5 Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies)

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EDIT: Read 'flame bait', then fell for it. Edited to minimize damage.

please elaborate?

As for my right to comment on the US I do have that right, in fact everyone has the right to comment on anything anywhere if they have information and opinion, if they didn't then the tyrants and murderers, the theives and rapists of the world would go unstopped. I see US citizens comment on things outside the US all the time often based on pathetic levels of information, they have that right and others have the right to challenge it.
If you personally cannot handle that then it is your issue, probably tied to your rabid xenophobia/nationalism, I would suggest you get over it and accept that the other 6.7 billion of us are out here and we have just the same rights as you.

Added to sig. You proved my point nicely.

Again, please elaborate? In what way have I proven your point, have you not made posts that betray a rabid xenophobia, did not your response to my post display xenophobic tendencies - your refusal to let foreigners pass comment is typical of a xenophobe, your resorting to an out of date cultural cliche in an attempt to insult me and undermine my argument betrayed that you think in nationalistic terms as have other posts by you. Please show some intelligence and reason or perhaps it is you that should hold his counsel.

Definitely. I really wish the AR-15 was unrestricted up here. All I could do with a restricted licence is shoot it at a range and that's it. The stupid thing is that it is restricted merely by name. No, not by criteria since it fits barrel regulations, overall length, and is semi auto. But by name since its political incorrect appearance somehow makes it more lethal. That's how stupid our gun laws are.

Yeah this one's laughable, but I'm sure he's got some more myths to bring to the table so if he wants to try harder than that then I'll be more than happy to address whatever comes up, despite the fact that he's obviously trolling.

Cmon red, at least give me a challenge:

http://www.gunmyths.com/2009/01/05/myth ... -to-crime/

And please explain these numbers:


http://www.discerningtoday.org/members/ ... 20Work.htm

And of course I saved the best for last...

[quote="RedHanrahan"Over one million US citizens killed by other citizens since 1962 using guns and they won't regulate, Just over 3000 US citizens killed by Islamic terrorism [probably with the colusion of US citizens] and they start two illegal wars - thats some dumb monkeys.[/quote]

Can you please show where those statistics are coming from, and who is included in them?

I love my SKS, though my AR (A2) is far more accurate and has minimal recoil. I'll report back once my AK is finished.

Interesting, I would imagine some of that would be Myth Busters' material.

Now, that apparently, gun control is being also discussed, I just have one question: "How come kids (from the youtube videos) are allowed to handle those weapons and not allowed to drink?"

The point in that article I take issue with is using the gunfight in one of the Matrix movies to illustrate the Hollywood delusion that shooting a car will make it blow up. Any other film where that happens, sure, use that as an example - and it's not like there's any shortage of them. In those movies, however, it's established early on in the franchise that anyone who realizes the nature of the Matrix can manipulate the code to do impossible things (cf Trinity's leap between buildings and through a window that may have been smaller than she was while fleeing an Agent). Thus, it's quite possible that Morpheus made the bullet explode when it hit the car, then accelerated the explosion in the car itself further, by screwing with the Matrix itself.

OTOH, when that happens in Bad Boys, the only possible excuse is Rule of Cool...

Red, take a thorazine or something. You're starting to foam at the mouth, man.

Yes. It is also possible to get hit with your own spent casing if you are using good technique depending on which direction you are shooting relative to the direction of the wind.

I kinda would like to get a Tavor TAR 21,

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N7X0pvhQ4w[/youtube]

Cool gun, sadly not likely to show up on the US civilian market anytime soon since it doesn't meet our import requirements for sporting purposes and I don't think IMI or Rafael has any plans to open a domestic US plant. I'm also not sure that it meets the barrel length requirement to not be considered a short barreled rifle, thought that bullpup design can be deceiving as to the actual barrel length. I'd be particularly curious to get a good look at the trigger mechanism, getting a good trigger pull in a bullpup configuration is notoriously difficult, and I'd like to see if the Israelis managed to solve that issue.

I'll add exaggerations on the availability and effectiveness of armor piercing bullets to the list of ridiculous myths; I particularly like the scene in Lethal Weapon 3 where Danny Glover shoots through a steel bulldozer blade using a .380 MAC11 loaded with "cop killer" bullets... I'd laugh, but then voters and politicians watch these movies and legislate based on them, giving us such laws as the ban on said imaginary "cop killer" bullets, a product which has never existed outside of Hollywood and thus necessarily requires laws that are vague and burdensome in application.

People being blown off their feet by gunfire is another prolific mistake, a weapon that powerful would be required by Newtonian physics to impart similar force to the firer, and guns just aren't that powerful. Getting hit by a car imparts much more force to a body, even powerful handguns only get into the hundreds of foot-pounds (some hunting calibers do break into the low thousands), which isn't nearly enough to fling someone across a room.

Exploding bullets, mercury tipped or otherwise are also largely mythical, not to mention dead useless even if they were available. Cutting notches in the tip just creates a crude hollowpoint, and rubbing garlic on them doesn't cause blood poisoning either. A Teflon coating does not make a bullet armor piercing, it was only used on some hard alloy bullets to protect the gun's bore from damage during firing; it does not allow the bullet to "slip through" Kevlar.

Last edited by Dox47 on 14 May 2011, 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

RedHanrahan wrote:

“Over one million US citizens killed by other citizens since 1962 using guns and they won't regulate, Just over 3000 US citizens killed by Islamic terrorism [probably with the colusion of US citizens] and they start two illegal wars - thats some dumb monkeys.”

How is that intelligent??
You imply that we’re monkeys and that we’ve started two illegal wars so that’s two insults right there.
You imply that the lost lives of 3000 Americans by terrorism aren’t worthy of some payback.
You don’t even specify what it is we’re supposed to be regulating, people or guns.
Both?

We can get TAR-21's up here, but they cost 3k . It's a goddamn shame since they're non-restricted unlike AR-15's.

For the record, their are over 22,000 laws on the books in the US regulating firearms. Interesting side note; violent crime dropped to historic lows during the same period that we really started to reform our gun laws to allow fewer restrictions, especially on concealed carry. I'm not going to argue a causal relationship, but I sure as hell will argue that allowing more people to carry guns didn't result in the wild west bloodbath that anti-gun organizations claimed would occur, quite the opposite in fact.