Tom

Oh, I agree. I'm especially amused by people who claim ATF doesn't have the authority to make the change when the loophole was created by an ATF change in the first place. And it will go to court, that much pretty much goes without saying. The final rule has been approved, but it doesn't go into effect until after it is published in the National Register - which as far as I can tell, hasn't happened yet. The major potential issue isn't the courts potentially legalizing short barreled rifles or shotguns for the masses (unless pistol braces are a major revenue stream for your company). The question is whether the Court which issued Bruen may take offence with the "may issue" nature of the NFA's approval process. With previous iterations of SCOTUS, I'd expect a certain amount of deference to the Government's position - especially with regards to an 89 (-ish) year old law. Now?

You might want to keep an eye on West Virginia vs EPA as well, though I'm not certain it's as big a stick as some of the "2A" crowd might want to believe. ATF did, however, recently issue updated rules on 'stabilizing braces' which will generate a lot of lawyer fees in the near term and could result in a weakening of NFA requirements. Worse case scenario, from a gun control perspective, given the current court would be overturning the NFA in its entirety. I'm thinking that is wishful thinking on some people's part, but I'll be surprised if the final ruling only overturns the updated rule. A more viable fix to the main problem isn't any easier than fighting/re-fighting the same fights about gun control legislation in the state houses and courts. Getting people in crisis the help they need shouldn't be that hard, but it is. Convincing people that 'every problem can be solved with a gun' is not true is also going to be harder than it should be.

This isn't particularly potent. Not more so than any number of rounds already on the market. Edit: Just for clarity, it's potent for it's size, but it isn't bringing new levels of lethality to the table. .308 win / 7.62x51 ARs have been on the market for decades and are far more potent, for example. Quibble - those are the numbers for the "non-hybrid" cases, which are using conventional brass. If you read up a bit in the article you'll see the hybrid cases are firing that same 135 grain projectile at 3,000 feet per second. Additionally, even the hybrid cases aren't being loaded to their maximum rated pressure at this point - for reasons(?)... The expectation is that the hybrid cases will be available on the civilian market. To my knowledge, the specs on the military loading of the cartridge haven't been released to the public and these numbers are for the civilian loadings. And, yes, SIG is hyping the bejeepers out of the rifle and the cartridge. You can count me as skeptical on how well the new rifle and cartridge (and scope) will work out in practice, but I'm not in a position to make more than quasi-informed guesses.

New weapons change doctrine all the time. I doubt it in this case primarily because I don't think the XM-5 is particularly suited to an active shooter scenario compared to a typical AR-type rifle. If, on the other hand, the rifle lives up to its hype and becomes readily available, expect doctrines to be adapted or developed accordingly. Cops, firefighters, and even soldiers aren't expected to throw their lives away needlessly either. The point of small unit tactics is coordinated action. Large groups of people mindlessly acting independently results in Keystone Kops. That said, leadership would clearly seem to have been lacking. Instead of Keystone Kapers, we saw everybody waiting on somebody (and not just anybody), so we ended up with nobody doing what needed to be done...

You may be over-estimating how easy it is to get the equipment. You can order a drone online and have it shipped to your door. I'm not sure how hard it would be to find the recipes for simple explosives, but it's clearly not impossible. A firearm either requires dealing with a licensed dealer or finding someone to sell you something off-the-books. Neither being quite as simple as point and click. (and on-book is a little harder now for the 18-20 set with the additional gun control legislation that passed following Uvalde)

True enough, my intent being to point out that simply sending a projectile down range is an awfully broad definition. Is it? The clays market is just one segment, and no, it isn't necessarily dominant in any way. There are also multiple other target sports, hunting, and collector markets - and that's before we get into the self-defense, security/LE, and assorted prepper markets. Assuming every gun owner is "in to" the same guns is a little like assuming every TTRPG player is "in to" Dungeons and Dragons. As someone who actually owns a skeet gun, it wouldn't be my first choice. While I can certainly load with buckshot or slugs instead of my usual skeet loads (1oz of #9 shot doing about 1150fps), I'd still need to be fairly close to be effective and an 8 pound shotgun with 28" barrels isn't particularly concealable or nimble in close quarters. Yes, I'm drawing an assumption. Based on the assertion that the primary purpose of every gun is to be a weapon. I'm in agreement with you on this point. The "lone hero with a gun" thing is entirely overdone and over-glamorized in our entertainment media and many video games. I've 'heard' guns are a part of the US's cultural mythology, and I can't disagree with that assertion. I've worked at two different shooting ranges over the years - and I've no idea how many times I've taught foreign visitors how to shoot. In other countries, you visit landmarks or try the local cuisine - in the US, you find someplace where you can shoot a gun. The 'funny' thing in my mind, is listening to the argument about actually teaching kids something about gun safety in schools is the mirror of listening to arguments about teaching them about sex. One side insists knowledge will cut down on unintended consequences, while the other blindly insists we need to keep the kids from being taught anything about the subject and thinking they don't already have at least a faint idea from watching their screens. Nothing bad could possibly come from that... Thank you. I'd also like to think, when it comes to guns, I'm closer to the norm rather than being an exception.

