... enjoy today's sandwich.
The painting of Diogenes is by Jean-Léon Gérôme.
You know, Diogenes "destroyed the single wooden bowl he possessed on seeing a peasant boy drink from the hollow of his hands. He then exclaimed: 'Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!'" But you might, nevertheless want or feel you need some things, and if you're buying them through Amazon, please go in through The Althouse Portal. You can get a simple wooden bowl or a lantern.
पोस्ट्स
१६९ टिप्पण्या:
He didn't give the boy his bowl instead? What a perverse, narcissistic jackass.
By the picture I'd say old Diogenes found at least 4 honest men.
Hoarding Amazon goods is called a Diogenes Disorder.
Try getting rid of that bowl now, and you'll have the court taking over your whole life.
If he had that many dogs sitting around him, he must have been giving away sandwiches.
I guess he wasn't into hot food.
Was Diogenes the first person to be famous for being famous?
Apparently Diogenes liked his soup cold.
Speaking of paintings, I was unrelatedly browsing the photorealistic paintings of Paul Roberts of Sniff'n the Tears this morning, admiring his work. He painted all the band's album covers and has gotten even better over the years. I came upon one that immediately made me think of this blog. There's a woman in the painting that I think looks like a longer-haired Althouse at some unknown point in her past. And Althouse might put mustard on a minute steak, just because nobody else does that.
http://www.paulrobertspaintings.co.uk/05%20-%2009/Noon.html
I haven't watched Fox News in a long time, but I have been down with a "stomach flu" for a few days, and, well, when did it become of a network of leftie pretty boys pushing long discredited talking points?
I criticize NPR a lot and they typically merit all my criticism and more, but I have to give them credit for 2 big things:
1.) Their reporters have been pretty careful in how they're discussing the LV shooting (making clear to use the correct terms, stating repeatedly when they're just speculating/the facts aren't known, and adopting the ATF spokesperson's description of slide fire stocks as a device that "simulates automatic fire.") You can tell they'e going out of their way to avoid having people knowledgeable about firearms gunsplain or otherwise mock them. They're managing to to a much better job on that front than the Media average.
2.) It seems like they're deliberately avoiding saying the guy's name (just using "gunman") and every time they do a story on the shooting they immediately do a story on one of the victims. They've going a little heavy on reporting the social media info of people killed, but I guess that's all they have for some of them right now and doing victim profiles/stories right after any update on the shooting or the investigation really keeps the focus on the victims and the crime itself (in a way that doesn't at all glamorize it).
So: good job so far, NPR.
Well, now I understand why there are dogs in the painting. Cynic = dogs.
Althouse - a learning experience and a Blog!
"If he had that many dogs sitting around him, he must have been giving away sandwiches"
No, these are really misogynistic symbols for the horde of groupies that followed him around.
Once you figure out the wiles of the patriarchy you can never be fooled again.
"We got there. We visited the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes. They spread robes for us. We delivered presents, we received presents. We ate, we smoked. We were all one.
"Now this is what happened. Me one night they took into a teepee. They sat me on a robe. With them I ate a certain plant, a strange herb of mystery and power. They beat their drums and sang their songs and made their prayers. My turn came to me with the drum. I sane my songs and made my prayer. And we ate again of this certain plant, this strange herb of mystery and power. And this we did all night. ...
[My spirit] saw war and the long hunger, peace and plenty of fat meat, and behind them both the things that makes all men brothers. It saw money. They all were as dreams, and yet were not dreams. It was this certain plant, this strange herb we ate that gave me this mystery.
The sun came up. We walked out of the tepee. You have drunk whiskey all night, felt the taste of its scum on your tongue, the fire which has scorched your insides? This herb but left my body clean and my mind whole. Would you know how my spirit felt? Look at this little silver pin fastened to my shirt."
-- "The Man Who Killed The Deer: A Novel of Pueblo Indian Life" 1942
"But this deer’s permission was not obtained."
"simulates automatic fire."
Yeah, because the semantics of the description are the most important thing, to, well gun <strike>nuts</strike> aficionados anyway. They are "simulated machine guns" I guess, so they shouldn't be covered by the same laws that actual machine guns are covered by because of "reasons."
I think they're waiting for him to croak. Dibs on the drumstick!
Below is a very interesting comment that I read this morning at The Conservative Treehouse.
---------
M. Mueller says:
October 3, 2017 at 10:56 pm
I found this an interesting theory. It was posted on Facebook by Leigh Scott.
This guy has zero online presence. Very few photos. He owns multiple homes in several way out places and owns a couple of planes. He’s a pilot.
This dude is a trafficker. That’s where his money comes from. Selling illegal stuff. Guns, drugs, people. Probably all of it.
Yeah, it probably was ISIS. They set up a meeting to buy a bunch of guns to do a mass shooting. But rather than pay for them, they said “hey, no time like the present!” and killed the “shooter” in the process. The cops won’t say anything about this because, as I’ve said before, this ties into a much larger network of terrorists in the US and they know that the shooter’s Asian girlfriend was his partner on this stuff and probably knows who he was meeting.
Why would he put up cameras if he was not going to engage the police? That makes more sense if you’re doing an illegal deal and you want to make sure housekeeping isn’t going to bust in. Or to make sure that it’s just the two guys you agreed to meet and not a third etc.
It also bothered me that he was known to be a big country music fan. I think he picked that weekend so he could go to the show.
As for “false flags” folks, the problem is that these types of events have not lead to any policy changes in a long time. Probably since 9/11.It’s diminishing returns to keep staging these events and nothing happens. And anything about “security devices” being mandated etc. makes no sense from an economic standpoint.
--------
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/10/03/curiouser-and-curiouser-vegas-shooters-girlfriend-used-multiple-ids-multiple-ss-numbers-and-married-two-men-simultaneously/comment-page-1/#comment-4452905
That theory would be fine if he didn't send his girlfriend abroad during the intense preparation phase and send her money.
'Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!'
Wow. He makes Marie Kondo look like a hoarder.
Well, Tim, semantics do matter in law. Remember the great "Assault Weapon" ban? It banned certain weapons that looked "bad." But you could have a weapon that lacked the cosmetic features, but functioned exactly the same.
People are endlessly innovative. If you ban bump stocks, someone will devise a modification that produces the same result, but will not involve the stock.
The outspokenly liberal Alec Baldwin admitted to Sen. Bernard Sanders recently that he fears his impression of Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live” may have backfired, Entertainment Weekly reported Wednesday. Mr. Baldwin made the admission in an interview with the former Democratic presidential candidate on the Oct. 3 edition of his “Here’s the Thing” podcast, a production of WNYC Studios. “In terms of Trump, do you think we’re making him a little too cuddly, a little too funny, and we’re taking people’s minds off stuff that’s a little more serious?”
Archie Bunker, Alex Keaton, they will never learn. Plus, I hate to tell you Alec, but nobody but the dedicated Trump haters, you know, like LLR Chuck, watch your show anymore.
Of course, there is always the possibility that many Americans find Trump sort of cuddly on his own. Might not want to share an apartment with him, but still.
A rich guy buying a bunch of guns is not at all strange. A guy getting rich through real estate is not at all strange. A rich guy, especially a real estate rich guy, owning a bunch of properties is not at all strange.
