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Laser Incidents With Aircraft On the Rise
EqualSlash writes "High-power laser pointers available for cheap are increasingly finding abuse as the ultimate long-distance weapons of pranksters and vandals. The Federal Aviation Administration says laser events aimed on planes have nearly doubled in the last year, leaping from 1,527 in 2009 to 2,836 in 2010. The highest number of incidents was reported at Los Angeles International Airport, which recorded 102 in 2010. Lasers pointed at cockpits can temporarily blind pilots, forcing them to give up control of an aircraft to their co-pilot or abort a take-off/landing. In March of 2008, unidentified individuals wielding four green laser pointers launched a coordinated attack on six incoming planes at Sydney Airport, which resulted in a ban on all laser pointers in the state of New South Wales."
How do you manage getting a beam of light inside a cockpit that opens facing upward? Aside from banking sharply it doesn't make any sense.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
They'll probably green lasers in the US before they'll ban semi-automatic handguns.
and just beat the shit out of them for being well on their way towards having those fun laser pointers banned completely?
People blind pilots.... using lasers.
- Citizens for Responsible Airport Laws
This is why we can't have nice things. Someone always has to be irresponsible.
...with these **********ing lasers on this **********ing plane!
Lasers are made in a great many colors, but couldn't they notch-filter the predominant linewidths (esp. those attenuated least in the atmosphere)?
Can't we just put laser filters on the cockpit windows (or have the pilots wear laser safety glasses)? Maybe we can't filter *every* color laser (that may block too much normal light), but we could filter the green ones which the article mentions as the more troublesome type.
20 characters max for the password? How will I use my favorite poems as passwords?
So, the biggest threat to airline travel is prankster laser pointer wielding yocals and not some loon putting explosives on a plane or hijacking it?!?
Remember that when you're taking your shoes off, having your personal items picked through and groped by the TSA.
Green lasers are often used for stargazing, since you can use the visible beam to point out specific stars. I wonder how many of these incidents are accidental hits either by idiots^W people who don't know the difference between a plane and a shooting star or who are honestly pointing out constellations while a plane just happens to fly through? Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity and all that.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Lasers pointed at cockpits can temporarily blind pilots
Please cite examples of pilots who have temporarily been "blinded" by a laser.
While it's a nuisance to see someone shine a laser beam around your cockpit, the plane's speed, the shakiness of human hands, and the distance from the person pointing it makes it unlikely that the laser beam will find its way directly into one of the two pupils a pilot may have for more than a fraction of a second.
But America has given up on things like trigonometry, math and science, in favor of bullshit like this. The current situation is 1) Pilot and copilot see red dot jump momentarily around the cockpit and decide to report the incident, 2) Pilot and copilot agree to overstate the harm done to them in an effort to persuade authorities that this is a "serious problem" 3) The media gets hold of the story and distorts it further, screaming for the death penalty for anyone who owns a laser pointer and lives within 10 miles of an airport. But no one is willing to do the math.
Yeah it's irresponsible to point lasers at airplanes. Call me if ever there's a serious incident that puts an aircraft in danger.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The "ban on lasers" is a confusing one.
The last decade the Australian Government has been using this "ban" word like a fad on everything. Its not illegal, its not prohibited... its BANNED.
I'm still trying to figure out what they mean, maybe someone cant have one near an airport or any teenager cant have one but a professor using one for presentation or someone pointing out star constellations is allowed to?
It just seems like a grey area so they make a ban instead of outright illegal.
I went out and purchased a green laser from the USA just before this ban got set in place simply as a middle finger to the Aussie Government. Going out into the middle of nowhere hours from any city and having a light show on a clear night making out you have a lightsaber is cool. Also you can do some great photography with them such as reflecting off water.
Pointing at planes is stupid, do some work and catch the idiots instead of being lazy and making everyone not have a choice.
