My Life as a Shooter: Scary Boomsticks

In Minnesota, it's Hunting Season. The season gets further subdivided by what tools are allowed when, and we're soon to see plenty of people clad in a garish combination of woodland camouflage and bright-as-the-sun orange. They'll get their kills, and take their photos with those kills, and some (sub-)urbanite twat will screech "But that's a high-powered sniper rifle!"

Look, Concerned Pearl-Clutcher Who Knows No Hunters, you wouldn't know what a "sniper rifle" is if it whacked you upside the head with its buttstock because--for the vast majority of marksmen employed in such a role--the difference between a deer rifle and a "sniper rifle" is the target. That's because the bolt-action rifle used to hunt deer and the bolt-action rifle used to kill suspected terrorists might as well be the same damned thing; the modifications routinely done to the latter are open to the former (and those willing to pay for such things can get them).


Look at the scary sniper rifle...from World War I...used after the war to kill deer.
Fucking Hell. Nothing says "I am incompetent to participate in firearms-related policy discussions." like making fundamental attribution errors such as that. Rifles are not scary demonic boomsticks. Neither are shotguns or handguns. FORM IS NOT FUNCTION.

Which leads to this: there are an increasing number of people who take game using semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. In plain terms, that AR-15 is a valid sporting rifle, because (once again) the difference is the target. (It would help if you knew what "semi-automatic" means and stop confusing it with full-automatic fire.)


This is a hunter with an AR-15 used as a deer rifle. Get used to it.
It's not even illegal (in the US) to get a proper assault rifle or machinegun. It's tedious, hideously expensive, and the cost of ownership makes the burden much like owning a Ferrari (so most don't bother), but NOT illegal. Getting a sound suppressor--what you think is a death machine called a "silencer"--is almost as tedious, but much cheaper and actually is required in many European countries due to their beneficial effects (i.e. you ain't going deaf; guns are called "boomsticks" for a reason).

Basic knowledge of how firearms actually work--truthful, accurate, verifiable information--is readily had now. You have no excuse for your ignorance, and until you get up to speed you have nothing to say about the matter that needs to be heard. Once you stop screeching about "Boomstick scary! BAN BAN BAN!" like a petulant brat, then I will take you seriously. Until then you get to sit down, shut up, and study the facts.

And no, you don't get a say on what firearms I can have or what I do with them. You decide for yourself, and yourself alone. I do not, and will not, justify what I acquire or what I do with what I acquire to you or anyone else.

(Note: This post was intended to go live on this date. An unforeseen access outage delayed it until the 3rd of November, 2015.)