The investigation and legal proceedings following the Charlottesville incident are being conducted like a kangaroo court.
http://www.unz.com/article/anarcho-tyranny-update/
Since Trump's election victory, two American institutions -- our judiciary and our intelligence community -- have been in a race to show which will disgrace itself the worst.
I thought that the appointment of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court put some breaks on the judiciary's race to disgrace itself.
The Charlottesville legal proceedings indicate, however, that much of our judiciary still is running on track to disgrace itself.
Very interesting story via Instapundit this am.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/donors-anti-trump-resistance-group-revealed/
An analysis for the funding of one partisan political foundation, the Center for Community Change. There are dozens of these things, this is just one, and the article does not try to list all of them much less untangle their finances.
Not that this stuff was not known from other published info, but its good intelligence.
Who are your (conservative partisans, Trump voters, etc.) actual political enemies?
This is a rather shadowy lot, deliberately so I think. The "faces" of the opposition are not the directors of the opposition, that much is clear.
Well, here is one layer of them - the Center for Community Change received the bulk of its funds from the directors of W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the The Open Society Foundation (Soros, but I suspect he himself, or his son, are just fronts). Every Citizen Counts - a sort-of PAC for Hillary Clinton. And a bunch of other usual suspects.
Money flowed through Center for Community Change to a very wide range of other activist operations including BLM-affiliated groups. The complexity of donors-to-donors-to-donors and besides that interlocking membership in various boards tells me that the whole system is designed mainly for three purposes -
- To disguise sources of funds, at least for political/PR reasons
- To make what amounts to unmonitored and unrestricted political contributions.
- And as I have noted before, to maintain a permanently embodied army of professional political operatives in the field, a "jobs for the lads" political industry.
People are endlessly innovative. If you ban bump stocks, someone will devise a modification that produces the same result, but will not involve the stock.
So if you were in the market with a powder that if you just added water, turned into a "simulated machine gun" that can send dozens of bullets down range in a short time that were more than real enough to be deadly, it wouldn't bother you?
Maybe the barrels need to be modified so that they overheat at high fire rates more quickly, IDK, not a gun expert, but the guns have a design flaw, and trying to get everybody to hew to the language of your little cult isn't going to get you anywhere.
Let's see: into minimalist décor and small houses. Ate raw octopus.
Yep. Diogenes was the First Hipster.
Good post. Well done.
"but the guns have a design flaw"
The design flaw is human ingenuity. There is really no way out of this (the occasional outrage, in a country this large and diverse) without a general ban on firearms. This has been done, elsewhere. Its had some interesting consequences, and if you want to geek out on historical trivia we can go there.
But your real problem is not details of laws or technology, but a set of cultural values that will not permit a restriction. And if you change those cultural values in order to establish those restrictions, you will not be yourselves, anymore, perhaps in directions that would be a real loss.
Wow Mike, I guess we will never hear if he was being chased by that crowd swinging the clubs, either.
Charlottesville has worked out perfectly for the Dems, so they have no interest in looking into the details of what actually happened, and they control the process. What is Sessions doing? Wasn't he supposed to be investigating this? I don't know what happened, but based on what we have so far, it looks like the narrative doesn't cover all of the facts.
The design flaw is human ingenuity.
Sure, but make it harder, and a serious crime to do it. All I'm asking. If you can turn a semi-automatic into an automatic by any number of simple methods, then the design of the semi-automatic is the problem. Maybe the firing needs to be controlled by electronics, and if you get caught with a weapon where this as been altered, you go to prison. I don't know, but this is not an insoluble problem.
"Since Trump's election victory, two American institutions -- our judiciary and our intelligence community -- have been in a race to show which will disgrace itself the worst."
They were always corrupt and completely political, the only thing that's changed is that now you are seeing them more accurately.
Maybe it has a clock mechanism that meters out the rounds. You get caught without one, you go to prison.
Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!
...said the guy carrying around a lantern in the daylight.
"then the design of the semi-automatic is the problem"
Then the next smart psycho will work with that restriction and find some scenario that works within those limits. Or makes use of them. The Orlando terrorist used an unmodified semi-auto, he simply selected a venue where this was more of an asset than a liability. This would not have worked so well with the crowd in Las Vegas, so some psycho found a quirk that works better in that specific environment. The next psycho will find some other and probably very different opportunity.
Like the creative fellow that used a semi-truck in Nice.
You can start following up behind the psychos, restricting fertiliser, semi-trucks, magazines, ammunition, and etc. and etc. one after another, and in the end what is going to be left? Not safety. And, I suspect, not any actual Americans.
Agree with Buwaya on the importance of the story.
Amazing how Left many of these non profits have become.
And the big salaries they pay..
to maintain a permanently embodied army of professional political operatives in the field, a "jobs for the lads" political industry.
Yes and they are arming themselves.
They are following and stalking college Republicans at UC, Berkeley.
I expect this will grow as they add more affiliates around the country, especially at universities that accumulate hangers on who pretend they were students there. Berkeley and Seattle are two venues where this is common. There are lots of hangers on at both places who work in restaurants and pretend they are or were students.
I'm sure there are similar colonies of malcontents at other places in the east.
It's amusing that Paddock graduated from Cal State Northridge where Paul Gigot of the WSJ also is an alum.
"Amazing how Left many of these non profits have become."
Conquest's second law.
Per daily mail Las Vegas gunman was on anti anxiety. Seems common feature of non Islamic massacres in us.
- columbine
- naval shipyard
- Virginia tech
- sandy hill elementary
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4947276/Stephen-Paddock-prescribed-Valium-Vegas-massacre.html
The fellow in this case, who apparently owned two small aircraft.
An alternative way out, in his case, could simply have been to take one of those, gas up, load it with additional gas tanks to its weight limit, and simply crash into the concert crowd kamikaze-style. There was nothing at all to stop him. He would probably have killed many more this way.
If you try thinking like a creative terrorist there is no end of opportunities to do massive damage. A little research will yield plenty of worse horrors open to the thinking villain. Finding and preventing them all is not merely impossible, but the attempt to prevent all these possibilities is profoundly socially destructive.
If those dogs were expecting treats from Diogenes, they were disappointed.
"jobs for the lads" political industry.
I think they spend their days trolling too.
"Money flowed through Center for Community Change to a very wide range of other activist operations including BLM-affiliated groups. The complexity of donors-to-donors-to-donors and besides that interlocking membership in various boards tells me that the whole system is designed mainly for three purposes...."
That's why I don't agree with people who laugh at the campus SJWs and say these Womyn's Studies majors are going to be making mocha lattes for the rest of their lives. A few will. The more motivated will go to work for the government or for organizations like Center for Community Change.
Then the next smart psycho will work with that restriction and find some scenario that works within those limits.
Yeah, but every one of these style attacks is essentially an attack on the second amendment, and if 2A absolutists are going to remain uncompromising, they are going to end up with a deal they really don't like.
Surrounded by dogs.
Looking for the honest man!
Just this past weekend we had a knife attack in Edmonton by a "refugee" that killed a police officer and wounded several others. If this shooter is radicalized, as it seems he might have been, there is another obvious mitigation technique.
Didn't Huck Finn sleep in a hogshead too?
