Congratulations. You've managed to capture the entire diversity of the US by visiting several times and not get shot or had a gun pointed at you. This is like forming an opinion about whether sharks will bite humans after you've laid on the beach once or twice and have never been bitten. Searching for some relevance here... and ... nope, none.

Agreed, if your gun is in a traditional safe, it's not much good when the burglars or home invasion psychos kick in your front door at 2 a.m. Jim Jeffries is indeed a funny guy, but like many who don't understand what "for protection" means to some homeowners here in the US, you might want to cite a bit more credible source or at least educate yourself.

Thanks to biometric safes and locking devices, it is quite easy to have a secured gun in a safe at arms reach, accessible to only one person, that can be unsecured, ready to fire in about 4 seconds. I know this to be true, because I have such a setup, and we practice what to do when the home alarm goes off just like we practice fire drills.

The distressing part is I absolutely hate having to be in such a situation. I'm no cowboy and this isn't the wild west, but when families around me are having their doors kicked in in the middle of the night by armed thugs, or having one or two fuckheads follow them up the driveway for an easy push-in robbery accompanied by beatings, shootings, molestation and sometimes killing, I decided that there would be no way I could live with myself if something tragic ever happened to my family at the hands of these nut jobs, knowing I might have been able to do something to stop it. And no, one can't relay on the local police to take care of these crimes. Around here, even with a top notch alarm system in the house that goes directly to dispatch, the cops usually arrive to clean up the blood and take statements, and almost never in time to stop the crime or catch the criminals.

Do you have house, car, fire or life insurance? Sure, but you hope you'll never have to use it. So, what's so unbelievable about a gun for protection? What do you suggest? You appear to think it's silly to state it's for protection... so does one simply relying on hope, faith or good luck in never having to witness your wife or child being duct taped to a chair while criminals rummage through your house, or having their head kicked in or bloodied on the end of a baseball bat?

Just a suggestions, but try to spend some time as an actual resident in a country before you pretend to understand it, consider yourself fortunate that you don't live in such a situation, and for fucks sake stop with the snide, morally superior judgement of those who do. If you can muster that, on a guess that you might be from NZ but really don't know, I'll stop telling everyone that Kiwi's really do fuck sheep, especially on National Lamb Day when it's a competition rather than just a hobby.

Have fun.

I agree, but i have something else that it smells like too. Like when i was a kid and i'd be out with friends, unsupervised, not yet responsible, and let's say someone swings off a tree and the branch snaps off. He goes oh that shows how strong i am, so before long another kid starts trying to rip a branch off, people are mocking each other, challenging each other's strength. Before you know it, you're in a group with a load of kids like wild animals trying to destroy a tree on someone's lawn, branches and leaves everywhere, dirt and mud and the tree uprooting. I made that example up, but many people have been in that kind of situation as a kid. Mine was absentmindedly throwing mud at a wall because it made an interesting splat. I zoned in half an hour later from my daydream and realised i'd ruined someone's wall and covered their driveway in mud. I did clear it up.

What this smells of to me, is that they were after someone, getting excited and feeling the thrill, suddenly one turns to his mate and goes "dude! do you think we can use those new explosives...?", another one chips in "even better, we've got that APC!", and they all hoot and howl with excitement, grab all of their exciting new toys and go in like the charge of the light brigade. Take out those fences so we can surround them! We need that wall down! Maybe that one! By this time they've forgotten that they're trying to protect people's property and safety, but they're having the time of their lives.

That's what it smells of to me - out of control immaturity and gang/yob mentality. And they're armed with army equipment now. When things like this start to happen, you really have to start questioning how things are being run. How else could it have happened that they gut out a house like that?

They pulled too close, fired way to fast, even the judge agreed. Yes, some blame falls on the parents, but how many cops are being shot and killed vs citizens at this point?

When does officer safety trump the fact that they are supposed to serve and protect, not shoot at the first option and sort it out later? They fired on Tamir within 2 Seconds of arriving on scene, 2 seconds...

What is even more disturbing about this case is, after shooting him, the police walked around the scene and looked for the weapon while the kid lay dying on the snow. Tamir laid there for 4 minutes bleeding from a torso gunshot wound until a police detective and an FBI agent who happened to be nearby came and rendered aid.

Both cops also had issues.

In a memo to Independence's human resources manager, released by the city in the aftermath of the shooting, Independence deputy police chief Jim Polak wrote that Loehmann had resigned rather than face certain termination due to concerns that he lacked the emotional stability to be a police officer. Polak said that Loehmann was unable to follow "basic functions as instructed". He specifically cited a "dangerous loss of composure" that occurred in a weapons training exercise, during which Loehmann's weapons handling was "dismal" and he became visibly "distracted and weepy" as a result of relationship problems. The memo concluded, "Individually, these events would not be considered major situations, but when taken together they show a pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions, I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies." It was subsequently revealed that Cleveland police officials never reviewed Loehmann's personnel file from Independence prior to hiring him.

