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.

[Niner Delta]

Obviously the Garand can fire 8 rounds faster than a bolt action Lee Enfield, so the key must be in the words
"aimed shots", whatever that means? ..

.

[Aughnanure]

Aimed shots usually implies firing at a target and hitting it, which is the purpose of military individual firearms.
One thing is for sure the Lee Enfield can fire 10 shots, aimed or otherwise, faster than the Garand in practically anyone’s hands .

The Garand is not a particularly fast semi automatic, and Frank was amazingly fast, I’d say he could get 8 away faster with his Lee Enfield than anyone with a Garand.

[Niner]

Did a AI Google search to see what artificial truth says:

The M1 Garand has a practical aimed rate of fire of 40 to 50 rounds per minute, whereas the bolt-action Lee-Enfield yields 20 to 30 aimed rounds per minute. The Garand’s semi-automatic action eliminated the need to manually cycle the bolt, allowing a typical GI to put more aimed lead downrange with less fatigue.The gap in sustained volume comes down to the mechanics and reload styles of each weapon:M1 Garand: This semi-automatic rifle automatically reloads, cocks the hammer, and chambers the next round after every trigger pull. It feeds via an 8-round en bloc clip. Once the 8th round is fired, the clip is automatically ejected with a distinct "ping", allowing the soldier to instantly slam a fresh 8-round clip down into the internal magazine. Lee-Enfield: Highly regarded as one of the fastest bolt-action rifles ever built, the Lee-Enfield features a smooth 60-degree bolt lift, a cock-on-closing mechanism, and a large 10-round magazine. In early training, British infantry were drilled to hit 15 to 30 aimed shots per minute in the famous "Mad Minute" exercise. However, the shooter still has to manually strip and load 5-round stripper clips into the top of the magazine to sustain this pace.

I'm not digging a trench and taking sides. Just saying what a Google thing said when asked. It would be hell if half of our remaining posting membership got into an argument over such a question. However, I can see why an American soldier's idea of shooting aimed fast might put an emphasis on the aimed and slow down the fast while the otherwise slower Lee Enfield shooter was cranking them out and a marksman enough to hit a target by instinct a hundred or so yards away faster.

[Aughnanure]

Fair enough.
Whilst we’re on gun law, Frank left a problem when he died, his wife inherited his collection of miniature guns then the lawmakers wanted to render them unfireable by welding, picture the staggering risk to public safety of a 6 inch long Martini Henry, fireable.
The family smuggled them interstate;.and then the zzzSouth Australian Government passed a law allowing them to be exempt from the firearms laws, but as a Government can grant an exemption they can just as easily rescind it.
Upshot was that the family sold them to an American collector as the safest option.

I had the pleasure of playing with the Martini Henry and the Vickers many years ago.
.
Here’s a picture of his miniature MGs.
Bugger can’t post that file type.
Here’s a link,
frank adlem miniature guns
Blocked again!!

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

The chest for the Vickers had the regulation dovetail joints at the joins of ends and sides.