Mike Sylvester's comment at 12.28 brings up some very interesting thoughts.
My husbands thoughts were. There must have been more than one shooter based on the distance between the two windows and that the firing sounds didn't have a break for a single shooter to go back or forth.
His initial thought was that the 'suspect' was probably already dead before the event.
The larger than necessary stock of arms and ammo at the hotel AND at his various residences, does tend to make one think that he was not just hoarding these expensive items, but was more likely trafficking in illegal arms. This would also explain the ability of someone with no discernible current source of income, other than some gambling, to become a very secretive millionaire.
It would be very interesting to see what the note on the table has written on it.
There is much more that we are not being told or probably will ever be told.
The other thing that I have gleaned from all of this is that the decor of the Mandalay Bay Casino is just Gawd awful.
Try getting rid of that bowl now, and you'll have the court taking over your whole life.
Freeman, I didn't read the entire article but was there any mention that a Power of Attorney document was ever made by either of these two?
I wonder if that was a reference by Twain to this picture? Huck Finn was the "honest man" in the story, at least among the whites in it, even if he did use the 'n word' a lot.
"Lassie and Her Pals Discover Timmy Stuck Down the Sewer", by Théodore Géricault
"if 2A absolutists are going to remain uncompromising, they are going to end up with a deal they really don't like."
The choice is stand firm, or death by a thousand cuts. And if they lose, I think its not just they (the absolutists) who will lose. Even their opponents will lose, and perhaps lose worst of all.
There are bigger things here at stake than a few dozen people. I am not American, you are. You have a certain personality type that makes you American. I will never be that, I am something else. But one thing that makes you American is a certain ferocity. If you let them beat it out of you, you will be something else.
It would be very interesting to see what the note on the table has written on it.
Yes, DBQ. It is clear, from the photo, that it was placed to be seen and secured to the table. The fact that we haven't heard anything about it from the MSM or LEO officials makes me highly suspicious that:
--it contains something they don't want us to know
--we may never know what's on the note
--a fake 'note' may be produced at some point in lieu of the original
If it sounds as though I don't trust the FBI it's because I don't. Totally.
Here it is.
http://www.stuffyoushouldread.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/HuckInSugarHogshead.jpg
I think Americans should be allowed to own guns.
I've never had an use for large clips, and automatic fire. As a matter of fact, the larger the caliber, the less likely I am to waste it, due to expense.
I had a friend who goes through crates of large caliber rounds, and the sad thing is, his kids have all dropped out of high school, and his wife left him.
I think at a certain point, guns become just another drug. If this guy didn't associate with other gun nuts, and his meth-like gun needs, he could have been a valuable member of society.
As it is, I no longer associate with him, because I don't want to be on the nut radar. I don't see it ending well for him, because all he talks about is the government and his constitutional rights.
My plan would be to exterminate these people in gas chambers, and use the heat from disposal to generate electricity.
"I had a friend who goes through crates of large caliber rounds, and the sad thing is, his kids have all dropped out of high school, and his wife left him."
!
Kids drop out and wife leaves due to daddy's expensive hobby? Then those golfers better check their kids report cards more closely!
You have something else going on here.
I think Americans should be allowed to own guns
100% agreed. The liberals somehow think that they are going to wave a magic wand and confiscate the millions of guns that in the hands of non criminal, normal citizens. They think that this will be a peaceful surrendering. Good luck with that.
I had a friend who goes through crates of large caliber rounds, and the sad thing is, his kids have all dropped out of high school, and his wife left him.
I think at a certain point, guns become just another drug.
Because some people have no self control or are mentally ill is no reason to ban a substance or item from everyone. Everything at some point can become a "drug" or obsession. Watch the TV show Hoarders sometime. Tin cans and garbage can become just another drug.
Guns are a tool and the various types of guns are used for various purposes. You can responsibly use your tools or you can become unhinged and do damage. Hatchets are tools. You can chop kindling or go all Lizzie Borden and kill your family. You can also accidentally chop off your own finger. Either way, hatchets are not illegal because Miss Borden decided to kill. Guns should not be either.
It's a little known fact that Diogenes' neighbor, the buttinsky proto-"liberal" Statefuckedes, used to go Diogenes one better by stealing everyone else's bowls and redistributing them to the bowl-less. This was the first known example of what modern "liberals" would come to be called (with a straight face, yet!) "compassion."
Swear to Zeus.
Because some people have no self control or are mentally ill is no reason to ban a substance or item from everyone.
The problem is, since the mentally ill are drugged and released to free-range, there is no way to keep the public from massacre.
One solution would be to create Asylums, and move the insane inmates out of the penitentiaries to the nuthouses, and not allow them to free-range.
Congress can't have both. You can't have the insane walking free, when the means to massacre society is also available.
Truth be told, 60 people killed is not a big number. I bet 60 people died last week on the Freeways. How many would have lived if the insane didn't have texting devices as they massacred the other drivers.
It's a little known fact that Diogenes' neighbor, the buttinsky proto-"liberal" Statefuckedes, used to go Diogenes one better by stealing everyone else's bowls and redistributing them to the bowl-less. This was the first known example of what modern "liberals" would come to be called (with a straight face, yet!) "compassion."
Actually, Statefuckedes stole everyone's bowls, kept the best for himself, sold 1/3 of the rest and kept the money, broke or lost a third of the bowls, and gave a third of the bowls to the bowl-less...most of whom were bowl-less because Statefuckedes took their bowls in the first place.
He then demanded that everyone praise him for his actions.
One solution would be to create Asylums, and move the insane inmates out of the penitentiaries to the nuthouses, and not allow them to free-range.
Oh..you mean the system we had before the Left fucked things up?
In America alone, around one million people... human lives are aborted within three trimesters of a sexual relationship. Most of the lives are terminated by scalpel, vacuum, forceps-wielding mass abortionists. In fact, sexual relationships are the leading proximate cause for an unprecedented anthropogenic loss of human life.
I don't know, but this is not an insoluble problem.
All problems that involve human evil are insoluble. All solutions to human evil eventually produce more human evil than the original problem.
The Sandy Hook abortionist first aborted his mother, stole her arms, then ran amuck in a mass abortion field. If he didn't get his arms from his aborted mother, then he could have acquired them from government distributed arms in Mexico. Where there is a will, there is a way.
That said, the Sandy Hook abortionist was a known lunatic. It seems that the Las Vegas abortionist was also a known quantity. Then there is Planned Republican in Virginia, who seems to have been triggered by Democratic tales of "throwing grandma of the cliff", and the press's collusion to spread the partisan propaganda for political progress.
The problem is, since the mentally ill are drugged and released to free-range, there is no way to keep the public from massacre.
As Gahrie says. The system we used to have before the left decided to be "compassionate" and throw the mentally ill out onto the streets. Amazingly the rise in "homeless" coincided with this mass release of sick, incompetent, ill people. Co-inkydink as the Stooges would say.
Chances of dying by:
http://www.nsc.org/learn/safety-knowledge/Pages/injury-facts-chart.aspx
"Freeman, I didn't read the entire article but was there any mention that a Power of Attorney document was ever made by either of these two?"
No. For profit guardian swooped in with an ex parte court order. Horrifying.
Alas, Quaestor is right.
