Assault-Style Weapons In The Civilian Market# LeisureTime - 读书听歌看电影
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npr fresh air，今晚回家路上听到的，简明扼要，感兴趣的童鞋不妨了解一下。
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Assault-Style Weapons In The Civilian Market
As the country reels after Friday's massacre in Newtown, Conn., the question
of how assault rifles like the one used at Sandy Hook Elementary School
entered the civilian market is front and center.
The semi-automatic weapon found at the site where Adam Lanza shot to death
20 children and six adults, for example, is a variant of a type of gun
developed for troops during Vietnam.
"It is one of a variety of assault rifles that militaries of the world
developed," Tom Diaz, a policy analyst for the Violence Policy Center, tells
Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "when they realized that most soldiers do not,
when they're engaged in combat ... take accurate aim, do not fire at long
distances, but rather just spray bullets in the general direction of the
enemy at short to medium range. ... [S]oldiers are not marksmen, and they
tend to just fire in bursts at ambiguous targets and, in fact, most
battlefield injuries are the result of just being where the bullet is and
not someone actually aiming at you."
Diaz — who is also the author of the forthcoming book The Last Gun, about
changes in the gun industry and gun violence — and his colleagues have
conducted extensive research on gun violence in the United States and have
written reports on assault weapons, as well as on the National Rifle
Association and the corporations that fund it. What gun manufacturers have
done to rejuvenate their markets, Diaz tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, is to
emphasize military-derived semi-automatic guns and, in marketing, "appeal to
the inner soldier, the insurrectionist feelings and high-tech desires to
market these military-style guns."
The only difference, Diaz says, between the semi-automatic rifles sold on
the civilian market and those issued to soldiers "is that the purely
military rifle is capable of firing what's called 'fully automatic fire,' "
meaning the gun will continue to fire until it expends all of the ammunition
in its magazine.
When it comes to potential bills that could be introduced in Congress in the
wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Diaz says it's crucial
to focus on this question of magazine capacity. Lawmakers must ask, Diaz
says, "What actually are the design features? What are the real functions of
assault weapons? ... Can you put a high-capacity magazine into this gun
that will hold 20, 40, 60, 100, 110 rounds of ammunition? And, if that's
true, then it's an assault rifle and we will not allow their manufacture or
import."
Interview Highlights
On the Bushmaster rifle found at Sandy Hook Elementary
"[It's] a variant of a type of gun called the AR-15 ... which was designed
and developed for military use roughly during the Vietnam War period. It is
one of a variety of assault rifles that militaries of the world developed
when they realized that most soldiers do not — when they're engaged in
combat — do not take accurate aim, do not fire at long distances, but
rather just spray bullets in the general direction of the enemy at short to
medium range. When the military accepted this as a fact — that soldiers are
not marksmen, and they tend to just fire in bursts at ambiguous targets,
and in fact most battlefield injuries are the result of just being where the
bullet is and not someone actually aiming at you — the militaries of the
world said, 'OK, we need a type of gun to give our soldiers that will do
just that.' ... This was the genesis of the assault rifle. The first one was
developed by the Germans in 1944. It was called the StG-44. The Soviet army
quickly ... made a design similar to it, which is called the AK-47,
probably the most widely used rifle in the world."
On how the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban defined a semi-automatic weapon
"It defined a semi-automatic assault weapon in terms of a gun that had at
least two of certain features. One of them was the actual crucial feature,
which is the ability to take a high capacity magazine. ... The others were .
.. almost decorative features that were on these guns, such as a bayonet
mount, which means you could put a bayonet on the gun; a thing called a ...
flash hider, which means that the flash from the barrel of the gun is less
observable; a stock in the rear that could be extended or shortened. ... The
requirement that you have at least two of those meant that gun manufactures
could say, 'Aha, we can keep the ability to take the high capacity magazine
and just knock off the rest of these bells and whistles [and] we still have
essentially the same gun, ... but it's now federally legal. And that's what
Bushmaster figured out. They actually rose to prominence after the 1994
semi-automatic assault weapons ban because they took off all the truly
irrelevant bells and whistles and just produced a basic gun."
