A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes to immediate living environments, Americansâ views on gun control may be less divided than the polarized national debate suggests.
The research was conducted against a backdrop of increasing gun violence and polarization on gun policy in the United States. The United States has over 350 million civilian firearms and gun-related incidents, including accidents and mass shootings, have become a leading cause of death in the country. Despite political divides, the new study aimed to explore whether thereâs common ground among Americans in their immediate living environments, focusing on neighborhood preferences related to gun ownership and storage.
The aversion to AR-15 owners was stronger than the aversion to owners of other types of firearms (pistols). When given a choice, the probability that a respondent would prefer to live near someone who owned an AR-15 plummeted by over 20 percentage points, indicating a strong societal preference against this type of gun ownership.
Which, as usual, goes a long way towards illustrating how effective propaganda and manipulation of peopleâs opinions can be. Not just on this specific topic either, but in this case I guess thatâs what weâre talking about. Despite its scientific dressings, what this study is exploring isnât actually any mechanical factor, it is measuring peopleâs perceptions which are not guaranteed to be reflected by reality. (And again, this is true of many other topics as wellâŚ)
The AR-15 platform does the same damn thing and shoots the same damn bullet in the same damn way as numerous other firearms, and yet just the name itself has a bad rap from being incessantly repeated in the news and social media.
Hereâs this old chestnut. Itâs still true.
Whyâs the one on top âscarier?â
Tl;dr: Own, store, and handle your gun responsibly. Donât be a paranoid loon. Donât believe in whatever boogeyman Fox News is pushing this week. Donât hyperventilate about fictional distinctions.
Your image is confusing. How does a the rifle with no magazine have the same capacity to rapid fire as the one above it? The Ar-15 appears to have more bullets immediately available, which would mean it would fire them faster.
How is having a pistol grip that improves comfort and hip firing not make the weapon easier and more comfortable to use?
How is being less visible at night not make a black gun more dangerous than one with a bright wooden sheen?
Do both guns have the same exact default trigger pull, or is the ar-15âs lighter and easier to fire?
These guns are different enough in actual use to make one more dangerous than the other. They both can kill you dead, but one literally is designed specifically to be deadiler in several ways. Itâs one of the reasons mass murders keep using it specifically to mas murder people.
Why is it surprising that itâs considered deadiler?
This picture is often used to draw out all the points youâve made, to demonstrate that many people are unfamiliar with many firearms. The Mini-14 in this picture is one available configuration of the rifle. The most basic, simple, low capacity version. However, the Mini-14 is fully capable of using 20 and 30 round magazines, a pistol grip, suppressor, bayonet, and even a folding stock (which the AR-15 canât do).
A better version of this picture uses two models of the Mini-14, illustrating how one is legal in California and the other isnât, even though theyâre functionally the same rifle. A firearm simply being black does not make it more dangerous. A pistol grip does not make it more dangerous or easier to hip fire for that matter. Any gun is easily hip fired, and I would suggest a non pistol grip rifle or shot gun is more ergonomic to fire from the hip as far as pulling the trigger is concerned.
The real argument should be whether semi auto rifles are more dangerous or not, not if specific semi auto rifles are more dangerous.
I asked the question because i honestly dont know the difference, but right off the bat youre saying the image is designed to show one gun in a âaction readyâ and the other in a ânot readyâ state. Leaving out the magazine for the second gun is especially misleading when trying to elict a âthey are totally the sameâ reaction.
Itâs no wonder that people will think one is deadlier than the other shown these exact guns in these conditions, because one literally is from the magazine capacity alone.
How is being less visible at night not make a black gun more dangerous than one with a bright wooden sheen?
Youâre right. We should regulate black paint just in case someone decides to turn their legitimate wooden rifle into a war machine.
So you ignored everything i asked about except the color?
Okay.
In aggregate, these differences between the two guns, especially the magazine shown on one gun and not the other, make the weapon more dangerous to others, so itâs considered more dangerous to others. Seems pretty simple to me.
How is having a pistol grip that improves comfort and hip firing not make the weapon easier and more comfortable to use?
In all of the PCSL, 2-gun, etc. matches Iâve been to, Iâve never seen anyone shooting from the hip.
A âtraditionalâ stock offers certain benefits that an AR-15 stock doesnât; you can sometimes get different comb heights (or an adjustable comb height) in order to make it easier to get a good sight picture. Since an AR-15 has a buffer tube in the stock, you canât really do much to move it up or down, and your charging handle limits your ability to have a stock with a comb that goes very far forward or up. Neither is ârightâ, but is going to be at least partially preference and purpose of the firearm.
