Actually since the upper and lower receiver are still intact, all he needs is a new barrel (~$100)and he’s back in business. The cynical part of me says he had a damaged barrel and this was just a political statement. I hope not though.
scottmangesays
I looked at doing something like this once. I thoughts the best way would be to take my guns to the police figuring they could safely dispose of them.
Ironically, in Virginia at least, there is a State Law that says the police CANNOT destroy guns.
Instead, the police are required to auction them off and use the money generated for the department budget.
Where I thought I was going to be doing a good thing, I would have been doing just the opposite of what I intended. I also find it odd that the police are required to put guns on the street that they may then have to defend themselves against.
Check your local laws before disposing of weapons or cut them up like the guy in the video did.
scottmangesays
Also consider what will happen to your guns after you die. If you want them destroyed (a good idea!), make sure you specify the executor personally destroy them otherwise they might simply sell them or turn them in hoping the police will destroy them.
Actually, there are lots of gun owners — including me — who hate the NRA as much as anyone else here. I own a pistol for sport shooting and personal protection, and I own a hunting rifle even though I haven’t actually hunted in years. I have no need for a military-grade weapon that gets off 100 rounds per minute and question the mental health of anyone who does think they need one. I support background checks, mandatory gun safety classes, mandatory safe storage for guns so children and burglars can’t get to them, limits on magazine size, and taking guns away from people who have demonstrated they can’t treat them responsibly. And I absolutely despise the NRA because it makes all gun owners look like loons.
MichaelEsays
I believe I saw a picture on his facebook account where he had also cut through the firing mechanism, effectively destroying the gun.
iammaraudersays
If you check the video at about the 1:15 mark you can see he also cut through the “body” right between the trigger and where the magazine would go. I am hazarding a guess, but I’d say it is pretty much out of action.
While he did end up destroying the gun thoroughly the first cut did leave a functioning gun with a short barrel. I don’t know much about US gun laws, but in theory that could be enough to get you into trouble. My advice would be to start by cutting the receiver (In the case of the AR-15 that’s the part with the trigger mechanism) first.
John Moralessays
One can only be a responsible gun owner if they are a gun owner.
A gun owner is someone who owns at least one gun.
If that gun owner destroys their gun(s), then they are no longer a gun owner.
Therefore, those who destroy their gun(s) cannot be responsible gun owners.
It’s in my will that, upon my death, my guns will be given to an artist, along with some money, with the charter of making art out of them. I am also currently in discussion (this is Pennsylvania: they are reluctant) with the machine shop to see if their CNC water-jet cutter can do tomographic cuts to some handguns, or cut them length-wise so they can be encased in lucite. The machine shop guys keep insisting that they’d rather have them, and that I am crazy.
All that said – ATF has authority to regulate destruction of guns and they publish a set of recommended guidelines for how to do it. The guidelines require the gun being chopped through the receiver in such a way that a substantial piece of it is missing. But do not obliterate the serial numbers because that’s a federal crime.
The fellow in the video chopped the gun at the barrel because the receivers of AR-15s are tempered aluminum alloy and it is extremely dangerous to chop-saw aluminum – it builds up on the saw wheel and can cause it to unbalance and basically explode. He should have used an oxy/acetylene torch.
I would not recommend giving a workable firearm to a policeman in the US. You actually have no way of telling if they destroyed it, or even if they sold it properly. There are too many incidents of cops “generously providing” weapons to suspects or people that they have shot; some cops allegedly carry a “drop piece” that they can plant on someone they shoot, so they can say they were a threat. It would really truly suck to have cops use a gun, which was turned in with the best intentions, in that manner. Remember: cops are not exactly the most responsible firearm user/owners, themselves – they have killed over 100 people this year so far and are on track to match their kill-rate for last year.
PS – the FBI is currently on record as having lost 350 weapons, including automatic rifles and submachine guns, in the last 2 years. Along with 150 laptops (10 carrying classified data). Worse yet, the FBI failed to report 20% of the losses – which is a nice way of saying “it was stolen from the FBI by the FBI.”
So, FBI: nope.
Meanwhile, regional police are much much worse. They “lose” guns all the time, in ridiculous numbers, and generally make sure they are not required to report the loss. That pretty much means that if the cops pick up a nifty submachine gun on a bust, it may go home with Officer Pork, and not to the evidence room.
