For a sidearm, yes, I agree. OTOH, most police aren't really using their firearms in "tactical situations", to be honest. They sure like to pretend they do, but in practice, not so much.

I was thinking more about integrated suppressors, though, not the kind that screws at the end. When you can wrap them around the barrel, they can be that much lighter, and the overall length is also much shorter. I don't think anyone does this with handguns in anything other than .22 LR currently, but there's no reason why they couldn't make a service pistol in .45 ACP like that.

With rifles, a modern suppressor is really quiet enough (with subsonic ammo, naturally) that all you hear is the action of the weapon working, even with something like .300 BLK. With handguns it's definitely louder, since the pressure is going to be higher out of a barrel that short, and yes, you'd still want hearing protection... but it will reduce the amount of damage that it causes even so.

It's both. Some states ban them outright (though the recent trend is to legalize in more states), but on federal level there's NFA, which requires a $200 tax for every transfer, and several months of waiting time for BATFE to process the paperwork. Plus a sign-off from a local LEO chief (or a gun trust to work around that requirement).

I want them to have the tools that they might realistically need (i.e. handguns: yes; MRAPs: no), and to make those tools safer for me if they do have to use them. A better way to discourage their misuse would be mandatory body cameras, IMO. There's already some statistics on departments that have started using wearable cams for their officers, and the drop in police use of force, and in citizens' complaints about police abuse, are quite remarkable.

Both stealing and killing involves measurable objective harm. The only morality being legislated here is that harm is immoral. So let's make that the sole exception.

Well, I can say that just fine. After all, pictures of people being murdered are okay, even though murdering people is not. Same goes for every other crime. I don't see why children should be specifically exempt from it.

(Truth be told, we as a society have gone way overboard on a lot of things pertaining to children. There are reasons to treat them differently from adults, and that includes treating them as more valuable, so to speak, but our scale is waaaay off into the "precious snowflake" territory right now... and the CP witch hunt is one of the outcomes. "Zero tolerance" policies in schools are another.)

And as far as simulated or drawn porn goes, there's no leg to stand on at all: nothing at all is harmed in any of the acts associated with the possession of it: neither in transfer, nor in creation - so there's no reason for it to not be legal, other than the desire to control what is in other people's heads.

They're less convenient. With a silencer, you only need one on the firearm that you're shooting, and everyone else in the room doesn't need to bother with protection (assuming subsonic ammo). Shooting rifles with ear muffs can also be awkward when trying to get a good cheek weld.

What makes you believe that?

I won't claim to be an expert marksman and have a nuanced opinion on accuracy, but I do know from personal experience (owning both guns and silencers) that any such effect, if it exists, would only matter for precision shooting (where you want sub-MOA groups, say), and is completely irrelevant when shooting at people.

Control of the firearm is affected in a sense that it becomes larger and heavier, and specifically more front-heavy. It's a bad thing in a sense that it makes it harder to draw fast (mainly a concern for sidearms), and it makes it bulkier and harder to carry around in your arms (not really a concern for police, who generally shouldn't be wielding their weapon for prolonged duration - they are not soldiers). It is a good thing in that increased mass means lower perceived recoil, which means more controllability for repeat shots, esp. in rapid fire. Furthermore, suppressors themselves reduce felt recoil by virtue of their design, further increasing controllability.

In terms of less stopping power, it depends on the ammo. Obviously, if you want your silencer to be effective, you're going to be shooting subsonic ammo, which means significantly reduced velocities. But this is generally compensated by increasing the mass of the bullet, or by using a caliber that is subsonic to begin with (like .45 ACP). Then there are calibers that are specifically designed for suppressed subsonic use, like .300 BLK, or 9x39mm of Vintorez fame.

So for sidearms, for example, if they are chambered in .45 ACP (which is generally considered as one of the better handgun calibers in terms of stopping power), the stopping power will be exactly the same with or without a suppressor. Ditto for .45 SMGs.

And, frankly, the only reason why I can see police ever needing supersonic bullets is if they have to confront someone wearing a bulletproof vest - which is a pretty damn rare occasion in practice.