But fundamentally, a gun that is difficult and uncomfortable to shoot is a bad design, regardless of how the stock is designed.
How is being less visible at night not make a black gun more dangerous than one with a bright wooden sheen?
So, it turns out that black isnât actually less visible at night. Nor are bright colors more visible at night. If you wear solid black at night in the woods, youâre going to be more visible than if you were wearing camouflage. No joke. It has to do with the way that you perceive color.
Do both guns have the same exact default trigger pull, or is the ar-15âs lighter and easier to fire?
Theyâre both roughly the same out of the box. Both should be in the 5-6 pound range. An AR-15 trigger assembly can be replaced fairly easily by anyone that wants to spend the money ($200-500, depending); I replaced mine with a flat-faced 2.5# trigger since I use it for competitions. Ruger uses a lot of MIM parts, so youâd need to start by replacing the guts with something made from tool steel, and then go to a gunsmith to get the detailing done to safely reduce trigger pull weight. (Done incorrectly, you can end up with things like a gun that is no longer drop safe.)
These guns are different enough in actual use to make one more dangerous than the other. They both can kill you dead, but one literally is designed specifically to be deadiler in several ways. [emphasis added] Itâs one of the reasons mass murders keep using it specifically to mas murder people.
Exactly how do you mean this? Both have the same rate of fire. Both use the same cartridge. They have the same overall length. You can change the furniture on the Mini-14 to black plastic if you want. Itâs literally the same bullet, at the same speed, and producing the same number of foot-pounds of force. How, exactly, is one deadlier than the other?
How, exactly, is one deadlier than the other?
Itâs not. Youâre never going to get a non-disingenuous question to this answer. You can easily get a 30 round magazine for the Mini 14, too, so the notion that the Armalite platform is somehow inherently has more ârapid fire capacityâ is nonsense, too.
FWIW you can get aftermarket stocks to go on an Armalite buffer tube with adjustable combs. Iâve seen them. Like, in catalogs. Iâve never actually seen anyone install one in real life, but at least they exist. You can even get a lower for a monte carlo style âsportingâ stock for an Armalite upper receiver, if you really want to.
Youâre ultimately correct in that itâs just cosmetics.
Your image is confusing. How does a the rifle with no magazine have the same capacity to rapid fire as the one above it? The Ar-15 appears to have more bullets immediately available, which would mean it would fire them faster.
The magazine isnât in the second picture but it has one. Looks like a Ruger 5816 to me, so if you want to see what it looks like with the magazine in it, check out their webpage. Funny enough, it looks like a 10 round mag in the AR, and the 5816 comes with a 20.
How is having a pistol grip that improves comfort and hip firing not make the weapon easier and more comfortable to use?
Youâre talking about personal preferences here. I tend to find them both pretty comfortable, but you really want to keep the stock at your shoulder.
How is being less visible at night not make a black gun more dangerous than one with a bright wooden sheen?
One of them is black metal, the other one is wood. Either could be painted if you wanted to I suppose, but if weâre talking about night-time scenarios, using a light would make either relatively visible.
Do both guns have the same exact default trigger pull, or is the ar-15âs lighter and easier to fire?
You could probably answer these questions in less time than it took you to write them out by looking them up. The 5816 has a pull of 13.50" the base model ruger AR (8500) is 10.25" - 13.50".
These guns are different enough in actual use to make one more dangerous than the other. They both can kill you dead, but one literally is designed specifically to be deadiler in several ways. Itâs one of the reasons mass murders keep using it specifically to mas murder people.
Clearly this is bullshit.
The image implies these guns have the same capabilities and fire rate, but one has a magazine and the other doesnt.
Given a circumstance where someone is shooting at you with either the top gun with a magazine and the bottom gun with no magazine, which would you prefer they have?
These guns are different enough in actual use to make one more dangerous than the other. They both can kill you dead, but one literally is designed specifically to be deadiler in several ways. Itâs one of the reasons mass murders keep using it specifically to mas murder people.
Others have already explained how theyâre both equally lethal, but to your point about mass murderers using the one over the other: The top rifle can be had for ~$400 & looks like the one all the soldiers and video game guys use. The bottom is closer to $1000 and does not look as cool (to the young adult male demographic that commits most mass shootings, at least). I would argue those two factors account more for their difference in mass shooting use than anything else.
These are all differences without distinction, both of these rifles are capable of the same amount of harm.
Magazine capacity is the same, the Ruger just doesnât have itâs magazine in the picture. Higher cap mags can be found for either rifle.
Pistol grip and color might make a difference in a video game, but no so much in reality.