On Beretta's marketing strategy for a semi-automatic pistol that entered
civilian market
"Prior to the early- to mid-1980s, most handguns in the United States,
including those used by law enforcement officers, were the old-fashioned
revolver, which had a capacity of about six rounds — relatively cumbersome.
In the 1980s, Beretta, an Italian company, decided to compete to replace
the U.S. military standard sidearm. Dating back to 1911, there was a gun
known as the Colt Model 1911, .45 caliber, semi-automatic pistol, and it was
thought to be antiquated, not suitable for the modern battlefield.
"So there was a competition and Beretta actually won the competition for its
.9 millimeter, high-capacity semi-automatic pistol. Beretta executives
later in interviews on public record which we've documented ... said, 'Look,
our strategy was this: ... What we want to do is get the cache of military
sales so that we can then turn to the much bigger, much more profitable
American civilian market and make a lot more money doing that.' And that's
precisely what they did. Beretta's advertising [strategy] to this day ... is
, 'This is a gun that we sell to the military. It's made for them but you
can use it.' "
On the FN 5.7, a gun designed for counterterrorism purposes that has entered
the civilian market
"It was specifically designed for use by counterterrorism teams because it
fires a very small but very high-velocity bullet that will penetrate body
armor — what people call ballistic vests or bullet-proof vests. When FN
first manufactured this gun, they recognized how dangerous it would be on a
civilian market and they claimed they would never sell it to civilians, that
it would only be for police and counterterrorism units. In fact, it's
become a very popular gun on the American civilian market and is exported to
Mexico, where it's called the mata policia, or police killer, cop killer."
On why he — himself a former NRA member and gun owner — switched sides on
the debate
"When I worked for Congressman [Chuck] Schumer, who was then chairman of the
House crime subcommittee — about 1993, 1994 — I inherited the gun
legislation account. And one of the things I had to do was generate a
hearing on, we called it 'Kids and Guns,' and, in the course of preparing a
hearing, staff members such as I was [would] actually go and interview the
witnesses. ... I talked to some of these children and I realized that their
world had nothing whatever to do with this kind of mythical world of the
National Rifle Association, and so that set me to thinking, and ... I
realized that I was living, frankly, in a dream world. I mean, I was living
in the world of when I was a Boy Scout."
npr fresh air，今晚回家路上听到的，简明扼要，感兴趣的童鞋不妨了解一下。
---------------------------
Assault-Style Weapons In The Civilian Market
As the country reels after Friday's massacre in Newtown, Conn., the question
of how assault rifles like the one used at Sandy Hook Elementary School
entered the civilian market is front and center.
The semi-automatic weapon found at the site where Adam Lanza shot to death
20 children and six adults, for example, is a variant of a type of gun
developed for troops during Vietnam.
"It is one of a variety of assault rifles that militaries of the world
developed," Tom Diaz, a policy analyst for the Violence Policy Center, tells
Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "when they realized that most soldiers do not,
when they're engaged in combat ... take accurate aim, do not fire at long
distances, but rather just spray bullets in the general direction of the
enemy at short to medium range. ... [S]oldiers are not marksmen, and they
tend to just fire in bursts at ambiguous targets and, in fact, most
battlefield injuries are the result of just being where the bullet is and
not someone actually aiming at you."
Diaz — who is also the author of the forthcoming book The Last Gun, about
changes in the gun industry and gun violence — and his colleagues have
conducted extensive research on gun violence in the United States and have
written reports on assault weapons, as well as on the National Rifle
Association and the corporations that fund it. What gun manufacturers have
done to rejuvenate their markets, Diaz tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, is to
emphasize military-derived semi-automatic guns and, in marketing, "appeal to
the inner soldier, the insurrectionist feelings and high-tech desires to
market these military-style guns."
The only difference, Diaz says, between the semi-automatic rifles sold on
the civilian market and those issued to soldiers "is that the purely
military rifle is capable of firing what's called 'fully automatic fire,' "
meaning the gun will continue to fire until it expends all of the ammunition
in its magazine.
When it comes to potential bills that could be introduced in Congress in the
wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Diaz says it's crucial
to focus on this question of magazine capacity. Lawmakers must ask, Diaz
says, "What actually are the design features? What are the real functions of
assault weapons? ... Can you put a high-capacity magazine into this gun
that will hold 20, 40, 60, 100, 110 rounds of ammunition? And, if that's
true, then it's an assault rifle and we will not allow their manufacture or
import."