Cops are, after all, the biggest exponents of gun culture in the US; they are probably the worst people to allow to handle weapons of any sort. They’re a danger to themselves and everyone around them. Obviously. This is a crazy bit of reality that Americans ignore: the absolute last person you want to give a sniper rifle to is a guy who joins the police so he can be a sniper; that is a person who wants to shoot people and who is going out of his way to be in a situation where they might “have to” kill someone.
Rob Grigjanissays
Marcus @16:
the FBI is currently on record as having lost 350 weapons, including automatic rifles and submachine guns, in the last 2 years.
Do you have a reference for that?
tomhsays
“Responsible gun owner” is an oxymoron. If you are a gun owner you are irresponsible.
Rob Grigjanis@#17:
It’s hard to get solid numbers for anything that can serve as a metric for FBI incompetence. But this is where I got the number I quoted. [abc news] I used that number because I thought it was probably generous to the FBI. When I was researching my homeland security book in ’02 I found references to the FBI having lost substantially more weapons than that. Unfortunately, I no longer have my clippings archives with my research from then.
I will say this much for the FBI: they’re the best of the worst. The army is pretty good at keeping its gear from leaking out (obviously) but that’s only because of very strict tracking and audit (I could probably remember my M-16’s serial # if I tried hard…) DEA has had bad problems losing guns, which is a problem because they seize lots of guns. Some cursory searches say DHS has lost over 200 between 2002 and 2007.
Ouch, I wish I hadn’t looked. An ICE agent lost a gun and it was used to kill someone [nbc]
What usually happens (to the FBI guys too) is they stop someplace, go inside to grab a bite to eat or something and decide to leave the gun in the car; it’s an unmarked car and someone bashes in the window and grabs the laptop bag. They’re a couple blocks away before they realize they just stole a cop’s laptop and gun.
Snarki, child of Lokisays
“Also consider what will happen to your guns after you die. If you want them destroyed (a good idea!), make sure you specify the executor personally destroy them otherwise they might simply sell them or turn them in hoping the police will destroy them.”
OR, have them buried with you, with your “cold dead hands” wrapped around them.
Offer not valid for cremation with ammunition inside.
Rob Grigjanissays
Marcus @19:
But this is where I got the number I quoted. [abc news]
The numbers in that article are for a period of 11-12 years, ending no later than 2005, since it refers to “Attorney General John Ashcroft”. So it’s still not clear where you got your “last 2 years” from.
rietpluimsays
I can live with gun ownership for sports or hunting. But personal protection is utter bullshit. People being killed by guns vastly outnumber people being saved. I am glad that the man in this video understands that, and I salute him for it.
rietpluimsays
I can live with gun ownership for sports or hunting
When strictly regulated. (Added to avoid confusion.)
I am a responsible gun owner. My caulking guns live in a locked cupboard so little children can’t get at them and squirt sealant up their noses.
komarovsays
Hm, it sounds like it can be tricky to sawing a weapon to bits in a legally approved and generally safe way. Perhaps it would be easier to fill the firing mechanism and barrel with something to freeze / block it permanently. Anything reasonably durable should work, from resins to concrete, and should prove pretty much impossible to remove once it has set. A plus it should be easier and cheaper to come by some of this than it might be for decent powertools otherwise needed. Or, if you’re inclined towards pyrotechnic displays, maybe you could make some thermite and see if it can burn through the mechanism. Whichever way one goes this should render the weapon into a true collectible, i.e. a harmless one.
thirdmillsays
Rietpluim, No. 23,the reason more people are killed than saved is that there isn’t mandatory training before people are allowed to buy a gun. There should be required coursework in gun safety that should include how to properly use a gun to defend yourself so that innocent people don’t get killed. If that happened, I predict you would see those numbers change.
And the one time I actually needed personal protection, I didn’t have to shoot anyone. The mere fact that I had a gun made the aggressor back off.
Rich Woodssays
@thirdmill #27:
The mere fact that I had a gun made the aggressor back off.
