Half a million #MarchForOurLives protesters rally in Washington DC - Polidicks

Except "Hunting" rifles even though an all you need to do to make an AR15 a hunting rifle is load a 5-round magazine

I just said that, yes. These are weapons first and foremost. You can use them as tools for hunting - but they are weapons.

I never said they were scary, they are much more effective at mass shootings because they are semi automatic and carry more than 6 rounds at a time majority of the time. The reason people are saying they are toys is to mock people who are more worried about their hobby being restricted than the safety of the general populace. Why would people call it a toy and be dead serious when wanting to get rid of them.

You said "sometimes legitimately used as tools". Buddy, you're going to have to provide a source that more guns are used illegitimately than legitimately....

Buddy, you're going to have to provide a source that shows I was claiming more guns were being used illegitimately than legitimately. My argument was 'they can just as easily be used illegitimately as they can be used legitimately because their 'legitimate use' depends primarily on the person holding the device'.

No, their legitimate use depends on law. By your own logic, someone who wanted to run over people with a car would be considered a legitimate use because it was their intention.

So the law is the thing that's pulling the trigger and determining what the weapon is being used on?

What pulls the trigger does not necessarily determine what is and is not a legitimate use.

Prove that and I'll give you a diamond.

So if I shoot someone I don't like, I would be thrown in jail because society has determined that using a gun to kill people I don't like is not a legitimate use for a firearm. However, shooting someone in self defense is something society has determined to be a legitimate use of a firearm. Hunting has also been determined to be a legitimate use of a firearm, as well as target shooting. We do this with everything. Unless you're using a different definition of the word "legitimate".

In all those cases the intentions of the person firing the weapon are either in direct question or a significant factor in the preponderance for whether or not it was legitimately used. For instance, in your second point if I shot someone I hated who accidentally stumbled into my lawn and shot them repeatedly after they were already down and dead, that would likely be found to be an illegitimate use - and even if it was found legitimate it would nonetheless be contested. In the first case, if you shot someone you didn't like which your society has also determined they don't like (e.g. Hitler) then it would be seen as a legitimate use of the firearm, even if you weren't a soldier at the time you pulled the trigger. Nobody would successfully prosecute an American citizen who went to Iraq and shot, specifically, Obama bin Laden with Murder in the First Degree -- even though that is absolutely what it would be on the books. Thereby, if you want to use your weapon illegitimately and your intention is to get away with it, all you need is to search for a legitimate target which society would forgive you for. In the last case if you shoot a deer in a hunting area without a license to do so, that is an illegitimate use of the firearm. Secondarily, if you shoot 'accidentally over your weight' with an over-penetrating round after lining up a shot through multiple deer to try and 'accidentally shoot over your weight' that is an illegitimate use of the weapon while you are legitimately authorized to use it in the way you were doing so, except for the way you went about using it which then makes it illegitimate.

You're actually proving my point here, that we have laws to determine what is and is not legitimate use. The user's intentions does not turn an illegitimate use into a legitimate use suddenly.

The user's intentions does not turn an illegitimate use into a legitimate use suddenly. I just provided examples where exactly that would likely to 'suddenly happen'.

So now that we've deduced that there is indeed a framework considering what is and is not legitimate use, show me how they are only "sometimes" legitimately used as tools, as opposed to mostly used as legitimate tools, as you implied in your original post.

I asked for you to quote where I stated they were 'mostly used as legitimate or illegitimate'. 'Sometimes' makes no preponderance on that one way or the other.

Every piece of evidence we have shows that a new assault weapons ban would have minimal or no impact and either way wouldn't help our mass shooting problem. Anyone who straight up ignores research is not advocating from an informed position, has zero credibility, and really just as a matter of principle should be ignored, regardless of the topic. They're marching because nothing has been done, but the specific things that their spokespeople and lawmakers and op-eds and commentators are all advocating for are feel-good measures, not substantive change. As long as they stay on the assault weapons bandwagon, the only possible outcomes are that either nothing is done, or a wholly ineffective measure is passed and ultimately nothing is done either.