(Rather than continuing to “talk code”, the video in question is Beau of the Fifth Column and the rifle is the SIG MCX Spear/XM-5) An additional point of consideration with this rifle, is you have to look at the system as a whole. The rifle is a nice piece of engineering, but that isn’t what’s supposed to make it such a big deal - either for the military or in civilian hands. It’s using a new ammunition technology which supposedly results in a round which is capable of defeating Class-IV body armor at ranges in the 500+ yards category and it’s getting a super-snifty sci-fi scope (XM157 from Vortex) which is supposed to make the average soldier competent out to those distances. The scope isn’t expected to be available to civilians in the near term and the price tag I’ve seen spitballed is upwards of $10k. Assuming this whole thing doesn’t turn into another military boondoggle, and ends up on the civilian market (because! Hey! ‘Murica!), mass shooters aren’t your main concern. It's snipers.

Just looked online, I found it for $22,221.99 - out of stock -, so you will still need divine favor apparently, in addition to the transfer fees...

I've seen that video, and his estimation on when that rifle will be readily available to the public is wildly optimistic (from a shooter's perspective) and I doubt the video was part of the issue at Uvalde - though the firearms community contains as many ignorant people as any other community. At the time of the video the civilian version of the rifle had an MSRP of $7999 and required two NFA transfer fees (plus a possible act of god) to acquire. The ammo isn't easy to come by either, being an entirely new caliber. My personal take on what happened at Uvalde was a massive failure of leadership, but my opinion is that of any other person getting his information from the news. You might also want to clarify what you mean by "cheap guns". Your typical AR-platform rifle runs $500-$2000 new depending on the manufacturer, etc, and the manufacturer producing the Army's new rifle is not known for being budget friendly. No, we aren't talking baseballs - but they do make machines which fire them down range, along with tee-shirts, tennis balls, and probably just about anything else any of us can imagine. And there is a significant amount of money (well into the millions) in the parts of the industry catering to skeet shooters (along with trap shooters and sporting clays shooters). Firearms are certainly a weapon technology, but not all firearms are built with 'weapon' being their primary purpose. Additionally, given it is a large industry (monetarily), with hundreds of millions of firearms estimated to be in civilian hands in the US (just read an estimate in a CNN piece claiming 390 million), in the hands of tens of millions of US citizens - one would think the death toll would be significantly higher than it is if the 'primary' purpose of all these firearms was to be weapons.

Only if you’re defining them as weapons solely on the basis of propelling a projectile down range?

Full auto ownership is regulated by NFA, but there are competitive shooting sports which feature semi-auto firearms. And of course there are divisions within those sports which allow full auto. As to firearms scaled down to kids, why is anyone surprised? Mom and/or Dad use them, of course the kids are going to want to use something similar. There are toy tools (including scaled down power tools) and cooking sets. Of course there are scaled down firearms - this is a family tradition for many people. Teaching the kids young is no different for these families than teaching baseball or any other hobby.

I still recall when "pet rocks" were a thing people actually paid money for - but at least you got something physical for your dollar...

Assuming they’re working their way up the ladder, I’d assume there’s quite a few rungs to go before we see Trump facing a jury. I’d also assume they’ll need to do something concrete before the 2024 electioneering starts getting serious.

No offense taken. I don't belong to either party, so I can usually find at least some fault with both - even if I can sometimes have an easier time understanding one over the other regardless of whether or not I agree. My favorite quote about being of the same coin actually comes from an old Champions supplement. "... might be differ'nt sides of the same coin, but they ain't the same side." (more or less, I'm too lazy to go digging for the book right now)

Yeah. Health care feels like a social program type thing. Not the Republican's strong suite...

I won't entirely disagree with you there. I will note that both parties engage in gerrymandering. People could also argue that both parties try to set the election rules to their own advantage, but it would seem to be only one party that focuses primarily on restricting access to voting.

