One way to resolve the issue might be to redirect some of the immense intelligence focus from Islamic terrorism to domestic terrorism.

That is what this is, domestic terrorism. It may not always have a manifesto behind it, but that is not relevant. There were numerous people who said this person was probably a school shooter in the making. He was doing things with white power groups and militias. Why didn't our mass spying that we do catch that? Because it wasn't an Islamic group.

We can ban assault rifles or put limits on them, we can make mandatory psych evals required for gun purchases, or we could do any number of things. While we look into what we can legislate, we should also be looking into how we can use resources we have in place to STOP JUST THIS SORT OF THING.

As anyone who knows me knows, I am a hardcore supporter of the right to bear arms. I am not an NRA member, because they aren't really concerned about the right to bear arms, just that they keep getting money from gun manufacturers. I still think we can keep AR type rifles, but we should have a national mandate on clip size, number of clips allowed, and we should have a mandatory psych eval required if you plan on purchasing anything other than a hunting rifle. Yes, that includes handguns.

@MilkmanDan

One big problem is that different states are passing different laws. Connecticut, after Sandy Hook, made it illegal to sell guns or ammo clips that can accept more than 10 rounds and required owners of guns that were semi-automatic and could fire more than 10 rounds to register them. Additionally you need a permit to purchase a gun and background checks are required for all private sales.

Contrast that with other states like Missouri where literally anyone who is not a felon can buy a gun, doesn't have to register it, and doesn't even need a background check if the sale is private.

Legislation on gun control needs to be centralized. Until the federal government establishes uniform laws about licensing and registering firearms, which should include mandatory background checks, training classes, and a federal database that tracks all guns sold in the U.S., it's just going to be too easy to head to a state that has lax gun laws and stock up on all the firepower you need to carry out whatever heinous crime a person has in mind.

And I'm thoroughly pessimistic about it ever happening. The NRA and gun "enthusiasts" as well as the gun manufacturing industry are just too strong as a lobbying group. These kids are absolutely doing the right thing by protesting and they'll get their time in the spotlight, but eventually that spotlight will shift to something else and it will be business as usual in D.C. with politicians taking political donations from the NRA to fund their never-ending re-election campaigns.

So; I understand this was all sort of manufactured for the broadcast? Or more properly: because people were standing underneath the drone area during opening ceremonies, NBC fell back on video tape of the dress rehearsal?
Anyone else understand this to be the case?

Sorry. You're right. I shouldn't have laid it all on Keanu.

It is just creepy.

They are employees of a business. Who hired them? Where are the normal looking women?

This is Hooters, only with guns and not hamburgers and beer. Or whatever they sell there.

Would there be any normal looking women, when the intent is obviously to draw male eyes to this business?

Do you realize that you are being pandered to, you folks who are making fun of my "outrage"? Do you know you are being manipulated? Do you understand that it is super creepy if you don't know you are being manipulated?

There is a great new movement right now of women speaking up and making clear that they are intelligent and have loads to offer other than beauty. It was super thrilling to watch the Golden Globes and hear all these amazing and brilliant women talk so eloquently about something other than who made their dress.

To go from that to this parade of nubile flesh as a backdrop to gun skills .... creeped me out. It isn't real. It isn't what the world looks like. It is manufactured and disturbing when I personally am hungry for images of women DOING and being, instead of being looked at.

There are women out there who love guns and are knowledgeable about guns. And they don't all look like this.

You know I adore you completely, Chaos. And I wasn't accurate in my original post. Thank you for calling that to my attention.

But it isn't true that only you brought "common sense and facts" into this. I brought the common sense and facts, too. Just not eloquently or accurately. Being talked about like that, being reduced to "outrage" instead of being accorded some respect for noticing the unnatural assemblage of super attractive women obviously being used to as eye bait... well, that is common. Very common. And uncool.

You, though, dear friend, are super cool.

Counter-rotating propellers sparked my curiosity when I first saw them on a British Seafire Mk46 at a flight show in the early nineties.

So my amateur's answer would be that it's about the problem of turning the engine's power into thrust. With increasing power, you can either increase the propeller's RPM or its area. So you either a) spin it faster, b) increase its diameter, c) use a more favourable blade geometry, d) add more blades.

a) and b) both lead to blade tips moving faster, and once they approach the speed of sound, wave drag sets in and ruins your day. b) also runs into issues in terms of ground clearance. Thus the Kim Jong-un blades on planes like the An-70: short and fat.

c) is rather difficult to do in terms of manufacture -- that's why more pronounced blade shapes are a relatively recent development.

d) on a single propeller decreases the efficiency of each blade as it passes through the previous blade's vortex. That's why, for instance, German planes in WW2 almost exclusively relied on 3-bladed propellers with increasing blade size, whereas Supermarine went to four and even 5 blades rather quickly. You can work the issue to a certain degree by modifying the blade geometry, thus the 8 blade props on a modern A400M.

Adding more blades by adding another propeller gets around d), although the aft prop still loses efficiency compared to the front prop. On the other hand, counter-rotating props massively reduces problems with torque, which can be rather horrendous for single engine prop planes. The Bf 109, for instance, is (in)famous for being difficult during take-off as it pulls to the side quite violently.

