They are useful for defending a medium sized area, versus pistols which are useful only for defending a small area. They are simply more effective defense machines.
I explained it well enough already. But since you want to be pedantic about it, defense would be using the rifle to eliminate threats to your life or the lives of others.
Target shooting? Pretty sure more ammo is spent putting holes in paper every day than ammo spent trying to kill someone. So yea…common use says, target practice.
more ammo is spent putting holes in paper every day than ammo spent trying to kill someone
That’s probably true, but what percentage of that shooting range ammo is used in preparation for shooting people (whether offensively or defensively)?
Hold on I did some similar math to this the other day…
How many gun owners become mass shooters? Lets see, 333,287,557 people, 50% (generous, it isn’t quite 50 but for easy math) ownership for 166,643,778.5 people owning guns, and I’ll be generous and include gang shootings (because I know the number) at 547 for the year, turns out, 547 is 0.00032824507756826% of 166643778.5, meaning 0.00032824507756826% of gun owners are likely to pull off a mass shooting in any given year.
S’not exactly what you asked but we have almost no way to ever figure out the answer you seek. We’d need to know how many range trips they make and count their ammo off video surveillance, assuming we can get the angle, and they never shot off camera on private land or something. Or look at their ammo purchases, find a roundcount from their shooting, find out what’s at home, and the difference is the estimation. That stuff just isn’t tracked like that.
I shoot long range mainly, it’s a lot of fun trying to hit a small target at hundreds of yards. It’s not easy at all. It’s a hobby, people shoot bows for hobby as well, or slingshots or air rifles.
I also hunt and own a farm. I keep an AR10 in the utv Incase of wild boar, which are fucking scary… I’d rather face a bunch of pissed off coyotes than a single wild bore.
Better ban alcohol then, it kills more people than rifles of any kind used in homicides by around 5xs the numbers…knives as well, since they kill around 2 times what rifles of any kind do… hilarious that you bring up lawn darts though…do you want to wrap everyone in bubble wrap? Let’s keep all drugs banned as well since they kill basically more people than anything else.
Living life to it’s fullest can be dangerous…if you want to live in a nanny way, do it to yourself but leave the adults the fuck alone.
