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[Loud Whispers]

That's trivial.
You can buy empty brass even in places with strict gun laws. Bullets are easy enough to cast from lead and such like (lead is both easy to get and easy to cast). You would have to gild the bullets OR you could give them a good layer of high temp grease. The hardest part would be powder and primers, but honestly, how many places really control access to them? In a worst case you make what you need, it wouldn't be top quality, but you would be firing it at close range with a cheaply made sub-gun anyway...

For surveillance states, you could buy those materials, but red flags and alarm bells would also being going off somewhere in home security

[Shadowlord]

He's probably on a watchlist for owning those books. Pretty sure you can get on one for acquiring the Anarchist's Cookbook.

[Leafsnail]

From what I've heard there are home-made bullets around but they're pretty likely to make your gun jam or worse. A jammed gun isn't very useful even at short range

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Plus in the US it is legal to buy armor piercing bullets.

And I have yet to hear of a person shooting up police officers with those.

It should be noted that armor piercing bullets are actually a hindrance if you're going on a mass shooting. They don't fragment, and so cause vastly reduced damage compared to a typical bullet. You have to be able to actually hit something important.

[Neonivek]

Plus in the US it is legal to buy armor piercing bullets.

And I have yet to hear of a person shooting up police officers with those.

It should be noted that armor piercing bullets are actually a hindrance if you're going on a mass shooting. They don't fragment, and so cause vastly reduced damage compared to a typical bullet. You have to be able to actually hit something important.

Which luckily the human body is MADE of vital points (There is a chart somewhere... lets just say you have to be a sharp shooter to hit someone in a non-vital location). Though yeah Armor piercing shots would have more survivor.

[Loud Whispers]

In the hours after Sunday’s mass shooting at an Orlando night club, Chief John Mina of the Orlando Police Department said the gunman’s weapons included a pistol and an “AR-15-type assault rifle.”

On Monday night, officials clarified that the rifle Omar Mateen used in the shooting was not an AR-15, but a Sig Sauer MCX rifle.

MEME POLICE DOES IT AGAIN

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Plus in the US it is legal to buy armor piercing bullets.

And I have yet to hear of a person shooting up police officers with those.

It should be noted that armor piercing bullets are actually a hindrance if you're going on a mass shooting. They don't fragment, and so cause vastly reduced damage compared to a typical bullet. You have to be able to actually hit something important.

Which luckily the human body is MADE of vital points (There is a chart somewhere... lets just say you have to be a sharp shooter to hit someone in a non-vital location). Though yeah Armor piercing shots would have more survivor.

Most vital spots take time to kill you, though. Only the instant-death areas are going to be real vital points in a scenario like this, because you're certain to get medical aid.

The lack of an expanding wound is a massive advantage to your survival, and people survive being shot by non-AP bullets all the time.

In the hours after Sunday’s mass shooting at an Orlando night club, Chief John Mina of the Orlando Police Department said the gunman’s weapons included a pistol and an “AR-15-type assault rifle.”

On Monday night, officials clarified that the rifle Omar Mateen used in the shooting was not an AR-15, but a Sig Sauer MCX rifle.

MEME POLICE DOES IT AGAIN

"Breaking: Idiots on the internet try to kill each other over particularities of weapon not used in mass shooting."

[Frumple]

From what I've heard there are home-made bullets around but they're pretty likely to make your gun jam or worse. A jammed gun isn't very useful even at short range

T'expand on this a little... for anything even remotely resembling a modern firearm, yeah. You... can home make bullets (I actually helped with a few shotgun shells when I was a lot younger, heh), and you can certainly refill casings without too much trouble (though some sorts are much easier than others on that front, for all I've forgotten most of the specifics), but making them from scratch... well, it runs into the same problems most of that sort of backyard gunsmithing has. Modern firearms rely a hell of a lot on fairly precise machining to do what they do, both for the gun itself and for the bullets, and that's something that's not particularly easy to manage. 

It's not impossible to do it with tools you'd just kinda' have around, or to make them outside of a factory or whathaveyou, but it's generally going to be significantly lower (and often even worse so far as malfunctions go, inconsistent -- 'bout the only thing worse than shoddy bullets are a series of differently shoddy bulets) quality. Can still kill someone with 'em, but the chances of the gun exploding in your hand (or more mundane things like jamming, being terribly inaccurate, etc.) is much, much higher. There's kinda' a reason you don't really see much in the way of home made guns and gun accessories in areas where control is really strict. Is 'cause they're probably going to be a lot more shit than a stolen or smuggled one, yeah. S'also often less effort involved in filching one, t'boot. Can be kinda' fun to make shells or do some gunwork, though, if usually incredibly stupid to actually use once you've done what you could.

... also, this is probably the sixth or seventh time someone on B12 has brought up th'fact that the guy wasn't using an actual AR-15. Those initial reports are really screwing with people, heh.

[Loud Whispers]

*Not literal killing. So far. I am waiting for eventual mass murders over disputes in which weapons are favoured by mass murderers.

[Leafsnail]

Oh boy we've gotten to the pedantic and entirely irrelevant arguments about the exact make of gun stage of the debate.

[Solifuge]

Thankfully, I didn't lose anyone in the Orlando shooting. However, on different occasions, I've lost several relatives and one friend to gun violence. They were all shot and killed in Crimes of Passion, with weapons purchased shortly beforehand without a problem. One shooter was a substance abuser, and another was undergoing treatment for psychological problems, and neither should have passed a decent background check and been allowed to buy a weapon. I really wish they hadn't, but that's how it is right now in the US. I hope we can change this in my lifetime.

