the crap all comes rushing out of the barrel and splays out, like a blunderbus. This will make a mess of anybody in front of the business end of the cannon.

Unfortunately, the range of grapeshot sucks -- after a few metres, it's all dispersed and you're lucky if you do more than annoy people with the noise.

Onto the scene comes one Mr Henry Shrapnel, who invents a cunning way of increasing the range of anti-personnel weapons.

Essentially:

1. Take a hollow cannon ball.
2. Put a charge in the centre of it, with a fuse.
3. Around the charge, pack all of the crap that you would have stuffed into the cannon. Musketballs are good.

Hey presto, you have a weapon suitable for maiming people at a distance. It looks like those bombs that Wile E Coyote always seems to end up with.

You then put this shell in the cannon, with a small gunpowder charge to propel it towards the enemy.

The cunning (and difficult) part is that the fuse of the shell is lit by the propellant charge firing. You have to cut the fuse to the correct length, otherwise it'll either detonate before it gets to the French (in this case), or it'll still be fizzing when it lands (and can be snuffed out and subsequently fired back at the English).

Yeah, but look at Vietnam. They didn't have much more than machine guns. Face it, The US government with all of it's technology and high powered weapons, couldn't tell 250 million armed people what to do. Yeah, they could nuke or carpet bomb the whole country, but a huge wasteland with no economy is worthless, so it would defeat the purpose of their quest for power. The only way they could win is by killing the opposition, and the more Americans that are armed the greater our chance is of staying in control. And their weapons for man-on-man combat won't be superior to ours, that is unless they manage to take our guns away.





That gun is an AR-15 style rifle, and in terms of it's function and legality, isn't much different from this rifle:




That gun is a Remington .22 caliber semi-auto. The AR-15 is a .223 caliber semi-auto. The main differences is the AR-15 was designed in the battlefield, so it is easy to disassemble and clean, is very accurate, has little recoil, very rugged, has a pistol grip, and it looks like a badass machine gun. The law sees no difference between the Remington and the AR-15, and the differences in the way someone would use either to hunt would be minor, except maybe the hunted animal would a little intimidated by the looks of the AR-15....

Banning either of these semi-auto rifles isn't going to happen anytime soon, and I won't be surprised when a court rules the assault weapon ban unconstitutional. Keep in mind that the Crime BIll of 1994 had nothing to do with fully-automatic guns; it basically only banned certain accesories from legal semi-automatic "assault rifles". In other words, put a bayonet and a pistol grip onto that Remington and it suddenly becomes an illegal "assault weapon" under the law.

Fully-automatics are legal but it is a pain in the ass to register it and you have to pay a $200 fee, and it is a felony to possess an unregistered automatic.. Not an ideal route for a criminal, but they could (illegally) buy parts off of the black market (and I say on the black market because it is a felony just to own these parts as unregistered) and modify a semi-auto gun like the AR-15 to fire auto.

My roommate hunts sometimes. He's got a rifle in our house, but it doesn't bother me too much. I know it's for hunting and he keeps it pretty much in storage so there's little chance of accident in our particular case.

I can't imagine what he would think about people using automatic weapons for hunting. He'd probably call them lazy and stupid. As would I.

and can be snuffed out and subsequently fired back at the English

Hehehe, takes more balls than I've got to attempt this. Like playing a life and death game of Hot Potatoe.

Not many people own automatic weapons, and yeah it would be pretty rediculous to hunt with one, not to mention irresponsible since most of your shots are probably going to miss your target.

Reminds me of the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the Jewish guy plays hot potato grenade style with the Germans. I've seen it a thousand times, but I still leave a crease in the sofa.