Did you also have ammunition? Because you know what the statistics tell us about guns combined with ammunition. Maybe you (and your family) just got lucky that day.
thirdmillsays
Rich, a lot of those statistics involve people who have not actually been properly trained in how to use a gun to defend themselves. I will bet you anything that if people were required to have such training before they could buy guns, those statistics would change.
In my case, a bounty hunter showed up at my house looking for someone who apparently used to live there before I moved in, and said he was going to break down the door if I didn’t let him in to search the house. I told him that if he came through my door, I would aim for his head and empty my magazine. He left. Yes, I could have called the police, but by the time they got there the damage likely would already have been done. You know that when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.
EigenSprocketUKsays
I told him that if he came through my door, I would aim for his head and empty my magazine.
thirdmill, so your bluff would have worked even without a gun?
thirdmillsays
Lofty, it wasn’t a bluff. I was prepared to use lethal force to defend myself and my home, and he knew I was prepared to use lethal force to defend myself and my home, and that’s why it worked. And I’m not the bad guy for defending myself against aggression.
That aside, it would not have worked in a world in which private gun ownership is illegal, because then I wouldn’t have had the means to defend myself, and he’d have known I didn’t have the means to defend myself.
Look, I would like to live in a world in which there is no aggression and it’s never necessary to engage in self defense. If I had magical powers, I would make such a world. But that’s not the world we live in. There are far too many people out there who don’t respect the rights of other people, and so long as they exist, I’m not going to deprive people of the ability to defend themselves. I am willing to require that they get proper training in how to defend themselves, and I don’t think anyone needs an AR-15 for self defense. My pistol worked just fine. We’re probably 90% in agreement.
speed0spanksays
We also don’t live in a world where everyone will complete a training course (not that people with training don’t routinely murder people).
John Moralessays
thirdmill:
In my case, a bounty hunter showed up at my house looking for someone who apparently used to live there before I moved in, and said he was going to break down the door if I didn’t let him in to search the house. I told him that if he came through my door, I would aim for his head and empty my magazine.
Amazing that you write as if you imagine you were being righteous.
Me, I would have negotiated/documented/explained/called the police/something — and then let him search the house. And then follow up as appropriate.
It would save me a broken door, anyway.
But then, I’m not American, so I don’t immediately think of trespass as a kill-or-be-killed situation. Different attitude here in Oz.
—
That aside, it would not have worked in a world in which private gun ownership is illegal, because then I wouldn’t have had the means to defend myself, and he’d have known I didn’t have the means to defend myself.
Yeah, well, I’d rather be in a situation where neither has a firearm than one where both do. Less lethal.
But then, I imagine you’d have a battle-axe or something right by the doorway, just in case you need to defend yourself.
John Moralessays
PS to make it clear, you seem to think it’s perfectly reasonable to shoot someone in the head rather than let them search your house. And you further imagine that it would constitute self-defense.
Again: wow.
Rob Grigjanissays
thirdmill @32:
We’re probably 90% in agreement.
Twixt 90 and 100 lie the corpses of innumerable children. I’m fucking sick of Americans.
FTR, if it was a bounty hunter at my house, I’d call 911, and inform bounty hunter the cops were on their way, and we could all have a little chat when they arrived.
Ichthyicsays
That aside, it would not have worked in a world in which private gun ownership is illegal, because then I wouldn’t have had the means to defend myself, and he’d have known I didn’t have the means to defend myself.
OTOH, there’s no evidence to suggest that in countries that have enacted strict gun control laws, there is a rise in the amount of home invasions.
just the contrary, in fact.
while you might cling to your personal anecdote, and understandably so, it does not make a great statement about the validity of owning a gun for protection in general.
can you not see this?
It’s like if I said:
“I managed to protect myself from a shark attack by using a bang-stick on it and blowing its head off.”
does that mean my experience suggests we should equip all divers with bangsticks and simply kill the sharks? nope. overall it’s not a good idea.
but, if that had actually worked for me as a specific thing in such a traumatic experience, I could indeed imagine myself insisting I will be carrying a bang-stick with me whenever I go diving, good idea or not.
so, I think people here can understand your position, but still disagree that your experience is an indicator of what would be the best overall direction for everyone to take. in fact, far from it.
this is why we even HAVE science, to study issues just like this and come up with better recommendations than “this worked for ME”
Ichthyicsays
lastly….
