Some of you may have noticed that we’ve sprouted a new page link up top. The fact of the matter is that we’ve produced so many articles refuting various and sundry lies and disinformation people spout about guns that it’s gotten hard to keep track of all of them. So I’ve created a new page dubbed “Gun Facts” where I’m hoping to compile relevant articles to give the Armed Intelligentsia a resource for data to link to when people go off the rails and start claiming things like all AR-15s are fully automatic. I’ll try to produce some more articles to flush that section out, but I ask our readers (and writers!) to remind me if I’ve missed an article somewhere that would be right for this new section. And, as always, let us know if there’s something we can do to improve the site.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

17 COMMENTS

  2. OoOoOo maybe this?

    ”
    The pro-restriction people look at a 30 round .223 rifle as excessive while a 5 round 12GA shotgun is considered acceptable. In reality a 5 round shotgun with 00 buck shoots out about 9 .330 caliber lead balls per shot giving you a total capability of putting 45 .330 caliber lead balls on target. These 45 rounds before a reload are considered by even pro-restriction people to be reasonable firepower for defense against 2 or 3 life-threatening invaders given that in stressful situations missing is an option.

    But all but average sized and strength individuals will struggle with the recoil of shooting these 9 large projectiles simultaneously from a 12GA shotgun. A .223 rifle with a standard capacity magazine grants you the capability of putting only 30 .223 caliber projectiles on target. This is somehow considered by pro-restriction people be excessive for defending against 2-3 home invaders.

    While the .223 projectiles from the rifle are indeed going fast enough that they are individually each more powerful than one of the 9 simultaneous .330 caliber shotgun projectiles, you are firing only one at a time this greatly mitigates the recoil problem allowing you to actually aim a string of shots safely. This one-at-a-time feature also enables you to use appropriate force rather than the all or nothing arrangement of a shotgun.

    Also the innate physics of the high velocity .223 projectile is such that these fast moving bullets are more readily stopped and obliterated by hard building materials like walls. The larger slower moving .330 shotgun projectiles more readily penetrate hard building materials. This allows for safer use inside homes mitigating over-penetration more successfully than a shotgun.

    Since the .223 rifle is commonly loaded with hollow point ammunition for defense the penetration of soft targets is also mitigated, as hollow points are designed to stop inside a soft target rather than going through and causing unintended damage.

    Autoloading rifles are also preferable because rather than manually working the action the hypothetical home defender can focus their concentration 100% on situational awareness and determining the status of the threat, and safe shooting.

    The barrel shrouds (aka handguards) of these modern .223 rifles are intended as gripping and mounting platforms for things like flashlights and laser pointers so the user can better determine their target and what is beyond and hit it (not miss it and hit something unintended).

    The flash suppressors mitigate the night blindness induced by muzzle flash while firing in the dark so that the user may retain the ability to visually judge their target and what is beyond.

    The collapsible stocks are intended to be adjustable to various body types so that me and my partner may both comfortably utilize the same rifle for home defense rather than needing to proliferate multiple rifles in that role.

    The pistol grip and low recoil make the .223 rifle ergonomic enough to use throughout our entire lives as we age and begin to experience age related physical limitations like arthritis, loss of muscle and bone density, and loss of dexterity.

    I think all of these reasons are why so many people are using these .223 rifles in the role which up to this point shotguns were employed, and are pretty valid reasons for making a conscientious choice to do so.
    “

  5. Anti-gun folks claim that the UK ban worked to reduce homicide and is responsible for the low homicide rate of the UK as compared to the USA. Directly comparing UK rates of homicide to the USA is invalid evidence to support the contention that the ban “worked”. Throughout history the UK has always had lower homicide rates, so that doesn’t follow from the ban.

    What you’d need to look for to test the proposition that “the UK ban decreased homicide” is a decrease in homicide rate after the ban. According to table 1.1 in this source:

    http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb0212/hosb0212?view=Binary

    The murder rate experienced approximately a 45% increase between the ban and the record peak in 2002 and has experienced a modest decline since 2002 to the same level it was at the time of the ban. Now this data only reflects England and Wales, which gives the hypothesis the greatest benefit because the numbers become worse for the argument when you include the rest of the UK’s stats.

    So it would appear that the contention that the gun ban reduced the UK murder rate is not supportable from current evidence. The contention that the UK murder rate has decreased since the ban is also false. The UK murder rate has been increasing steadily for decades up until the peak in 2002. The greatest growth is shown after the 1997 UK handgun ban. The homicide rates in the UK are still not below their pre-ban rates. Homicide rates in the US have been falling precipitously since the 1990s with and without an AWB in effect.

    It would appear that it at best did nothing to affect the murder rate and at worst could be responsible for the 2002 peak. Reality is likely somewhere in the middle.

    If the contention is that the ban reduced only “gun murder” this is shown somewhat true in Chapter 2 of the same report, but this is a distinction without merit since is it statistically clear in Chapter 1 that other forms of murder have more than completely picked up the slack (which is precisely what those who oppose gun bans cite as the evidence that they only affect the law abiding and not total homicide rates). It is a fact that the gun ban created more victims defenseless against criminals, making more people rank higher in the criminals’ victim section processes.

    We should be concerned with murder regardless of the means and should therefore do things and enact policies to reduce the level of murder, not just shift it from one means to the next and have our rights and security compromised while doing it.

  6. Awesome! This will be extremely helpful. I regularly find myself trying to find some article from months ago I didn’t bookmark to show someone, and searching the terms “AR-15” and “Assault Weapon Ban” doesn’t get you very far. Thank you.

  8. A link section to government stats. and studies so we don’t have to hunt through articles to finds that study we read about 2 weeks ago in a TTAG post.

    B Krafts seems to have them at his finger tips so it should be easy.

    CDC death rates /causes, Uniform crime stats, stats for % of CCWP folks “go bad” – all the useful data at our finger tips can only help the intelligentsia become more smarter 😉

  10. I know you guys love the article format, but this would work better as a wiki. It’s entirely possible to create a wiki which is divided into TTAG article content (only editable by staff) and community content.

    The content would accumulate and be perfected 10x faster with a wiki and commenter participation.

      • Heh. Yeah, because that “wikipedia” thing is a terrible example of how to build a knowledge base.

        Articles inscribed on palimpsests using quill pens it is, then. 🙂

    • The potential for “community content” being disturbed by anti-gunners is pretty large though. On Wikipedia, mostly everybody is trying to submit correct information, and there is a moderating team reviewing work.

      I think that a TTAGwiki would work outstandingly, under the circumstances that the only people who can edit it are trusted contributors to the community.

      This would probably require us all to actually make accounts with TTAG, but I’m okay with that.

  11. But, but, but…. Rev. Jesse Jackson says that AR type rifles can blow up rail roads! Are you telling me that he lied? (heavy sarcasm engaged here!)

  12. Thank you! I use articles to refute gun grabbing “truths” put forth by gun grabbers on YouTube. But it was so hard to find old articles even with a Google search because Google kept churning out useless comments, not articles. This will help a lot to humiliate the gun grabbers.

  13. Ooh, this should be handy when I need at-a-glance factoids to bury anti-2A types in their own mound of BS. Mwahahaha!!!

  14. I’ve seen a couple articles here that list the reasons that Obama is, deep-down, anti-gun, even though on the surface he doesn’t want to take anyone’s guns away. I think those would be good to have on hand for reference.

Comments are closed.