Supreme Court to consider semiautomatic rifle laws

[Niner]

Saw this in the UPI news this morning.

June 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday announced that it will decide if states and cities can bar people from owning semiautomatic weapons, including AR-15-style rifles.

The court had previously declined to hear this challenge in 2025 and other times previously, CNN reported. It includes an appeal from two Illinois residents who want to buy AR-15 rifles but cannot because of a county ordinance making it illegal to buy or possess some assault weapon types. The case will be combined with one involving Connecticut residents who challenged the state's ban on the weapons.

[PeterN2]

It is almost 40 years ago since they banned semi auto rifles in the UK. I understand that in the US, if you already have one you can keep it, only new purchases banned. In the UK existing owners were banned as well as new purchases. Registration ensured that the police knew who had what and where it was. No option to hide one away. The same when they banned pistols. I still resent what they did to us.
Regards
Peter

[Niner]

The strange thing to me is that each state in the US thinks it can make up it's own rules about the right to own guns while citing the original founding fathers permissive Constitutional right was written before there were semi auto guns of any sort. Of course someone, or some organization, can get some legal thing going to reverse laws in some state they think are unconstitutional and unjust. How far such efforts gets in court is mostly up to the courts. The ultimate court, the Supreme Court, can pick and choose what it wants to hear of gun law cases that come up while at the same time the elevator carrying an argument of constitutional rights denial sometimes never even rises to the supreme court level to chance being selected for a hearing.

Meanwhile, the states are all on their own and what they think is gun control, although more rural states tend to be the least anti-gun. All the gun shows in the deep south have all the semi auto weapon options you could want to select from and the only BATF check in commercial sales is the same one as for any other firearm.

[Aughnanure]

Niner,
Just a slight correction there, when the Second Amendment was passed there were fully automatic weapons, or perhaps more correctly ‘burst fire’, see Roman Candle guns.
There were also repeaters and revolvers.
The Founding Fathers were educated men and some of them would have seen the Puckle gun in The Tower.
They would also have been well aware of breach loading guns.

When semi autos were banned in Australia 30 years ago the Government had no idea that some common bolt action rifles could be fired faster than some semiautomatics.

[Niner]

Bolt guns firing fast is one of the things that was a claim to fame of the Enfield as a battle rifle. At the same time bolt guns don't really frighten people in the way modern semi auto rifles do though. The anti gun people in the US fear the high capacity magazines of small high velocity rounds that can be run through a gun in quick order by the actions of simply one finger on a trigger. This fear is magnified by a black stock and assorted attachments like silencers and scopes and such and an open marketplace for buying semi auto weapons.

But isn't the hysteria really provoked by mass murderers who are usually singular anti social crazy people that rise up from nowhere like a bad horror movie character? More than a few, in the first place, fall through the cracks of being prevented from having access to a gun as the laws exist now. With the millions of semi auto guns in society in the US, and most everywhere else, to just pass a law banning them being sold legally going forward solves no problem and pisses off a lot of the population that has no intention of killing anybody.

I think the problem of prevention going forward should be examined in how the shooter is treated after the fact of a mass shooting. Maybe pass laws to make naming the shooter and telling what he did it for forbidden to be given in the news when such an event happens would be of some preventative help. If a potential shooter knew in advance that whatever his motive was and who he was wasn't going to make the news it would discourage him. No infamy assured might calm some of them down and prevent some of the bloody horrors.

[Aughnanure]

Re the Lee Enfield and rate of fire, a friend, the late Frank Adlem, was on the way to making some real money but the Japs took him prisoner and spoiled things.
He used to bet Americans that he could fire 8 aimed shots with his Lee Enfield faster than they could with a Garand], he never lost a bet.