Not in my experience. I've known many people who tried in Texas and Nevada, all failed. They said it was about 3 pages in triplicate (4 with cover page, totalling 12), fingerprints, photos, a pristine criminal record, chests of cash (the guns cost thousands or tens of thousands), a Class 3 FFL dealer willing to sell to you, 9 months to a year waiting for approval, and no local ordinance against it (local police will be notified).

I said the background check is similarly difficult to pass, not the entire process.

No one asked you that. We balked at your claim-
"The 2A specifically says "arms". There is plenty of debate and case law regarding what arms they meant. Suffice to say there isn't a shadow of a doubt that it means firearms (long and short) of all varieties commonly available."
...and I then gave you the federal definition of "firearms" which you begrudgingly admitted trumps yours, but still cling to the concept that firearms can't be regulated (even though they clearly are). I'm surprised you recall it so differently, especially when you can verify by just scrolling up.

This is a paranoid delusion. Because that's a possibility in a future where the 2a is repealed, they think that's enough reason to ignore any positive uses, like knowing if the person just diagnosed with schizophrenia has an arsenal, or the person who's stalking your 15 year old daughter, or the man who beats his wife. Also, taken to conclusion, that argument is basically "It might make it harder for me to break the law. That's unacceptable." Hardly a reasonable argument imo.

? Your argument was there are better issues to throw money at, bucketloads you said, now you admit it takes no money and declare yourself correct?!

Then don't be dumb and fuck little kids.
Don't be dumb and rape random women.
Don't be dumb by getting caught in the Jr high locker room filming.
Don't be a snarky tool who hides from what he said by doing mental gymnastics to pretend their warnings aren't implications.
See how giving these warnings imply you needed warning? That's how warnings work.

Because I post here doesn't make me the big dog...I'm not even top 20. Everyone is welcome, welcome to post as much or little as they choose, but if I see lies, misstatements, abuse, or insults when none are called for, I'm going to say something, just like I do in person. That's called being an upright citizen. I guess you prefer those who shrink away from that obligation....so hit ignore. That's what I'm doing.

Following on from above.

I didn't say you quoted me or anything about me. It was a "warning". My argument might have lead people to believe that I was against gun control. I gave the warning that it would be dumb to make any assumptions. I can't quite see how you missed this.

If you think it is not dumb to make assumptions, please let me know.

The 2A specifically says "arms". There is plenty of debate and case law regarding what arms they meant. Suffice to say there isn't a shadow of a doubt that it means firearms (long and short) of all varieties commonly available.

"doesn't mention anything about not restricting the types of armaments people can use"

It does restrict the government from making laws in this regard. The 2A is a law restricting government, not the people. "shall not be infringed" literally means you shall make no law that affects this right in any way.

You don't know whether advocates care if other arms are regulated. If I were to hazard a guess I'd say you are very wrong.

Gun control means whatever the group in control wants it to mean. Anything else is false. If they want it to mean taking away all of your guns, then that is what it is.

Constitutional amendments can indeed be changed. It is very, very difficult to do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Five_of_the_United_States_Constitution

No, it's not EDM. It's machined. We produce a variety of cylinder / piston pairs, some with keyed anti rotation or beveled flanges to prevent pull through. The achievement of a visually seamless interface between two parts is certainly not trivial, but with care and the proper sequence of machining steps (guess which face you mill last? right - the one the user sees as seamless) you can do this on good quality CNC's with the right cutters. EDM'ing the complex curved shapes that truly mate across the surface on the early parts shown in the video is very (prohibitively) difficult, as you have to rely on ram EDM which is plain nasty.

Good dog, Cujo! Also, you know that mutt drops a log the size of a baguette at least twice a day and it practically takes a snow shovel to fling it into the neighbor's yard.

I use to have a tragically retarded Cocker Spaniel (and, to note, there is no other variety of that breed) and it was like the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, only with dogshit. At least three times a day, this golden-furred, floppy ear'd mongrel would scarf down a can of Alpo, a cup of kibble and whatever food was left lying on the table -- the same table the cat always got smacked for climbing on, but the dog ... ohhh, no! It's CUTE when the dog does it! -- then make a beeline to the back lawn where it'd crap Mt. Everest. I'd have to trudge out the the back yard, shovel in hand, while the guy next door shot me the stink-eye because he was tired of fishing dog turds out of his swimming pool every day during the summer. This task is odious enough, but it's a thousand times worse when you're stoned and it's a million degrees out and you'd much rather be floating on your waterbed listening to Dark Side of the Moon in headphones while blissful AC-cooled air wafts over your twice-weekly washed body and not fighting your way through a black fog of Horseflies to reach a 1:1 scale model of Mt. Doom made entirely of a too-quickly digested overpriced slurry of meat scraps and offal that the canners couldn't fob off on Mexico.

It might not have been as bad as all that, but in my hazy recollection, it was pretty darned close.

I'm not sure why I told you all this, to be perfectly honest, but I did. So there.

I'm pretty sure I was in there a couple of nights back. Not to push the stereotype, but it's an Aussie pub in *celtic Dublin.

Like the rest of the world, we have Irish bars, but i's nice to have a bit of variety.

Nice to see appropriate use of force, though. Give the man a raise.

Not used to seeing the un-splattered variety...

This is the lucky 1/1000 that gets found and saved.
This is becoming the norm rather than the exception, although often it's a plastic bag, mistaken for their food source, jellyfish, that horrifically chokes or suffocates turtles to death.
The ocean is chock full of petroleum products like plastics, mostly in near microscopic pieces. If you eat seafood of any variety, so are you.

