Please don’t patronize me with your superior attitude. While I am not former or active military I am well versed in the use of firearms. If I chose to use my P229 .40 as my home defense gun, that is my choice and you and the Gov’t are not going to tell me otherwise.

Danger to neighbors? Well gosh golly, maybe only the police and folks like you with the experience and training should be allowed to have guns, not us ignorant citizens. Condesention drips from your post, and it is unbecoming of a military man, and a true American.

Unless I horribly miss my guess, the implication was the intimidation factor. The characteristic sound of a pump-action firearm has tremendous cultural penetration, giving it tremendous value as a psychological tool.

Actually Josh any ‘thing’ you assault someone with becomes an ‘assault weapon.’
Rapid fire or not. Though a baseball bat can, I guess, be considered rapid fire if you can swing fast enough.

You and your father may have claim to have vast reserves of experience with guns, but unfortunately, you are making stuff up. There are plenty of good and reasonable alternatives to a pump-action shotgun for home defense.

If you actually researched around for a little more than your predetermined opinions, you would find that the rounds from AR-15 tend to disintegrate in drywall, making them less of a danger to your other family members and your neighbors. On the other hand, buckshot from your pump-action shotgun, as well as many pistol calibers can exit your house and injure bystanders outside.

So don’t presume to tell other people how they can and cannot defend themselves in their own homes, particularly when you don’t know much about it yourself.

“An AR-15, as anyone with any gun knowledge knows, can be turned fully auto by a very simple procedure. My Dad (a former Marine counter-insurgency warfare instructor during Vietnam) can do it in a very short amount of time, and he’s not a gunsmith.”

could possibly get your dad in real trouble with the ATF.

Your wording seems to say that he has converted AR-15′s
,a civilian rifle and not in Vietnam, to full auto. Thats the way it reads to me. If he did this while in service and under orders then you need to say so.

“Fact is, in my opinion, and this is the considered opinion of an ex-Army troop trained in the assault weapons prevalent in the 1980’s, any weapon you can rapid fire is an assault weapon.”

Before you continue, perhaps you would like to explore the difference between “fact” and “opinion”. They are two entirely different things.

Just like a .22 pistol and a real “assault rifle”.

How?

It’s far from simple and requires actually milling out part of the lower receiver. But, you know, you can turn a Ruger 10/22 into a machine gun with a shoestring.