Pistols for no-one, garands for all! (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario, the US government (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary) makes a surprising decision on the subject on the matter of gun control in unanimity which gets a bee in, it involves three main decisions...

• It becomes illegal for a civilian to own any magazine fed firearm with a barrel shorter than a foot, revolvers with barrels below that length must be registered. Museums may keep examples for display and historical purposes. Pistol caliber ammunition for the US civilian market now must use black powder.
• A special rule is put in place: with the exception of those individuals which have been convicted of violent crimes, have a history of pronounced violent mental illness or substance abuse and those who sign a voluntary opt out form, every adult US citizen is to be given an M1 Garand rifle as well as 320 rounds of ammunition in En Bloc clips, a sniper scope, a user's manual and a sword bayonet. Adults get their gun delivered to their homes as soon as possible, with kids getting theirs on their 18th birthday. These weapons and ammunition are to be made in the US to stimulate the locals arms industry, but will be the property of the federal government. Selling them will be a crime, as is modifying it's inner workings. In addition, all high schools (private and public) will be required to give a short course on the use of these weapons, their proper maintenance and gun safety.
• Individual States are allowed to decide if fully Automatic Weapons with barrels longer than a foot are Legal or Illegal in their boarders, as well as stuff like open carry and similar.

Funds are swiftly allocated towards making it a reality. The supreme court has said that their is nothing wrong with this new policy. Lobbyists are gleefully ignored on both sides.

What happens and are you in favor of such a policy?

Zor

[Borgholio]

What is the purpose of giving everybody rifles? Defense against foreign invasion? Deterrent against violent criminals? A consolation prize to get people over the butthurt of having to give up modern handguns?

The reasoning behind this will determine if it's a good idea or not, IMO. For instance, a defense against foreign invasion would make this a swell idea. Any invading army would have to deal with 200 million riflemen across the country in addition to our armed forces. Think Minutemen on steroids. Deterrent against violent criminals *may* work if they know every house they break in to will have at least one trained rifleman in there. On the streets...it could be problematic if people start acting like open-carry nuts do today.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The obvious question is "why"? This is the United States ... we're not likely to be invaded by any foreign power in the next century, so there's no point in giving everybody WW2-vintage semi-automatic rifles for national defense purposes. They're also much too big and bulky to make for good "self defense" guns, so there's no point for that either. I mean, I suppose you could hunt with them, and shoot holes in targets with them ... but in that case, why give everybody a .30-06? Why not just bring back the old M1 Carbine, which used the much weaker and much easier-handling .30 Carbine round?

[Bedlam]

I suppose the issue is that it's now hard to hide a weapon and takes longer to bring it to bear.

If you have a gun everybody can see you have a gun.

[TheFeniX]

I suppose the issue is that it's now hard to hide a weapon and takes longer to bring it to bear.

In maybe 20 years when the now illegal handguns finally get out of circulation due to the supply slowly dwindling. Until that time, criminals are going to be pretty sure the person they are looking to accost in public is not armed. Home Invasions will likely take a hit in the immediate future.

Since a lot of crime guns come from straw buys by dealers acting illegally, one thing going for them is that cheap pistols will no longer be available as the supply can no longer easily meet the demand. So petty crimes will be much less likely to involve a firearm as no one will want to risk having to toss a weapon.

The question then becomes: what do you do with the hundreds of thousands of felons you just created overnight? There's no gun registry, only sales receipts. How many instances of "I sold, lost, destroyed" that gun until cops just start getting warrants to search for guns? And since handguns can be hidden anywhere, how much property damage will be done as police destroy walls to find any hidden cashes?