You know that when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.
you really should avoid using inane, overused, cliches when trying to make a point.
it fails to impress anyone that you are actually thinking when you write.
rietpluimsays
thirdmill Yeah, nothing like a mandatory training to prevent people from using their guns when robbing, burgling, or assaulting.
rietpluimsays
BTW What sick kind of country has bounty hunters? And what even sicker kind of country allows bounty hunters to carry guns?
Some people in the comments are claiming he’s committed a felony by making a short-barreled rifle.
Wait. Are you suggesting that someone would say something stupid in a YouTube comment?
This is messing with my worldview.
Actually since the upper and lower receiver are still intact, all he needs is a new barrel (~$100)and he’s back in business. The cynical part of me says he had a damaged barrel and this was just a political statement. I hope not though.
I looked at doing something like this once. I thoughts the best way would be to take my guns to the police figuring they could safely dispose of them.
Ironically, in Virginia at least, there is a State Law that says the police CANNOT destroy guns.
Instead, the police are required to auction them off and use the money generated for the department budget.
Where I thought I was going to be doing a good thing, I would have been doing just the opposite of what I intended. I also find it odd that the police are required to put guns on the street that they may then have to defend themselves against.
Check your local laws before disposing of weapons or cut them up like the guy in the video did.
Also consider what will happen to your guns after you die. If you want them destroyed (a good idea!), make sure you specify the executor personally destroy them otherwise they might simply sell them or turn them in hoping the police will destroy them.
Damn. That was good to see.
Actually, there are lots of gun owners — including me — who hate the NRA as much as anyone else here. I own a pistol for sport shooting and personal protection, and I own a hunting rifle even though I haven’t actually hunted in years. I have no need for a military-grade weapon that gets off 100 rounds per minute and question the mental health of anyone who does think they need one. I support background checks, mandatory gun safety classes, mandatory safe storage for guns so children and burglars can’t get to them, limits on magazine size, and taking guns away from people who have demonstrated they can’t treat them responsibly. And I absolutely despise the NRA because it makes all gun owners look like loons.
I believe I saw a picture on his facebook account where he had also cut through the firing mechanism, effectively destroying the gun.
If you check the video at about the 1:15 mark you can see he also cut through the “body” right between the trigger and where the magazine would go. I am hazarding a guess, but I’d say it is pretty much out of action.
While he did end up destroying the gun thoroughly the first cut did leave a functioning gun with a short barrel. I don’t know much about US gun laws, but in theory that could be enough to get you into trouble. My advice would be to start by cutting the receiver (In the case of the AR-15 that’s the part with the trigger mechanism) first.
One can only be a responsible gun owner if they are a gun owner.
A gun owner is someone who owns at least one gun.
If that gun owner destroys their gun(s), then they are no longer a gun owner.
Therefore, those who destroy their gun(s) cannot be responsible gun owners.
I also approve of responsible ex-gun owners.
There ain’t enough of ’em.
Sorry, PZ.
—
scottmange’s post @4 is interesting, in particular because I also noticed this story: Florida gun owner hands AR-57 rifle into [sic] police after Parkland school shooting: ‘No person needs this’
It’s in my will that, upon my death, my guns will be given to an artist, along with some money, with the charter of making art out of them. I am also currently in discussion (this is Pennsylvania: they are reluctant) with the machine shop to see if their CNC water-jet cutter can do tomographic cuts to some handguns, or cut them length-wise so they can be encased in lucite. The machine shop guys keep insisting that they’d rather have them, and that I am crazy.
All that said – ATF has authority to regulate destruction of guns and they publish a set of recommended guidelines for how to do it. The guidelines require the gun being chopped through the receiver in such a way that a substantial piece of it is missing. But do not obliterate the serial numbers because that’s a federal crime.
The fellow in the video chopped the gun at the barrel because the receivers of AR-15s are tempered aluminum alloy and it is extremely dangerous to chop-saw aluminum – it builds up on the saw wheel and can cause it to unbalance and basically explode. He should have used an oxy/acetylene torch.
