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Comment by wireprotocol | Hacker News Reader

Given that rifles are involved in such a small number of murders, why go to all the effort of including rifles in the ban? Seems like a big logistical challenge and you'd make a lot of your fellow citizens unhappy.

If your proposal is to ban all semi-auto pistols (including from police) but allow all semi-auto rifles (without allowing state/local restrictions), you might get some traction. Such a plan would be better supported by numbers, better supported by the Constitution (which is talking about militia weapons), and more politically palatable (nobody will say "over my dead body" because they have to change their little gun for a big gun).

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I'm not naive enough to think any ban would be easy, but the logistics aren't insurmountable. There has been a ban on assault weapons before. Eventually, there must be legislation to reduce access to military-style assault rifles such as those used in mass shootings.

Why must there be? We are talking about small numbers of deaths and a large number of people who want (and/or currently own) rifles.

Sometimes you just need to be practical and look at the numbers. Just because you don't want a rifle doesn't mean a ban has zero cost or that the cost is somehow not a valid one. Many of our fellow citizens want the freedom to own rifles and you should have some respect for that.

The better case for gun control in every possible way is pistols. But nobody will ever budge on pistols if they sense that it's just a "first step" to confiscating rifles as well. The only way to get any kind of gun control is to earn trust by showing respect for ordinary citizens owning rifles, and from that point of respect you can make reasonable suggestions on pistols.

I am not advocating a blanket ban on all guns. Rifles, sure. For hunting, sport, farming etc. But semi-automatic AR-15s have no place in a civil society. Preventing access to them seems like a sensible compromise, and it has been demonstrated to be effective in other countries. My friend's son had active-shooter training at school. He is six. That is an unacceptable situation.

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