"Blogger tim in vermont said...
Just this past weekend we had a knife attack in Edmonton by a "refugee" that killed a police officer and wounded several others."
Nobody died, and only the cop was attacked with a knife. The rest were run down a U Haul. Luckily, this particular stabby refugee was fairly incompetent.
"was fairly incompetent."
Incompetent criminals are the best kind.
I know someone who once had something like a dozen guns in his hotel room. He wasn't even a "gun guy," just a guy with a lot of disposable income who bought guns occasionally and was moving. I asked if he was worried that the maid might find them and be frightened. He said he didn't want to leave them in his car, "What if someone breaks into the car and finds all these guns? I will have given a dozen guns to a criminal!" Don't remember what happened after that. Probably nothing.
Diogenes sounds like he was jackass.
His depiction is not unlike that of a mentally ill person...
You would think all that planning and foresight would be subordinated to some higher religious or political purpose than simply killing people. It's such a stupid act. Why didn't he behave in a stupid way?
William,
Maybe the alleged note will shed light on that.
Apart from all the carnage, Paddock stole attention away from Hillary's book tour.
It's okay to own things as long as they don't own you. And if Diogenes was a philosopher, I guess homeless shelters must be full of deep thinkers.
The Constitution leaves the method of election of Congressmen to the state.
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for [deleted by Amendment Senators and] Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof
It reserves the right of the federal government to change this rule.
but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations
Nowhere in the document does it mention the courts. Obviously if the states did something un-Constitutional, then the courts could step in.
But by doing exactly what the Constitution says "states rights exercised" then I don't see where they can intervene.
Now, the fact that all states do it the same way, maybe these states have been coerced by a criminal conspiracy, and must be federalized. But that would require an amendment in my book.
Quaestor said...
I don't know, but this is not an insoluble problem.
All problems that involve human evil are insoluble. All solutions to human evil eventually produce more human evil than the original problem.
10/4/17, 1:59 PM
Tim,
Not only is there no solution, there is no problem.
Do you understand that, with existing CNC technology, never mind 3D printing soon to be in every home, if every M-16 and AK-47 in existence were melted down and made into bowls for Diogenes, one can make them afresh from raw metal without the involvement of another human being besides the Amazon delivery boy?
You can rent this stuff too, needn't be rich. You could make bigger - a .50 caliber machine gun, a grenade launcher, a cannon.
Look at prisons - what more restrictive environment - would you want to live in a prison? Yet phones, drugs, weapons are smuggled into prisons, and used, daily.
No, I get that you want a technological solution, but you can't have one. Can you create a unicorn by longing?
Think of it as a structural problem. "Impossible? Nothing is impossible!" Yes...except when it's structurally impossible, like rolling thirteen on one pair of dice.
If people do tech talk that makes you feel bad, well, I dunno what to say. No offense, but you're not really competent to understand the issue. People with great knowledge and experience (and others without it) have tried to deal with issues like this before. And here we are. You're not bringing anything to the table but a fresh, doubtless sincere cup of Instant Outrage, in Classic Something-Must-Be-Done Flavor.
It's like trying to stop 9/11s by banning airplanes and boxcutters.
Alas, Quaestor is right.
No. No, he's not right. All solutions to human evil do *not* necessarily produce more human evil than the original problem.
"His initial thought was that the 'suspect' was probably already dead before the event."
Can they tell by the angle of the shot whether it was self-inflicted or not?
I thought they could. I might have watched too many 70's cop shows.
Regarding something Althouse said back in the Tom Petty thread:
'When I heard ‘American Girl’ for the first time I said, ‘when did I record that?’ - Roger McGuinn
tim in vermont said...
"Maybe it has a clock mechanism that meters out the rounds. You get caught without one, you go to prison."
Yeah, good idea. If Steve Paddock had only had one of those, he'd be safely in prison now. Or no, I guess he'd have had to not have one, wouldn't he.
buwaya,
You seem to have met some seriously pissed-off people when you were in the NRA. That kind of surprises me. Firstly, I've been an NRA member for decades, and I have not met anyone as a result. It's not like there's a clubhouse. They just send you a magazine, and endless fund-raising letters. But I have met people at the local range, and they have all -- every one -- been polite, well-mannered and easy-going. Nobody seems particularly pissed-off, although we are all pretty sick of the gun-grabbers and their endless lies. Maybe down there in the Bay Area, they feel more threatened or something. But it is a fact that people with concealed carry permits have a lower arrest rate than police officers. Ferocious we may be, but violent we are not.
"But I have met people at the local range, and they have all -- every one -- been polite, well-mannered and easy-going. "
Indeed, these are all gentlemen. Also self-organizing, inner-directed, and very far from being in sync with the local authorities. There is an undercurrent of rebellion, in spite of being genial. Maybe it is more of a California thing.
Yes, I joined @20 years ago at the urging of several friends who used to take me to the shooting ranges here (I don't own a gun). And yes, they were quite political on the issue.
I was surprised one day, in 2015-ish, when while touring an industrial plant I went for lunch with a shift/control room crew (@12 persons), and it turned out every one had an "assault rifle", and decided opinions on the matter.
So which of the dogs is Ruth?
The bump-fire rifle modification is legal because your hand becomes the spring, and thus the person remains in control.
An automatic weapon can be fired one handed. The person is not in control of the firing rate.
If the person adds a spring (somehow) to the contraption, then that would be an illegal/criminal modification.
So the hand being a spring is what stands before us as a nation.
So which of the dogs is Ruth?
The old Bitch.
An automatic weapon can be fired one handed. The person is not in control of the firing rate.
I love all of these distinctions without differences.
I love all of these distinctions without differences.
My wife, your wife...what difference does it make, anyway?
What you ask, Tim, cannot be done.
roughcoat: No. No, he's not right. All solutions to human evil do *not* necessarily produce more human evil than the original problem.
Quaestor: I came here for an argument.
roughcoat: No, you didn't.
tim in vermont said...If you can turn a semi-automatic into an automatic by any number of simple methods, then the design of the semi-automatic is the problem. Maybe the firing needs to be controlled by electronics, and if you get caught with a weapon where this as been altered, you go to prison. I don't know, but this is not an insoluble problem.
Ok, but it's not just semantics when your misunderstanding/lack of care about the details of the thing make you put forward mechanically silly ideas related to regulation.
Bump fire and slide fire stocks don't "turn" a semi into an auto. They use a method to greatly increase the rate of fire of a semi...possibly approximating the rate of fire an actual auto has (using, of course, completely different means).
That may sound like splitting hairs, but it's not: if you want to make a thing illegal you have to understand with some precision what your law will accomplish/can accomplish. So when you say "we can't make it illegal to create these things but we should make it illegal to possess or use them" you're mirroring the argument for fully automatic weapons! There exist some (mostly crappy) semiautomatic weapons that are relatively easy to modify to actually function fully automatically--no stocks, no tricks, just mechanical modification that changes the way the weapon operates. What I mean is: that's possible today! It's also highly illegal--the current NFA laws prohibit that action. So, at best, you're just saying that slide fire & bump fire stocks should be added to the list of already-illegal devices. Fine, you know: if enough people agree then that'll be the law. It would be silly, though, to pretend that your new law would have actually done much to actually prevent something like this from happening. To take it to an absurd level: there are already laws against mass murder.
