Actually, Canada has a very proud military heritage, and it's citizens seem to be much more responsible in the handling of their firearms, since they have nearly as high per capita gun ownership yet only a fraction of the murders involving guns. I think there's much we could learn from our Canadian brethren when it comes to our attitude toward violence.
Canada's gun registry debacle... now that's a whole 'nother story!
Everyone seems to have some very legitimate concerns and I'm impressed how well informed y'all are! Guess I haven't cornered the market on gun info among DJs!
A couple of things do seem in question, so for the non gun nuts among us, I thought I'd clarify just a bit. First, the term "semi-automatic" is just another way to load a round of ammunition. A revolver uses a cylinder to rotate another shot into position, while a semi-auto uses the energy of the gun's recoil to cycle a slide, which extracts the old shell and shoves a new round of ammo into the chamber. It is NOT a machinegun. (Those would be referred to as full-auto, or just "automatic.") The advantage to semi-auto pistols is that they usually hold more ammunition than revolvers. They are fed by magazines (sometimes erroneously called "clips" because of the movies), speeding the reloading process. Semi-auto pistols are favored by law enforcement for these reasons.
Why are revolvers still around? The plain truth is their simplicity. They never jam and are very reliable. Many cops favor them for "back-up."
In America, full-auto machineguns are already illegal. Since the '30s, they have been tightly regulated and it's both difficult and expensive to possess a full-auto rifle or pistol. (It's not impossible, though, which is how they got around Constitutional considerations.) Nearly all automatic weapons are in the hands of SWAT and local police departments. The standard M-16, a.k.a. the "ugly black rifle" is the one you often see on CNN being carried by our soldiers. The civilian version, the AR-15, is identical, except that it is semi-auto. That means just one shot per pull of the trigger -- totally legal.
I have one rifle that I won. (I'm generally a handgun guy!) It is a Romanian "sporter" 991 -- a civilian version of an AK-47. This is the rifle you're used to seeing waved around by the Iraqis on TV. Like the AR, mine is semi-auto. Also, it was made / sold during the Clinton "assault weapons" ban, so it's magazine only holds ten shots, not 30 like a standard AK.
By the by, the "AR" in AR-15 doesn't mean "assault rifle." It means "Armalite," the company that holds the patent on the ugly black rifle. But this DOES bring me to another point: so-called "assault weapons."
The whole issue of guns has become political and there are dirty tricks being used by both sides of this debate. A couple decades ago, one group, whose goal is to totally ban civilian gun ownership, applied the term "assault weapon" to any gun with a military appearance. It was devised by Josh Sugarmann of the VPC (Violence Policy Center), from his 1988 strategy paper on gun control. He and his group were frustrated, having made little headway in their quest for an outright ban on All Firearms, so he wrote “The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machineguns versus semi-automatic assault weapons (anything that looks like a machinegun is assumed to be a machinegun) can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these.” This was actually ON their own website for years -- a glaring admission of deception.
The fact is that there is no such thing as an "assault weapon." (Isn't any weapon used in an assault an assault weapon?) There are assault RIFLES, used mostly by the military, which are usually light machineguns with a select-fire switch, allowing the full-auto to be turned on and off. There are full out machineguns which some may classify as assault weapons as well. But a scary looking semi-auto rifle is just that. My AK clone is no more lethal, accurate or powerful than your grand dad's deer rifle or the 30.06 legally available at your corner sporting goods store.
I've found a teriffic way to spot B.S. gun control measures -- a great rule of thumb: If POLICE are exempt from the rule, then it is bad. As I see it, anything that's good for police is good for me. My life is every bit as important as any cop's.
Unlike many of my fellow firearm freaks, I won't say that there should be zero gun controls. I parted company with most of 'em in my support for NICS, the National Instant Check System, because it has a chance of working. (And has been proven to have done so!) When you go to buy a gun and give up your I.D., they check to make sure you're not a convicted felon. Only recently have they included mental health information, and it's not quite done yet. This is why the VT shooter was allowed to buy his pistols. This needs to be fixed! But NICS works, and works FAST. I'm not charged, and approval or denial takes only seconds, so I'm not inconvenienced. I see this as a win-win for everyone.
Gun controls that don't work: waiting periods, one-gun-a-month, ammunition capacity limitations, "no carry" zones (we call them "Criminal Empowerment Zones"), registration (which solves very few crimes, prevents none and CAN lead to confiscation), ballistic fingerprinting (a gun's characteristics can change over time, unlike real fingerprints, making any database useless. After spending millions, Maryland's ballistic database solved ONE crime in it's first three years!) and a bunch more I can't think of at the moment.
Anyway, my two cents has turned into a buck fifty, so I'll shut up now. Just wanted to help fill-in some knowledge gaps where needed. From the look of the boards here, y'all probably know most of this anyway! At this point, maybe any remaining questions should be off list? I'd be happy to answer any y'all might have, and if I don't know, I have ways of finding out.
Great discussion, all!