AndyS
AndyS's JournalThe AR platform is no longer lethal enough for the Military.
Meet the NGSW, Next Generation Squad Weapon. The contract has been awarded and delivery is slowly beginning. If you want one the civilian version is already available to the public. In excess of $2000 a copy sales are slow but once the military contract pays for the tooling and R&D it should drop to AR levels.
The bullet is ~20% larger and the powder charge is increased to produce the same muzzle velocity of the smaller 5.56 NATO, 3000 feet per second. Improvements are an increased range (the smaller lighter 5.56 tends to bounce off some surfaces after ~100m) and the ability to penetrate the highest level ceramic body armor. Weight and portability match that of the AR platform.
I'm posting this with a simple question for the gun rightists here. Given the lethality of the AR15 and it's ascension to the gun of choice for mass shooters is there some level of lethality that should be with held from the public at large? At what point does the ability do destroy human life need to be restricted?
Mass public shootings today are more frequent and deadlier.
https://www.theviolenceproject.org/key-findings/Fascinating study about mass shootings in the US. Covers the '60s to present. Although it's not the central theme of the study it does put to rest the idea that it's Justa Modern Sporting rifle. Well, maybe if the sport is killing people quickly and efficiently.
The AR-15 and it's derivatives is the most lethal weapon ever marketed to the civilian public. THE MOST LETHAL EVER period.
Below is a still shot of one of the graphs at the cite. Gunners will tell you that rifles are less than 30% of guns used in mass shootings. True if you average all shootings since 1960. However if we break down the graph by decades the % of rifles (all ARs by the way) used has grown from 2% to 30% to 59% in the last ten years. If we only take the last 5 years into account the % grows to 90%.
Not only are the majority of mass shootings done with ARs but the fatality rate is many times higher than shootings with other kinds of weapons. The graph below is interactive at the link. It gives the incident, the AR type used as well as the number of casualties.
State lawmakers made concealed firearms legal without a permit. Then, more West Virginians died.
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But in the months and years after the law was enacted, more West Virginians died from guns. A study, conducted by West Virginia University researchers and published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that firearm deaths were about 26% more frequent in the state after legislators passed HB 4145.
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“This is something that you could have foreseen at the time,” Palumbo said. “When you put more guns in more places, you’re going to have more accidents and more gun casualties as a result.”
https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2023/10/12/west-virginia-gun-deaths-concealed-carry/?utm_source=The+Trace+mailing+list&utm_campaign=e58fdad993-trace_bulletin_oct_16_2023&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f76c3ff31c-e58fdad993-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
In a couple of years homicide rates went up 26%.
This ain't rocket science people. More guns = more death and injury. 26 states have Political Carry Laws (nothing about the Constitution applies here) and 26 states showed a 15% or more increase in homicides.
It's just a question of time . . .
If you run thousands of ads like this:https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=
&high_res=true&w=1200
how long before you create thousands of these:
?quality=75&auto=webp
Hmmm, what happened in the last year or so . . .
Oh, that's right Texas passed Political Carry (aka Constitutional carry which it is not).
Flannel, muddy girl camo and man cards. See the ads used to sell the AR-15.
A very interesting chronological look at ads for the AR-15. The first one was in 1966 and it was marketed (unsuccessfully) as a hunting rifle. 1966 was before the NSSF pulled off it's coup of the old NRA which was dedicated to gun safety and marksmanship.
From 1977 on all the ads centered on military and police as a selling point of the rifle. Curious how the gun culture is insistent that it isn't a military weapon when the gun industry has advertised it as such for 25 years!
It's well worth the read and an education on how the gun industry literally brain washed a generation of gun buyers.
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https://wapo.st/46lNKjs
It was made from aluminum and plastic, not the heavier metals and wood used in traditional firearms. Its cartridges were tiny compared with typical hunting ammunition. And it was all black — a dour monochrome far from the rich walnut accentuating many guns at the time. In short, the AR-15 presented a litany of challenges for those tasked with trying to sell it.
Many gun enthusiasts and industry executives were initially skeptical that an offshoot of a weapon originally designed for combat could sell in a marketplace focused on extolling the virtues of rifles for hunting and handguns for self-defense.
