mingaa
Raconteur
Wall Street Journal - 1/17/13 - missed this John Lott article for a week??!
This from the article - and more (with 17,000+ comments!):
"The civilian version of the Bushmaster uses essentially the same sorts of bullets as small game-hunting rifles, fires at the same rapidity (one bullet per pull of the trigger), and does the same damage. The civilian version of the AK-47 is similar, though it fires a much larger bullet—.30 inches in diameter, as opposed to the .223 inch rounds used by the Bushmaster. No self-respecting military in the world would use the civilian version of these guns.
A common question is: "Why do people need a semiautomatic Bushmaster to go out and kill deer?" The answer is simple: It is a hunting rifle. It has just been made to look like a military weapon.
But the point isn't to help hunters. Semiautomatic weapons also protect people and save lives. Single-shot rifles that require you to physically reload the gun may not do people a lot of good when they are facing multiple criminals or when their first shot misses or fails to stop an attacker...."
FULL ARTICLE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... %3Darticle
This from the article - and more (with 17,000+ comments!):
"The civilian version of the Bushmaster uses essentially the same sorts of bullets as small game-hunting rifles, fires at the same rapidity (one bullet per pull of the trigger), and does the same damage. The civilian version of the AK-47 is similar, though it fires a much larger bullet—.30 inches in diameter, as opposed to the .223 inch rounds used by the Bushmaster. No self-respecting military in the world would use the civilian version of these guns.
A common question is: "Why do people need a semiautomatic Bushmaster to go out and kill deer?" The answer is simple: It is a hunting rifle. It has just been made to look like a military weapon.
But the point isn't to help hunters. Semiautomatic weapons also protect people and save lives. Single-shot rifles that require you to physically reload the gun may not do people a lot of good when they are facing multiple criminals or when their first shot misses or fails to stop an attacker...."
FULL ARTICLE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... %3Darticle
