The Virginia House of Delegates approved an assault weapons ban on a party line vote Friday.
Fairfax County Democratic Del. Dan Helmer’s bill would end the sale and transfer of assault firearms manufactured after July 1, 2024. It also prohibits the sale of certain large capacity magazines.
“This bill would stop the sale of weapons similar to those I and many of the other veterans carried in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Helmer said.
To me, if the magazine is bigger than 5, and you can just hold the trigger, it should be illegal. Five rounds with five finger presses is all somone should ever need for hunting.
I don’t know shit about guns nor do I care for them, but that is just my general feeling. It’s the mag size and the speed it can be discharged at that matters.
you ABSOLUTELY cannot, that’s been the case for a very long time now.
there are plenty of other things like that, it’s not simply just a ‘here’s what you need to kill a deer and that’s all you get’
I’m not a hunter, I don’t kill or even eat animals; the motivation behind owning firearms doesn’t begin or end with hunting.
Nobody is out there with full auto. period.
Looks like they may have edited it, they also hate normal ol’ semi. Can’t please the Anti-Self Defense people.
That’s a fair thought. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and feelings on it.
For what it’s worth, automatic (holding the trigger) weapons are not available to American civilians without a class 3 permit. This permit is expensive and requires (I think) annual reapplication. I have never met anyone with this permit.
As for magazine size, I like to have a higher capacity for more fun at the range. One person I know got a 50 round drum magazine for their handgun. If you saw it, it would look silly and the thing would not be easily concealed. It’d be like carrying around a full Nintendo 64.
For my own opinion on the matter I think we need to focus on proper storage. No need for a teenager to have unrestricted access to guns. If we stopped that, there wouldn’t have been a columbine shooting. Most if not all gun accidents are from mishandling, any time a person underage has one, it’s due to improper storage (not locked up). I guess what I’m saying is the responsibility falls on the gun owner to ensure their items are secure and handled properly and with respect.
Many countries that the pro-gun community insists have “banned guns” will let you go to a range, unlicensed, and fire basically anything the range offers.
Meanwhile in America, scoping gun laws to reasonable use is staunchly opposed. We’re supposed to accept that semi-automatic weapons with high capacity accessories are going to be sold to domestic terrorists and idiots, so people can “have fun at the range”.
Not only is that deeply fucked in the head, it’s not even necessary.
What a strange coincidence, I’ve never heard of these weapons being used in a mass shooting or gang crime, despite the pro-gun community insisting that regulations don’t work.
Not necessary is not a good reason to not have something. Cars don’t need to go 100mph, clothes don’t need to have colors, Highly flavored foods are not necessary and actually may harm people with the preservatives and whatever else may be in the food. You’re doing the same thing that conservatives do with border patrol reasons. "they could be terrorists and rapists. Not everyone who owns guns is a murderer, just like not every person crossing the border is a terrorist.
Cars are subjected to licensing and safety regulations that are being constantly changed. Heavy vehicles will soon include mandatory ECU speed limiters to address exactly this. As far as I’m aware, drivers haven’t been parading around making flowery death threats over it.
The FTC has had principles for marketing junk food to children for almost a decade and harmful additives are routinely banned. As far as I’m aware, children haven’t been parading around making flowery death threats over it.
Which is why legal immigration processes scrutinize character and intent and can be revoked at any time.
All your “but other things are dangerous” list does is demonstrate that gun laws aren’t held to the standard as any every other public risk.
could you be anymore reductive with this statement?
yes, smack down that strawman argument you just propped up!!
I know you want to clean up after him and pretend there’s some noble use for high capacity, semi-automatic weapons but it’s literally the reason he gave for owning them.
Gonna need at least 15 rounds for a self-defense oriented pistol, and 30 for a home defense rifle.
This is the classic problem with democracy “I don’t know anything about this topic but I definitely have opinions anyway.” And look, I get it, and I don’t have a solution to this democratic problem. There’s no good test for reasonable expertise so we can’t be excluding people from having opinions in areas based on knowledge. Furthermore, if you feel strongly that an issue affects you, how well educated do you really need to be before your opinion becomes valid?
Yea, I don’t buy it. I’m saying I don’t know much about guns because I don’t want any in my house, but given what people “claim” they need guns for (hunting / defense) 5 bullets should be plenty.
WTF do you need 30 rounds for? Are you fighting an army? My guess is that any burglar is running away after the first shot, you’re not going to be in an action movie 30 minute shoot out.
This is the problem with 2a people, they have these fantasies of what is “needed” that’s completely detached from reality and just serves to provide guns to maniacs that can go on shooting rampages.
Self-defense pistols require higher mag capacity for 2 reasons.
One reason is because the goal of shooting an attacker isn’t to kill him from blood loss in 40 minutes. It’s to stop him from killing you in 5 seconds, meaning it generally requires multiple hits to physically stop them.