I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate perspective. I generally see one side suggesting various (additional gun) controls and the other side pointing to mental health (with a substantial contingent trying to ignore the problem and suggesting more guns). This may be a matter of which bits of the picture we happen to see, so I'm inclined to put it down as our individual perspectives not perfectly aligning. What I seldom see is more than a rhetorical question asking how we have a society that can produce young men (mostly) who think attacking a school room full of children is a life goal. (Disgruntled employees going off in the work place probably have a longer history (which is my initial impression on the latest Walmart shooting), even if still doesn't make sense to the vast majority of us.) I'm old enough that 'active shooter drills' weren't a thing when I was growing up, but I do remember the signs that indicated where the fallout shelters were located in the school. I graduated High School in 1983. Columbine happened in 1999. I remember thinking back then that the kid I used to be in would have probably been on a watch list - loner, into military history, violent fantasy (AD&D - I discovered Hero while I was in the service), liked guns/weapons... Interestingly enough, the Assault Weapon Ban was in place back then. It ran 1994-2004. The backbone of most of the restrictions that currently govern firearms sales date to the Gun Control Act of 1968. The majority of the controls regulating machineguns, destructive devices, short barreled rifles/shotguns, and silencers/suppressors date back to the National Firearms Act of 1934. It's not like there aren't any restrictions currently in place. The additional controls usually brought up that I'm recalling off hand are red flag laws and universal background checks. The issue with red flag laws, from a practical sense, is the same issue with something like restraining orders. Law enforcement is reactive. It generally can't 'do' anything until after the fact - if then. Colorado has red flag laws, and the shooter there apparently should have run afoul of them - except the family wouldn't cooperate and the prosecutor apparently just let the matter drop. If anyone has any additional (or better) information, feel free to correct me. On principle, they sound like a good-enough idea, and gun groups generally oppose them on 'due process' concerns. Universal background checks sound good in theory, but is probably impractical to implement - and once again, is only enforceable in the reactive sense. It would also only likely be possible with universal gun registration (which gun groups are rather vehement in their opposition to) and would require a massive infrastructure to attempt even token enforcement. It's not impossible, but it would require a huge investment - especially since the estimated number of firearms in private hands ranges between 370-400+ million from what I'm recalling off the top of my head.

I'd say you hit the highlights, though you should probably add religion to the list and there does seem to be one or more subsets of people who are trying to more narrowly define what it means to be an 'American'.

My favorite part of US politics. The two primary parties spend so much time and energy trying to control some aspect of somebody else's life, mostly, it seems, as a means of ensuring their own positions.

Firearms are arguably very much a part of the US's cultural mythology. Attacking 'guns' is attacking many people's sense of identity as 'Americans', which is something the Republican party is willing to play to in order to keep their base riled up... (and you can safely bet there is someone else off panel 'advising' their wannabe sovereign to convince the torch people that the pitchfork people are out to take away their torches...) The other part of the problem - "Why is doing something about gun violence even questioned in America?" - is the assumption that only one side has the 'right' answer. Everybody (probably) wants to 'do something' about gun violence. They just don't agree on what or how - or who.

Ugh. I had always thought Ohio, despite it's lack of what I would call Mountains (Yes, Mountain Snobbery is a thing and I am aware folks living near the rockies laugh at the Applachians height) might be a great place to move to . When it got more and more red, it looked appealing as I know good folk there. They're still good. But some days it feels like finding a place where the Q brainwashing hasn't taken root is getting harder in harder. I'm very sorry, Cygnia. I know what it's like to watch your state seem to turn evil on you right under your eyes. At least Kaptur beat Majewski…

Well, Trump is having another bad day. SCOTUS has apparently declined to involve itself with the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the Jan 6 committee has voted to supoena him. Both breaking news on CNN, the supoena news is also on BBC.

Part of me is wondering if this is the real reason Russia hasn't used a nuke yet.

Despite the thumbnail, it’s not just a “gunz bad!” analysis.

I suppose if the guns are in the hand of recognized military and “resistance” groups, they don’t count? As violent as the US is, and I live in a supposedly violent part of the country (too darn close to Detroit, I guess), I’m not particularly concerned with gun violence… As opposed to say, someone in Ukraine, or any one of the multiple countries where people are literally running around with fully automatic weapons and anti-tank rocket launchers killing each other. As gun crazy as ‘Murica might be, we are not the most brutally violent place on the planet. And I’ve seen more police in Europe toting submachine guns as regular carry than I’ve seen in the US.