...by a laser while piloting a helicopter and it's scary as hell. I don't have a solution but I sure wish I did. There are some sick puppies out there that this continues to go on. These people should be arrested and prosecuted but I recognize that it's difficult to impossible to catch these idiots.
How are people able to accurately point a laser at a dude's eyeball in an aircraft moving over 100 mph from a relevant angle of attack through the aircraft's windshield from an unrestricted vantage point? From BELOW the aircraft?
This sounds like a crap story to me.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that.
Near my international airport (KSEA for those interested) is a public park on the north end of the airport, from there it is a ridiculously easy shoot into the cockpit with a laser at around 3 miles when aircraft are landing to the north (runways 34). At that range most green lasers beams are actually fairly wide, but still plenty bright, especially to eyes that have spent the last 6 hours acclimated to almost total darkness (pilots routinely turn the lights down at night) Since you bring up geometry, I submit to you that the angle from ground to cockpit at that distance is probably in the 10 degree range. And consider that these aircraft are landing from the south, facing north. The pilot is required to maintain contact with the runway lighting system at all times, including the lights leading up to the runway. If they can see lights 1/2 mile ahead of them, I think they can see the lights 3 miles ahead of them. If you'd like i'll get out my FAR/AIM (FAA rule bible) and quote you the regs.
Now, lets talk the pussies argument. Would you want YOUR pilot to be even 1/4 blinded when operating at 175mph and 300 feet off the ground? Safety says you go around and let your eyes reacclimate. It's not that they could NEVER land the plane, but that given the other stressors already in place, why would you risk it? Remember we are in the plane with you, and we have just as much interest in going home to our families as you do.
My credentials: Commerial rated, Multi-engine and Single-engine, with an unrestricted IFR rating.
Posting AC due to lack of account, long time reader.
They're an annoyance everywhere they're used.
you had me at #!
... don't they have anything better to do, like eat some surfers? And just who gave them the lasers in the first place? Damn Pentagon!
Ok i'll say it are they mounted to sharks?
blarg?
I have to agree. I've heard reports of this for a long time but how is this even possible? Scattering on the windows? They're pointed upwards as well from what I've seen of big planes. Maybe they're talking about small aircraft. I just can't see 1500 incidences a year, though. Maybe the pilots are confusing the phenomena with something else.
This should be on an episode of mythbusters.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
This is an example of the "fallacy of the transposed conditional" and how people use it to justify legislation that does nothing to address the problem.
See if you can assign a likelihood (high or low) to the following:
Probability that someone has a laser, given that they shined one at an airplane,
Probability that someone shines one at an airplane, given that they have a laser.
The likelihood that anyone having a laser will use it against an airplane is so astronomically small that legislation will have no appreciable effect, but will inconvenience many people.
The logic is precisely backwards, but it sounds like a justification.
Someone should introduce the legislators down under to Bayes Theorem.
This still seems to be happening a lot around Sydney. I noticed that it made it into YSSY ATIS last Thursday night. Approach: EXP INDEPENDENT VISUAL APCH Runway: 34L AND R FOR ARRS AND DEPS Operational Info: PARALLEL RWY OPS IN PROG. INDEPENDENT DEPARTURES IN PROG WIND: 030/15, CROSSWIND MAX 15 KNOTS UNAUTHORISED LASER ACTIVITY REPORTED 07NM ON FINAL Cloud: CAVOK - (Ceiling and Visibility OK) Temperature: 29 QNH: 1010
put a kW class laser on the planes and fire back
It's not just NSW that have banned laser pointers, a laser pointer over 1mw is a banned import into Australia. If you import one, it will be seized by Customs. To legally import one, you must get a firearms license issued by the police in your state of residence. It's against the law in most states (Queensland seem to be the exception) to be in possession of a laser pointer, of any colour, in a public place.
be able to land with the remaining eye?
There was a video on youtube from a news channel that showed what happend when a green laser hit the cockput of a plane/helio but I can't seem to find it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r5-bMstX6g This is about all I can find. Anyways its not so much the fact that it goes into the pilots eye, it's just that illuminates the cockpit like a disco which then doesn't allow the person to see out side the window.