I would not recommend giving a workable firearm to a policeman in the US. You actually have no way of telling if they destroyed it, or even if they sold it properly. There are too many incidents of cops “generously providing” weapons to suspects or people that they have shot; some cops allegedly carry a “drop piece” that they can plant on someone they shoot, so they can say they were a threat. It would really truly suck to have cops use a gun, which was turned in with the best intentions, in that manner. Remember: cops are not exactly the most responsible firearm user/owners, themselves – they have killed over 100 people this year so far and are on track to match their kill-rate for last year.
PS – the FBI is currently on record as having lost 350 weapons, including automatic rifles and submachine guns, in the last 2 years. Along with 150 laptops (10 carrying classified data). Worse yet, the FBI failed to report 20% of the losses – which is a nice way of saying “it was stolen from the FBI by the FBI.”
So, FBI: nope.
Meanwhile, regional police are much much worse. They “lose” guns all the time, in ridiculous numbers, and generally make sure they are not required to report the loss. That pretty much means that if the cops pick up a nifty submachine gun on a bust, it may go home with Officer Pork, and not to the evidence room.
Cops are, after all, the biggest exponents of gun culture in the US; they are probably the worst people to allow to handle weapons of any sort. They’re a danger to themselves and everyone around them. Obviously. This is a crazy bit of reality that Americans ignore: the absolute last person you want to give a sniper rifle to is a guy who joins the police so he can be a sniper; that is a person who wants to shoot people and who is going out of his way to be in a situation where they might “have to” kill someone.
Marcus @16:
Do you have a reference for that?
“Responsible gun owner” is an oxymoron. If you are a gun owner you are irresponsible.
Rob Grigjanis@#17:
It’s hard to get solid numbers for anything that can serve as a metric for FBI incompetence. But this is where I got the number I quoted. [abc news] I used that number because I thought it was probably generous to the FBI. When I was researching my homeland security book in ’02 I found references to the FBI having lost substantially more weapons than that. Unfortunately, I no longer have my clippings archives with my research from then.
I will say this much for the FBI: they’re the best of the worst. The army is pretty good at keeping its gear from leaking out (obviously) but that’s only because of very strict tracking and audit (I could probably remember my M-16’s serial # if I tried hard…) DEA has had bad problems losing guns, which is a problem because they seize lots of guns. Some cursory searches say DHS has lost over 200 between 2002 and 2007.
Ouch, I wish I hadn’t looked. An ICE agent lost a gun and it was used to kill someone [nbc]
What usually happens (to the FBI guys too) is they stop someplace, go inside to grab a bite to eat or something and decide to leave the gun in the car; it’s an unmarked car and someone bashes in the window and grabs the laptop bag. They’re a couple blocks away before they realize they just stole a cop’s laptop and gun.
“Also consider what will happen to your guns after you die. If you want them destroyed (a good idea!), make sure you specify the executor personally destroy them otherwise they might simply sell them or turn them in hoping the police will destroy them.”
OR, have them buried with you, with your “cold dead hands” wrapped around them.
Offer not valid for cremation with ammunition inside.
Marcus @19:
The numbers in that article are for a period of 11-12 years, ending no later than 2005, since it refers to “Attorney General John Ashcroft”. So it’s still not clear where you got your “last 2 years” from.
I can live with gun ownership for sports or hunting. But personal protection is utter bullshit. People being killed by guns vastly outnumber people being saved. I am glad that the man in this video understands that, and I salute him for it.
When strictly regulated. (Added to avoid confusion.)
I am a responsible gun owner. My caulking guns live in a locked cupboard so little children can’t get at them and squirt sealant up their noses.
Hm, it sounds like it can be tricky to sawing a weapon to bits in a legally approved and generally safe way. Perhaps it would be easier to fill the firing mechanism and barrel with something to freeze / block it permanently. Anything reasonably durable should work, from resins to concrete, and should prove pretty much impossible to remove once it has set. A plus it should be easier and cheaper to come by some of this than it might be for decent powertools otherwise needed. Or, if you’re inclined towards pyrotechnic displays, maybe you could make some thermite and see if it can burn through the mechanism. Whichever way one goes this should render the weapon into a true collectible, i.e. a harmless one.
Rietpluim, No. 23,the reason more people are killed than saved is that there isn’t mandatory training before people are allowed to buy a gun. There should be required coursework in gun safety that should include how to properly use a gun to defend yourself so that innocent people don’t get killed. If that happened, I predict you would see those numbers change.