Through it all, the gun also became a point of emphasis for gun companies that turned to tactical weapons as an emerging and lucrative market.*
* The AR-15 market is so competitive that there is very little profit in selling the gun alone, hence the need to sell cheap tactical add-ons often with keystone markup to make up the shortfall.
Fun fact:
68% of the guns used in mass shootings since 1984 were purchased legally.
These are the 'law abiding citizens' the gun culture fights so hard for.
Who will protect me from these law abiding citizens?
It's "Justa" . . .
I'm not familiar with the Justa gun company but I hear about it a lot from gun rights activists. You know, it's Justa modern sporting rifle.
In the case of the Justa AR-15 it's also just the choice of mass shooters. Oh! The Gunner says, but pistols kill more people than rifles, in fact hammers are used as often as rifles! The same they say is true of mass shootings; only 30% of mass shootings are done with the Justa AR-15.
Well if you take into account all mass shootings going back to 1984 that's true. But when these shootings are examined by time line that's not the case. In the decade from 2010-2020 the Justa AR-15 was used in 34% of such shooting sprees. However in the years since 2020 that percentage rose to 59%. The Justa is now the defacto killing machine of choice.
Not only has the number of Justas increased but the leathality of the Justa is 2.7 times that of other weapons used in mass shootings.
There was a ban on Justas from 1994 to 2004 and amazingly the number of mass shootings fell by 37%, amazingly close to the percentage of shootings committed with Justas. Gunners will eagerly point out that the ban was ineffective because the exact same rifle was still available without the military pretties like flash suppressors and bayonet mounts. But still mass shootings decreased?
Hmmm, so why did mass shootings decrease? Could it be that the marketing of the Justa is aimed at military wannabes and when the ugly black gun was off the market they lost interest? Might it just be that the way gun makers market their Justas actually generate mass shootings? We don't know because research into gun violence has been forbidden for so long. Maybe in another decade there will be enough data to find out.
I don't want to ban Justas. I'd like to have them put under the 1934 NFA that governs machine guns. I'd be willing to forego the $200 stamp to own one, just undergo the same background check it takes to buy a machine gun and have it registered to the owner with the ATF. I wonder if it's the background check or the registration that makes Gunners all butt hurt?
All the hoopla aside, forget the 2nd and the gun grabbers. The Justa is a slightly degraded military grade weapon designed to a Pentagon RFQ to be used in warfare. The marketing of the Justa is concentrated on its military ancestry and the incredible leathality it has. The people who the advertising is designed to appeal to are exactly the people we don't want to have a Justa.
Que the gunners to say, "Mass shootings are only a tiny % of all shootings!" True but they are the only source of reasonably accurate data becaue the media reports it, not the CDC or FBI.
Information from the Gunviolence archive, Statistica.com and The Trace.
It's mental illness . . .
WITH A FUCKING GUN.
Without the gun it's anguished teens like we've had forever.
I have an admission and a request.
I take pictures and I write about gun violence. It's all I do. Gun violence is an anguish inducing and painful topic for me. Many have made me acutely aware of how difficult a struggle it is to reduce this carnage. I've long since given up on preventing it, I'd be happy to simply see it diminish a bit.
I watched Sandy Hook unveil on live TV with a 4 year old grandchild in my lap and two others in class a block away. I did the same with Parkland. Uvalde was on my TV in real time. I saw it all. My nephew died by gun suicide. A friend's daughter attempted the same. I've had a gun pointed at me. More than once. This is a personal thing to me and I'm not entirely rational about it.
That was the admission.
Now for the request.
For those who feel like responding to my posts with what may seem like a pragmatic outlook that nothing will ever be done, that nothing will ever change, that I should just accept it and go on with life I would ask two things; consider looking a survivor in the eyes as you compose your words. How would those comments be received by a parent of Sandy Hook or Parkland or Uvalde or one of the hundreds of other schools where shootings have ended promising lives as they just began? How would it make them feel to be told all is in vane and those deaths will never lead to anything redeeming? Choose your words carefully.
The second thing I'd ask is for you to take the advice of your mother. If you can't say something nice and supportive just STFU.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Pelican Bay, TX 76020
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Member since: Thu Jan 20, 2005, 02:07 PM
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