The "cold dead hand" brigade has always been mostly bark and no bite, but something like this is going to polarize even people on the fence as the government effectively steals millions of dollars in property. Just for myself, I have tens of thousands of dollars in firearms and ammunition. Many I've bought personally, many given to me for safe keeping. Who is going to pay to take and destroy all of that? Am I supposed to believe my Dad's collectors edition Colt .45 1911 isn't gong to end up in some cops personal collection? My rifles, carbine, etc? What happens when that first guy refuses to get robbed by people with badges, fights back, and gets killed? Then the cops decide they can't take any risks and go in guns blazing like we already have a problem with and more people end up dead?

You want to get rid of handguns in America: you do it the way they did with full-auto weapons: any new pistol made after 2014 (or whatever year you passed the law) is now illegal to own. Older guns already owned are grandfathered in. As the guns get collected by police and are destroyed, the market slowly dwindles until there are no new legal handguns to buy.

[Elheru Aran]

And what about revolvers? They aren't pistols if you want to use exact terminology. There are also some unconventional 'pistols' that use bolt-action operation, as well as various historic-reproduction flintlock/percussion pieces, but for the purposes of the topic I fully recognize the historic repros are a dead end as they're largely single-shot.

Also, there are a number of firearms beyond simple pistols and rifles. Bolt-action rifles, break-open shotguns, pump-action shotguns, pistol-size (for a relative size of pistol) AK modifications, and far more. Are these regulated as well?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

And what about revolvers? They aren't pistols if you want to use exact terminology.

His RAR actually covers this. It says that any revolver with a barrel length of less than a foot must be registered (as an unintended, and hilarious, consequence "Buntline"-style single-action revolvers suddenly become the best-selling handgun in the United States.)

[lance]

Why am I seeing a failed robbery via flaregun leading to a town burning down?

[Raw Shark]

I suppose the issue is that it's now hard to hide a weapon and takes longer to bring it to bear.

In maybe 20 years when the now illegal handguns finally get out of circulation due to the supply slowly dwindling. Until that time, criminals are going to be pretty sure the person they are looking to accost in public is not armed. Home Invasions will likely take a hit in the immediate future.

Since a lot of crime guns come from straw buys by dealers acting illegally, one thing going for them is that cheap pistols will no longer be available as the supply can no longer easily meet the demand. So petty crimes will be much less likely to involve a firearm as no one will want to risk having to toss a weapon.

Sounds good so far.

The question then becomes: what do you do with the hundreds of thousands of felons you just created overnight? There's no gun registry, only sales receipts. How many instances of "I sold, lost, destroyed" that gun until cops just start getting warrants to search for guns? And since handguns can be hidden anywhere, how much property damage will be done as police destroy walls to find any hidden cashes?

The "cold dead hand" brigade has always been mostly bark and no bite, but something like this is going to polarize even people on the fence as the government effectively steals millions of dollars in property. Just for myself, I have tens of thousands of dollars in firearms and ammunition. Many I've bought personally, many given to me for safe keeping. Who is going to pay to take and destroy all of that? Am I supposed to believe my Dad's collectors edition Colt .45 1911 isn't gong to end up in some cops personal collection? My rifles, carbine, etc? What happens when that first guy refuses to get robbed by people with badges, fights back, and gets killed? Then the cops decide they can't take any risks and go in guns blazing like we already have a problem with and more people end up dead?

You want to get rid of handguns in America: you do it the way they did with full-auto weapons: any new pistol made after 2014 (or whatever year you passed the law) is now illegal to own. Older guns already owned are grandfathered in. As the guns get collected by police and are destroyed, the market slowly dwindles until there are no new legal handguns to buy.

Sounds fine to me. IMHO this whole thing has only ever been a culture war from the perspective of the gun side; the rest of us just want to increase safety. I enjoy shooting inanimate things, and am willing to shoot non-sapient edible things if I have to (I probably killed over 100 squirrels that did not get eaten in my teens when my Dad made that one of my jobs, and a few that did get eaten when shit got rough), and think most reasonable left-wing people agree with that; it's getting a handgun unexpectedly shoved up my nose at my job every few years that bothers me. The Garand mandate would eventually eliminate my problem almost entirely while throwing a fairly lethal bone to the gun people, so I voted for it as a compromise position.