And the one time I actually needed personal protection, I didn’t have to shoot anyone. The mere fact that I had a gun made the aggressor back off.
@thirdmill #27:
Did you also have ammunition? Because you know what the statistics tell us about guns combined with ammunition. Maybe you (and your family) just got lucky that day.
Rich, a lot of those statistics involve people who have not actually been properly trained in how to use a gun to defend themselves. I will bet you anything that if people were required to have such training before they could buy guns, those statistics would change.
In my case, a bounty hunter showed up at my house looking for someone who apparently used to live there before I moved in, and said he was going to break down the door if I didn’t let him in to search the house. I told him that if he came through my door, I would aim for his head and empty my magazine. He left. Yes, I could have called the police, but by the time they got there the damage likely would already have been done. You know that when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.
Why, who did you want to kill who was behind him?
thirdmill, so your bluff would have worked even without a gun?
Lofty, it wasn’t a bluff. I was prepared to use lethal force to defend myself and my home, and he knew I was prepared to use lethal force to defend myself and my home, and that’s why it worked. And I’m not the bad guy for defending myself against aggression.
That aside, it would not have worked in a world in which private gun ownership is illegal, because then I wouldn’t have had the means to defend myself, and he’d have known I didn’t have the means to defend myself.
Look, I would like to live in a world in which there is no aggression and it’s never necessary to engage in self defense. If I had magical powers, I would make such a world. But that’s not the world we live in. There are far too many people out there who don’t respect the rights of other people, and so long as they exist, I’m not going to deprive people of the ability to defend themselves. I am willing to require that they get proper training in how to defend themselves, and I don’t think anyone needs an AR-15 for self defense. My pistol worked just fine. We’re probably 90% in agreement.
We also don’t live in a world where everyone will complete a training course (not that people with training don’t routinely murder people).
thirdmill:
Amazing that you write as if you imagine you were being righteous.
Me, I would have negotiated/documented/explained/called the police/something — and then let him search the house. And then follow up as appropriate.
It would save me a broken door, anyway.
But then, I’m not American, so I don’t immediately think of trespass as a kill-or-be-killed situation. Different attitude here in Oz.
—
Yeah, well, I’d rather be in a situation where neither has a firearm than one where both do. Less lethal.
But then, I imagine you’d have a battle-axe or something right by the doorway, just in case you need to defend yourself.
PS to make it clear, you seem to think it’s perfectly reasonable to shoot someone in the head rather than let them search your house. And you further imagine that it would constitute self-defense.
Again: wow.
thirdmill @32:
Twixt 90 and 100 lie the corpses of innumerable children. I’m fucking sick of Americans.
further to Rob: http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/child-injured-killed
Rob:
Me too, and I’m smack in the middle of them.
FTR, if it was a bounty hunter at my house, I’d call 911, and inform bounty hunter the cops were on their way, and we could all have a little chat when they arrived.
OTOH, there’s no evidence to suggest that in countries that have enacted strict gun control laws, there is a rise in the amount of home invasions.
just the contrary, in fact.
while you might cling to your personal anecdote, and understandably so, it does not make a great statement about the validity of owning a gun for protection in general.
can you not see this?
It’s like if I said:
“I managed to protect myself from a shark attack by using a bang-stick on it and blowing its head off.”
does that mean my experience suggests we should equip all divers with bangsticks and simply kill the sharks? nope. overall it’s not a good idea.
but, if that had actually worked for me as a specific thing in such a traumatic experience, I could indeed imagine myself insisting I will be carrying a bang-stick with me whenever I go diving, good idea or not.
so, I think people here can understand your position, but still disagree that your experience is an indicator of what would be the best overall direction for everyone to take. in fact, far from it.
this is why we even HAVE science, to study issues just like this and come up with better recommendations than “this worked for ME”
lastly….
you really should avoid using inane, overused, cliches when trying to make a point.
it fails to impress anyone that you are actually thinking when you write.
thirdmill Yeah, nothing like a mandatory training to prevent people from using their guns when robbing, burgling, or assaulting.
BTW What sick kind of country has bounty hunters? And what even sicker kind of country allows bounty hunters to carry guns?