Guns And Firepower
What are the most dangerous guns?
Actually, the most dangerous gun out there now is any gun that is loaded and particularly a loaded gun in the wrong hands. Any gun can be dangerous. An old revolver with only one bullet in it can be dangerous if the two year old finds it hidden under the couch and ends up shooting himself or herself. That sort of thing does happen. A gun that is in the hands of the wrong person: a teenager, somebody that is angry, somebody that has road rage, somebody that is drunk. All guns are dangerous. All loaded guns are dangerous and the issue is who is getting access to those guns. Some guns can be more dangerous than others. Semiautomatics that fire a number of rounds quickly obviously are going to be more dangerous than a gun that is only going to be firing one bullet at a time as the chamber moves. Guns that can pierce body armor for police officers are going to be more dangerous than guns that do not. Guns like the .50 caliber sniper rifle. Guns that can shoot from far away and take down helicopters are obviously more dangerous than others. But the bottom line is: any loaded gun is dangerous if it is in the wrong hands or if it is the wrong place, or if it is used by somebody that is not thinking straight on what they are doing.
What is the safest gun?
Again, any gun can be a safe gun or a dangerous gun depending on whether it's loaded and depending on whose hands it's in. Guns can be made safer. This is one thing that a lot of people don't stop and think about. While all guns are dangerous, guns can be made safer. Guns that have trigger locks built into the gun, obviously, are safer. Guns that could be developed that would say that you need to have a distinct fingerprint pattern to be able to pull the trigger are obviously going to be safer because they can't be used by someone else. Guns that would have an indicator to show whether or not a bullet's in the chamber are going to be safer. There are a number of things that can make a gun safer. Having it harder to pull the trigger would make it less likely that a three-year-old would accidentally shoot the weapon. Most gun manufacturers don't take these steps to make their guns safer. Again, there's no regulation from the federal level on how we manufacture guns. There are no safety standards. There are more restrictions on what we do with toy guns in this country than what we do with real guns in this country.
Are guns cheap?
It's hard to tell since we don't really have any regulation of guns and we don't really keep track of guns. We really don't know if guns are getting cheaper or not. A lot of guns are sold on the illegal black market and those guns presumably have a price fluctuation depending on supply and demand. Again since Congress basically restricts information on illegal guns and where they're coming from and the supply patterns, it's hard for us to figure out anything there. You can look to see what the manufacturing costs are and get some ideas as to whether it's costing more to manufacture a product or less to manufacture a product, which usually determines price, but no regulation of the gun industry, we don't know. We're not allowed to sue the gun industry, so we don't get those figures. It's amazing to me that you have this industry that's so totally unregulated and so dangerous. Other industries we have some information on, gun industry we don't. Generally though we assume that the prices are fairly stable. Cheap guns are the sort of things that we're concerned about, the old Saturday Night Specials, if you will. When I talked to police chiefs around the country they say that a lot of the guns that they're seeing from gang-bangers are the fairly new guns, the fairly expensive guns. It's not quite sure what the market is. The one thing that is clear is that people make a lot of money off of guns--the manufacturers do, the distributers do, and the people that are a part of the supply chain.
What is the difference between a handgun and an assault weapon?
Handgun can be an Assault Weapon. Assault Weapons basically are Weapons that were marketed by the gun industry in the 80's in the 90's as something that could fire a lot of rounds very quickly. Basically any Gun that can fire a number of rounds quickly a semiautomatic weapon can be considered an Assault Weapon if you will. It's the capacity to shoot a number of rounds very quickly. Those can be either something that your holding with a longer barrel and a stock or they can be a Handgun. The Virginia Tech killer had Handguns but they were semiautomatic Handguns. He had clips that held 15 bullets, which meant that he was able to get off 15 shots within 15 seconds the guns he had could have held clips that held 30 rounds. Similarly a longer Assault Weapon semiautomatic can shoot off 15 rounds, can shoot off 30 rounds some can even be modified to shoot off up to a 100 rounds. So any gun that can quickly fire a round is considered a semiautomatic and a lot of people would consider those Assault Weaponns. There is no real standard a definition of Assault Weapons but that is a marketing term that the industry did use.