Deplorable in manners. Laughable at their mentality of prioritizing highest-value food items for consumption regardless of taste & variety. Still smarter than those buffet eaters that pig out on carbs.

Hope they don't sick from all the cholesterol from the shrimps.

There are a few shots in there of the back of the controller - it looks like it can take a HUGE variety of input, which is clearly necessary for this purpose. Basically seems to be a giant adapter.

Edit: and then I realized the name. Dur.

There are quite a few different languages which can all be compiled down to something that can be run on a system like this. On the whole though the system isn't writing code itself.

Imagine you have a magical problem solving machine with a fixed input, all sorts of switches and levers, and an output. You chose the shape and the size of the machine but you don't chose where to set the levers or which switches to set.

The machine learning process works by having lots and lots of examples of good inputs and matching correct outputs known as a training set. It starts with all the levers and switches set randomly. Each time it makes a guess it looks how far it was from the right answer given from the training set and sees how it could change its settings to get a little closer to the right answer next time.

Given enough time and computing power it can fine tune the settings to get to the point where it's very accurate for a wide variety of complex problems.

Hmmm... along comes plastic. Plastic is cheap, reusable, lasts a long time, doesn't mind getting wet, weighs less compared to the variety of non-plastic things it replaced. Humans love plastic. Producers make more things out of plastic to keep the humans happy. Uh oh. Plastic winds up where it shouldn't. Humans aren't bad, plastic producers that made the plastic for the humans are bad. Humans might have wanted it before, now they don't, but it's not their fault, it's the shitty industries fault. How dare they make things that we used to want, but now we don't. Bastards. If you feel so strongly, take everything you own that has plastic in it and give it the toss. That'll show 'em. (Proper government representation?)

That was based on a comment on youtube...I wouldn't know thrash from deathmetal myself. My tastes in metal are pretty well limited to the classic rock varieties: Led Zeppelin, Dio, etc..

But it would seem the song is more familiar than I realized, I -have- seen that video before. Still prefer the dancer personally, she's much easier on the eyes.

I don't think anyone suggests that civilian disarmament encourages tyranny, merely that civilian armament discourages tyranny.



In any case, there are a variety of applications that aren't "fighting hitler".

No country goes on forever without some domestic strife. Could be domestic war, could be economic collapse, could be the government scapegoating "your kind", could be a weather disaster, could be whatever.
In such an unlikely event, if you happen to be around at the time, you may wish to guard your family, food, fuel, etc.

Note that these events affect a LOT of people when they do happen (as in millions at a time).
Even though they are less frequent than a random shooting, the sheer quantity of people makes them significant.

Eg. The last Houston destruction by hurricane was in 1979 (38 years ago). That's not so infrequent, in a city of 2.3 million people (ish).
That's an upper bound of 60'000 people affected per year on average.
Either way, it's a lot of people that need to guard their homes from looters, etc.
Granted not everyone is on a destroyed street - but you see what I mean.

There have been plenty of disasters and riots in the last few decades where you wouldn't want to be caught helpless - just in case.

That's also a commentary on society. During the Fukushima disaster, nobody was looting or robbing, or whatever. Japan has a better behaved society.

-scheherazade

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.
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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

@drradon: I agree with you 100% on teaching both and teaching basic arithmetic first and then leading on to proper math once that foundation is established.

@dannym3141,

I was first blindsided by it when my kids came home with multiplication homework and were adamant they couldn't answer it the way I was showing them because it would be marked wrong, it was the wrong way to do multiplication.

The link to the full Manitoba math curriculum is below. The worst sections are under 'Mental Math' with the idea being that you should be able to add/subtract/multiply/divide all numbers in your head with a dozen pages worth of tricks. The tricks being what newtboy was calling 'proofs'. Our curriculum calls them 'techniques' though and I've included an example from the Grade 3 curriculum verbatim after of how it is supposed to be 'taught'.

Overall Math curriculum:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/index.html

Grade 3 example:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/support_gr3/number.pdf

From page 56:
Describe a mental mathematics strategy that could be used to determine a given basic fact, such as
-doubles (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 7 + 7)
-doubles plus one (e.g., for 6 + 7, think 6 + 6 + 1)
-doubles take away one (e.g., for 6 + 7, think 7 + 7 – 1)
-doubles plus two (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 6 + 6 + 2)
-doubles take away two (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 8 + 8 – 2)
-making 10 (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 6 + 4 + 4 or 8 + 2 + 4)
-commutative property (e.g., for 3 + 9, think 9 + 3)
-addition to subtraction (e.g., for 13 – 7, think 7 + ? = 13)."

Now before you think me and observe there's nothing wrong with showing kids some extra tricks to help them, that is NOT how this is supposed to be used. If you read further, students are REQUIRED to "explore" multiple methods of calculating answers and must demonstrate they know and can use all these 'tricks'. So instead of providing assistance for difficult calculations as it should be, it's used to make ALL calculations difficult, and create extra work, AND makes kids just learning the concept completely overwhelmed with everything you MUST know to get a right answer to 2+2=4.

And here's the link to the Grade 11 review of the basic arithmetic:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/ess_mm_gr11/full_doc.pdf

And for the Grade 11 students and teaching them to add/subtract/multiply and divide, the teacher's guide describes this like a subjective discovery process with quotes like this:
"Consequently, mental calculation activities should include periods for thought and discussion.
During these periods, the teacher should encourage students to
-suggest a variety of possible solutions to the same problem
-explain the different methods used to come to the correct answer and their
effectiveness
-explain the thought process that led to an incorrect answer"

An important note is we are not talking about solving complex word problems here or anything, but specifically for calculating a basic arithmetic operation with the different methods being those described from back in Grade 3 already outlined above.