You think that after traveling a mile or more, a laser beam projects a "dot"? WTF?
It's called lightning and it has been a "temporary blindness" risk that pilots have always been required to contend with.
Of course you're probably more alert the the possibility of lightning when flying near thunderstorms than you will be expecting a laser out of nowhere.
I do tend to believe that the risks are potentially overblown here, based on just how fast laser beams spread and so forth. I think it's more a case of outrage and indignity that some asshole would actually point a laster at a pilot flying an aircraft than it is likely to be something that requires banning the devices entirely and making it a federal offense to use one outdoors at night etc.
Personally I think I might prefer the asshole with the laser pointer over having to land in a thunderstorm.
G.
IAAP and we've had the cockpit lasered before. While it's certainly unlikely that the laser beam will hit your pupils directly, the pressing issue is, you can very quickly lose your night vision when the beam is refracted/scattered by the windshield. On short final (when these idiots are lasering the cockpits) a loss of night vision (likely) or partial blindness (less likely) will jeopardize the safety of everyone aboard during the approach.
Now they only have to ban sharks and we're safe!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, they don't.
There has not been a single case of a pilot blinded by lasers, nor is it likely there ever will be.
Not only do pilots look at the (rather tall) instrument board most at the time, and don't stare at scenery, but it's also impossible to keep the laser pointer pointed at a moving target at any distance. If anyone were able to do so, don't fine them -- hire them as gunners for the military, because that kind of precision is supernatural.
And at the distance a plane is away, combined with the rather thick windows of a plane, even if a superhuman was able to hit the eye of a pilot for a fraction of a second, it would have far less of an impact than a quick glance at the sun, something people frequently do.
Plain and simple, this is FUD, and another attempt at at the same time scaring people and showing that the powers do something about it.
This is why we can't have nice things. Someone always has to be irresponsible.
Indeed. If you want one of these things for hobby or just for fun, *NOW* is the time to buy, because before too long, you'll need a licence to purchase.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Maybe they should check to make sure it isn't sharks with lasers!
The problem is not actually blinding pilots, it is that at large enough distances a green laser is a rather distracting giant green spot, which makes it quite hard to see other things, like the runway.
See Wicked Lasers' "Photonic Disruptor."
Not familiar with this specific case, but usually airports are built out of town and developers build houses around them. New people move in to the houses and try to close the airport. Many airports try noise abatement approaches, such as higher flight patterns resulting in steep descents, or altering the landing pattern around problem areas where possible. Unfortunately we have lost a lot of good airports this way. Business owners often choose where to build or work by the quality of the local airport, resulting in a catch 22 for politicians. Many towns are now trying to proactively defeat this problem by zoning around airports as industrial only zones.
I don't know for sure, but seems to me there might be another factor here - duration. Lightning flash quite quickly, maybe a second at the longest. These morons with the lasers, if they happen to have good hand-eye coordination, might be able to track the aircraft pretty well, and keep the laser generally 'focused' on the cockpit windshield for several seconds at a time. I imagine it's sort of the difference between driving with occasional lightning flashes, vs having an oncoming vehicle shining their high-beams in your eyes for 5 or 10 seconds (which, at least for me, feels like an eternity when I'm driving at night, and am having a hard time seeing the road - and in just the wrong situation, might be long enough to cause an accident).
I believe, so far, there have been no fatalities as a result of these clowns, but should an aircraft ever crash, and the flight data recorder has the pilot complaining about being blinded by a laser, this will blow up into a huge media issue.
Laser pointers have a very narrow specta. I narrow band interference coating can be placed in the airplane windshields at 435 and 660 nanometers.
The cost would be negligible for an airplane. In the meantime glasses with similar coatings would protect pilots.
A ban on lasers would deprive individuals of one of the greatest inventions ever. One of those people may use on in a more productive manner, and if prevented they may never make their contribution to technology.
