We post this second of two articles about guns in America on a very sad day as a young man killed students in Florida today - marking the eighth school shooting with deaths or injuries in 2018 so far. The earlier article, Gun Rights and the Progressive Movement was posted in January.
| The law against machine guns is being thwarted because of easily accessible assault style rifles. Because the U.S. public was fearful of massacres enabled by machine guns, they demanded a law against them. And, in 1934, for the first time in its history, the U.S. passed anti-gun legislation, effectively outlawing machine guns. But now innovative gunsmiths have developed devices that, when coupled with assault style rifles, skirt the law against machine guns. These barely legal guns mimic the sound, feel, and deadliness of machine guns. As sold in the U.S., assault style rifles are incapable of shooting like a machine gun. A person cannot shoot continuously by holding the trigger down. Instead, he must pull and release the trigger each shot. Hence, these guns are called semi-automatics. The rate at which they can be fired is slower than a machine gun or fully automatic gun. |
