Osama Bin Pwned: Al Qaeda mocked in Twitter counter-jihad Al Qaeda has come under attack from a massive troll army after asking Twitter users for ideas on how jihadis could run a PR campaign. Using the hashtag #اقتراحك_لتطوير_اﻹعلام_الجهادي, which means “suggestions for development of jihadist media”, supporters of the Islamists' war on everyone offered various po-faced suggestions, …
It's a massive difference between having a bolt-action rifle or a shotgun on a ranch, and carrying around a Glock 17 or a sweet-jesus-this-thing-is-legal??? AR-15 in Detroit.
I don't have any problem with the former, not even with teaching kids how to use them, but massive problem with the latter.
Tools are tools.
When used (in)correctly, an ax, a claw-hammer, or a largish screwdriver can be lethal at distances in excess of 30 feet (horizontal), which is much further than most (civilian) gun deaths. (I throw an ax at logging competitions, and can easily hit a human-sized target at 75 feet; I watched a guy get killed by a claw hammer thrown from 35 feet up in Humboldt County (was an accident, don't ask); and a friend once won a bar bet by sticking 7 of 10 Craftsman brand #41588 screwdrivers into a straw archery butt at 15 yards in under 15 seconds ... with pretty good grouping (#41588s are about two feet long, and nearly a pound in weight)). Shall we ban axes, hammers, and screwdrivers?
All of those things need skilled application. The problem is that some coked-up low life can kill someone with a Glock after five minutes instruction.
I would suggest that there is more than one type of gun: there are guns needed by farmers, there are guns solely intended to be easily concealable and suitable for killing people at short range, and there are guns intended to spray large areas with bullets to kill people as fast as possible. The first category is far harder to use to carry out a crime or a massacre than the others.
At the time of the writing of the US Constitution, militia weapons took minutes to fire a single shot. The Amendment didn't give citizens the right to own artillery. Yet it is interpreted at present to allow weapons which exceed the capability of a large eighteenth century artillery piece. It's called "scope creep", and is the besetting sin of a lot of US legislation.
@ribosome
I do get what you are saying but I respectfully suggest a better way of considering the matter would be to look at the other end of the weapon. True theres very little civilian need (barring those folks on the border with a ranch full of smugglers, they can have tanks and apaches) for the more extreme weapons, but weapons is weapons. The root of the issue is mentalists. Not sports shooters, farmers, hunters or people just scared to get gas at night, but mentally unstable violent loons. They should not be allowed guns and responsible gun owners should ensure their guns are properly secured. I was shooting for around 5 years, starting with a pellet gun, before I was ever allowed near a gun vaguely unsupervised and frankly I am sure an eye was kept on me for a while longer. Anybody who displayed more than a passing interest in better firearms was directed towards the cow sheds with a shovel. Parents and the community were extremely involved in active gun control. The local police had a huge amoung of say in who had guns, anybody who perhaps wasn't entire stable, was prone to being drunk, maybe whupped on their wife but you couldn't prove it etc etc didn't get approved. The police actively and randomly checked on the security of storage. Basically it came down to ensuring guns stayed in the right hands, it was the people not the weapon. True if you lusted after 50cal rifles meant for taking out vehicles and small buildings you were considered a risk, but in south africa probably not, you'd need that to stop an elephant.
I guess the biggest problem is writing a law that covers both the countryside and the city, two completely different environments and sets of needs and people understanding there are different worlds out there to consider. When people talk about taking away guns expect a strong reaction, for some folks thats taking away their livelihood or their culture. Both 'sides' need to come up with some reasonable and effective solutions that accomodate everyons needs, both for safety but also protecting peoples ability to work and feed their kids.
@Jake
We get it, you are great at everything you do, so is your offspring and all your friends....
but, what about the others, that have hand guns lying around and get killed because their kids pick up the guns and shoot them, or the kid shoots themselves, or they shoot a friend.
Most sensible people are not talking about taking away RESPONSIBLE gun ownership, but making it harder for those less responsible to have guns, and gee I don't know, maybe stop toddlers killing each other?
I honestly fail to see how that would be a bad thing.
Really? The first time I shot a pistol I was handed a 9mm (Beretta, not a Glock as it happens) and barely hit a thing.
I was given a .22lr, got a handle on that, then worked my way up through a .38 revolver and eventually back up to the 9mm semi. Took a lot more than 5 minutes.
Probably also worth mentioning that whilst some of these guns exceed the capability of 18th century artillery, they don't exceed the capability of the 21st century artillery the US Army possesses.
If you take the rather paranoid 2nd Amendment view that you own guns to protect you from the government*, then in fact the relative capability of military vs. militia's weaponry is now much more in favour of the government than it was when the Amendment was penned, when (broadly speaking) in a fight of government vs. civilians both side were armed with muskets, with the difference decided by weight of numbers rather than the ludicrous technological advantage that would exist in such a scrap today.
*And not to hunt, control varmints, or for self defence either from Mexican smugglers or simply from burglars on account of you being a rancher an hour's drive from the nearest Police Station - not a scenario we have to live with in the relatively compact UK which colours our opinion of the US gun laws, despite some American's living in very different circumstances and with very real dangers. As an island we haven't been invaded in a long time, so we don't really think of it as a real possibility. It's no surprise that places like Finland who have regularly been invaded over the past century hold their guns dear to their hearts, as do ranchers caught in the cross-fire between Mexican drug traffickers and the DEA.
