Depends.

If there was an intruder in my home I knew wasn't my wife, cat, or dog (the only ones with any business being here) that didn't announce themselves and entered my bedroom, absolutely 100% they're getting the 12 gauge. It's way easier to get out of jail than out of the morgue, and my wife won't be raped or killed, nor both of us eaten (we have bears here) because I was afraid to protect us.
Because I don't live alone, I would likely call out to be sure it wasn't my wife unless I could actually see her there with me. Because I don't WANT to kill someone, I might fire a warning shot but with a pump action that's not necessary, and my first load is low power bird shot...the second is buckshot, third on are slugs.


Full disclosure, I live in California now, where the law isn't on my side. A few years ago a man in my town shot one of three armed home invaders inside his house and was actually prosecuted. I'm fairly certain he was acquitted, I'm 100% certain he was in the right.

You want to defend yourself from bad government with an AR-15? How did that work out for the people in Waco? An AR-15 isn't going to defend you from the government. A Michigan militia isn't going to cut it either. The only thing that will defend you from the government is a 2+ Star General who doesn't like what the government is doing and gets his troops to agree.
For dealing with Robbers/Mice - A normal cat, is much better suited in that case. An AR isn't going to provide you any more protection, in fact it will likely provide less. There are 2 schools of thought for home protection - A big bang to scare/kill a robber or accurate and a little less deadly. I'd go for less deadly as then I don't have to worry so much about rounds flying through walls and hitting other people. A 12 gauge with bird shot should be perfect for that, loud as hell, but wont blast through the drywall and hit a kid. Plus it will get a nice spread, so I'm likely to hit whoever was dumb enough to come into my house. An AR-15 will go right though the walls - of my house and maybe the one next door.
So I don't need a bad cat to defend myself. A good cat does it well enough and it isn't worth having the bad cats on the streets keeping me up all night.

What about where there aren't police? Where I live, we only have highway patrol, and they can take 15-30 minutes if none are near, longer if they're busy. If I catch my meth head neighbor breaking into my house (and my neighbors have), I'm not waiting to see if he chooses fight or flight before grabbing my 12 gauge. Even here in Humboldt we have home invasions...meth is a hell of a drug, and it's everywhere these days.
I'm not living in constant fear of home invasion, but I do think it's enough of a possibility, and the possible consequences of being unprepared so dire that it's prudent to be able to protect yourself and not just expect a timely rescue.

...but i am in America, and you did say no CIVILIZED country, so maybe I'm exempt? ;-)

Good points.

I'm not a gun nutadvocate, but I have friends who are. I have shot a fairly wide range of guns with them, including an AR-15. For myself, I only ever owned BB guns and a .22 pellet air rifle, for target shooting and varmint control on my family farm. I did go pheasant hunting with borrowed 20 and 12 gauge shotguns a couple times.

My friend that owns the AR-15 is a responsible gun owner. Do I think he needs it? Hell no. But he likes it. Do I need a PC with an i7 processor and nVidia 1060 GPU? Hell no. But I like it.

So I guess it becomes a question of to what extent the things that we like can be used for negative purposes. My nVidia 1060 is unlikely to be used to facilitate a crime (unless games or bitcoin mining get criminalized). However, even though AR-15s might be one of the primary firearms of choice for murderous wackos, the percentage of people that own AR-15's who are murderous wackos is also extremely low.

If banning AR-15s would significantly reduce the rate of mass shootings and/or the average number of deaths per incident, it could be well worth doing even though it would annoy many responsible owners like my friend. ...But, I just don't think that would be the case. Not by itself.

I think we're at a point where we NEED to do something. If the something that we decide to do is to ban AR-15s, well, so be it I guess. But I don't think we'd be pleased with the long-term results of that. It'd be cutting the flower off of the top of the weed. We need to dig deeper, and I think that registration and licensing are sane ways to attempt to do that.

Yes, that's a larger diameter than an anti tank rifle, which usually was between 12.7mm and 20mm. But compared to, say, a 20mm Lahti L39, this most likely uses a lot less propellant in the cartridge. A lot. Thus less muzzle energy, less recoil, less injuries.

For comparison, Rock Island had a four gauge and a .950 JDJ (that's ~24mm) in one of their auctions, and they took them out for some shooting. Here's the clip: link. And yes, that's Ian from FW in the background.

Your video, Test firing a custom 4 gauge shotgun, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

For people unfamiliar with "gauge": 4(12) gauge basically means that your barrel diameter is equal to the diameter of a lead ball weighing 1/4(1/12) pound.