Anyway having a "clock mechanism" that regulates the number of rounds fired (or the method or speed with which they can be fired) is in a way what the firearm laws already do.
That's why it's important to be specific when suggesting what you want to change. Without doing that you're likely to be arguing for either something that's already illegal or for something that's not mechanically possible.
"I love all of these distinctions without differences."
There is another, more interesting perhaps -
Training and skill.
A fellow like Jerry Miculek can achieve near-automatic firing rates with his extremely well educated trigger finger (or whatever it is he does).
5 a second (300 rpm), which is not far from the lower end of automatic fire rates; many machineguns run at 400-500 rpm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3gf_5MR4tE
My wife, your wife...what difference does it make, anyway?
Both women. My only point is that if you are going to be absolutist in the light of new information, to me anyway, and I suspect to most Americans outside of the world of gun aficionados, there is no "bright line" between a machine gun and a semi automatic rigged up with some simple, easily obtainable patch.
Nobody had any problem with extremely tight restrictions on machine guns, sure, part of the problem was Prohibition, but part of the problem was the Tommy Guns. Now we just get "deny deny deny."
Bump fire and slide fire stocks don't "turn" a semi into an auto. They use a method to greatly increase the rate of fire of a semi...possibly approximating the rate of fire an actual auto has (using, of course, completely different means).
Surely you have been reading this blog long enough to recognize that what you are writing is just persiflage. I know you want to drag me into the weeds so that we can lose site of the real issues, but no. You guys have proposed bright lines, but they are at best smudgy lines, distinctions that make no real difference, to me anyway.
It's possible, by the way, to bump fire a semi without the use of any kind of stock or external device. I can't link it now but do a search for "belt loop bump fire" or "bump fire from shoulder no stock" and you'll see videos of people demonstrating the technique. It takes a little practice and with most methods you can't aim effectively at all, but it's possible to just use your hand and body positioning to fire a semi very very quickly.
So banning the slide fire and bump fire stocks won't eliminate the ability of a person to fire a standard semi at an accelerated rate if they so desire.
My favorite so far is "simulated automatic fire," this is sort of like "simulating sex, but with penetration." "It was harder to make her cum, I could only use have my dick!" Please.
Quaestor @ 5:33 PM:
Huh?
My damn browser Safari, keeps completing words halfway through. Yeesh!
So here again:
So banning the slide fire and bump fire stocks won't eliminate the ability of a person to fire a standard semi at an accelerated rate if they so desire.
So the problem is the semi automatic rifles. That's what you guys keep telling me. And I am a voter who takes the NRA seriously, since I look at it as a precursor for other freedom restrictions.
It seems like "bump stocks" could be made illegal under current laws governing machine guns.
tim in vermont:
What happened to your Labrador? Did he get eaten by the lizard? :)
"there is no "bright line" between a machine gun and a semi automatic rigged up with some simple, easily obtainable patch."
Given some skill and some motivation, no there isn't much of a distinction.
If you want a machinegun of sorts, there are any number of legal and illegal ways to get one.
Its not particularly difficult to make one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA&t=1s
And that was in Britain, where this was highly illegal, with no expert advice or re-purposing of existing and easily obtained parts.
Granted, its an obstacle, leaving this sort of thing to the more clever and motivated.
If the US had a greater degree of motivation you would see a lot more of this I think. Though I wonder whether there isn't a great deal of this sort of homebrew work going on, as guns are very much a US cottage industry, a folk art.
Perhaps, in the US, the vast majority of sort of person with the skill and character to make such illegal objects has better things to do; but again the more this class of person are hit over the head the more likely they are to rebel, along the grain of their abilities.
tim in vermont said...You guys have proposed bright lines, but they are at best smudgy lines, distinctions that make no real difference, to me anyway
Ok tim. You want to write a law or have the government take some action to do something, right? What would you like that law to say? "Bump fire stocks are now illegal." Good; very good. The law is going to have to define what a bump fire stock is, though...it can't just say "stuff tim doesn't like." The current NFA regulations are pretty specific. Bump fire stocks are today legal because they don't meet the current law's criteria for automatic weapons.
You could, certainly, change that law! The ATF publishes findings all the time changing what is and is not permissible around the margins. I'm not saying you can't ban something, tim, I'm just saying you have to actually know what you're banning, and if what you're banning won't solve the problem you're trying to solve then the ban itself doesn't seem very useful.
If what you want to accomplish is "ban anything that allows a person to fire a semi auto over X rate" then you're going to have a very tough time, tim. There are a large number of firearm designs (operating mechanisms, etc) and since before the first semi-auto was invented people have been working on the problem of how to fire more quickly.
An automatic is a bright line because it's a mechanical definition--that means something and a law recognizing/distinguishing that meaning can be useful. A vague feeling, or knowing what's bad when you see it isn't really useful when we're talking about physical mechanisms.
Just as an example: I sometimes hear people say that since almost all semi-autos are capable of being fired quickly we should ban them all and people could just have revolvers.
Here is a video of Jerry Miculek shooting 16 rounds in 4 seconds (on target) from a revolver
Now he's a world champion & speed world record holder, but he's done plenty of videos with stock or close to stock revolvers showing that they are mechanically capable of being fired very quickly indeed.
Short of banning all firearms, what law would you pass that would slow Jerry down?
tim in vermont said...My favorite so far is "simulated automatic fire," this is sort of like "simulating sex, but with penetration." "It was harder to make her cum, I could only use have my dick!" Please.
Please what? It's a fucking quote from the ATF spokeswoman.
NPR: ATF Says Gunman Had 'Bump-Fire' Stocks
"The classification of these devices depends on whether they mechanically alter the function of the firearm to fire fully automatic," said Jill Snyder, ATF Special Agent in Charge. "Bump-fire stocks, while simulating automatic fire, do not actually alter the firearm to fire automatically, making them legal under current federal law. It is still being determined which firearms were used in the shooting."
Gee, the AFT Agent in Charge sure is talking about a smudgy line, huh? She's too much of a gun-nut to get it, I guess. She probably LOVES letting people break gun laws.
tim in vermont said...
"I know you want to drag me into the weeds so that we can lose site of the real issues, but no. You guys have proposed bright lines, but they are at best smudgy lines, distinctions that make no real difference, to me anyway."
What I hear you saying, is that this guy could not have killed 50 people if he had not had the weapons he had, and so you want to make it impossible for people like him to have weapons like that. That is a superficially logical argument. But what the people arguing with you are saying is that "weapons like that" is not as clear-cut as you think it is.
I will go a step farther. I don't care how you chop it, I am opposed to ANY additional restrictions on the 2nd Amendment. And I want to see the ones that are there rolled back. And I do not trust people who say they only wants to make a few reasonable modifications. They only want to make a few reasonable modifications *today*. If we have learned anything from the last 50 years, it is that all slopes are slippery.
tim in vermont said...It seems like "bump stocks" could be made illegal under current laws governing machine guns.
No, they're not illegal under the current law, tim. The ATF would love to say they are, but based on the law they can't.
It would certainly be possible to pass a law making bump fire stocks illegal. I don't think anyone is disputing that.
