From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Brian Densmore Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 3:43 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [OT] Clinton Assault Weapon Ban Ending - was - RE:gmailinitiations
Not true. I had the opportunity to purchase a .44 "semi-automatic" rifle a few years back. Totally legally, before the Clinton ban. This is called a semi-automatic, but in reality is a .44 sub-machine gun. A simple modification turns this semi-automatic "assault weapon" into a fully automatic mass- people-killing "assault weapon". The modification is and almost always has been illegal, but lots of people do it anyway, I'm sure. I'm sorry, but I really see no reason for these weapons to be legal. I have a gun and use it to kill food with (food <> human beings), and Shooting a deer with an assault weapon pretty much nullifies the food quality part of it, not to mention the fur/leather quality.
Pretty much any semi-automatic weapon (including those you shoot Bambi with) can be modified to become fully-automatic. Hell, if you can pull the trigger fast enough, you needn't modify. In the Mini-14 world there is a popular device for this very purpose, allowing you to avoid the illegal modification of your rifle.
I've fired thousands of weapons in my day, and to be honest, those Chinese AK-47 knock-offs (they call it an SKS) that were popular a while back are probably the most dangerous. They sold for $200.00 or less. These are excellent for modification to full auto - in fact, most of them are mere millimeters from it to begin with. (As with most weapons of this sort, fifteen minutes with a bastard file will get it done.) I can certainly see (even as a self-professed gun nut) that these don't need to be readily available in that format. I let my stepson fire one last year; handed it to him with six rounds in it, he pulled the trigger once, and they all went down range! Note: These weren't even part of the ban, I can buy one NOW.
As for the deer bit, I'm not sure how soft I should make this landing... but here goes. In the service I preferred to fire a 7.62 NATO round, roughly equivalent to your .308 Remington. The ever-popular 5.56mm NATO round fired by an M-16 (and many variants) is practically identical to a .223 Remington as well. At ranges exceeding 500 yards, I still prefer a .308, but you really can't beat a .223 for precision firing at less than 200 yards with a scope. Both of these rounds are excellent for their purposes both in combat, and in sport. Their behavior in both realms is IDENTICAL. Either punch through flesh and bone (.308) or fragment and do as much damage as possible (.223).
The .223 is messy enough to keep most folks from surviving to the hospital, as in the case of our D.C. sniper (hardly qualified to hold this title, however). The effects on the flesh of a deer are exactly the same as that with any mammal, and when fired properly the terminal effects are the same: a hole in (or through) a target. Dustin