Trigger pull difference is negligible, and could be lighter on either of the two rifles. There is no such thing as default trigger pullâŚ
Partly because the AR-15 is lighter than the Mini 14, is easier to reload, and is generally designed to meet the modern needs of armies killinâ humans better. Then thereâs the incessant marketing, the huge number of manufacturers at multiple price points (the Mini 14 being a Ruger exclusive), the aftermarket of optics and tacticool accessories, and the general cultural impact. How many Mini 14s have actually been involved in mass shootings and gun-nerd intimidation exercises? Itâs almost like the least stable assholes are interested in a âbadassâ gun.
But okay, fine. Thereâs a not-insignificant amount of truth to the graphic. By all means, the gun nerds should put it everywhere and inform the previously ignorant public. I donât think the result will be to convince people the AR-15 is actually useful, just that the Mini-14 is equally unnecessary as a civilian tool or hunting rifle, and they shouldnât assume a wooden-stock rifle is inherently less dangerous than a plastic one.
And, for the record, I am tediously, annoyingly aware of current second-amendment jurisprudence and the lack of sufficient political will to change the constitution, and while I donât think the former is well considered, the situation is what it is. It just sucks. It leaves America unique among stable democracies in having gun violence anywhere near the top of the list of causes of death.
By all means, the gun nerds should put it everywhere and inform the previously ignorant public.
The problem is how rude so many of them are about it.
Instead of âthere is no such thing as an âassault rifleâ and hereâs how that myth got started,â itâs âdefine assault rifle.â Itâs this weird assumption that everyone knows as much about guns as they do and it really doesnât help them. I get that it can be a knee-jerk reaction to people who have issues with guns (as is assuming anyone who has issues with guns wants a blanket ban on them), but it really does not help.
Not to go off on a tangent, but itâs âassault weaponâ thatâs the boogeyman term, meant to confuse the uninformed with assault rifles. Assault rifles are select fire, full auto and burst fire capable rifles. Assault weapons are semi-automatic rifles that have the same or similar cosmetics as assault rifles.
The trick is a person latches onto the adjective, not the noun, and a rifle is a kind of weapon, so it makes it seem like assault rifles fit under assault weapons, when Iâm fact itâs the opposite.
Yeah, the level of gatekeeping is extraordinary. âNot only must you respect my political position, but your lack of nuanced technical information means you have literally no room to be part of the conversation!â I see similar attitudes about military matters, where not having served is viewed as a reason to completely dismiss concerns, rather than a valuable outside perspective to be considered.
I grew up in the gun culture, and we actually have a few guns locked up in a safe in my father-in lawâs garage, but I havenât been motivated at all to go get them in the last 5+ years, because WTF do I really need them for? I might grab the single-shot 12-gauge someday because casual skeet shooting is legitimately fun, but while I still have a sort of lingering âsuburban white guyâ interest, I just fell out of love with actually having guns over the years, and my fellow gun owners were a not insignificant part of that.
âAssault Rifleâ is a bit of a boogeyman term, true, but part of the reason gun folks hate it so much is that while they donât personally intend to use their own toys that way (anytime soon), their favorite guns absolutely DO amount to semi-automatic versions of common military weapons. You know, the rifles one might need when assaulting an enemy position:
- lightweight
- compact compared to earlier weapons serving a similar use case
- accurate
- high rate of fire. One little factoid the gun folks donât like to have mentioned is that even the most common military rifles stopped being fully automatic years ago because itâs wasteful, and most are semi-automatic and three-round burst (correction: The US Army retrofit its burst to have fully auto again, though the USMC did not). âTheyâre not machine gunsâ is another way to weaponize pedantry. Semi-auto sends plenty of lead downrange.
- arbitrary magazine size limited only by material science and added weight
- quick and easy reloading of the rifle with pre-loaded magazines.
- easily adapted with aftermarket parts that enhance only anti-personnel activities (lasers, flashlights, bump stocks, bayonets, etc.).
- chambered in a mid-size round: high-velocity, small bullet. Designed specifically to do well taking down animals human sized and smaller, but lightweight enough to carry a shitload of them without being over-encumbered.
Itâs not hard at all to come up with an objective technical definition that has nothing to do with âscary looking or notâ. Find some numbers for the various criteria and make bright lines, such that weapons that are still legal will be more poorly suited to mass murder than the current crop of black rifles. There will absolutely be people pushing at the margins, but you canât let perfect be the enemy of good. But no⌠people like the feeling of power they get by having weapons that are virtually identical to the stuff that âwarriorsâ have, so theyâre going to cling to them like their lives depend on it, even though statistically they very much do not.