Garmback, who was driving the police cruiser, has been a police officer in Cleveland since 2008. In 2014, the City of Cleveland paid US$100,000 to settle an excessive force lawsuit brought against him by a local woman; according to her lawsuit, Garmback "rushed and placed her in a chokehold, tackled her to the ground, twisted her wrist and began hitting her body" and "such reckless, wanton and willful excessive use of force proximately caused bodily injury". The woman had called the police to report a car blocking her driveway. The settlement does not appear in Garmback's personnel file.

Amazing pieces of work, and both out there to take care of us. I feel safe, do you?

As I recall, it was the kids driveway, and road rage dad followed them home and started a fight with some young teenagers after being cut off or something.

To be fair, they didn't jump anyone. He started it.

Not sure why they're blocking the driveway though...

In a perfect world, perhaps. This world is not perfect, and many people don't have the ability to 'plan', either financially or sexually. Your plan leaves anyone who does not plan perfectly for an unknown future on the streets and destitute. That's not the country we have decided we want to live in. If you do, there's always Somalia.
Your plan leaves us with millions of destitute elderly on the streets. Bad plan, that would NEVER work. Again, you expect people to plan for their future perfectly, and if they don't, fuck em. That's terrible, uncaring, non-thinking planning. They don't just disappear if they planned badly and are homeless, foodless, and hopeless, they show up on your driveway with a knife.
How about we just remove all corporate welfare, cut our military by 5%, and actually extend benefits for PEOPLE? The reduced costs in your plan would not even be noticed in the federal budget, not a single percent change, mine would be noticed. I think you believe that 'welfare' (social programs) is a major cost to the fed, it's simply NOT. On the other hand, it does save us billions by not having to deal with sick desperate homeless people by the millions. It's proven time and time again that taking care of them humanely costs far less than ignoring them until you can no longer ignore them.

Ten percent Devil's advocate here and ninety percent real: I'd be interested in the opposite of this. Driving in town (especially here in Thailand where drivers are completely insane, but really anywhere) annoys me / raises my blood pressure. But highway roadtrips are actually rather fun, nice scenery and fun roads. So a whole lot of the time, if I had to choose one or the other, I'd take the highway bits and let the auto-drive handle traffic and stop lights.

The progress shown here is impressive, but overall I think that things will only get really useful when the car can handle as much (or as little) of the drive as you want it to, all the way on up to driving 100% of the way from driveway to parking at the destination.

If it gets your four-year-old psyched about clearing your driveway for you, that's probably worth the effort right there. Despite what my parents thought, I'm fairly sure shoveling all that snow by hand as a kid didn't actually improve my character at all. There's also few things quite like snow shoveling to make you appreciate the value of knowing how to maintain a small engine, which I'd wager is a more valuable life skill and better for one's character than knowing how to shovel stuff for hours without wrecking your back.

I'm a snowboarder, I'd kill for that amount of snow.
Driveway be damned

You wouldn't be *envious* if you had to live through winter after winter after winter in a northern climate country. Sure it looks fun, and it is for a few minutes, then you have to shovel your driveway for the 15th time and try to get to work on time. I'm in Canada right now and I'm just counting the weeks until spring...

Won't work on most driveways, and only with certain types of snow..

Oh, one other funny trick I've used when stuck with a front wheel drive car going up a hill that refuses to go; turn around and BACK up the hill (Obviously, NOT on a public road, but very useful on snowy driveways and a private road that a friend lives up...)

That way---and yes, it's only marginal---but that way, the weight shift puts the weight onto the driving wheels instead of taking it off them as the car rocks backwards under acceleration...

We usually have a few feet of snow at least, and have had to call plowers to get our driveway plowed a few times. We usually have below zero weather on many occasions (none so far?) Alaska will become the new Seattle maybe.

Oh yeah well we had a duck walk all the way up our 175 foot driveway, across the entire yard in front of us, around the house into the backyard while we sat on the front deck. Never had a duck in the yard before but this guy was on a walkabout.

here's the problem I see with that...these things are initially going to be expensive. ideas like this only pay off when used widely. Sure I might be able to invest in making a driveway from these things and I might get a small return on my electric bill, but it just won't be very productive initially. standard catch 22.

but the bottom line is that we've got to invest in infrastructure...it's a necessity that we invest in technologies that show promise such as this. they won't get cheap until pretty much after we've invested in them.

but if they hold up, then it should work out. I figure that's probably going to be the biggest thing...how long are these individual hexes going to hold out? replacing a few here and there won't be a big deal, but replacing entire sheets of them for miles just won't work out long term.