Am I wrong to think that gun owners and lawmakers know what an assault weapon is? Am I also wrong to assume that if a magazine is not high capacity no matter the time to reload it still cuts down on the kill rate? AR-15's seem to be the weapon of choice of course there is also the AK 47, the uzi, those types of weapons whatever they are called is what I am talking about. What is the difference we both know this is an exercise in futility as nothing will be done because of just this type of discusson. I wish it were different but it wont be until the kids that have lived through it get old enough to take the reins of government and then maybe some common sense can be injected into this discussion.
You clearly don't understand the problem here. Unless you can objectively define an assault weapon you can't ban them. It really is that simple. Trying to make vague claims about other people obfuscating simply means you're more interested in tubthumping than in useful discussion. For a law to be enforced it must be objectively defined because otherwise all you have is endless speculation about whose opinion matters.
A lot of people think that anything big and scary looking must be an "assault weapon" but it's hard to take them seriously because they can't define it. All they do is come up with some vague notion that gets people riled up but means nothing. By many definitions an "assault weapon" would be something fully automatic and such weapons are already unlawful to possess without a very rare and specific license, and prohibitively expensive even if you do have such a license. If you can get the license you should expect to pay five figures for a machine gun you are allowed to own. Needless to say the people who own such licenses are nowhere near the top of the "likely to go out shooting people" list.
You're also falling back on the left's attempts to change terminology with your reference to "high capacity magazines" which, based on gun's normal specifications, are typically referred to as "standard capacity magazines". Some handguns come with magazines that hold 6-8 rounds. Other guns are larger and hold 15 or more rounds. A pistol with a wider handgrip allows bullets to be staggered as they are stacked and therefore holds more rounds. To give you a simple example, the Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm comes with magazines that hold 17 rounds as standard. These aren't "high capacity" magazines whatever the left-leaning rabble rousers like to think, they are standard capacity. To reduce the capacity would require spacers and fillers, meaning the 10-round limit so beloved in some circles would be better described as a "low capacity magazine". If these people had even the slightest idea of how fast you can change a magazine they would know that it would make very little difference to the kill rate of someone who was intent on causing harm to people. Sadly they are more interested in tubthumping than useful discussion.
And once again you bleat on about common sense when essentially you mean little more than "I know it when I see it, I can't define it in any useful terms, but it should be banned anyway". Perhaps you could look at the picture I posted in the other thread and let me know which, if any, of the guns shown would count as "assault weapons" in your mind. It's curious that even an attempt to come up with an objective definition is met with your usual claims that "this type of discussion" is about obfuscation rather than achieving anything. If the best you've got is vague terms and when requested to define the terms you hide behind claims of obfuscation it doesn't indicate that you've got anything useful to work with at all. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to how your notion of "er, ah, let's ban, well, some guns that are kinda scary but I can't tell you which ones are allowed and which ones aren't allowed" even remotely resembles common sense.
One thing that is curious about this sort of thing is that, once again, after a shooting the call is to take guns away from innocent people who didn't do it. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of this playbook and demand people be prohibited from driving cars because of attacks in Nice and London using motor vehicles. Or perhaps we could talk of "powerful engines" and "assault vehicles" and seek to ban them, even as we refuse to come up with a useful definition of the words selected to generate an emotional rather than a logical response.
It would also be really nice if the people asserting that their proposals will protect people could explain exactly how they would protect people, especially given the self-evident fact that criminals don't obey the existing laws and are unlikely to give any additional regard to future laws. I guess it's easier to simply claim "this will protect our children" without offering any evidence and hope for an emotional response, than it is to come up with anything useful.