Efficiency and capacity are the issues here. You know how mass shootings nearly exclusively happen in the USA? It's not true. The same type of events DO happen in Europe too, several times per year there's nutters going on rampages in malls and schools. The difference is that since it's hard to get hold of high-capacity weapons, the perpetrator is typically armed with either a knife or an axe, or at most a hunting rifle, and the typical result is that two-three people get wounded before he's taken down.
Knives, axes, and even hunting rifles, are low-capacity weapons. Great against a single target, pretty useless against crowds. And that's a good thing.
The Glock 17 is a semi-automatic pistol, it is available with up to 30 round magazine and fires as fast as you can twitch your finger. Effective firing rate is estimated to be 800 rounds per minute, and if that's not enough it costs about $20 to enable selective fire with a firing rate of 2000 rounds per minute. The AR-15 is the semi-automatic version of the M-16 assault rifle - it's a straight up military weapon. You can mow down crowds with these guns, and that's exactly what they've been used for.
Under what legal circumstances is a bolt-action rifle or shotgun not sufficient, so one would need a semi-automatic gun? I frankly can't think of any.
Yes, but they aren't actually the problem. They make the problem worse and I am not saying ignore that, but focussing on drawing a magical line in the sand on what is an excessive weapon and what isn't won't fix the problem. Keeping guns out of the hands of nutters will go a huge way and that is the absolute biggest factor that needs to be dealt with. Sure we can restrict weapons based on rate of fire and capacity, but a gun is still a gun. This isn't about an outright ban on guns, it's stopping the mentalists having access to a gun (any gun) when the wind blows the wrong way and upsets the voices.
So you ban glocks, whats to stop someone having 4 revolvers in their belt and two in thigh holsters, thats 36 shots fired from two guns at a time with virtually no reload time to drop an empty gun and pull another 2 out. It's still too much unless you are planning on going back to blow darts. Plus the single most important factor with restricting weapons, as we have seen in the past is that people (especially criminals) don't obey the law. Yes it makes it a little more difficult but not much.
Again, I'm not saying don't do it, I'm just saying if you want to reduce gun crime the focus needs to be on policing and restricting mentalists having access to any gun, no matter the capacity or firepower of the weapon. Curtailing 'extreme' firearms is just a small part of the solution and pretty inneffective by itself.
The M16's appearance, which seems to provoke an almost atavistic fear, is largely due to a change that would improve accuracy in any rifle; instead of requiring the shooter to place his cheek low on an angled stock to sight along the weapon, the AR-15 and successors raised the sight path to allow for a straight stock and recoil path, which does not pull a weapon upwards during recoil. ANY rifle may be improved in this manner, and if one uses an optical sight, an angled stock is no longer needed.
It's my opinion that the crazies who get hold of an AR 15 or the like and go on a killing spree are (thank God) not usually SNIPERS, and are (usually) crazy enough to not kill coolly and deliberately: were Adam Lanza less disturbed,he might have killed as many with a much less controversial rifle, even without 20 or 30-round magazines.
There have been snipers; we even had one near where I live -- *he* didn't use a rifle. (http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2013/08/trial_date_set_for_suspected_i.html ), However, the Beltway snipers did; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks
These are far more frightening than the occasional spray and pray shooter.
The Beltway snipers used a military style weapon, but they would not have needed one for their killings and attacks. They are, however, in my opinion symptomatic of the breakdown of a culture and of the mental health of its people, one I believe related to the adversarial "I got mine; get lost" attitude so many even in government seem to endorse. However, that is another thread. What is pertinent here is that those unable or unwilling to exercise their rights responsibly may lose them -- and if today it is guns, how long can it be until speech and conscience are regulated?
A British acquaintance on the Net years ago derided governments' approach to terror; he said he was going to produce a bumper sticker reading,
"I'll worry about terrorists, when I can stop worrying about motorists."
Look for it.
My own experience raising kids (in Alaska, where hunting and fishing are a way of life) is that the really, really important thing is making sure you don't let them fall behind on Algebra. Because it's an absolute fucking nightmare trying to figure out how to fix your kid being mathematically challenged if you have any hope of them not being consigned to a career flipping burgers and washing dishes. Shooting rats in a field might appear to be an important lesson to some, but failing to leave school with whatever qualifications your country bestows is possibly a worse outcome than missing consistently and blowing the fuck out of the carrots.
You gave us Palin, we haven't forgotten that yet ;-)
Of course scholastic achievement is important and it requires parental input, but who said teaching your kid to shoot meant you couldn't also teach them to count? One wabbit, two wabbits, three wabbitses ;-) The two are not mutually exclusive. You'll find just as many issues in life if you only teach your child calculus. A parents job involves bestowing a wide range of experiences and skills on a child to make them a well rounded adult.
Although Alaska appears to have found another career besides burger flipping and shopping cart collecting for the intellectually underendowed. Vice presidential candidate ;-)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
