• Casuls_Die_Thrice@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Speaking as an American, you only see those price points on the high-end Gucci ARs; on a good day, an “entry level” AR can run you less than $500 before various taxes & fees. It’s not hyperbole to say there are more guns than people in the US.

      • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The thought of going up to a store and buying an assault rifle over the counter for $500 with barely any restrictions is so alien to me.

        • ElDuderino@lemmus.org
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          2 days ago

          Technically, they are not assault rifles as they cannot do selective fire or fully automatic fire. And most states where people actually live have plenty of restrictions.

          • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Technically. Plus couldn’t you just buy it off someone with literally none of those restrictions?

            • ElDuderino@lemmus.org
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              2 days ago

              Not in CA - you still need a federally licensed dealer to mediate the sale. Many other states have similar restrictions.

              • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                2 days ago

                SCOTUS: “restrictions on weapons of war? not for long”

                They’re likely going to overturn the assault weapons ban that any state has had for the reasoning of the 2nd amendment

                • ElDuderino@lemmus.org
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                  2 days ago

                  That’s what I hear. Private citizens shouldnt be banned from having arms that we let policemen use against civilians.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 days ago

          We can also buy from private parties and there’s zero restrictions. Problem is we have it that way because they should be getting used right about now…

        • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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          2 days ago

          Alien to most Americans too. Let’s break it down.

          • Pedantry first: the garden variety AR-15 is not an “assault rifle”. (AR stands for “Armalite” – the company that first developed the rifle, not “assault rifle”.) Assault Rifle is a technical term with a technical definition: a shoulder-fired rifle in intermediate caliber with select fire. The AR-15s you usually see meet all those criteria except for the select fire: since they’re not capable of fully automatic fire, they’re not assault rifles. (Which is why efforts to ban them are usually called “assault weapon” bans – “assault weapon” is a term with no officially accepted definition, so it can mean whatever the people trying to ban things want it to mean.) And for an even deeper level of pedantry: some people will mistakenly tell you something along the lines of “AR-15 is the semi-auto civilian version, while the full-auto military version is called a M-16 or M-4.” While that’s generally the case, it’s not really true. In the early days of adopting it, the US military adopted the AR-15 and designated it the M-16 for internal reference. But the company making them (Colt at that time) still called them AR-15s and (for a while) still marked military rifles as “AR-15”. Also, back in those early days, it was legal to sell newly made full-auto guns to civilians, and while it wasn’t very common, it did happen, so there are a few full-auto civilian AR-15s in existence, but most of that is just purely academic curiosities, really.

          • While some states have barely any restrictions (basically just the federally mandated background check), many states do have significant restrictions. Since the states with restrictions are some of the most populated states, that actually affects the vast majority of Americans. It varies widely between states, but it’s common to have waiting periods, training requirements, or to even ban AR-15 style guns outright – the various ‘assault weapon’ bans, each one with its own slightly different definition of what an ‘assault weapon’ is. (And gun stores will refuse to sell to out-of-state buyers, so you can’t easily circumvent these bans by simply traveling to a different state.) Most Americans can’t simply walk into a gun store and buy an AR-15 ‘over the counter’. For some, it’s just not possible to buy one at all. For others, it can be a difficult process that may eventually conclude with a technically ‘over the counter’ sale, it’s definitely not the just ‘walk in and buy one’ kind of thing you’re talking about.

          • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Since the states with restrictions are some of the most populated states,

            it surprises a lot of people to learn that Texas has nearly as many restrictions as California. You want to go somewhere where they have practically no gun laws, go to Wyoming (i’m not joking).

          • xzite@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Assault Rifle is a technical term with a technical definition

            It’s only really a “technical term” in the civilian anglosphere and the actual “definition” is very shaking when you start investigating it. By your definition a belt fed machine gun with a single shot setting is an assault rifle. Not to mention that there’s no actual definition of what an “intermediate round” even is.

            Most European armies call them some variant of gewehr or rifle and even anglosphere armies just call them rifles, or carbines if they are under some unspecified length.

            “assault weapon” is a term with no officially accepted definition, so it can mean whatever the people trying to ban things want it to mean

            This is like saying manslaughter or murder is a term with no officially accepted definition since it varies by jurisdiction.

            • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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              2 days ago

              By your definition a belt fed machine gun with a single shot setting is an assault rifle.

              Only if it’s in an intermediate caliber and light enough to shoulder fire.

              Which, admittedly, there are a few of those out there … but only a few. And, well, arguably such a gun could be an ‘assault rifle’ if you chose to use it as one. Being belt-fed rather than magazine-fed doesn’t really fundamentally change the nature of the thing, and at that point, the feed mechanism is the only functional difference between that and what you’d typically call an assault rifle.

              • athatet@lemmy.zip
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                2 days ago

                arguably such a gun could be an assault rifle if you if you choose to use it as one

                Kinda like an AR then, huh?

            • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              yeah, we should be more specific when discussing them what we mean. are we talking semi-auto >22LR rifles with large magazines?

              of course that kind of discussion would require a populatiion educated on firearms. certainly better educated than i am.

          • thermal_shock@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Can it be used for assault? Is it a rifle? Them who fucking cares, it’s technically correct in both scenarios.

          • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            What’s a “forced reset trigger” and why does it cost $9500 then?

            The point is that’s nitpicking the definition.

          • SynAcker@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 days ago

            Now you can drop in a forced reset trigger (FRT) for about $250 into any AR15. This still meets the definition of a semiautomatic rifle (one pull of the trigger per round fired) while enabling the user to shoot at fully automatic speeds.

      • TabbsTheBat (they/them)@pawb.social
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        2 days ago

        I wish lol… discounting sales I don’t think I’ve seen any semi-automatic rifles here for under a 1000€ (mind you, we’re in the EU so that is tax and any other fees included). If I was looking for guns under a thousand, it’d basically be bolt action hunting rifles, sporting rifles, shotguns, and pistols lol. If I could pick stuff like that for 500 it’d make it a lot easier to collect fun guns

        Also the image of a gucci collab with a gun manufacturer… now that would be the most american thing I’ve seen in a while haha