REDDIT: The gun control post you came here to see can now be found here: http://liberaltaria.com/?p=7
Although WordPress.com has since apologized and insisted this blog was suspended solely because it triggered an automated anti-spam mechanism, I have since moved to a new host that is in my control.
This blog can now be found at: http://www.liberaltaria.com/
Liberaltaria 
Very well done, thank you!
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Thank you for a well written and thought out post. Do you have a twitter name?
You use the wrong “vain”
I can’t find what you are referring to. Could you please provide more detail? thanks…
The first sentence in the last paragraph, the children of Sandy Hook die in VAIN, not VEIN.
Only one hiccup here. The pro-assault-style-weapon folks have taken to calling military features, such as a handgrip, “cosmetic features.”
Pretty clever. Yet, here’s the thing. The handgrip, collapsible stock and flash suppressor are in no wise cosmetic, and I can prove it quite easily. How? Ask the military. Of any country. Is it remotely logical that militaries spend money on “cosmetic features?” No – that’s silly. Why are the features there? Because they make the weapon more effective. These guns are about as heavily engineered as anything else the military buys, and they buy things because they work, not because of their style points.”Cosmetic” they ain’t. Relevant to military lethality? Yup.
I used to own an AR-style in CA until they went illegal. And yes, I went and got a nice, brown gun – in fact, the Ruger Mini-14 shown in the article. It’s not quite in the same league – the handgrip is a significant part of that.
“Because they make the weapon more effective. These guns are about as heavily engineered as anything else the military buys, and they buy things because they work, not because of their style points.”Cosmetic” they ain’t. Relevant to military lethality? Yup.”
Bull. They’re about ergonomics for comfort, which does NOTHING to increase lethality, thus they are demonized by people like you because they “look scary!” This is not a video game, changing the stock or muzzle attachment does not give you +50 damage and +10 to accuracy.
“I used to own an AR-style in CA until they went illegal.”
I might be wrong on this, but I’m 99.9% sure that if you already owned one you were allowed to keep it. Even so, they’re still legal as long as you don’t have certain “scary” features on them.
Flash suppresor: Its primary intent is to reduce the chances that the shooter will be blinded in low light conditions. … it is only a secondary benefit that the flash suppressor reduces the intensity of the flash visible to the enemy.
Secondly, making guns more comfortable to shoot (pistol grip, adjustable stock) has a direct relationship to the lethality.
That’s ridiculous. You’re basically saying that the AR you had was “more deadly” than your Ruger Mini-14, only because of the different angle your wrist sits at while aiming the gun. It shoots the same round 5.56 so how can it be “more deadly”?
I loved your post! Thank you!
Just one small nit-picky point: The mass shooting in Arizona was not in a GFZ.
And I’ve never understood the purpose of GFZs, but I have speculated a little in the last few months:
It’s not to prevent those bent on doing harm (obviously. If someone has the intention of shooting someone, I don’t think they care about the extra charge…), but to prevent accidental discharges. Except… I haven’t heard of ANY accidental discharges by CCers… ever. I searched for a few hours and couldn’t find any statistics.
It seems to me like it doesn’t happen at all!
Thank you for your post, especially as someone who did a 180. I really enjoyed reading it.
One small correction, in the diagram for 1994 Assault Weapon Ban your arrow for “threaded barrel” should point to the end. By definition a rifle has a barrel which is grooved or “rifled,” however by convention this isn’t always the case as there are “smooth bore rifles.” Rather “threaded barrel” refers to a barrel which is threaded at the end to accept a suppressor.
“…so that those poor children in Sandy Hook did not die in vein.” should be *vain*
Reducing gun violence does NOT necessarily reduce violence in general. People are so focused on the gun deaths that they forget that the deaths may have happened anyway. The Sandy Hook SHOOTING tragedy could just have just as easily been the Sandy Hook FIRE BOMB tragedy.
Also, I am SICK and TIRED of the current government society thinking that we the people are either too violent, too crazy, or too stupid to own guns…..BUT, the surest way to make somebody violent in THIS country is to make them feel like their rights are denied. It doesn’t matter what the “right” is.