Father of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim hopes to bring unique lawsuit against AR-15 makers

[krispos42]

22. You mean, typical advertising techniques?

Yeah, of course they do that, just like Ford does for pickup trucks or DeWalt does for power tools. And don't forget the beer commercials!

But I understand where you're coming from. They play up the military angle, I think in part because it's macho and they fetishize the military. George Lakoff notes this is part of the conservative "strict father" model he wrote about in "What's the Matter With Kansas?"

Part of it too is that, since it's generally agreed that the military has decently high standards for their equipment, if the military is using it then the design is pretty good. And of course, when you're defending yourself with a rifle you're doing something awfully similar to what the military does in combat. The difference is that what you're doing will likely only last seconds, not multi-year tours like the Army.

There are numerous reasons why I don't own an AR-15 and probably won't, but that can be for another time.

The issue here, I think, is that the AR-15 is, in one aspect, just another gun. It's a launching device for bullets. Unless you beat somebody with it, the gun doesn't do the actual injury; the bullet it launches does.

The military, the police, and civilians have done work improving the AR-15 as a bullet-launching device. A lot of it is technical; what kind of coating to use on the mechanical parts, what kind of steel or aluminum to use, how to heat treat it. What kind of stock works better? How can we make the trigger pull smoother, or lighter, or both? Is the magazine release too big? Too small? Too smooth? Too rough?

Gas system... direct impingement or gas piston? Carbine length or mid-size? Without or without gas-adjustment?

There's certainly a lot more than that; I'm far from an expert on this issue. But what I'm getting at is that the metrics are too strong to ignore, and these are above and beyond being specific to the AR-15. A protruding pistol grip is generally more comfortable and secure than a traditional straight grip. And having two (front and back) can be even better.

Mounting a flashlight to your gun is just too good of an idea to not do.

A telescoping buttstock that quickly adjusts for different arm lengths and different thicknesses of clothing seems, nowadays at least, to be just basic common sense.

Red dot sights work better than iron sights; they're easier to see, don't' require as much in terms of sight alignment, and don't require your eyes to focus off the target.

These improvements have spread very widely throughout the world and across a variety of rifles and shotguns. In fact, they're now making small red-dot sights for ordinary pistols. You'll probably start seeing them on cops a lot more.

The metric is speed and accuracy. OF COURSE people want to get their sights on target faster, whether your hunting a running deer, shooting clays, or facing down an adversary. OF COURSE people want to put their bullets where they are aiming. And these kinds of improvements and developments are making a difference.

So yeah, the military is going to adopt them. And the police. And Joe Schmoe down the street. Because that's what progress is... continual improvements.

What you're complaining about is that CONCEPTS (not technology) is migrating from the police/military world into the civilian world. You don't like it, you seem to want it to revert, somehow, and you fight what has been a largely lost cause on this.

And I understand it's intimidating and threatening. People that have guns for self defense are people that think and practice and plan for the circumstance of having to take a human life. And it's creepy because some of them REALLY TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. Like, really seriously. Like, to the point where it seems they grow a desire to test the skills they've acquired and the planning they've done.

And the internet, like it has for everything else, makes this stuff more available and easy to find. And to find others that have a similar hobby. I think part of your concern is that you realize just how popular this is, something that 25 years ago you would be ignorant of because you didn't go to a gun store or read a gun magazine or have any friends to talk with about guns. Now it's everywhere, just like everything else.

But ultimately the intense concern over this has resulted in a backlash that is having the opposite effect of what you would like. Rifle and handgun sales under Obama skyrocketed because of his, and his party's, stance on guns. Trying to make tactical rifles unacceptable socially, if not legally, has led to soaring sales and more effort into R&D, as well as more accessories.

The only real, if incomplete solution, would be to ban semi-auto long guns. Of course, the market would respond in relatively short order with tactical pump-action rifles, with red dot sights and pistol grips and adjustable stocks and matte black finishes, but at least they would be manual action, not semi-automatic action.