[Zixinus]

What about proper instruction about the proper use of the thing? Adults who are not attending high schools. Not just "this is how to pull the trigger" but stuff like trigger discipline and target identification. I recall that the one nation (Finland?) where firearms are issued to everyone that is actually done after someone complete conscription training.

A thought about fighting off invasions: an armed populace may actually escalate the warfare as an invading army will automatically assume that any native population will be hostile and enemy combatants. It can make otherwise unused terror tactics necessary to assure that an invaded population is disarmed.

[Lord Revan]

What about proper instruction about the proper use of the thing? Adults who are not attending high schools. Not just "this is how to pull the trigger" but stuff like trigger discipline and target identification. I recall that the one nation (Finland?) where firearms are issued to everyone that is actually done after someone complete conscription training.

A thought about fighting off invasions: an armed populace may actually escalate the warfare as an invading army will automatically assume that any native population will be hostile and enemy combatants. It can make otherwise unused terror tactics necessary to assure that an invaded population is disarmed.

I think the country you were thinking about is Switzerland where it's actually part of the military service, here in Finland you need a license to own a firearm of any type and most certain those licenses aren't issued to everyone who has done their compulsory military service, I should know as I've done said military service and there's no firearms in my home and there won't be as long I have say in it.

[LadyTevar]

Garands, hmm? Damn good deer rifles, not so much for squirrel. You'd have hunters in an uproar over their favorite rifle/shotgun.

[Elheru Aran]

The OP doesn't actually proscribe long-arms. So hunting rifles and shotguns, even combat longarms, are still fine. It's pistols and short revolvers that are prohibited.

Instead of movie theater shootings we'd have more Charles Whitman situations, I suppose...

[LaCroix]

given an M1 Garand rifle as well as 320 rounds of ammunition in En Bloc clips, a sniper scope, a user's manual

Yeah. Instead of having people using inaccurate pistols where you need to get relatively close and still can miss easily, now everyone is using accurate rifles capable of shooting people from rooftops, hundreds of yards away.

Good idea - a flawless solution...

[Tsyroc]

If everyone is going to have a Garand the police or SWAT are going to need better body armor.

Even with just plain lead rounds the number of things that the Garand can penetrate or shoot through is going to be a lot higher than if people had handguns. There's also the issue on how much further a 30.06 will travel when fired. I've lived in a few states where "high powered" rifles like the 30.06 and the .308 weren't allowed for hunting because of concerns about the bullets traveling down range after a miss and hitting some unsuspecting farmer in his field, or even going through the walls of a house.

Is part of the reasoning behind picking the Garand it's size and weight? The could be a bit unwieldy for a lot of people. There are also a fair amount of them around if you want to get one from the government. My dad got one through a shooting program the government was running to get rid of some of its stockpiled weapons.

[Elheru Aran]

There are also a fair amount of them around if you want to get one from the government. My dad got one through a shooting program the government was running to get rid of some of its stockpiled weapons.

Civilian Marksmanship Program? They still do that. Apparently from WWII on to somewhere around the mid.... 60s? the US made an obscene number of Garands. Put in your application, pass a background check and do a little firearms training, and you can get a fully functional mil-spec Garand for very little money, Cosmoline and all. They might even include some ammo, I don't know for sure about that part. Bayonet too if you pay extra, IIRC (or otherwise it's pretty easy to get a genuine GI Garand bayonet in various places, they sell them for drill-team use).

What would you suggest as a dirt-common, simple and reliable longarm alternative? Personally I might go with something which is a single-shot as that would help limit casualties. Since blackpowder is going to be a more common option now that all pistol-caliber ammunition will use it, perhaps a Rolling Block rifle?

[LaCroix]

What would you suggest as a dirt-common, simple and reliable longarm alternative? Personally I might go with something which is a single-shot as that would help limit casualties. Since blackpowder is going to be a more common option now that all pistol-caliber ammunition will use it, perhaps a Rolling Block rifle?