The NRA et al. have worked hard and spent a lot of money to create the narrative that laws are powerless to stop gun violence, and that the only cure for the misuse of Guns is to have More People buying More Guns, and apparently holding them against each other's heads all the time. This is sociopathic and absolutely fucking insane as a model for a society; a constant Cold War with your neighbors, with mutually-assured destruction on a person-by-person basis? And yet the myth persists, against all odds. If you yourself are a believer, I urge you to take a step back and consider some things.


Consider, first, where the money is in this situation. Guns and Gun Manufacture are a colossal industry with incredible spending power; very large organizations like the NRA are given much of these profits to fight Gun Control on all fronts, discrediting and misrepresenting legitimate studies, funding slanted studies of their own, creating a network of propaganda and magazines to spread their curated information, hiring huge teams of lawyers and lobbyists, and "donating" to cover the campaign costs of a large number of congress members (and using that as leverage to keep that congress person sympathetic to their business). This is public knowledge, yet some people still continue to treat their platform as anything other than self-sustaining propaganda.

Secondly, a quick crosspost from the Sad Thread.

...but when the "If everyone in that club had guns, this wouldn't have happened" argument came out, I tried my best to explain how these sorts of mass killers don't usually expect to survive, and often commit suicide right afterward. They see themselves as heroes and martyrs, whose actions and deaths will be publicized by the news and become an inspiration to other violent extremists who share their views. More guns don't stop that... being gunned down in response only helps further polarize the folks that sympathize or idolize these killers.

Shooting At The Bad Guys, or even holding guns at each others heads every day of our lives, just makes it a fight, and Humans have a really shitty neuropsychological loophole when it comes to fights. Get enough Anger and Adrenaline in your bloodstream, and it shuts down your Empathy and Conscience; we literally can lose the capacity to understand others, accurately judge what they're thinking, etc. if we think someone or their "group" wants to fight us. This is why Fearmongering, indoctrination into certain forms of violent extremism, and similar propaganda works on us Humans. This is our psychological nature, being used against us by unscrupulous people who want to maintain forms of power.

Finally, to preempt some rebuttals. Yes, laws cannot actually control people's behavior, just like locked doors can't actually prevent people from breaking and entering; if someone is dead-set on it, they'll bust a door down or break a window, get in, and hope to escape before the cops show up. Yet, no one thinks twice about putting locks on our homes anyway. The goal of these security systems, much like laws, isn't to prevent break-ins from being possible; it's to scare borderline criminals away from committing a crime, to make the crime take more effort or expertise and impeding the crime itself, and to slow down Crimes of Passion done in the heat of the moment, in hope that their conscience or empathy have time to kick back in.

[Morrigi]

Or maybe you've not considered all issues. Like where to get bullets from.

That's trivial.

You can buy empty brass even in places with strict gun laws. Bullets are easy enough to cast from lead and such like (lead is both easy to get and easy to cast). You would have to gild the bullets OR you could give them a good layer of high temp grease. The hardest part would be powder and primers, but honestly, how many places really control access to them? In a worst case you make what you need, it wouldn't be top quality, but you would be firing it at close range with a cheaply made sub-gun anyway...

As it happens, primers can be re-filled with a mixture of powdered match heads and the striking surface on match boxes. It's dead simple, there are videos of it on YouTube. That leaves gunpowder, and smokeless powder can be made by anyone with significant knowledge of chemistry and the right equipment. Meanwhile, black powder, while weak and unreliable, can be made by anyone and their dog.

[Baffler]

I wouldn't trust black powder in a modern cartridge under pretty much any circumstance, tbh. It isn't nearly as good a propellant as smokeless powder, plus a modern firearm can't really afford to have the works gummed up with the gunk left over after firing it. Your gun could pretty much be relied on to jam early and often, and even before that happens it still might just explode or misfire on you because I'm willing to bet handmade powder doesn't have an especially consistent grain. Even if you do trust it, you'd better be prepared to explode a few guns/cartridges before you find the right proportions to handload with your homemade primer and powder. And if you're a terrorist with the ability to produce smokeless powder, you'd be much better off just using the needed nitroglycerin in a bomb.

[Shadowlord]

Or maybe you've not considered all issues. Like where to get bullets from.

That's trivial.

You can buy empty brass even in places with strict gun laws. Bullets are easy enough to cast from lead and such like (lead is both easy to get and easy to cast). You would have to gild the bullets OR you could give them a good layer of high temp grease. The hardest part would be powder and primers, but honestly, how many places really control access to them? In a worst case you make what you need, it wouldn't be top quality, but you would be firing it at close range with a cheaply made sub-gun anyway...

As it happens, primers can be re-filled with a mixture of powdered match heads and the striking surface on match boxes. It's dead simple, there are videos of it on YouTube. That leaves gunpowder, and smokeless powder can be made by anyone with significant knowledge of chemistry and the right equipment. Meanwhile, black powder, while weak and unreliable, can be made by anyone and their dog.

I guarant-fucking-tee you that the government is watching for people who purchase large quantities of matchbooks, because those same striking surfaces are used in the creation of methamphetamine. Citation: well, just google it if you don't believe me. I'd probably get banned if I linked to a page that said how to make meth.

[Solifuge]

People are also capable of fashioning a knife from a rock, and stabbing someone any time. And yet they don't.

Like I was trying to say in the text wall at the bottom of last page, guns are quick, impersonal, and impulsive. They let a moment of fleeting anger turn into someone's death. I've experienced this. The more someone has to do to prepare, and the more time they have to think about what they're about to do, the less likely they are to do it. The only defense against gun violence is to put roadblocks in the way of what would otherwise become an impulse turned into the permanence of someone's death.