Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

@undefined @muzikant Hard to do that when the main customer urging them to do so is the US government.

@muzikant Hundreds, if not thousands, of legal gun models match that criteria. They just don't look as scary as the AR-15.

@muzikant Lol, it's not just personal experience. It's literally the selling point of the round.

And those people aren't doing "research", unless you count watching Rambo movies and watching media coverage of prior incidents where the shooters' names and photos are up for the whole world to see. They're picking what looks scary or cool because they've seen them in movies and on TV and are imitating.

If they were doing research, they would choose guns specific to their situation or plan, which would not all be the same one.

@muzikant I use personal experience to back up my claims. I've shot both at soft tissue targets (in my case, melons).

Both bullets cause shock waves that balloon out and cause massive damage. What more comparison do you need?

More importantly, the technique of hollowing out a round's point can be used on any caliber, so there's no fixed point of comparison to begin with. Even AR-15 rounds can be purchased with hollow points, and non-AR-15 rounds can have higher powder loads to go the speed the AR rounds go and do damage the same way they do (although this usually requires modifications to the weapon's receiver to handle the increased pressure involved). Several calibers do it by default.

Meanwhile, the AK-47 is more reliable, has a bigger magazine capacity, is cheaper because Russia made tons of them during the cold war and now they're available surplus, and uses bigger bullets that are typically made out of steel, which can penetrate through multiple walls... and it's even the quintessential movie bad guy gun. Yet people are concerned about AR-15s.

@muzikant Again, first google result (and personal experience).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow-point_bullet
Specifically, read the Mechanism section for a description of the destructive potential of the mushrooming effect.

@muzikant Against an unarmored target, you get almost the exact same effect by hollowing out the point of any other type of round. Hollow-points are freely sold legally across the country.

@muzikant Why not?

@muzikant According to this study, only about half of defensive incidents with a gun occur on one's own property. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4109494

And your "any gun" argument works in the opposite direction too. The fact that "any gun" would work in an AR-15's place makes it that much more silly of an idea to ban AR-15s specifically.

@muzikant Literally the first result on google details ten such examples:
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/defensive-ar-15-uses/#:~:text=Mary%2C%20Florida%2C%20a%20group%20of,rounds%20before%20the%20threat%20ceased.

@muzikant You don't really think that's true, right? AR-15s are used for defense of self or others all the time. Those examples just aren't as hyped by the media.

@alfredo_liberal I'm so thankful I took high school statistics so I don't have to live with that fear.

Even as a relatively-privileged white man, I'm far more afraid of the police abusing their authority to harm me than some media-overhyped punk mass shooter.

@TomWellborn Why, though? I'm a gun owner and even I think they're crazy. Nobody can reach people like that.

@TomWellborn Good article... couple notes though:
1) Your list of reasons why people buy AR-15s was pretty solid, but you missed two big ones: (a) Because they're high-quality and reliable, and (b) because of their popularity, they and their ammo are reasonably priced compared to other models.
2) You talk about the idolization of the AR-15, but ignore similar conversation-stifling effects stemming from its demonization. When anti-gun activists talk about banning AR-15s but not guns with the exact same capabilities only with a wood stock, it's difficult for their opponents to take them seriously.
3) In the solutions section, you didn't have an entry for voluntary government-funded gun buyback systems. That's a great way to get guns off the street before they "fall" into the wrong hands.
4) Throughout the article, it often felt like you were conflating gun owners with gun culture warriors, when the latter are only a very small vocal minority subset of the former.

@GregCirillo Then that video is wrong. The .223 is a very small round, but it's designed to go supersonic, much faster than larger rounds, which imparts it with considerably more force.

@pganssle Have you considered just buying a digital camera separate from your phone? With those requirements, it would probably be a lot easier to find two specialized bits of hardware instead of one super-specialized mashup.