I wish lol… discounting sales I don’t think I’ve seen any semi-automatic rifles here for under a 1000€ (mind you, we’re in the EU so that is tax and any other fees included). If I was looking for guns under a thousand, it’d basically be bolt action hunting rifles, sporting rifles, shotguns, and pistols lol. If I could pick stuff like that for 500 it’d make it a lot easier to collect fun guns
Also the image of a gucci collab with a gun manufacturer… now that would be the most american thing I’ve seen in a while haha
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The thought of going up to a store and buying an assault rifle over the counter for $500 with barely any restrictions is so alien to me.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 1 day ago
Alien to most Americans too. Let’s break it down.
Pedantry first: the garden variety AR-15 is not an “assault rifle”. (AR stands for “Armalite” – the company that first developed the rifle, not “assault rifle”.) Assault Rifle is a technical term with a technical definition: a shoulder-fired rifle in intermediate caliber with select fire. The AR-15s you usually see meet all those criteria except for the select fire: since they’re not capable of fully automatic fire, they’re not assault rifles. (Which is why efforts to ban them are usually called “assault weapon” bans – “assault weapon” is a term with no officially accepted definition, so it can mean whatever the people trying to ban things want it to mean.) And for an even deeper level of pedantry: some people will mistakenly tell you something along the lines of “AR-15 is the semi-auto civilian version, while the full-auto military version is called a M-16 or M-4.” While that’s generally the case, it’s not really true. In the early days of adopting it, the US military adopted the AR-15 and designated it the M-16 for internal reference. But the company making them (Colt at that time) still called them AR-15s and (for a while) still marked military rifles as “AR-15”. Also, back in those early days, it was legal to sell newly made full-auto guns to civilians, and while it wasn’t very common, it did happen, so there are a few full-auto civilian AR-15s in existence, but most of that is just purely academic curiosities, really.
While some states have barely any restrictions (basically just the federally mandated background check), many states do have significant restrictions. Since the states with restrictions are some of the most populated states, that actually affects the vast majority of Americans. It varies widely between states, but it’s common to have waiting periods, training requirements, or to even ban AR-15 style guns outright – the various ‘assault weapon’ bans, each one with its own slightly different definition of what an ‘assault weapon’ is. (And gun stores will refuse to sell to out-of-state buyers, so you can’t easily circumvent these bans by simply traveling to a different state.) Most Americans can’t simply walk into a gun store and buy an AR-15 ‘over the counter’. For some, it’s just not possible to buy one at all. For others, it can be a difficult process that may eventually conclude with a technically ‘over the counter’ sale, it’s definitely not the just ‘walk in and buy one’ kind of thing you’re talking about.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
it surprises a lot of people to learn that Texas has nearly as many restrictions as California. You want to go somewhere where they have practically no gun laws, go to Wyoming (i’m not joking).
xzite@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s only really a “technical term” in the civilian anglosphere and the actual “definition” is very shaking when you start investigating it. By your definition a belt fed machine gun with a single shot setting is an assault rifle. Not to mention that there’s no actual definition of what an “intermediate round” even is.
Most European armies call them some variant of gewehr or rifle and even anglosphere armies just call them rifles, or carbines if they are under some unspecified length.
This is like saying manslaughter or murder is a term with no officially accepted definition since it varies by jurisdiction.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
yeah, we should be more specific when discussing them what we mean. are we talking semi-auto >22LR rifles with large magazines?
of course that kind of discussion would require a populatiion educated on firearms. certainly better educated than i am.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 15 hours ago
Only if it’s in an intermediate caliber and light enough to shoulder fire.
Which, admittedly, there are a few of those out there … but only a few. And, well, arguably such a gun could be an ‘assault rifle’ if you chose to use it as one. Being belt-fed rather than magazine-fed doesn’t really fundamentally change the nature of the thing, and at that point, the feed mechanism is the only functional difference between that and what you’d typically call an assault rifle.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Can it be used for assault? Is it a rifle? Them who fucking cares, it’s technically correct in both scenarios.
Pulsar@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
That difficult process is what Don Jr wants to address with GrabAGun.com, just imagine how convenient is going to be to order any kind of weapon online and have delivered to your front door.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 20 hours ago
We can also buy from private parties and there’s zero restrictions. Problem is we have it that way because they should be getting used right about now…
ElDuderino@lemmus.org 16 hours ago
Technically, they are not assault rifles as they cannot do selective fire or fully automatic fire. And most states where people actually live have plenty of restrictions.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Technically. Plus couldn’t you just buy it off someone with literally none of those restrictions?
ElDuderino@lemmus.org 15 hours ago
Not in CA - you still need a federally licensed dealer to mediate the sale. Many other states have similar restrictions.
marduk@lemmy.today 1 day ago
You won’t get a fully automatic rifle for less than $10k, probably closer to $30k
SynAcker@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Now you can drop in a forced reset trigger (FRT) for about $250 into any AR15. This still meets the definition of a semiautomatic rifle (one pull of the trigger per round fired) while enabling the user to shoot at fully automatic speeds.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
What’s a “forced reset trigger” and why does it cost $9500 then?
The point is that’s nitpicking the definition.
daggermoon@piefed.world 22 hours ago
It depends on the state but in some states handguns are harder to get than assault rifles.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
and i just found a 22LR bolt action for $100. online, i haven’t gone to the gun store or shooting in a hot minute. same place, my buddy runs a gun store with attached range. if people are going to have firearms, they should be educated and trained on their use. but my buddy says that half of the folk he sells to frighten him. like, they’re the type that buys a gun dreaming of and waiting for a chance to use it on a person. but they pass their 4473, so he sells.