I hesitate to wade into these kinds of conversations but a lot of what you wrote is inaccurate.
Shotguns have a limited range compared to rifles but it’s still at least 50 yards so it isn’t going to matter. People hunt deer with them, they aren’t like shotguns in video games. They can also use removable magazines and be as easy to reload as any other semi automatic firearm.
There is not a single difference between a “sniper rifle” and a hunting rifle.
Handguns are not meaningfully less lethal than rifles against unarmed targets at close range. The mass shooting at Virginia tech was one of the worst and was done with handguns.
> Assault rifles are rifles designed for killing humans (as opposed to hunting rifles)
Every type of firearm was designed for killing people. Today’s “hunting rifle” was the standard issue infantry weapon in WWI and WWII. Russia is still arming some soldiers with what you would call a hunting rifle in Ukraine right now.
Getting shot by a handgun is not like getting shot by AR-15. Even at the same caliber the muzzle velocity of a modern rifle makes the bullet that much deadlier.
Prime Minister Robert Fico got shot three (?) times with a handgun and it now looks like he'll survive. Of course he got the best medical care, but still, it serves to illustrate my point.
With an AK-47 I cannot hit anything at 50 yards. The combination of kickback, terrible sight, rough trigger make it pretty hard to use effectively. It's one of the most popular weapons in war zones (doesn't jam, easy to repair, etc) but in my hands it's useless.
I understand we're dealing with shades of gray here. It's about making a policy tradeoff between how many legitimate uses a weapon type has (for example home defense, farm use, hunting) and how many victims it claims.
> Getting shot by a handgun is not like getting shot by AR-15. Even at the same caliber the muzzle velocity of a modern rifle makes the bullet that much deadlier.
Yeah I should have been more clear about my thoughts on this, my apologies.
Rifle rounds are unquestionably more deadly from a ballistic standpoint but at close range (25 yards or less, just for the sake of hypotheticals), before handgun round velocity falls off enough that they are ineffective, shot placement and how fast you can stop any bleeding matter much more than ballistics.
There aren’t many mass shooting events I can think off where it would have made a big difference if a pistol caliber had been used instead of a rifle caliber - it definitely would in cases like the Las Vegas concert though. That wasn’t an untrained teenager though so it might be outside of the scope of discussion anyways.
> I understand we're dealing with shades of gray here. It's about making a policy tradeoff between how many legitimate uses a weapon type has (for example home defense, farm use, hunting) and how many victims it claims.
Agreed and thank you for your very reasonable response.
Shotguns have a limited range compared to rifles but it’s still at least 50 yards so it isn’t going to matter. People hunt deer with them, they aren’t like shotguns in video games. They can also use removable magazines and be as easy to reload as any other semi automatic firearm.
There is not a single difference between a “sniper rifle” and a hunting rifle.
Handguns are not meaningfully less lethal than rifles against unarmed targets at close range. The mass shooting at Virginia tech was one of the worst and was done with handguns.
> Assault rifles are rifles designed for killing humans (as opposed to hunting rifles)
Every type of firearm was designed for killing people. Today’s “hunting rifle” was the standard issue infantry weapon in WWI and WWII. Russia is still arming some soldiers with what you would call a hunting rifle in Ukraine right now.