This (as well as "we have plenty of evidence that police using firearms in public negatively affects the health of people at the scene") is a different issue. DoD ships a lot of equipment to local police forces, and most of it doesn't really serve a good purpose, and a good chunk of it does in fact induce abuse - but silencers would probably be somewhere on the bottom of my personal "offensive" list. Fully automatic firearms, armored cars, .50 BMG rifles and other such things would be on top. But really, the entire program itself is messed up in too many ways, especially when combined with "equitable sharing" asset forfeiture. I would be perfectly content to shut down the whole thing entirely, and have the local PDs pay for any equipment that they require out of their budget.

As far as silencers go, I would actually be willing to go so far as to mandate their use by everyone (including police officers, except in special circumstances) when shooting in public for any reason outside of designated ranges - including during hunting etc. Given the permanent hearing damage that can be induced in bystanders, I think it's irresponsible to not take care of the noise when there's the ability to do so. Of course, this is not viable so long as silencers remain regulated and taxed as heavily as they currently are in US (much more so than guns themselves).

To clarify, in a speech this July, Hungarian prime minister Orban has given some examples of countries that he considers successful, and the systems of which he thinks are worth imitating. Those countries are Russia, China, Turkey and Singapore. He specifically noted that they are "not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, maybe not even democracies", and went on to say that "“I don’t think that our European Union membership precludes us from building an illiberal new state based on national foundations".

And he walks the walk, not just talks the talk. There's a massive crackdown on NGOs that are pushing back against authoritarianism in the country, on the grounds that they have foreign funding and are hence "hostile foreign agents". The party, Fidesz, has a supermajority (2/3) in the parliament, which lets them amend the constitution - which they did, adopting a completely new one in 2011, which of course gives the ruling party that much more power, as well as writing a bunch of their platform directly it (e.g. recognizing "life at conception"), defining marriage as "one man, one woman", excluding age and sexual orientation from traits which are illegal to discriminate against, and inserted a bunch of references to Christianity in the preamble, such as "we recognise the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood".

Any argument involving the words "inherently immoral" in the context of legislation is inherently invalid. Legislating morality is just a bad idea.

A similar thing did happen in UK, actually, and before this whole 3D gun printing craze at that. There was a guy, you see, who figured out that you can actually make a reasonably efficient firearm (a smoothbore submachinegun chambered in 9x19mm - good enough for distances up to 50m or so) out of shelf components - steel tubes and such - if you just pick the ones with the right diameter. So he set on a quest to do just that, wrote a book detailing how to build one, and published it in 1998.

This being UK, after he published it, they charged him with construction of an illegal firearm. He's still in prison. The book is still on Amazon.

It's because they don't need it. In a disarmed society, you don't need to have a gun to extort money by force.

It's an incorrect statement. The correct one is "legal gun owners are statistically the least likely demographic to commit crimes". That's because, by definition, a legal gun owner is the one who was never convicted of a felony, and the majority of criminals (esp. when it comes to violent crime) have past criminal records.

Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't. The nice thing about having a shotgun is that if he wouldn't, OP could still defend himself.

Out of a carbine, it would actually be a fair bit more powerful than 7.62x39 at the muzzle, at least for hot loads - you can get .44 Magnum to push a 240gr bullet at ~1900 fps or so, giving 1900 ft lbs of energy - compared to ~1500 for 7.62x39 out of AK. But given that it's a fat non-spitzer bullet, it would slow down much faster, as well.

It'll take a fair bit to heat up the barrel to the point where it'd be a concern, though. I have personally dumped 6 30-round magazines - 180 rounds - down the line one after another from an AR, and it basically heated up the handguards to the point where they were uncomfortable to hold with bare hands (but not melting). Now, keeping in mind that 6 magazines is actually the standard loadout of a US army soldier, I don't think that this is a concern.

Shooting a polar bear with buckshot, sure. Shooting it with a slug would be as efficient as shooting it with .303, if not more so.

Their primary purpose would be to alert the properly outfitted army units of enemy movements in those remote areas.

So they're basically an early alert / light scout force, not line infantry.

If you already have tons of .303 in stock, why bother?

If they want cheap, they should just buy Mosins by the crate. They can likely stock up on a dozen rifles for every ranger they have, and use them for spare parts as needed for several more decades to come.