Every piece of evidence we have shows that a new assault weapons ban would have minimal or no impact and either way wouldn't help our mass shooting problem. Anyone who straight up ignores research is not advocating from an informed position, has zero credibility, and really just as a matter of principle should be ignored, regardless of the topic. Agreed, which is why stating 'it has no impact' is factually and statistically false. At the very least it was found to have 'some impact'. People keep saying 'it had no impact' - that is not what said study concludes with. They're marching because nothing has been done, but the specific things that their spokespeople and lawmakers and op-eds and commentators are all advocating for are feel-good measures, not substantive change. What said people are advocating for are a wide range of things, indicating that they are considering a wide range of options. Their first and principal concern, however, is voting out anyone who refuses to compromise and feels 'no problem exists'.

Maybe you could start by acknowledging that there's a problem with proliferation. The issue might not be specific to "assault weapons", but curbing proliferation (or "banning the evil guns" as you put it) most likely would be a step in the right direction.

No, what I’m thinking is that there’s a metric shit ton of better ways to reduce gun violence and none of them involve dumb politicians passing another rehashed assault weapons ban.

How we have simultaneously both a bunch of people marching to ban guns and a presidency that validates the entire reason we have firearms in the first place at the same time is beyond me.

Marching to stop gun violence is not 'a march to ban guns'.

Yeah, I acknowledge there's a problem with proliferation. According to the stats, it's 97% handguns. That's not a rhetorical 'pick a number close to 100%' 97%, that's an actual measured 97% of firearm homicides are committed with handguns. Less than 1% are committed with rifles of any kind. 'Assault weapons' are only a tiny minority of that. The DoJ-sponsored study on the 1994 AWB found that the reduction in use of assault weapons was correlated with an increase in use of non-assault weapons, on account of the distinction being purely cosmetic and easily circumvented. So no, it's not addressing proliferation, it's not a step in the right direction, it's a total waste of political capital that could be much better spent on factors that actually are significant contributors to gun crime.

“When they give us that inch — that bump stock ban — we will take a mile,” proclaimed Delaney Tarr, another Marjory Stoneman Douglas student leader. “We are not here for breadcrumbs.”

You are right, that was hyperbolic. They have a variety of reasons for marching. Among their numbers are individuals who seek the restriction of firearms that constitute the reason we retained the second amendment in the first place. The very tools that have likely kept this administration from seeking a more direct path to the death of democracy and the same tools that offer us an abort button in the event that they do.

This country is doomed if you need firearms to remove a tyrannical sitting president, only because a civil war will see us destroyed by foreign agents taking advantage of weakness. This isn't the 1700's and that's not a good checks and balance imo.

All of that is accurate. They're not going to be satisfied with bump stock bans. They want something that's more useful, that does more, that actually impacts firearms being brought into schools or being available for such easy purchase. Reading that is 'we want to ban guns' just shows that you didn't actually watch or listen to the march itself.

Where have I mentioned assault weapons? You're saying that you're not acknowledging legal gun ownership in general, "assault" weapons or otherwise, as a source of violence. Which is what I'm doubtful of. You haven't "beaten the topic to death", you presented flawed arguments (which I've debunked in the very post you're quoting) and called it a day, pretending you won. As I've already explained, if your 'arguments' suffice to claim that there's no link between gun ownership and violence, then we can also claim that there's no relation between poverty/mental health and violence either, which is absurd. I've also presented indications that poverty and poor mental healthcare aren't sufficient explanations of your abysmal murder rates on their own, and showed that there's a link between gun ownership and suicide rates among males. If that's not sufficient for you to at least consider the possibility that proliferation favors lethality then there's nothing I can do for you.

The point is that it dooms the country. It prevents subjugation. The ability of foreign powers to directly influence the resulting unrest would be limited. We have a tiered governmental structure that allows for the reformation of any component without totally destroying the system. If nothing else, consider this: If your goal is to save lives, I'd recommend a different path. Continuing to drive a wedge between the two parties with this instead of pursuing the massive variety of options that you could get bipartisan support for (better education, better healthcare, better reentry programs in prisons, etc etc) is going to lead to a civil war eventually. It will continue to make various groups feel marginalized and will never solve the underlying issues that cause it in the first place.

That is difficult when one of those parties is constantly and mindfully driving that wedge, refusing to cooperate or compromise, and becoming increasingly and unapologetically more extremist every passing week.

Has anybody managed to provide a reasonable argument for why "assault weapons" should be banned? Because I feel like the only argumentation I see coming from the pro-AWB side of things has been "what, you want children to die?"