SDGuy wrote:
Misrepresenting semi-automatic firearms as machines guns has been a common tactic with the left since at least the early 1990s...the ignorant masses believe it, and clamor for laws to outlaw access to "assault style weapons", thinking that machine guns are easily obtainable by anyone at the corner gunstore.

Ted King wrote:
Smart, powerful people are misinformed about a lot of things and accidentally say things they didn't intend to say quite frequently. I don't buy your argument.

davester wrote:
...if Lanza used a fully automatic weapon then it would WEAKEN Obama's stance on gun control since those weapons are already illegal...

Christopher S. Koper wrote:
Although the ban has been successful in reducing crimes with AWs (Assault Weapons), any benefits from this reduction are likely to have been outweighed by steady or rising use of non-banned semiautomatics with LCMs (large-capacity magazines), which are used in crime much more frequently than AWs. Therefore, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury, as we might have expected had the ban reduced crimes with both AWs and LCMs.

However, the grandfathering provision of the AW-LCM ban guaranteed that the effects of this law would occur only gradually over time. Those effects are still unfolding and may not be fully felt for several years into the future, particularly if foreign, pre-ban LCMs continue to be imported into the U.S. in large numbers. It is thus premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun violence.

FactCheck.org wrote:
Koper concluded by saying that “a new ban on large capacity magazines and assault weapons would certainly not be a panacea for gun crime, but it may help to prevent further spread of particularly dangerous weaponry and eventually bring small reductions in some of the most serious and costly gun crimes.”

davester wrote:
They should instead be all saying "Yeah! What the black kenyan president guy said!"

deckeda wrote:
If I understand you correctly, you're convinced Obama furthers gun restrictions by making guns appear worse than they are, by falsely attributing Lanza as using a more dangerous gun than he used or even, from a practical standpoint, could have used due to existing tougher regs on automatics.

Again I ask, how does this process work? Do people refer back to the speech and say, "Remember Lanza? He used an automatic weapon.' And more and more people do this, no one recognizes the obvious factual error and the next thing you know all guns are outlawed?

deckeda wrote:
At what point does the falsehood become ineffective at helping further gun restrictions? Never? After a while? How about ... yesterday.

FactCheck.org wrote:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has introduced a bill to institute a new ban on assault weapons, claimed the 1994 ban “was effective at reducing crime.” That’s not correct either. The study concluded that “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

davester wrote:
...most people don't know the difference...

davester wrote:
and in many cases the difference is pretty close to irrelevant when you consider that a handheld machine gun can only be fired in short bursts and is virtually equalled in killing power by a semiauto slightly modified to allow rapid fire. You are arguing semantics that are irrelevant.

davester wrote: The rapid-fire characteristics of many of the popular weapons of today have only one practical value...to mass slaughter whatever it is you're shooting at before the slaughterees can escape. Human or animal, neither is justified.

Mac-A-Matic wrote:
[quote=deckeda]
If I understand you correctly, you're convinced Obama furthers gun restrictions by making guns appear worse than they are, by falsely attributing Lanza as using a more dangerous gun than he used or even, from a practical standpoint, could have used due to existing tougher regs on automatics.

Again I ask, how does this process work? Do people refer back to the speech and say, "Remember Lanza? He used an automatic weapon.' And more and more people do this, no one recognizes the obvious factual error and the next thing you know all guns are outlawed?

Mac-A-Matic wrote: [quote=deckeda]
At what point does the falsehood become ineffective at helping further gun restrictions? Never? After a while? How about ... yesterday.

FactCheck.org wrote:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has introduced a bill to institute a new ban on assault weapons, claimed the 1994 ban “was effective at reducing crime.” That’s not correct either. The study concluded that “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

Mac-A-Matic wrote:

Don't recall such leeway given to George W. Bush when he was "misinformed" and said thing he didn't "intend" to say quite frequently.

RgrF wrote:
[quote=SDGuy]
Misrepresenting semi-automatic firearms as machines guns has been a common tactic with the left since at least the early 1990s...the ignorant masses believe it, and clamor for laws to outlaw access to "assault style weapons", thinking that machine guns are easily obtainable by anyone at the corner gunstore.