In case of this 4 gauge shotgun, we're talking about a barrel diameter of almost 27mm.

From the comments in 2009 when this crash test was first released, they won't believe it. People said that it was "obvious" that they had removed bolts and the engine from the Bel Air and that a real crash wouldn't go that way.

Even faced with evidence that modern cars are stronger, they will still say things like:

Engineering improvements or not, the sheer weight and gauge of metals used in the 50's is far superior to the aluminum foil they make cars out of now.

I think by "altimate" what @bobknight33 really meant to say is "alt-right" - AKA the bullshit propaganda he sees on Alex Jones etc.

I like how, massive scandal, obstruction of justice, possible treason, like god-damnit, it's possible that people at the highest levels committed outright TREASON and Bob's worried about semantics. Where was your sense of moderation for Obama, Bob? You were ready to hang him for enjoying spicy mustard (I know, that's so much more un-American than selling your soul and country to the Russians so they can bail-out your bankrupt ass like Trump, right?

So, I'll stop asking if you're getting tired of winning. Joke's growing old. Instead, I'll ask. Do you think this is winning? Do you think America is winning under Trump? Do you think Trump is winning? Do you think Trump makes your life better and Obama made your life worse?

I'm just curious to gauge the level of your delusion here, but I'd genuinely love to hear your answers. Not that I think you're brave enough to admit the truth, but it would be nice to get it from you at least once.

Okay, but pointing a gun at your face is still not something you do even if you are sure it's not loaded. I am really just making light, though. Probably you don't read the gauge while the air tank is attached to the gun.

Okay, so I'm assuming that is an airgun and that is a pressure gauge on the end under the barrel? So, if you want to know how much pressure is in your gun, you point it at your face to read the gauge? Who designed that?

Anyways, I like how casually she stands when she shoots.

Interesting idea, but I have two main problems with this premise.

Firstly, it's not like we've got a lot of resources invested in the search. If I have a few people people to search a large forest for a particular type of tree, I'm going to use large scale searches looking for big obvious examples... I'm not going to do a sweep search to look at every tree.

Secondly, it doesn't take into account what's required for intelligent life to develop. He picked an example of a sports team - Manchester United - but didn't take into account that the best players (which I suggest is equivalent to intelligence) are all in the premier league, which comprises 20 teams. There are hundreds of other teams out there that would hardly blip on a skillometer (which I suggest is equivalent to a mind gauge).

OK, that second example got a little stretched and frankly weird, but it's key that we're looking for intelligent life, not all life, because intelligent life gives off more signals. Probably. No one really knows.

I like that little extra shell-ring thingy he's got on the shotgun you can see him using to reload right before the slow motion bit. I've never seen one of those before and at first I thought he was pushing a mis-fired shell back into the chamber (or whatever you call it in a shotgun, the breach?), which asking about was the reason I started this comment until I watched it a third time.

I've never fired a semi-automatic shotgun (or any kind of shotgun since I was 15 or so) but I do recall a 12-gauge having a not insignificant amount of recoil, and I've heard from a SWAT guy that semi-automatic shotguns are frowned upon because people in panic-firefight-mode tend to pull the trigger too fast and end up shooting the ceiling. He seems to have no problem though.

I think the tide of militant veganism is changing. Not that there are fewer of them, but I think vegans are more self-aware now (some proof being in a lot of vegan videos about vegans). Every time I hear people complain about mouthy vegans, I hear many chime in to say that they aren't that way. But then again, hipsters claim they're not hipsters so that may not be a good gauge.

I, personally, don't even mention I'm vegan unless it comes up directly -- and even then I don't continue the conversation unless prodded. I also hope I keep a relatively cool head about it.

As for the religious aspect of it, can you blame them? Just like being indoctrinated with religion from birth, you're indoctrinated from birth to eat meat. And you are constantly socially pressured for your whole life to eat meat. It becomes one of the many pieces that you use to build your sense of self with. And when it's threatened, well, people do what they do with religion, food, politics, etc. They go fucking batshit.

Also, when you first become vegan, you almost always go through a period of ~1 - 3 years feeling like Neo coming out the the matrix and the rage is hard to hide. "How could they do this?!?! They're killing them all!!!" It takes a while to let that cool off and think of more productive ways to spread your views, the best way, I find, is just living the lifestyle peacefully. I like teaching by example.

I was thinking the same thing, it's hilarious - they have the whole setup there, signals, cameras... yet they haven't set it up with some sort of gauge to flash the signal to stop to such vehicles? Laziness.