But they are typically heavier, more unwieldy, and are bolt action and thus have a lower rate of fire.
It's a continuum though. Go up in ballistic power from .223 only a little bit and you still find plenty of lightweight semi-auto rifles. And you can certainly find semi-autos all the way to at least 7mm Remington Mangum.
With a pistol grip, an amateur could easily shoot and kill a bunch of people with one,
Personally I have a lot of doubt about how much difference a pistol grip actually makes, but I could be convinced if anybody has researched that and has some evidence.
with a pistol grip and large capacity magazine is far more deadly for killing
A skilled operator can change magazines so quickly that I feel like magazine capacity is almost a moot point. To me the real distinction is binary "has a detachable magazine" or "does not have a detachable magazine."
Of course, I suppose in the context of how much damage an unskilled operator can do, then yes, a larger magazine is more "deadly" in a sense. But large magazines are not specific to the AR series. Even if the original manufacturer doesn't provide them, there's little reason in principle that someone else can't manufacture a higher capacity magazine for any rifle that uses detachable magazines.
The kid in CT that murdered his own mother, stole her guns and killed all the students was dropping half-full mags and reloading. IIRC, law enforcement interpreted this behavior as mirroring his FPS “training”. That would seem to indicate capacity didn’t matter as much as simply having a detachable mag. The guy that shot up that Batman theater in CO or wherever brought in a 50 or 100 rnd drum mag (IIRC) and had it jam on him (as they do).
Exactly. We have a total of two mass shootings where magazine capacity had *any* relevance. One guy got jumped while "reloading"--but since his second magazine was damaged and wouldn't feed that's not really of much relevance--from a practical standpoint he was out of ammo. If he had smaller mags that might actually have increased the death toll because a dinged mag would have removed less of his ammo.
The second is the Las Vegas case--and in that case he had a ton of guns, mostly he was switching guns rather than reloading.
Detachable or not is the only meaningful distinction.
It's a continuum though. Go up in ballistic power from .223 only a little bit and you still find plenty of lightweight semi-auto rifles. And you can certainly find semi-autos all the way to at least 7mm Remington Mangum.
With a pistol grip, an amateur could easily shoot and kill a bunch of people with one,
Personally I have a lot of doubt about how much difference a pistol grip actually makes, but I could be convinced if anybody has researched that and has some evidence.
with a pistol grip and large capacity magazine is far more deadly for killing
A skilled operator can change magazines so quickly that I feel like magazine capacity is almost a moot point. To me the real distinction is binary "has a detachable magazine" or "does not have a detachable magazine."
Of course, I suppose in the context of how much damage an unskilled operator can do, then yes, a larger magazine is more "deadly" in a sense. But large magazines are not specific to the AR series. Even if the original manufacturer doesn't provide them, there's little reason in principle that someone else can't manufacture a higher capacity magazine for any rifle that uses detachable magazines.