I donât disagree but itâs frustrating to somebody who cares and is knowledgeable about a topic to have people militantly try to outlaw and poorly regulate it while not having critical knowledge and understanding on the topic. Thereâs a reason gun people tend to be very irritated by a lot of the anti-gun crowd.
If someone is going to make claims about ARs that are dubious wouldnât asking for a definition of ARs be the best way to make sure theyâre talking about the same thing instead of misunderstanding? Iâve never seen someone ask for the definition of AR from someone who wasnât talking about ARs. Seems like a completely reasonable question and I have no idead why one would think otherwise.
Whyâs the one on top âscarier?â
Because of the type of people more likely to buy the one at the top.
Iâm not sure why people like you donât understand that. Itâs not the gun, itâs the sort of people buying it.
And if you are an AR-15 owner and donât like who the gun is associated with, Iâm sorry. You donât get to choose how society judges things, whether or not it is fair.
Because of the type of people more likely to buy the one at the top.
Whoâs that?
You donât get to choose how society judges things, whether or not it is fair.
Are you saying that a study with a self-selection bias of participants that specifically use MTurk, that has 3 comparative subjects (no gun, pistol, AR) is indicative of societal perspective?
You know exactly who I am talking about. You donât live under a rock, Iâm sure. Donât pretend and play coy. Iâm not going to play that game with you.
The study only had 3 categories: no firearms, pistol(s), or an AR-15, so youâre literally just ranting at bad survey design.
In 1986 someone used the bottom to basically single-handedly kill 2 FBI agents and wound 4 others in an active gunfight. In most other countries, both weapons are heavily regulated if not prohibited for civilian ownership.
Assault weapon bans are both a product of ignorant perception and the lack of political will to ban all self-loading firearms or subgroups thereof.
active gunfight
Iâve always wondered this. Whatâs the fixation with adding âactiveâ all the time? Is a âpassiveâ gunfight an overweight Floridian on an oxygen tank, draped across a mobility scooter waiting for the targets to come to him?
I canât answer for âpeople,â only for me. But Iâm pretty sure you canât just slap an upper receiver for a different caliber on a Mini 14. The AR platform is inherently customizable and modular.
That doesnât make it shoot bullets any harder versus another gun in the same chambering, though. (Edited).
Whatâs the practical purpose of changing calibers if it doesnât make a difference?
The short answer is that AR-15s are just better rifles. Theyâre more accurate, theyâre more reliable, theyâre easier to clean and maintain, theyâre easier to repair, they have much better ergonomics, none of the parts are proprietary, and consequently thereâs an enormous aftermarket for parts, accessories, and customization. They also have a modular design that, with the exception of the barrel nut and castle nut which have torque specifications, can be almost completely disassembled with a single roll punch and an allen wrench or two. That means if something breaks or wears out you donât have to send it back to the manufacturer or pay out the nose for a gunsmith, you can just order the part and fix it yourself with basically just a pointy stick and a YouTube video. It also means you can start out with a really cheap rifle and upgrade it component by component until you have a high-end rifle if you want to.
That Mini-14 on the bottom is a fine rifle, and theyâre actually pretty popular, but the AR platform outclasses it on most crucial metrics. If you could only have one or the other, for most people itâd be the AR without question. A lot of people have spilled a lot of ink speculating about this reason or that reason as to why so many people want ARs, and usually manage to miss the fact that theyâre just fantastic rifles. Even with the amount of cringey fetishizing of the military that happens on the conservative side of the gun community, nobody would want one if they sucked.
Details like this are really just a distraction. Do you really think the average respondent understands these technical details, or have any good reason to memorize the specs of all rifles? The focus on the AR-15 is not because of any risk associated with that particular gun, but because most people understand that this is a semi-auto rifle. There is no other model of gun that will have that kind of widespread recognition.
Drawing up these very silly technical arguments is a willful ignorance of the underlying issue: What is the limit of deadly force we should allow one person to lawfully own? We donât let people own tactical nukes. We donât need to argue over thermonuclear or hydrogen nukes. We donât need to understand quantum mechanics to regulate these devices. The technical details do not matter. The potential body count is what matters. And so it is with guns, which happen to occupy that grey area where reasonable people disagree on an acceptable level of lethality. You do not need to know all the different models of gun to be killed by one, so we should not require such technical knowledge when engaging in discourse around their regulation.
Iâm assuming the magazine size. Which is generally why magazine size is the common way to enforce which rifles are considered problematic for home ownership.
Thereâs nothing physically preventing anyone from putting a readily available 30+ round magazine into a Mini 14.
It even says âsame capacityâ right there in the picture. Although to be fair, the Mini 14 in that picture either has a flush fit low capacity magazine installed in it or is unloaded.