For blackpowder, you can't go wrong with a Shiloh sharps rifle, either paper or metal cartridge. Falling block is absolutely reliable, and for the 63 percussion, it also automatically cuts the paper cartridge open and thus primes the chamber.

[Tsyroc]

There are also a fair amount of them around if you want to get one from the government. My dad got one through a shooting program the government was running to get rid of some of its stockpiled weapons.

Civilian Marksmanship Program? They still do that. Apparently from WWII on to somewhere around the mid.... 60s? the US made an obscene number of Garands. Put in your application, pass a background check and do a little firearms training, and you can get a fully functional mil-spec Garand for very little money, Cosmoline and all. They might even include some ammo, I don't know for sure about that part. Bayonet too if you pay extra, IIRC (or otherwise it's pretty easy to get a genuine GI Garand bayonet in various places, they sell them for drill-team use).

What would you suggest as a dirt-common, simple and reliable longarm alternative? Personally I might go with something which is a single-shot as that would help limit casualties. Since blackpowder is going to be a more common option now that all pistol-caliber ammunition will use it, perhaps a Rolling Block rifle?

Civilian Marksmanship Program sounds correct. My dad had to do some target shooting qualifying (basically hit the target so many times), pay his money and wait for his gun to arrive. It showed up the day before my sister's wedding and did come packaged all gooped up. I don't think any ammo came with it and he doesn't have a bayonet for it.

As for firearm alternatives. I don't know. I like rifles in pistol calibers but I'm not sure how I would like them in black powder. There are quite a few substitutes for black powder, some of which might be close enough to black powder to be acceptable in this scenario. My dad has a lever action rifle that takes .38 and .357 with a fairly short barrel. I like it because I can't shoot pistols worth a darn and I'm a lot more accurate with this gun and it is easy and comfortable to shoot. I don't think it would be too effective in defending against an invading army except for maybe in tight quarters fighting.

[Joun_Lord]

Much as I love the Garand it would be a terrible weapon for home defense. Its a pretty massive gun so good luck maneuvering it in tight hallways. Reloading a gun from a clip is something most people aren't used to so storing it properly unloaded will endanger people while their limp little girl man hands try to jam in the clip to load it.

Its a big powerful round in a big heavy weapon meaning weaklings and many woman are going to have a tough time shouldering it and firing it. Thats the people who should be defending themselves the most, the people who ain't big and strong tough people who can go one on one with the meth head trying to nab your TV.

Also that big powerful round is going to over penetrate like a motherfuck. Not so much a problem when you are facing down the screaming Hun horde, very much a problem when you are blasting away in your house or apartment building with your family and neighbors. I don't even like my neighbors but I certainly don't want to blast them while I'm trying to blast Cletus Cousinfucker.

Any pistols people want to buy are going to be black powder which corrosive as hell and will fuck a weapon very quickly if they don't clean it meaning a person who just buys this fuck huge black powder Glock will probably take it out to to the range once, fire a few rounds to get the feel of it, toss it in a gun box without cleaning it then have it fail on them when they bring it out to fire upon their attacker.

And this is a turrible idea to stimulate the arms industry. Sure they get a nice stimulation of monies when Comrade Obama decides to give every Tom, Dick, and Henrieta a nice shiny new rifle but thats a one time thing. It would give them the same problem they are starting to have now, they had massive profits while whores fed gun nuts stories about how Obama would take all our guns, Bloomberg would take all our guns and large sodas, Dianne Feinstein would take all our guns, and Carolyn McCarthy would take all our shoulder things that go up (but strangely nothing about Romney taking all our guns when he actually did try that shit, oh yeah, he's got an R beside his name). Now as people realize for the most part the anti-gunners ain't going to get shit done, Obama has more important things to worry about then assault clips (like turning us into a communist muslim theocracy ruled by Oprah, I read that on the internet so it must be true!), and MOST people would rather have a stable economy and leaders who can get shit done then take away law abiding citizens guns.