Problem solved.
-Brenda Make
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Perhaps people who can't deal with momentary distractions shouldn't be pilots? Gods know what they'd do if they ever saw sun reflected from a building, or hit a bird, or saw lightning.
Here is one that I knew about off hand...
http://articles.cnn.com/1997-05-14/us/9705_14_russia.laser_1_laser-device-russian-ship-laser-burns?_s=PM:US
Google will return more.
Sorry about wavelength. Will still work at proper wavelengths as laser light is generally monochromatic. I'm tired.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Laser pointers are not all that coherent. The beam would likely "paint" the entire airplane at a mile away.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Can't you equip aircraft with slightly more powerful lasers that shine back whenever this happens?
Protip: Criminals will use whatever weapons they can get, including illegal ones. And if you think guns for defense is a myth, tell that the people saved every year when they shoot the stronger and healthier idiot trying to harm them. People can be evil. Not all criminals and sociopaths are violent because they "had a bad upbringing" or are in "a bad place in their life." Some are just plain evil and take pleasure in harming others or taking what they haven't earned. If that person is stronger than you, your defense against their will involves countering their violence with something that puts you on par with them regardless of physical stature; enter the firearm. There's a reason they say a Democrat is a Republican that hasn't been mugged yet (note: I'm neither).
Sorry, but I've already had to fend off one attempted home invasion (in Phoenix) with my shotgun, so unless you have first-hand experience with violent criminals, I think your opinion is worthless.
I didn't create a violent, dangerous society. That would be the criminal class who did, plus stupid laws and courts who let violent criminals out early, while keeping non-violent drug offenders in. Don't look at me, I didn't vote for the people who did that; if I had my way, drugs would all be decriminalized.
The "rest of you" don't have the same situation we do. If you're in Europe, you live in small, homogeneous countries, so you don't have all the race and poverty problems we do. It's a lot easier to get along when you don't have giant groups of people mired in poverty for whatever reason.
Finally, even here, criminals don't always have guns, because they're not THAT easy to get (thanks to background check laws). So to commit a "gun crime", a criminal has to steal a gun first, and then commit a crime with it. But most criminals don't need guns for their crimes; they use other weapons: bats, knives, or good old-fashioned fists. They spend lots of time in prison pumping iron, so they're ready to use their physical size when they get out.
How exactly do you propose a 90-pound woman to defend herself against a 250 pound man? That's what guns are for, to level the field for physically disadvantaged people.
Wouldn't simply polarizing the cockpit windows completely negate this problem? Even polarized sunglasses would work.
...people blind pilots.
When law abiding citizens are unable to buy high powered laser pointers, then only criminals will have high powered laser pointers.
Oh, oops, did I forget the opening tag again?
Airline rules vary, but typically the gun has to be in a case 'designed for holding firearms' and it must be locked.
Get that? It must be locked. NORMAL checked luggage not only doesn't have to be locked, it's not allowed to be locked (so TSA can rifle through it as they please and steal your shit).
So if you want to be able to lock your checked baggage, just fly with a gun. Not only will you be able to lock your gun case, you will be REQUIRED to do so, and anything else you can fit in that gun case can be locked too. I used to know a guy who claimed to always fly with a starter pistol (legal in many jurisdictions) just so he could check a lockable case.
IANAL YMMV
...you'd come across this example of what it does to a pilot's view of a runway.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
The damn thing doesn't appear to blind the cat.
Why don't they just issue laser safety glasses to pilots, and they can put them on when the ass-hats arrive?
http://www.thorlabs.us/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectGroup_ID=762
When will there be an MS Flight Sim Fly Red-eye/ Green Laser-in-my-eye Edition?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Who comes up with crazy laws like that anyway? It's too bad some criminals don't invade their homes and rape them.
Is there a passive defense against this? I'm very curious: this would seem to be a fairly serious threat for a military plane in combat, how do they deal with it? Is there a film that could be retrofitted to canopy windows on commercial craft?
