I understand what you are saying, Aaron.
I think a lot of people who mention the "looks bad in court" argument carry it to levels far beyond what Ayoob ever intended.
Remember, he first started mentioning it in the early 1980s, which was a completely different time, when most police officers were armed with revolvers that may or may not have been loaded with hollowpoints.
It's different today, as most police are armed with high capacity automatics loaded with hollowpoints and often carry an AR-15 sytle "patrol rifle" in their car. Also at the time he started writing about it, the phrase "home invasion" was not in the dictionary. Also, compare the number of places that have a castle doctrine and issue CCW permits to any citizen with a clean background who passes a perscribed course now to the time when Ayoob first advanced that
argument.
If it does end up in court, a decent attorney can make a lot of these arguments look foolish. If the prosecution makes a big deal about a legally owned AR, the defense attorney can respond, "You mean like the type of rifle carried in this city's patrol cars which is the most common type of rifle you will find in police cars across the country?" Or the longarm manufactured by more American companies than any other?"
If you want to worry about all of the things that might look bad in court, you should probably eliminate time spent online on forums like this, since afterall, a police forensic team might get their hands on your computer and the prosecution might try to consture it to indicate 'an obsession with weapons designed to kill people.'
And you probably should not own more than three guns total, less the prosecution accuse you of building up an arsenal.
And those training classes with high speed combat experienced trainers--the prosecution could argue that no civilian needs to know those things and that any civilian who pays money to learn them was just itching for an excuse to blow someone away--like those poor guys who kicked his door in and were only engaged in a property crime when he shot them with his faux M4 as though he was reinacting Blackhawk Down or Red Dawn.
There is no end to what a prosecutor *might* try to do.
Again, can you show me a case where someone was prosecuted for a different/custom gun where they did not do something wrong that made the shooting unjustiifed under the laws where it took place, or where the shooting took place in a state where an AR is otherwise legal to own and is legally owned by the shooter?



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