Quote:
Originally posted by Lebell
Should I take your silence to mean agreement that the AWB is a joke and that bans on these guns are based more on irrational fear and not for practical reasons*?
(Practical reasons that I could argue is a good reason that nuclear weapons shouldn't be privately owned, btw.)
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I didn't view the AWB as being based on irrational fear. I interpret it as the legislature attempting to ban weapons they viewed as dangerous. The gun industry then found loopholes to continue building weapons that would operate in a similar fashion to the ones that were banned.
They chose elements they thought would stop a certain class of weapons being produced and used. I don't think it's accurate to blame the lawmakers because manufacturers then found ways to get around the legislation. That is, they didn't want citizens arming themselves with pin-point accurate weapons that shot a lot of bullets in rapid succession (we can agree, I'm assuming, that even though both weaopns require one finger pull per bullet, changing 7 seven round clips takes longer than 1 fifty round clip).
This is my take on the situation, although I don't doubt that some people have capitalized on the fear factor of the looks of these weapons. I just don't think that was the only, or even primary, motivation.