It would be very difficult to pass a law that would actually prevent someone from using a bump fire technique (even without a stock) to achieve a high rate of fire. If what you actually want to do is make that impossible or illegal, banning bump fire stocks will not accomplish your goal.
If your goal is just to ban those specific items it will not be difficult to accomplish that goal.
Personally, I'm not interested in owning (or, God forbid, using) a machine gun. Anything I want to do in terms of self defense I can do just as well with a semi-auto . . . only, of course, slower. But not too much slower.
Quaestor @ 5:56 PM:
:)
What would slow most people down is magazine size limits and design limitations like non-interchangeable magazines, as in California or Canada.
You could, for instance, require semiauto weapons to have fixed magazines and at best reload individual rounds or from stripper clips -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY19tDMDvr4
OK, Miculek or his students can fire six or ten very fast, but that does not make a machinegun. You can bump-fire likewise, but for just a few shots.
The US problem here though is that there are an immense number of unconstrained weapons and large magazines already out there. Making these illegal would be a huge logistical problem, and extremely unpopular among the affected people and their sympathisers. And these things are not that difficult to make or modify either. Again, this just adds motivation to defy the authorities and will not impede the especially motivated evil genius.
What you really have here is not a technical problem, but a cultural-political problem. The people (not the techo-gadgets) that need to be controlled do not want to be controlled, they are hostile to the authorities and entities that want to control them. You must convince them, and in the modern state of cultural conflict and distrust this is impossible.
So the problem is the semi automatic rifles.
Horse power alterations in automobile engines and other modifications can be illegally done to make the vehicle not street legal. Cams, lifters, nitro enhanced engines. Etc etc.
None of these alterations are an indication that there is something wrong with the original vehicle or the intent of the original manufacturer. We don't go apeshit to ban all vehicles because someone suped up their car and caused a wreck because the were being hot shots.
The problem is not with the tool, the car, the rifle. It is with the use that the moron using it has put it to. (I know preposition end, bad)
Actually, many of those modifications are NOT illegal. The resulting frankencar might be :-)
It's sort of like the illicit drug trade.
A nation can ban these drugs, but it is not under any expectation that it will solve the problem. Mental illness and brain damage will keep this activity high, even with laws.
The same for automatic weapons, and virtual automatic weapons. Many mental and brain damaged people will keep these conversion parts flowing, even if made illicit.
The point is, that as rule of law, it would be illegal to sell them, and thus makes owning them more difficult. It proclaims that as a nation, we don't want automatic weapons to be classed as just another gun.
The markup on bump stocks is almost 50%, so gun dealers are getting rich on these things. I drove over to my local gun shop, and he had a waiting list at $300 each.
I found the same one on the Internet for $99.99 on sale. So, it's like the gun dealers are having a field day with the local insane.
I saw them at a gun show this summer. The markup there was 50% as well.
None of these alterations are an indication that there is something wrong with the original vehicle or the intent of the original manufacturer.
Have you guys been studying how to beg a question?
Some people hold up the Australian model for gun control.
I know Australia and Australians. I used to work for an Australian company.
Half my living relatives are now in Australia.
Australians, in spite of their reputation, compared to Americans, are meticulous rule-followers. They also have a massively different attitude to government. They, mostly, actually trust their government. And this all was and is especially so among the people who owned guns, solid citizens.
Americans of that class, whether outright gun nuts or the sort who would for any reason be inclined to own an AR-15, solid citizens, are very different from Australians.
If what you actually want to do is make that impossible or illegal, banning bump fire stocks will not accomplish your goal.
I think that the best we can hope for is to make it difficult to have a machine gun, "simulated" or actual. What that means for "just add water" type machine guns, by that, I mean semi-automatics, is open to debate, as far as. I am concerned.
What if you had a castle tower, and it had a lever, and if you pulled the lever, the whole castle collapsed, and everybody was on the honor system to not pull the lever, and it was a design feature of the castle, and it was built according to the specification and worked as designed, would you call that a design defect? I would.
Same as if you had a big red button on the front door of your house that if anybody pressed it, they would be killed. Worked according to design, just don't press it and there won't be any problems! is that a design problem?
tim,
It sounds like what you want is an extremely watered-down version of the laws that prevented the Bataclan Massacre in France.
@ Tim in Vermont
My response was to your statement So the problem is the semi automatic rifles. That's what you guys keep telling me
Firstly. Us guys and gals have not said that the problem is with the original product, the semi automatic rifle. The problem is with the user of the weapon.
As others have pointed out you can ban 'bump stocks'. Fine. Then the next modification will have to be banned as it is invented. Then the next. Plus you can't ban people having skills.
Because some people misuse and abuse their tool, weapon, car, hammer....we should ban or make it difficult to own hammers, cars etc?
What if you do ban hammers? How do you plan to get them out of the hands of people. Next think about guns and forcing people to give them up to who? The GOVERNMENT? Good luck with that.
molon labe
The best thing for the country, is to allow unlimited sales of bolt-action long guns, and to declare everything else contraband. Shotgun shell rifles would also be exempt.
We could give the 3 years to turn in their non-bolt action long guns, and these would be given to the rebels in foreign countries who are fighting dictators.
Those who refuse or are caught with non-bolt action rifles will have their citizenship revoked and deported to Honduras.
Simple. Mental health reform requires one step at a time. It won't hurt Hondurus, because they are all insane anyway.
"Same as if you had a big red button on the front door of your house that if anybody pressed it, they would be killed. Worked according to design, just don't press it and there won't be any problems! is that a design problem?"
Well, no, that's something more than a design problem. That is, at the very least, a bad attitude.
Now who's begging the question? And BTW, thanks for using the phrase correctly.
There are so, so many ways to skin a cat -
FRANKLIN ARMORY® BFSIII™, BINARY FIRING SYSTEM III™ TRIGGER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DhGoDp2ktk
I.e., a small drop-in device without special tools also emulates full auto.
And all sorts of other ways. Its not a difficult problem.
I am thinking of a wind-up coil-spring mechanism to drop into the trigger guard.
Or something like a friction-toy mechanism. All you need is to make something reciprocate fairly rapidly.
tim in vermont said...I think that the best we can hope for is to make it difficult to have a machine gun, "simulated" or actual.
Ok, that's your goal, make it difficult to have a machine gun or a semi with a bump-fire stock. I agree "we" could ban bump fire stocks quite easily. We would probably not even have to grandfather existing devices in--ban them all, make possession a federal NFA violation (which is a mandatory big felony). Done.
Now, though. I can approximate the function of a bump fire stock with a couple of pieces of 2x4, a long screw or bolt, and a spring (alternately I'd need a couple of nails and some thick rubber bands). Putting those on a standard semi auto would be highly illegal under your law (it would be "building" an unregistered machine gun, in fact), but I could put that together with Home Depot parts in a few minutes. Someone could use such a contraption to increase the rate of fire on a standard semiauto pretty easily...so we're right back to your ban not preventing people from doing that thing you want to prevent.
If you want to effectively stop people from potentially firing a semi auto quickly you have to listen to buwaya and pass CA or MA-style restrictions: fixed mags (without the now-common "bullet button" bypasses), low mag counts, etc. Ignoring the fact that even those restrictions are relatively easy to get around, passing a law to make CA's restrictions apply nationwide would accomplish the goal of making it much more difficult for individuals to fire weapons very quickly.
