Help me understand , why is semi automatic in a rifle so important to gun owners here?

[Crepuscular]

23. so important?

I don't think that it's that they are so important, more so that there is no good reason to ban them and bans are ridiculous and ineffective, as we learned with the Volstead act and 30 years of the "war on drugs".

I own about a dozen different rifles, including muzzle loaders, .22's, lever actions, bolt actions, single shots and three semi-auto's. No AR-15's, though. The semi-auto's are fun to shoot, 2 of them are strictly for plinking, I use one that is chambered in .44 Magnum for hunting, in an area where rifles are restricted to being chambered in pistol calibers only. The fact that I own semi-autos poses no threat to anyone and confiscating them would accomplish nothing in terms of making society "safer".

If you want to make any progress in "banning" any sort of weapon, then a good starting point would be to provide some actual proof that there is something unique and ban-worthy about those particular weapons, that results in dramatically greater potential for harm, than is posed by various other firearms that would not be banned. That has not occurred to this point, instead the focus has been purely emotion driven and has focused on ridiculous features like bayonet lugs and plastic stocks.

The fact of the matter is that long guns, including so called "assault weapons" are used in a very, very small percentage of gun crimes. As much as the media wants to create the illusion of some kind of an epidemic of long gun related crimes, the facts just don't support such a fantasy.