So gun sales are flatlining, every asshole who bought 20 AR-15s is starting to get desperate to sell them to try to break somewhere close to even, and gun makers are starting to regret increasing productivity. They might make it up when the next Prez election comes around if Hilary is running but even thats not totally 100% guaranteed.

This banning most guns and giving everyone Garands is worse then that by alot. It would probably wind up several damaging if not destroying domestic gun companies that are reliant of civilian sales.

Plus this wouldn't make anyone safer as people throw a shitfit as the gubmit tries to steal their property and actually goes full retard "cold dead hands". Would probably wind up with alot of dead cops, alot of dead people shot by cops as they go full SWAT on anyone from a guy with a collection of hundreds of antique and rare guns to a little old lady with a purse pistol, and civil unrest not seen in Murica since probably the not so Civil War.

[Elheru Aran]

Who even said it was about the arms industry? Did John Moses Browning piss in your Cheerios this morning? (Or John Garand. Take your pick)

The fact of the matter is that this isn't going to change much. The majority of people don't use guns. So this will be a new experience for them. It might do them good.

And the OP said nothing about confiscating currently owned weapons, merely that it's illegal to own magazine-fed pistols <1' BL. Everything else is fair game-- certainly not 'banning most guns'-- after you register revolvers below 1' BL, and blackpowder shooting becomes a much bigger deal. Yeah, some yahoos are going to blow themselves up because they didn't clean their guns-- but on the other hand, how many people are killed each day in gun accidents? And over time people are going to have it pounded into their heads that they need to clean the guns after they use them.

It's also now left up to the states to regulate guns rather than upon a federal level. That's going to make things interesting in some localities. Not sure how that can be squared with the Second.

Let's review: Everybody gets a Garand. Pistols under one foot barrel length fed by a magazine are now illegal, revolvers have to be registered. Apart from that, you can have: Rifles. Shotguns. Semi-automatic rifles. Blackpowder weapons. Revolvers over a foot long. Long-barreled pistols.

Sure, the NRA and its johns in the arms industry will scream bloody murder, but frankly, things are not going to change much. In fact, as only around 6.5 million Garands were made, the arms industry will get a kick in the pants as I suppose the government is going to make a pretty massive order to balance out the shortfall here. The most legitimate concern here is the sudden proliferation of arms in the general population now that everybody gets a Garand, and the issues that may result from the firepower of the Garand being used in an unsafe manner. That's what we would have to worry about here.

[Joun_Lord]

Who even said it was about the arms industry? Did John Moses Browning piss in your Cheerios this morning? (Or John Garand. Take your pick)

The fact of the matter is that this isn't going to change much. The majority of people don't use guns. So this will be a new experience for them. It might do them good.

And the OP said nothing about confiscating currently owned weapons, merely that it's illegal to own magazine-fed pistols <1' BL. Everything else is fair game-- certainly not 'banning most guns'-- after you register revolvers below 1' BL, and blackpowder shooting becomes a much bigger deal. Yeah, some yahoos are going to blow themselves up because they didn't clean their guns-- but on the other hand, how many people are killed each day in gun accidents? And over time people are going to have it pounded into their heads that they need to clean the guns after they use them.

It's also now left up to the states to regulate guns rather than upon a federal level. That's going to make things interesting in some localities. Not sure how that can be squared with the Second.

Let's review: Everybody gets a Garand. Pistols under one foot barrel length fed by a magazine are now illegal, revolvers have to be registered. Apart from that, you can have: Rifles. Shotguns. Semi-automatic rifles. Blackpowder weapons. Revolvers over a foot long. Long-barreled pistols.