At that point, though, you're all but banning semis altogether. Most of the people calling for more restrictions today are explicitly saying they DON'T want to ban all semis. Maybe you do--and that ban would in fact accomplish the goal I think you want to accomplish.
The point of trying to pin down precisely what you want to pass a law against is to clarify exactly what that law will actually do. A ban on bump stocks will probably prevent people from using bump stocks and will make it marginally more difficult for some people to fire quickly using that method, but will not prevent people's ability to fire quickly using another method. In order to prevent any method from being useful you will need to ban most semis, and that's politically a much, much tougher task.
It's not bad faith when I ask for specifics and insist on clear definitions here--it's important to determine what we're actually talking about.
"What if you had a castle tower, and it had a lever, and if you pulled the lever, the whole castle collapsed, and everybody was on the honor system to not pull the lever, and it was a design feature of the castle, and it was built according to the specification and worked as designed, would you call that a design defect?"
If you think about it, and you know something about what makes so many modern systems work, that's exactly what you've got right now. In this respect guns are a trivial problem. There are a great number of people sitting by as many of these red buttons, and at any time one of them could indeed hit the button. You exist by trusting a great number of people.
buwaya said...I am thinking of a wind-up coil-spring mechanism to drop into the trigger guard.
Something similar exists using a crank and a cam--I've only seem them on Ruger 10/22s but the principle should be valid for larger weapons.
There was one ridiculous one I saw recently, the "AutoGlove." It used a servo and a cam on a glove that you held in the triggerguard. The ATF ruled that one an actual machine gun, though, which looking at it the first time I assumed had to be correct. I think their idea was that if you used it on a weapon with enough room inside the triggerguard the cam would nto actuate the trigger unless you physically moved your finger and that'd be enough to count as your finger doing the action (and thus the weapon functioning as a semiauto). Since I'm pretty sure you COULD use it on something with a smaller space and thereby not have to move your hand at all to allow the cam to crank the trigger back and forth quickly...anyway I understand they got a bad ruling from the ATF and had to shut down.
Mechanically, though, there're all sorts of things you can do to speed up firing if you don't care about accuracy, wear, or jams/breakage.
Blogger buwaya said...
Then the next smart psycho will work with that restriction and find some scenario that works within those limits
--
A guy like him with no record to draw attention and a lot of money could likely have acquired a far more efficient killing device.
The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. - Huckleberry Finn
In which he discards his wooden bowl.
There are a great number of people sitting by as many of these red buttons, and at any time one of them could indeed hit the button.
That was basically the plot of Dr Strangelove.
Now who's begging the question?
Not me.
Hoodlum, as you made very clear, it's almost impossible to prevent people from turning a semi-automatic weapon into what is, close enough for jazz, an automatic weapon, maybe not one of those helicopter Gatling guns from Viet Nam, but close enough. So yeah, I think that is a serious problem and I think that much stricter laws regarding these weapons are in order, given the new, to me, information about them. I was sort of fine with semi-automatics, didn't like them, but was sort of fine with them. that's because I was ignorant about them. I doubt I am the only one who had their eyes open this week.
The above is my opinion, which has changed since last week. I am unlikely to change it again. Doesn't mean I am for "long gun" registries, or anything like that, bans on handguns or shotguns, nope. I even think that you guys should try to extract concealed carry reciprocity for any concessions, but these "semi, not so semi-automatics," you guys should understand, are your biggest threat to 2A.
"A guy like him with no record to draw attention and a lot of money could likely have acquired a far more efficient killing device."
He already had airplanes. The guns were used for reasons not entirely determined by a body-count. Perhaps he wanted to see, to some extent, what evil he was doing.
Yeah..one of many at this point that feel the need to document their deeds. Though..it seems like a slightly new twist to train a camera solely on themselves.
Strange gift for his mom..
tim in vermont said...Hoodlum, as you made very clear, it's almost impossible to prevent people from turning a semi-automatic weapon into what is, close enough for jazz, an automatic weapon, maybe not one of those helicopter Gatling guns from Viet Nam, but close enough. So yeah, I think that is a serious problem and I think that much stricter laws regarding these weapons are in order, given the new, to me, information about them. I was sort of fine with semi-automatics, didn't like them, but was sort of fine with them. that's because I was ignorant about them. I doubt I am the only one who had their eyes open this week.
See, if you'd just substitute "something that can fire almost as fast as an automatic" in for "what is, close enough for jazz, an automatic" you'd be fine. You don't care about the mechanism, you care about the potential ability to fire a lot of rounds very quickly. Incorrectly describing the mechanism doesn't get anyone anywhere and in fact obscures your actual concern.
The best thing right now for Mandalay Resort and Casino is to declare bankruptcy and change ownership before the lawyers surround them.
Prediction: Stephen Paddock was not a gun enthusiast who killed other gun enthusiasts to make a political point about guns. - Scott Adams. He thinks the man had underlying psychopathy but then went on antidepressants and/or other medicines and then lost the usual thrill feelings from gambling, so he shot a lot of people in order to feel again.
Priority for his fortune is paying to the extent possible the lifetime medical bills of the survivors. Gunshot victims can easily incur over $1 million in lifetime expenses, depending on location and severity.
@tim, I don't own and don't desire to own an AR-type of rifle, but if you want to reinstitute the Bill Clinton ban on "assault rifles" then I'm against you all the way. This is fifty year old technology, damn it! We aren't talking laser cannons or rail guns.
"This is fifty year old technology, damn it! We aren't talking laser cannons or rail guns."
I don't want any sort of regular gun at all, but I would really, really like to have a laser cannon!
Gerome's Diogenes looks ridiculously well groomed.
Alma-Tedema's looks much more likely, although it's very unlikely young Athenian girls would be out unsupervised to mock him.
The thing is that guns are already optimized for their purpose. Anything added it subtracted will likely reduce its function, accuracy, power, reliability, handleability, IOW its safety and effectiveness.
Morally, in an engineering sense, this is wrong and can have no good effect.
Let's explain another reason why your plan is counter effective or counterproductive. Rapid advances made in Firearms technology largely trickled off after World War II. Another generation of refinement since you've been in, and everybody's using World War II or Vietnam era technology. Who is the next US small arms genius after Stoner or maybe Ingram? What, some 1911 tweaker?
But much of the reason for that is increasing regulatory pressure on small arms enthusiasts, collectors and scholars, sport and practical users, and members generally of what might be called the gun culture, the vast majority of whom are some of the most law-abiding, safe, responsible and productive members of society.
In particular since 1934 and probably before that in municipalities such as New York City, viz., the Sullivan Law, governments at all levels have been quite happy to chip away at this as with so many of our rights.
But what really takes the cake, is the impact of the regulatory choke-hold on the innovation and Improvement in the field. No or few young boys or girls are going to grow up with basement Workshop with maybe a lathe in it, compressor, drill press, mig welder, punches and chisels and a'that, and fewer and fewer at school. In general I do feel that America is poorer in mechanisms than when I was young. Objective data refutes this given my Suburban, but even so the Toyota truck is probably just as good. Choice of terrs everywhere. Like to backtrack that credit card...
