Quote:
Originally Posted by Number 10 GI
Here is an interesting bit of firearm history a friend sent me:
"A hundred and twelve years ago, in 1907...our great grandparents were first able to the semi-auto Winchester Model 1907.
This is a gun they could buy from a Sears catalogue and have delivered via US Post. It was/ is a semi-automatic, high powered centerfire rifle, with detachable, high capacity magazine.
About 400,000 semi-automatic rifles were produced before WW2. Civilians had hundreds of thousands of these for 40 years, while US soldiers were still being issued old fashioned bolt action rifles.
The 1907 fired just as fast as an AR15 or AK47 and the bullet (.351 Winchester) was actually larger than those fired by the more modern looking weapons..
The ONLY functional difference between the 1907 and a controversial and much feared AR15 is the modern black plastic stock.
The semi auto, so-called "assault rifle" is 110 years old. It isnt new in any way.
The semi auto rifle was not a weapon of war. The government MADE IT a weapon of war 40 years after civilians had them.
The semi-auto can be safely owned by civilians. The proof is that literally 3 generations of adults owned and used them responsibly and no one ever even noticed.
Want to fix the horror of mass shootings? Fix the things that have changed in society for the worse in the last 50 years."
As I pointed out earlier, after WWII millions of semi automatic M1 Carbines were sold to the American public with 15 and 30 round magazines. You could buy them from catalogs and gun magazine ads and have them shipped directly to your home by the US Postal Service. Using all the illogic in this thread there should have been hundreds of shootings using the Model 1907 and M1 Carbine. What changed? Society and moral values have changed and not for the good. So easy to blame an inanimate object than to work on correcting the real problem. Gun bans, mental pablum for simple minds.
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It is true that FUNCTUALLY the Winchester 1907 is similar to the AR 15 in that they are both semi-auto rifles. But, there are significant differences. The 1907 would be longer than an AR-15 clone and therefore harder to hide under a trench coat. The cartridge of the 1907 would produce MUCH more recoil than the 223 used in an AR-15. This low-recoil feature of the 223 cartridge allows AR-15 shooters to become more proficient killers because they don't have to worry about the affects of high recoil - like barrel rise and shooter flinching. Also, the 223 cartridge is smaller and lighter than the 351 caliber of the 1907 so a mass murder can carry more rounds. And the high velocity of the 223 causes the bullet to practically explode in human flesh as compared with the .351 low velocity round. So, there ARE significant differences.
.........And society has changed so much since we grew up in the 1950s that SOMETHING must be done about the MASS-MURDER problem. The EASIEST solution is to do what Australia and New Zealand did - eliminate semi-auto rifles from CIVILIAN hands.