Sure, the NRA and its johns in the arms industry will scream bloody murder, but frankly, things are not going to change much. In fact, as only around 6.5 million Garands were made, the arms industry will get a kick in the pants as I suppose the government is going to make a pretty massive order to balance out the shortfall here. The most legitimate concern here is the sudden proliferation of arms in the general population now that everybody gets a Garand, and the issues that may result from the firepower of the Garand being used in an unsafe manner. That's what we would have to worry about here.

OP said "These weapons and ammunition are to be made in the US to stimulate the locals arms industry".

And when its illegal to own magazine fed pistols then its a damn sure bet they are going to be confiscated unless you think that the government is going to let millions of illegal items still be owned by people.

Also even if most weapons aren't banned outright they may as well be considering the black-powder pistol cartridge mandate will render most weapons non-functional. You might say "whelp dats just pistol caliber hurr durr" and you'd be right. Oh did I mention that nearly every long gun cartridge is used in pistols, therefore "pistol caliber". Hell there are even .50 BMG handguns (see the Triple Action Thunder).

[Elheru Aran]

I suspect that the insanity of such 'pistols' renders them rather unique and very unlikely to be mass-produced to any extent. Also, that Triple Action Thunder piece? No magazine. It's a single-shot. Legit. As insane as that might be, it's legit.

Frankly, there is a difference between 'rifle caliber' and 'pistol caliber'. Yes, some pistols do use rifle rounds. So? There's rifles that use pistol rounds, too. You don't go around calling a .45 ACP a 'rifle round'. There is a distinction, occasionally vague, but it remains. If it *usually* goes through a weapon that is held against the shoulder, it's a rifle caliber round. These are optimized for use in a rifle, while pistol caliber rounds are optimized for use in a pistol.

Now there's a modern trend for a 'rifle-caliber pistol' such as extremely short AKM's or AR's. They would fall under the ban above for having barrels shorter than a foot, though. Otherwise you could simply swap out the barrel and they'd be rifle or carbine size. There are other handguns that are either cut-down rifles or effectively purpose-built mini-rifles such as the Thompson-Center Contender and Remington X100-- the latter two, I believe, are single-shot.

Simply arguing that because there are 'pistols' made in certain rifle calibers renders those 'pistol' calibers is not going to get you anywhere. A rifle round is not a pistol round, and vice versa. If that was the case, the Garands would be illegal too because I'm certain there are 30-06 'pistols' out there.

Did you miss where I said the production of ammunition and Garands would stimulate the arms industry? That's what Zor said. I see no reason this wouldn't work out. Even if they run out of people to give Garands to, they still have carte blanche to make almost everything else.

They may be confiscated, I concede the possibility, but more likely given the odds of public opinion, they would be given the option to turn them in or grandfather them in (likely for a fee). You can't buy new pistols, but you can keep the ones you have. They did this with automatic weapons back in the day, and they can do it again with pistols.

Admittedly it opens something of a can of worms in the form of a underground gun trade, but no good RAR would be without that... and it's not like that doesn't exist anyway.

[Joun_Lord]

There is a difference between pistol caliber rounds and rifle rounds but I wouldn't put it past people drawing up gun legislation to not know the difference anymore they know what a barrel shroud is or see the difference between a Ruger Mini-14 and an AR-15 is negligible beyond the scary "tactical" features.

These boobs who are the equivalent of the Republitards trying to police women bodies they have no idea how works and them saying "if it fires from a pistol, its a pistol caliber" is not exactly something that is in the realm of fantasy because of that. Thus all ammo is made to be black powder, even shotgun ammo as there are .410 and 12 gauge pistols (though to my knowledge the 12 gauge pistols are mostly pretty unique custom jobs but still they exist, though sawed down double barrel shotties could easily fit into a pistol category of firearms) and is more or less a ban as most modern weapons cannot reliably feed black powder ammo.

And yes, the Thomas Center Contender comes in 30-06 so its ammo too would be illegal except black powder variants.

I ain't saying that is what would happen in a situation as described by Zor but the ability for such lawls to be horrifically abused like the reddest headest steppest child in the world is there.