Anyhoo...
Of this diminishing resource base there is exceedingly little acceptance of young firearms tinkerers, very much so to full grown ones. It's not as easy to innovate at a deep level when the enterprise is so deprecated? May as well turn your clockwork concepts to better electromechanical dildos. Or sideswipe STEM altogether and go into finance. Or maybe you're an artisan who turns the Magic in your hands towards union labor or massage or goes into graphic design, God forbid.
Anyway, let's just go science fiction, Let's ignore material constraints and suppose that the 300 million firearms in American private hands, and I presume all police and military and everyone else is well because this is the technology of the future and it will be so much better.
What features and design parameters precisely do you, Tim of Vermont, think the new generation of small arms should have? Do you have any strong opinions? If you feel a certain kind of way about 9 millimeter versus 45, or the 556 and 762 versus some new intermediate caliber? You think maybe angry people should have smaller rifles and pistols, or slower operating ones, than those with inner peace?
Maybe instead of a mechanical trigger you touch with your finger there should be a Bluetooth link to an implant in your skull and you just think bang and it shoots?
Where do you think you put the agency so that everyone can be safe?
___ or Trump fires Tillerson for calling him a moron.
Tell me Tim, would you feel better if the shooter had simply had one rifle and he pulled the trigger one of the time? Or even would you like it better if he had a bolt action World War II or World War 1 rifle? Or hunting rifle? He had over an hour. If he got off five or ten shots a minute he still could have killed a hundred people.
Mechanically, though, there're all sorts of things you can do to speed up firing if you don't care about accuracy, wear, or jams/breakage.
With a $50 Dremel toolkit. Or less.
Plasma rifle in a forty watt range, railguns were only demonstrated in eraser, and the second transformer.
Typo alert. I meant to say:
Ignore material constraints and suppose that the 300 million firearms in American private hands, and I presume all police and military and everyone else is well because this is the technology of the future and it will be so much better, will be replaced on a one-for-one exchange basis with equivalent firearms of the new safe type, anonymously without registration, tracing, or other threat to our civil rights.
Sadly, yes, criminals will also get their firearms exchanged for new ones, but after all, they're the ones you most want to reach, right? This was awful, completely awful, as would have been a dozen or three or one, but number one I wonder where they're there will be copycats or others who adopt this technique, and two, most shooting is by ordinary criminals in ordinary crimes, and much harm may be reduced if drive-bys are reduced in their propensity to claim innocent bystanders. It would be interesting to see Hoodrats hooking sawed-off Mauser rifles out the car window. Perhaps and then they would learn the virtue of aiming.
@ Tim in VT
If you are not a gun expert and live in rural Vermont you are surrounded by such experts.
Also, let's ban fingers and belt loops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD213VW6WjY
But whatever new weapon you invented science fiction, and for me that's groovy, you still got the old ones cold dead hands over their owners this is going to happen. Put it this way. You're trusting the government. Who trusts both Obama and Trump, not to mention their judge picks, let alone the next President? Or this or any Congress? How does science fiction remedies political poison in our real life atmosphere? Who trusts the new weapons not to have a GPS chip in them so they can all be hunted down and seized? Then I guess Tim you want to make it a pound me in the ass federal prison crime to take out the chip. Then, same to put on the internet a how-to video or PDF instructions.
It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge. -H. Beam Piper, Uller Uprising
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
Although no one can confirm Yamamoto's quote, I prefer to keep the illusion.
Plasma rifle in a forty watt range...
Unimpressive compared to a 5.56x45 rated around 1,800 Joules.
Insty is now linking to a story that he was shooting at General Aviation fuel tanks next to the concert. Had one exploded, there would be a thousand dead instead of 59.
Paddock, a 64-year-old Mesquite resident, had broken two windows in his 32nd-floor suite — one in line with the concert site and the other with a direct view of the fuel tanks, one source said. The bases of private aircraft operators are close to the tanks.
And he had an airplane and knew about the tanks.
Two shooters ?
Diogenes would urinate in public in order to prove that human beings are merely animals. But animals don't urinate in public in order to make a point.
Michael K said...Two shooters ?
Two windows, pointing in two different directions.
Nah. At least two different distances. And not an echo. The far away sound after a long pause--quickly followed by loud close fire is the giveaway.
This is fifty year old technology
More like one hundred year old, isn't it?
Lets just outlaw evil.
The president is a career killer, the ultimate survivor champion in that he doesn't just win, he potentially ruins the lives of anyone he boots from the island. Why in the world would anyone take a position in the administration knowing you can be fired, and lose two jobs, the one you had and the one you just lost. It was just chairman of Exxon though. No biggie.
Also, let's ban fingers and belt loops.
Why you guys think that persuading me that semi-autmotics are defective in design helps your cause, I don't know. Maybe you should take the Scott Adams posts more seriously, because that's what you guys are doing, pointing out the problems with semi-automatics. One after the other you guys do it.
The first one to come along and say "look, I know that they are machine guns in all but name, but so what?" would get more respect from me.
Tell me Tim, would you feel better if the shooter had simply had one rifle and he pulled the trigger one of the time? Or even would you like it better if he had a bolt action World War II or World War 1 rifle? Or hunting rifle? He had over an hour.
The things machine guns do is make the responders, or "attackers" I guess, approach very slowly, heads down, always under cover, so yeah, I would rather the guy had a bolt action rifle to a machine gun. Yeesh! He probably would have had less than 72 minutes.
What the gun nuts want is a precise definition of helper parts to a semi-automatic to make it an automatic to be banned so that they can have a workaround to it up on YouTube within a day. It's a fool's game and there is no reason to play it.
And anybody who tries to make a point about a "coming civil war" just turns me away more. For one thing, do any of you know any soldiers win the US Army, I mean personally, I know a couple, and I don't really think that these guys are going to carry out orders to kill Americans. In Iran, what they did was bring in people from different tribes who had been whipped up into a frenzy of tribal blood lust. That's what China did too. It ain't happening here.
Safari substituted "win" for "within" It's so smart!
I was stationed in Sinop, Turkey in the early 90's. Great place. The unit coin was for "Diogenes Station." Still have it somewhere.
According to the police he shot for 10 minutes. He didn't have 72 minutes. A bolt action rifle would've reduced the casualty list by at least 50%.
Any semi-automatic can be converted to automatic with a little technology and skill.
@ tim in vermont believes that a semi-automatic rifle that functions as intended (one trigger pull, one shot) is "defective in design". He and I will just have to disagree on that.
Now for a little Alinsky.
"Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy."
"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."
"The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
You know that kid next door, the 16 year old with the backwards baseball hat and pants half way down his ass? If he is not a felon and can scrape together $200 he can have a pistol in his pocket. At least in Vermont.
According to the police he shot for 10 minutes. He didn't have 72 minutes. A bolt action rifle would've reduced the casualty list by at least 50%.
The guys at Mogadishu would have liked that.
The bad guys, I mean.
Speaking of swamps and swamp creatures... Somebody should take one of the cantina scenes from Star Wars and photoshop the heads of some of the monsters from DC onto it. Hillary. Podesta. Maxine. Michelle. McCain. Reid. The possibilities are endless...
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