While I agree with the broad strokes of your argument, positing that life is soooo much better in Japan completely overlooks the sky-high suicide rate there (consistently one of the top countries in the world).

Life may be less desperate, but obviously there are serious underlying issues.

The US government's blind support of massive corporations certainly is a factor. Allowing them to triple the cost of insulin over the past decade or so in spite of the fact that manufacturing costs are stable or even falling is part of what causes patients like the above to ration their supply.

I also found out recently that all financially motivated crime in the US (theft, auto crime, robbery etc.) as a total cost is less than half of the wage theft practiced by big corporations (short-changing vacation time and paychecks mostly). In fact the #1 type of wage theft is underpaying minimum-wage workers, which alone accounts for more than all of the typical "crimes" combined.

If that doesn't lead to homicidal rage, I don't know what does.

After the recent production numbers of the Model 3 and the reports of horrible working conditions at the Fremont plant, Tesla lost a lot of its shine for me.

Elon Musk seems to be convinced that being a Silicon Valley bigshot of his calibre is enough to run this operation, or that industrialism of the sort that, say, Toyota is engaged in is outdated. Those pitiful production numbers and the issues with the workforce indicate to me that management at Tesla (read: Musk) is not capable of industrial manufacture of cars at scale. Not at this time, at least.

Sounds like there could be a nice market for manufacturing after-market "microdrop" replacement nozzles.

Banning 3rd party mods that increase rate of fire actually seems to be getting bipartisan support in congress, with their NRA overlords publicly giving the green light.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lasvegas-shooting/nra-backs-bump-stocks-regulations-after-las-vegas-massacre-idUSKBN1CA0X6

I'm guessing since gun manufacturers, represented by the NRA, aren't in the bump stock business, they don't really want to suffer from the bad press caused by a related but separate industry.

I just hope congress has the balls to also ban the resale of existing rapid fire mods, not just the sale of new ones.

Ok, gotta point out that it is not illegal to own an automatic weapon in the US. Any owned before the ban are grandfathered. I also think certain types of firearm dealer/manufacturer license holders can buy, sell, and make them under certain circumstances. Plenty of people legally own full auto weapons in America, you can rent them at certain ranges (remember the little girl that shot the instructor in the head), and there was even a TV show about a guy who's business was making them that ended just recently.
I think it is illegal to sell them to non license holders in America...but that's a far cry from saying no one can legally have them.

They missed the NRA's contention (that the courts agreed with) about why bump stocks weren't machine guns too. The argument was that since only one bullet comes out of the gun for every trigger pull, it's technically not a machine gun, it's still a semi auto.

Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
------------------------------------------------------------------



Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

Thoughts:

1) There has been a ban on sales of new, fully-automatic firearms ("machine guns") since 1986. That leaves some loopholes (can still buy them if they were manufactured before then, but that demand plus scarcity makes them expensive, etc.) but in general, there isn't a whole lot of uproar over that 20-year-old ban.

2) These bump-fire stocks don't technically convert a firearm into fully-automatic; the trigger is still being pulled 1 time for each bullet that comes out (semi-automatic).

3) However, they easily allow for rates of fire (bullets per minute/second) comparable to fully-automatic weapons. So, I think an unbiased and reasonable person would say that while a firearm equipped with one of these does not violate the letter of the ban on fully-automatic firearms, it does quite reasonably violate the spirit of that ban.

4) Doing anything to correct that discrepancy will require updated laws. Updating the law requires a legislature that generally supports the update and a president that agrees, or a legislature that overwhelmingly supports the update and can override a presidential veto.

5) None of that exists at the moment in the US. So, it is (perhaps coldly) logical to say that these bump-fire stocks will not be banned as an extension to the 1986 ban on full-auto firearms, at least not in the short term.

6) However, before quietly accepting that, it is worth noting that political fallout amongst those individuals in the legislature that refuse to consider updating the law is a very real possibility. Plenty of people, even on the right, even plenty of gun nuts, say that they are in favor of some degree of "common sense" gun control. Pointing out that bump-fire stocks essentially circumvent the already in-place ban on fully-automatic firearms seems like a good way to test that professed adherence to common sense.

7) Get that word out there, and pretty importantly, try to do it in a way that is as respectful towards the average "gun nut" as possible. Their minds can be swayed. Hunters, sportsmen, and even people that have guns for self defense can be persuaded with reason -- they can still do their thing even without bump-fire stocks, just like they can do their thing without fully-automatic firearms. Congresscritters probably can't be convinced, because they've already been bribed"persuaded" with campaign donations, NRA lobbyists, etc.


So, don't preach to the choir. Try to convince the people that do actually own guns. The good news? You've got "common sense" on your side.

Congratulations! Your video, Manufacturing plywood boards: then and now, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 132 Badge!

Your video, Manufacturing plywood boards: then and now, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Since this happened in France I don't think the fact the aircraft were manufactured in Canada is sufficient for the Canada channel.