There are other options for CA gun owners. You can use a real ugly stock that eliminates the pistol grip per CA law, and then you don’t need the bullet butten. But you still must use 10 round mags, and you also have to eliminate other features, like folding stocks and such. The bullet button approach is the preferred approach.

In the UK sems were banned, they still have ARs with the gas tube removed, making it a strait pull actions.

This last point is interesting: even if all semi autos are banned, you could still sell and own manually operated ARs, and you could also sell the steel tube needed to convert in to semi auto operation.

If all repeatable arms are banned, you could make a single shot AR that could be converted to repeater and semi auto capability.

Even if all firearms are banned, you could still sell and own 80% receivers, which could then be built into firearms.

To make a ban work, ALL gun parts would have to be banned.

Further, if such bans are in place, and if the penalty is high enought, it means you might as well go the full distance if you are going to violate the ban, and go for full auto. Or, hell, RPGs.

For those that don’t know, we can own an AR-15 in California, but only use 10 round magazines and the magazine release is a bullet button (requiring a “tool” to release the magazine, or tip of a bullet, hence the name).

I have an LMT Defender Model 16, a carbine (M4 setup). Agreed with others – it’s very light and a joy to shoot. I’ve outfitted mine with an AimPoint red dot site.

I can’t believe I forgot Sarah Palin. She’s absolutely at the top of the current list. Clearly, I had a ‘brain freeze’.

Think I’ll leave the blackboard to others. Or start some serious proofing.

For,

“.036″ and inch caliber ”

Read,

“.036″ an inch caliber ”

Of course the error probably wouldn’t confuse anyone … other than those whom it was meant to help inform in the first place.

DNW:

That reminds me of a news report that said a shooter used a “22 mm” pistol (he obviously meant .22 caliber), which prompted a blog commenter to say, “That guy must have had arms like Popeye.”

Yeah, I doubt even Der Schwarzenegger would be depicted hoisting a piece discharging a round about the size of that used in the nose cannons of WWII fighter planes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20mm_cannon

(Now watch some troll show up and claim that a Brown Bess ball is virtually a “20mm projectile”)

Thanks for the detailed information. I’m neither a gun expert nor a history expert, and I hope I didn’t come across that way. I was just trying to give a general outline and was deliberately vague about specifics.

I knew the part about the M-14 firing .30-06 was wrong as soon as I posted it.

As the saying goes, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

That reminds me of a news report that said a shooter used a “22 mm” pistol (he obviously meant .22 caliber), which prompted a blog commenter to say, “That guy must have had arms like Popeye.”

“An article on Sunday about the way in which the gunman in the Connecticut school shooting blasted his way into the building on Friday and shot his victims multiple times misstated, in some editions, the caliber of two handguns found at the school. The guns were a 10-millimeter Glock and a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer – not .10-millimeter and .9-millimeter.”

… before realizing Hinderaker had already done so himself just following:

“The second correction reflects the ignorance of firearms, and mathematics, that dogs “mainstream” reporting on gun issues. Have the Times’s reporters and editors seriously never heard of a 9 millimeter pistol? And do they really not understand how microscopic a .9 millimeter bullet would be? When people know so little about firearms, how do they presume to lecture the rest of us on public policy relating to guns?”

He makes an extremely important point.

What, if anything do the idiots reporting the news actually “know” about anything at all?

Could they reasonably believe that the victims were slain by a man using guns firing .004″ and .036″ and inch caliber bullets? (Four thousandths of an inch and thirty-six thousandths of an inch diameters respectively.)

A dime, as even a reporter might be expected to know, is about fifty thousandths of an inch thick, as in top to bottom, whereas the Caucasian’s proverbial scalp hair is about .1 mm, or .004″ or a little less in diameter.

A heavy duty paperclip – I just happen to have one handy for straightening and measuring – is made of a wire having diameter of .037″; a slightly larger diameter than the reportedly larger caliber of .9 millimeter. [.9 x .0394″ = .035″]

The bigger caliber gun then, shot bullets the diameter of a paperclip wire. Or so we were informed.

Back in the real world, multiply that .9 mm “caliber” by 5 or so, and you are finally up to the size of the pellets found in BB type guns: 4.5 mm, or .177 inch prox.

The smallest commercially available and common caliber firearm that I even know of is a .17 hmr.

Yet neither the fact gatherers who are supposedly university graduates, nor their editors – ostensibly the same plus seasoned by experience and common sense – realized they were publishing not only nonsense, but spectacularly obvious nonsense.

And they wonder why they are held in contempt?

As the saying famously goes, the moment they open their mouths about anything you know anything about, they prove themselves either liars or fools.

It started as the .30-03, then was modified into the .30-06 with advanced spitzer type bullet (copying the German advances in bullet design).

The .30-06 is actuall the .30 M1906, the date of adoption.

Based upon WW1 experience, to increase the max effective range for use in machine guns, they replaced the .30 M1906 with the .30 M1.

But the long maximum range of the .30 M1 caused problems at many army rifle ranges, where the longer range bullet could be a safety hazzard. so they developed the .30 M2, which is basically the same as the older M1906. Since the lighter bullet in the M2 had less recoil, it was preferrd by the troops and ended up being standard in WW2. The M1 went on to become the basis of M72 match ammo.

The 7.62 NATO is basically a shortened .30 M2 with very similar ballistics. Advances in gunpowder made that possible.

Now that I put neo to sleep, I’ll mention that there is an interesting political history surrounding the British .303 round, the Hauge Convention, and hollow point and soft point bullets. In fact, the term “Dum Dum” as applied to bullets comes from the place in India where soft nose bullets were made.