glock27 wrote: Sat Jan 05, 2019 8:46 pm
That’s the part to me that is so bogus. Your .223/5.56 round is a very puny cartridge in the firearm culture. They are fun to shoot and usually cheap. But the 55 grains average is not a grenade like the media makes it out to be. This remind me of a video I saw by Steven crowder. He pretends to be a liberal undercover to make a point at how dumb and uneducated people are. People are okay with the puny .223 for hunting. But when they see the size of a 30-06 they think it should be banned. And they want to ban the scary looking guns. It’s a shame how pathetic the world has come too. Here’s the YouTube video. I find this guy very entertaining. It’s about 15 minutes long, I find myself watching it again every so often
https://youtu.be/SqJ_4YhYMhE
What I’ve found is that people who are ignorant about firearms tend to lack a sense of perspective about them....simply because they don’t
know anything. It’s that ignorance that informs their views about firearms. You can’t have perspective unless you have factual knowledge against which to compare your fears and suspicions. Until about a year ago, I used to carry around an inert (no powder or primer) .223 and .308 round, and a spent .375 H&H Magnum case in my pocket, and I would use them as props when discussing AR15s with people who were cautious fence-sitters on firearms. I always started by showing them the .375 case, explaining how it was used to hunt animals like large African game, and the largest most dangerous North America game animals. Then I’d show them the .308 round, and explain how it was frequently used to take medium sized game like deer, black bears, and hogs, and explain how it was like a weaker version of the .30-06 hunting round. Then I’d show them the .223 round and explain how it was originally designed for small game and varmints like prairie dogs and small predators.
Usually, up to that point, the person I was speaking with would be more or less engaged and interested, and they obviously understood the point that the the .223 is a fairly weak cartridge as far as rifle calibers go. Only then would I first reveal that the .308 was also the caliber fired in a “.30 caliber machine gun”, and that it was “adapted from” the more powerful .30-06 “hunting” cartridge; and then reveal that the weakest cartridge - the .223 small game cartridge - was also the caliber used in an AR15.
If they were intellectually honest - and usually, fence sitters actually ARE that - they get the point and they admit that maybe the AR15 isn’t the “destroyer of worlds” that the antis hyperventilate about. If they’re still willing to talk about this stuff, I’ll tell them about the relative ballistics of 7.62x39 versus .30-30 - a cartridge that has arguably taken more deer in North America than any other cartridge - and prove that the 7.62x39 is weaker than the .30-30, making the point that a lever action .30-30 hunting rifle is more powerful than an AK47.
Along the way, it provides ample opportunity to make plain that what people are reacting negatively to is the
visual aspect of a MSR, not the power/lethality - because it is
easily empirically proven that MSRs are not as lethal/powerful as many common hunting rifles. When these points truly sink in, it becomes readily apparent that people are reacting emotionally rather than logically to the whole issue. You can begin to disconnect people’s feelings about how a MSR looks, from how it actually works, and its actual lethality relative to the kind of hunting arms they are prefectly comfortable with.
Before anyone says, “Hey, I use .223/5.56 to hunt deer and hogs,” YES, I
know some people do. That’s not the point. The point is to give people who know NOTHING about firearms and ballistics some sense of
perspective about the utility and lethality of various cartridges and the rifles that fire them, with the goal of changing their minds about how they view MSRs in particular as compared to “traditional” hunting rifles.
I stopped carrying those inert cartridges about the time we moved in October of 2017, because I misplaced them in the move. I know they’re around somewhere, but I haven’t seen them yet. And a year later, I’ve more or less given up on trying to have those discussions....mostly probably because I’ve become more reclusive in the past year....but also because I am very tired of fighting it. Stupidity is like entropy. You can’t fight it. It simply exists... as part of the “law of human nature thermodynamics”. I vote according to my conscience, and I live my life accordinginly. I accept the the probability that, some day, people like me will be outlaws - not through any agency of my own, but because dumbasses vote too.
I’m still happy to take someone to the range for their first time and introduce them to shooting, because I think that this is by far the most effective tool for enlightening others. But, for that to happen, the other person has to be open-minded enough to be willing to investigate shooting for themselves, without being burdened by all the drama and stupidity. You can’t
argue an anti into changing their mind. You can only
show them ... and most of the antis don’t want to be shown anything. They’d rather exist in ignorance than face the possibility that maybe they’ve been wrong all this time. The number of people who are big enough to admit when they’ve been wrong about something and adjust their thinking accordingly without feeling like their identity is being assaulted, are vastly outnumbered by the number of people who completely lack an ability for introspection and self-assessment, who are categorically unable to unlink their self-worth from their ideological certainties.
Every year, that disparity in numbers grows larger. That’s why I am very pessimistic about our national future and a due regard for the human right to keep and bear arms.
