Unlike the gun lovers replying to you and being either stupid (“guns don’t kill people”) or silly (“assault weapons doesn’t mean anything” - the point is that you don’t need a fucking full auto high caliber rifle at home), I am a European and I agree.

I have an automatic rifle as a check against tyranny and home invaders. Two types of people who do not abide by gun laws.

I expected them. I teach in the American south. Attitudes and facile arguments like this are about everywhere in this area.

...you have an automatic rifle as a check against tyranny?

Dude, the last time I checked, neither an Abrams, a drone, nor an anti-materiel rifle like the Barrett give a fish-bellied fuck about your personal firearm.

I -hate- that excuse. If the Big Green Killpower wanted your ass, there’d be fuck-all you could do about…

It’s the guns, the people, the situation they find themselves in, the lack of responsibility, the ease at which people can acquire firearms, the lack of sincerity when acknowledging the damage they can quite easily inflict, the lack of education on responsible gun ownership, the way people fetishize gun ownership, and…

The replies to you are really bumming me out.

Given the length of your post (and I did read all of it), I assume you missed the replies where I made clear that “ease of modification for military-use firing modes” is generally what I use as a definition.

A semi-auto pistol can double-tap with a minimum of effort, and a little bit of hand positioning.

That’s…

It didn’t disappear; you appear to be in the greys here. I’m not dismissing replies, so either you’re not looking at “pending” comments, or something’s screwy with Kinja (which is also a possibility).

Military assault weapons and civilian solid-stock rifles are two very different things, this is true.

However, there are…

I’m no redneck, but I don’t have a bleeding heart either. Do you consider an AR-15 an assault weapon? Because if so, your definition is skewed. A rifle that only has only one firing mode (semi automatic) cannot be considered an assault weapon. “Assault weapon” is a political buzz word. Just like armor piercing rounds…

Even having a gun for home defence causes issues. Not only does it escalate any situation you try to use it in (most home invaders aren’t looking to kill people but rather just want your stuff) but also increases the chance of someone accidentally killing themselves with said weapon.

Oh good. I hate people who do not understand that it’s less to do with the stock of the weapon than what it’s capable of doing, the type of ammunition it is intended to fire, and the ease with which it can be modified to military standards.

But let’s keep on oversimplifying the debate for the sake of infatilizing…

Hi there. I’ve been to BCT. I come from a military family, and my mother was a LEO for many, many years. I’m also married to a service member.

I know quite well what a military assault weapon is, and what a wood-stocked long rifle are.

Kindly look elsewhere for your quibbles with semantics.

I was in Europe for a few weeks last November when there were those three mass shootings in like a week.

I’ve not the first problem with personal firearm ownership for home defense, hunting, or target shooting (note: none of these pursuits require assault weapon ownership; I have a huge issue with assault weapons as a whole).

I do, however, have a serious issue with defining an entire nation through firearm ownership.…

Can you elaborate on what exactly is “South Park” politics? If I’m a fan of South Park, do people assume I vote a certain way?

Libertarianism is a paper ideology. It looks convincing as a dry equation, but completely falls apart when subjected to real-world, human conditions. Surprise, surprise, trying to apply overly simplistic economic principles to every sphere of human society and governance is not an effective way for the world to…

South Park can be fine in doses, but as a former fan (like most people back in my high school days, when the show first started airing, I thought it was this amazing, transgressive thing), I got really, really turned off at how so much of the point came to be to emptily poke at any sort of genuine, real-world social…

No, I think he very clearly calls the Pauls’ intentions and motivations into question, though yes, of course Burnenko is also questioning the good sense of those they targeted among the voting public:

He [Donald Trump] gets South Park—its cheap spite, its self-congratulation, the fantasy that privileged scorn for political correctness is subversive, rather than the exact opposite—better than the Pauls ever did...

Neither the infant or the mother are contagious.