I realize you may be exaggerating for effect, but in case you've actually been misled by sensationalist media into believing this, let me inform you that there is no significant constituency in the US for "keeping hold of hard core military weapons in their homes".
I feel like at least half the men I know would love to purchase ridiculously overpowered and expensive weapons. Most already do; they'd buy more if they could.
Civilians haven't been able to register fully-automatic weapons in America since 1986. I suppose they could buy a grandfathered-in weapon that was on the registry before then, but if that's the case, you have some seriously wealthy friends.
Perhaps you're thinking of the semi-automatic versions available to civilians, but once you turn an 'assault rifle' into a semi-automatic it's no more lethal than a semi-automatic hunting rifle, and the label is largely cosmetic.
The AR-15 that lunatic recently used certainly looks scary, but since the rounds it takes are significantly less powerful than those used by your typical boring old hunting rifle, what's the point of the distinction?
Thank you. And my point was that mainstream organizations such as the NRA do not push for assault rifles and other military weapons to be re-legalized for civilians, nor is there any significant clamoring for this.
Having fired some of their weapons, I disagree that there is no difference between an AK-47 or AR-15 and a hunting rifle. Magazine size and ease of reloading make a difference. Semi-automatic weapons such as the AK-47, AR-15 or even SKS can still be manually fired at high rates, with easy reloading. They were designed for combat, not hunting, and even removing their fully-automatic capability, they're still quite effective.
Yes, this is sort of true, depending on the rifle. Some hunting rifles are as efficient as an AR-15, and some aren't.
The ease of reloading a hunting rifle depends on the type of magazine it takes. Internal box or rotary magazines will be slow to reload, since you've got to feed the bullets into the magazine. (Yeah, a stripper clip speeds this up, but only so much.) But there's plenty of hunting rifles with external box magazines, which can be reloaded as fast as any gun with detachable box magazines.
A semi-automatic's a semi-automatic. There's no real difference in rate of fire once the bullets are loaded. (I suppose a heavier trigger pull might slow you down a little.)
Aftermarket magazine capacity isn't that different if you're using a box magazine, but the bigger the magazine, the more likely it jams, making the big magazine sort of moot.
It's true that there aren't many (any? I've never seen one) high-capacity drum magazines for hunting rifles, but personally I'd rather leave those on the market as a honeypot for idiots. The damn things jam all the bloody time and clearing the jam takes at least as long as reloading a detachable box magazine (and possibly forever, if you're just some random sociopath with no firearms knowledge who just bought whatever looked scary).
I guess the possible magazine sizes play a role here. I can't imagine a hunting rifle with a 100 round mag. And aren't most of them bolt action, that is, not even semi-automatic?
The thing is, there's no clearly defined set of characteristics that makes a firearm "military", "hunting", "sniper" or any other purpose. There are bolt-action rifles that take 20-round detachable magazines[0] and semi-automatics that only hold 4[1]. Incidentally, putting some different accessories on that same rifle makes it look like a military weapon[2].
The primary functional difference between guns labeled "military-style" or "assault" and "sporting" or "hunting" is a detachable magazine with larger capacity. One might think that regulating those would be an effective means of mitigating the impact of criminal acts with guns, but that was tried and did not appear to have the desired effect[3].
The lunatic who attacked the school was not trained, but was also attacking cornered, defenseless children at short range. Practically any firearm would have been used in this attack to equivalent effect.
As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that might have stopped this (once it started) would have been a police officer at the school or an armed teacher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_School_shooting). We might have better been able to prevent the shooting from taking place at all with better mental health care. They weren't even his guns, so gun control that inspects the purchaser would not have worked.
