Pro AR-15 arguments

[blues]

A good friend was eating breakfast with his wife and two little kids one Saturday in their suburban Portland home, when a van full of tweakers arrived and brought their domestic dispute to his yard. A second car full of individuals arrived shortly afterward. This escalated to destruction of property and threats. My friend with an AR held at low ready resolved the situation peacefully while his family moved to safety. Portland PD arrived 10 min later.

For defending your family against a group of people, an AR is a good weapon. These things happen.

I admire his willingness to engage on behalf of his family...but I do worry about the potential consequences and ramifications of walking out that door if things turn to shit.

Glad it worked out.

[HCM]

I admire his willingness to engage on behalf of his family...but I do worry about the potential consequences and ramifications of walking out that door if things turn to shit.

Glad it worked out.

Big difference there between “in the street in front of his house” and “in his front yard.”

[Clusterfrack]

I admire his willingness to engage on behalf of his family...but I do worry about the potential consequences and ramifications of walking out that door if things turn to shit.

Glad it worked out.

Describing the layout of the house and yard in detail would help but I don’t want to derail this thread. He was at his back doors trying to keep an eye on all the angry people and the stoned guy destroying his fence, while also in sight of his front entrance. Lots of glass on the bottom level. Unknown if people were armed. Scary situation.

[blues]

Describing the layout of the house and yard in detail would help but I don’t want to derail this thread. He was at his back doors trying to keep an eye on all the angry people and the stoned guy destroying his fence, while also in sight of his front entrance. Lots of glass on the bottom level. Unknown if people were armed. Scary situation.

Thanks for fleshing that out a bit more.

Big difference there between “in the street in front of his house” and “in his front yard.”

Understood. I suppose my faith in my fellow man is a bit jaded when it comes to being judged.

[TicTacticalTimmy]

IMO if you are serious about arguing for the second amendment, and you are having a conversation with someone who is serious about determining the correct policy (i.e. not a braindead zombie who refuses to listen to reason) you should skip all the "sporting purposes" related BS and just get down to the heart of the issue:

unregistered and widely distributed firearms are an effective deterrent against tyranny, and represent the only way a people can hope to free themselves of tyranny once it has been established. What are the arguments against this?

1. "The US is a healthy Democracy and would never become a tyranny"
Rebuttal 1: most of the people who are calling loudly for gun control are the same people who genuinely believe that Trump closely resembles Hitler, and that anyone who wants reduced immigration is a "white supremacist". As of the 2016 election, I feel it is hypocritical of those people to make such an argument.
Rebuttal 2: the Weimar Republic was a functioning liberal democracy. Look how that turned out. How about modern Russia's gradual slide back into authoritarianism?

2. "All this tyranny talk is hypothetical, whereas children are being mowed down en masse by psychos with guns TODAY."

Rebuttal: let's step back and look at the facts. According to left-wing Mother Jones, there were 475 deaths from mass shootings in 2015. (Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604) .(Note: This statistic is BS because it defines multiple homicides with 3 or more fatalities as a mass shooting, and the majority of those are in fact from gang violence where groups of armed men are shooting other groups of armed men, each individual rarely killing more than one person and almost always exclusively using handguns).
To give ground, lets accept this statistic and even round it up: 500 deaths per year is the cost of allowing citizens to own military style weapons. Let's also assume this gun control solution would prevent all of those deaths going forward, instantaneously, and do so for the next 100 years. That means that over 100 years up to 50,000 lives could be saved.
This sounds like a lot, but consider the costs of a communist or fascist tyranny without any civilian armed resistance. An example of this would be the USSR where, under communist rule, AT LEAST 25,000,000 (that's 25 million men women and children) were killed by their own government. 25,000,000/50,000=500. Over the course of a century, a well-armed citizenry prevents 500 deaths for every 1 sacrifice.
Now we come back to the specific objection, namely that such a government coming to power is not impossible, but it is unlikely. How unlikely? Perhaps such governments crop up only once in a thousand years? Only the most progressive and optimistic reading of human history would give such a figure, so let's use it. If the likelihood of tyranny popping up is only 10% per century, then a well armed citizenry still prevents 50 innocent deaths for a sacrifice of 1. I think anyone who is thinking logically would agree that is a pretty good trade.

Note that this is for someone who specifically wants to ban such firearms to eliminate mass shootings. If they think to ban them in order to stop homicide in general, there are many other arguments you could use but I won't go into them here.

[zuplex]

I'll give it a go.

1. Self-defense is a human right. If you accept that one may use deadly force to defend one's self, family, and community, then the tool chosen for that purpose doesn't really matter.

2. Rifles are useful for self defense because they can stop an attacker quickly with fewer rounds fired. Fewer rounds = fewer chances for a miss = fewer chances for innocent bystanders getting hit.

3. Semi-automatic rifles are superior to other types of rifles for self-defense (in general) because they offer rapid follow-up shots in case the attacker does not stop with the first one or two. They can also be operated one-handed if needed, particularly lightweight, low-recoil rifles like the AR-15.

4. The AR-15's cartridge allows for an effective weapon with low recoil. This, combined with its light weight and adjustable stock, make it ideal for use by people with smaller frames or who do not possess a lot of upper body strength. The .223/5.56 bullet is also less likely to penetrate all the way through a house if the shooter misses.

5. The AR-15's standard capacity magazine of 30 rounds allows the armed citizen to keep a rifle stored for self-defense that can provide a decisive response against even multiple attackers. Imagine if black families in the South had AR-15s when the men in bedsheets came a-callin'...

That's why "regular" people need rifles like the AR-15. They really are the best tools for the job at hand.

[Robinson]

I believe the 2nd Amendment was meant to protect the right to defense of self, defense of family, home, community, state, and country if necessary. But the central reason behind it is to prevent the people of this country from ever being outgunned by the government. The professional military doesn't factor into that equation. Therefore AR-15s and other small arms suitable for the task should be considered specially protected.

[willie]

Would putting ARs in a category that required buyers to meet the same requirements as obtaining a chl be acceptable? And in this scenario private sales would go through dealers. Is that reasonable?

[HCM]

Would putting ARs in a category that required buyers to meet the same requirements as obtaining a chl be acceptable? And in this scenario private sales would go through dealers. Is that reasonable?

No.

In fact, Fuck that.

[LOKNLOD]

Would putting ARs in a category that required buyers to meet the same requirements as obtaining a chl be acceptable? And in this scenario private sales would go through dealers. Is that reasonable?

Not really.

For private sales to go through dealers, guns must be registered or they are easy to move around outside that process. Granted, true criminals will move guns outside that process regardless, but for it to have any deterrence to people who generally want to follow the law, then there would have to be consequence to having a gun that was outside the system. The only way to enforce that is to register all of them. Then a normal guy won’t be (as) tempted to sell his to another guy outside the system lest it show back up on him later.

Registering has long been a goal of the antis, partly because it sounds reasonable to many especially those who don’t really care about guns, so it seems like a potential win. But what good does registration do to prevent crime? For ordinates street crime, we know they will typically be using stolen guns outside any sort of registration system. For sudden-normal-guy-turned mass shooter, it doesn’t guarantee any protection either; you could know the ownership of every gun in the world but until sometime decides to use one it’s meaningless. They like to make the car analogy but registering cars doesn’t stop speeding or reckless driving, does it?

Registration is completely useless in preventing any sort of crime. It’s excellent for creating obstacles to ownership of weapons though. First it’s registration. Then it’s licensing (fees). Then it’s increasing them, more hoops, more obstacles. Inspections. Insurance. Storage requirements. Papers, please.

This is the end game when they say “universal background checks”.