And the bigger reason is because precise shooting under stress is really, really difficult. In a 2-way shooting scenario with 5 rounds the most likely outcome is you miss all 5 shots. You carry 12-15 rounds in the mag not so you can shoot someone 12 times - you do it so you have 12 chances to hit.
It’s also one of the reasons you don’t hear about people with concealed firearms taking out mass shooters very often. Anyone with a lick of training knows they’re going to miss most of their shots and that they’re more likely to shoot an innocent bystander than the shooter.
If the goal is to stop someone in 5 seconds, why would you need more rounds for the higher caliber rifle? Seems like 5 rifle rounds and 12-15 pistol rounds would be enough stopping power.
But if your argument is more chances to hit, well then you’re just advocating for more rounds going somewhere other than there target, and 30 (high caliber rifle) rounds is certainly too much to fire out your walls willy nilly.
it’s like you only read half of the comment and raced to post this reply…
the comment you replied to said:
the reason why you need more than 5 rifle rounds, IS NOT about stopping power. It’s about giving you more than enough chances to land hits (if such a thing is absolutely necessary, the #1 goal of any sane gun owner is to avoid a firefight at ALL FUCKING COSTS).
Precise shooting in a stressful environment is really fucking hard, your heart is hammering your hands are shaking, you realize this could be the end. All of these factors heavily affect shooting ability in the moment.
you are making a lot of assumptions here, like assuming it’s home defense shooting 556 or the like. What happens when you’re out in the wilderness and end up in a face off with a bear or a cougar? There are so many complex settings and situations and here you are framing the conversation as if this only applies to defending your bedroom or hallway.
For home defense, many many people take this into account and avoid calibers with high penetration power. Not every home defenser has 5.56 or .300blk. Plenty of “assault weapons” that shoot pistol calibers
Nice ad hominem, thank you for putting your poor faith on display right away, but no, I was merely just addressing the points as presented.
So why did they say the rifle needed more than the handgun?
So the numbers should be the same then, no?
Which is dangerous for anyone nearby.
Seems like you’re the one making assumptions, champ, all I implied is higher caliber, because I don’t think people often refer to .22 carbines as rifles.
Okay, so how many shots do you think you need for a bear, or for a cougar? Because even if you’re squeezing your trigger as fast as possible, a cougar is gonna be able to finish you before you finish your 30 round mag.
oh cute, a nice little strawman to finish with, almost needed a reminder that you were a bad faith actor. Didn’t say anything about assault weapons though, scare quotes were cute though, definitely keep that up.
Not who you’re arguing with, but I am who you initially replied to.
I never said a rifle needed more ammo than a pistol, and you’re claiming I did. I only addressed handguns in my comment. So maybe there’s some accuracy to the claim you are framing your reply before reading the comments…
Also, an AR-15 is a .22 inch (22 caliber) carbine. It’s not a .22lr carbine (though I have BCG replacement that let’s me run .22lr through it for cheaper plinking).
Also not who you’re arguing with nor who you originally replied too, but:
He didn’t, but “because the pistol still needs to be concealable.” Jam this in your pants and it’ll 100% stick out, or “print” as they call it. Rifles are inherrently less concealable, so they may as well have their standard capacity magazines.
Then the same is true for the person attacking you.
The pro-gun community insists that even “a lick of training” should be entirely optional.
There are multiple reasons you need a small handful of bullets for self defense:
You don’t want to have to count rounds during the most stressful situation in your life. You should be focused on other tasks besides worrying about round count and reloading.
Bullets are the fastest and most reliable way to disable someone, yes, but they’re not instant like in the movies. Unless you get a head shot (usually not advised) or hit their spine (a bit of luck) they don’t have to stop fighting for a decent amount of time. You need multiple hits until they give up or are forced to.
You use up bullets way faster than you think. Your scenario where a 30 round magazine is appropriate (to you) would average one shot per minute. A typical self defense shooting is averaging multiple shots per second.
Smart home invaders bring buddies.
If they knew you only had five shots, couldn’t they just count your shots and then come after you?
Do you really want to have to deal with a potentially deadly encounter with “enough” preparation, or would you like to have way more than enough?
Going by the pro-gun communities own statistics, it takes 75 million gun owners to see 100,000 “defensive gun uses” that can be independently verified.
So it looks like for 99.9% of gun owners, they needed exactly 0 rounds.
Thankfully. However I bet those 100k were glad they had a few.
Do you think this logic should be used for statutory rape laws? Should we let the experts in having sex with children write them because surely nobody else could get it right?
We can all clearly see the problems and we can all clearly see the “experts” doing absolutely nothing to solve them.
It’s a person on social media making a comment. It’s not even actual legislation.
But anyway, just to let us know your qualifications, how many people have you killed in self defense and how many bullets did it take?
what an absurd false equivolency. The person you are replying to is saying that we shouldn’t be forcing through bad laws written by lawmakers who don’t understand the specifics of the thing they are crafting law for, and your response is to say that we shouldn’t use pedos to write child sex laws?
We should just pass laws on feelings and not specifics?
This is absolutely about actual legislation