Interview Highlights
On the Bushmaster rifle found at Sandy Hook Elementary
"[It's] a variant of a type of gun called the AR-15 ... which was designed
and developed for military use roughly during the Vietnam War period. It is
one of a variety of assault rifles that militaries of the world developed
when they realized that most soldiers do not — when they're engaged in
combat — do not take accurate aim, do not fire at long distances, but
rather just spray bullets in the general direction of the enemy at short to
medium range. When the military accepted this as a fact — that soldiers are
not marksmen, and they tend to just fire in bursts at ambiguous targets,
and in fact most battlefield injuries are the result of just being where the
bullet is and not someone actually aiming at you — the militaries of the
world said, 'OK, we need a type of gun to give our soldiers that will do
just that.' ... This was the genesis of the assault rifle. The first one was
developed by the Germans in 1944. It was called the StG-44. The Soviet army
quickly ... made a design similar to it, which is called the AK-47,
probably the most widely used rifle in the world."
On how the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban defined a semi-automatic weapon
"It defined a semi-automatic assault weapon in terms of a gun that had at
least two of certain features. One of them was the actual crucial feature,
which is the ability to take a high capacity magazine. ... The others were .
.. almost decorative features that were on these guns, such as a bayonet
mount, which means you could put a bayonet on the gun; a thing called a ...
flash hider, which means that the flash from the barrel of the gun is less
observable; a stock in the rear that could be extended or shortened. ... The
requirement that you have at least two of those meant that gun manufactures
could say, 'Aha, we can keep the ability to take the high capacity magazine
and just knock off the rest of these bells and whistles [and] we still have
essentially the same gun, ... but it's now federally legal. And that's what
Bushmaster figured out. They actually rose to prominence after the 1994
semi-automatic assault weapons ban because they took off all the truly
irrelevant bells and whistles and just produced a basic gun."
On Beretta's marketing strategy for a semi-automatic pistol that entered
civilian market
"Prior to the early- to mid-1980s, most handguns in the United States,
including those used by law enforcement officers, were the old-fashioned
revolver, which had a capacity of about six rounds — relatively cumbersome.
In the 1980s, Beretta, an Italian company, decided to compete to replace
the U.S. military standard sidearm. Dating back to 1911, there was a gun
known as the Colt Model 1911, .45 caliber, semi-automatic pistol, and it was
thought to be antiquated, not suitable for the modern battlefield.
"So there was a competition and Beretta actually won the competition for its
.9 millimeter, high-capacity semi-automatic pistol. Beretta executives
later in interviews on public record which we've documented ... said, 'Look,
our strategy was this: ... What we want to do is get the cache of military
sales so that we can then turn to the much bigger, much more profitable
American civilian market and make a lot more money doing that.' And that's
precisely what they did. Beretta's advertising [strategy] to this day ... is
, 'This is a gun that we sell to the military. It's made for them but you
can use it.' "
On the FN 5.7, a gun designed for counterterrorism purposes that has entered
the civilian market
"It was specifically designed for use by counterterrorism teams because it
fires a very small but very high-velocity bullet that will penetrate body
armor — what people call ballistic vests or bullet-proof vests. When FN
first manufactured this gun, they recognized how dangerous it would be on a
civilian market and they claimed they would never sell it to civilians, that
it would only be for police and counterterrorism units. In fact, it's
become a very popular gun on the American civilian market and is exported to
Mexico, where it's called the mata policia, or police killer, cop killer."
On why he — himself a former NRA member and gun owner — switched sides on
the debate
"When I worked for Congressman [Chuck] Schumer, who was then chairman of the
House crime subcommittee — about 1993, 1994 — I inherited the gun
legislation account. And one of the things I had to do was generate a
hearing on, we called it 'Kids and Guns,' and, in the course of preparing a
hearing, staff members such as I was [would] actually go and interview the
witnesses. ... I talked to some of these children and I realized that their
world had nothing whatever to do with this kind of mythical world of the
National Rifle Association, and so that set me to thinking, and ... I
realized that I was living, frankly, in a dream world. I mean, I was living
in the world of when I was a Boy Scout."