After reading your opinion, I think you are worthless. :)
Um, yeah about that, I'm an ATPL pilot and I've been distracted by lasers on finals plenty of times. By the times it hits us, it's this big very bright glowing dot and it obscures our view. It usually flickers back and forward too and it's incredibly distracting, the last thing anyone needs is a distraction during finals.
Europe doesn't have race and poverty problems? You ignorance is very apparent.
There's Gypsies; no one likes them for whatever reason. Then there's immigrants from mulsim countries moving to Western European countries. In particular, Paris France has an area of poor muslims surrounding them. There are several issues France has, some valid, some intolerant.
So yeah, European countries have race and poverty issues, and they've been dealing with them without guns because social problems like racial tension and poverty often can't be solved by guns.
The problem you specifically have is that the prison system you're dealing with sucks apples. If you go into prison a druggie, you come out a sociopath.
Not an argument against you at all... But, I just spent a bunch of time with a friend from the UK, and got to talking about violent crime over there. Let me say that from her stories, it really doesn't seem to be the safest place in the world. Just like here in the US, there are good parts of town, and bad parts... And there is plenty of fucked up shit happening.
For example, one major problem over there is glassing.
I've got to say, that while I don't relish the thought of everyone being armed, I don't think banning all guns will do anything to solve problems of violence.
Many of the big problems I hear about in Europe seem to involve their Muslim immigrants, especially in France as another poster noted here.
Why Europe ever let middle-eastern Muslims come in, I have no idea. It should have been obvious that they would never assimilate, and that is exactly what causes racial conflicts. They need to all be sent back to their home countries. Both the USA and many European countries are having a lot of problems as a result of poor immigration policies.
As for glassing, yes that can be a problem, just as knives can be. I've heard that the UK also has lots of knife attacks. Take away guns, and people will just resort to another convenient weapon. What are they going to do, ban glass and kitchen knives? Or try to ban pointy knives (a group of doctors in the UK seriously proposed that!).
Wouldn't it make sense to coat the cockpit windows with laser light attenuating filter material?
Many of the big problems I hear about in Europe seem to involve their Muslim immigrants, especially in France as another poster noted here.
Why Europe ever let middle-eastern Muslims come in, I have no idea. It should have been obvious that they would never assimilate, and that is exactly what causes racial conflicts. They need to all be sent back to their home countries. Both the USA and many European countries are having a lot of problems as a result of poor immigration policies.
So after a long history of French colonization and military control, the Muslim immigrants need to be sent home? If you don't want an immigration problem, don't colonize West African countries and expect the inhabitants to stay put where they are. It's not as if they all decided to pack their bags one day and move to France for their freedoms.
Best "String" Ever!
You have a point with Algeria, but 1) Muslims are coming from many other countries besides Algeria, and 2) Muslims are going to a lot of other European countries besides France (Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, etc.), several which did not colonize any African countries.
But yeah, it would have been better if the European powers had never gotten involved in Africa. Countries need to keep to themselves and stop trying to establish empires. It never turns out well; just look at the history of Rome.
Sorry, but I've already had to fend off one attempted home invasion (in Phoenix) with my shotgun, so unless you have first-hand experience with violent criminals, I think your opinion is worthless.
I don't buy that one experience, if true, gives you superior qualifications or knowledge. I've spent much of my life in downtowns of major cities with much higher crime rates than Phoenix, but that doesn't make me an expert. I do know that criminals almost always want easy money, not conflict -- they want your money, not you. Pointing a gun at a criminal greatly increases your chance of getting shot; the mentally unstable (either natural or drug-assisted) may freak out and shoot. A tip for the inexperienced: If they want your money, give it to them; it's just money, it's not worth your life or health.
Your experience coincidentally fits the same old rhetoric from right wing fringe:
The "rest of you" don't have the same situation we do. If you're in Europe, you live in small, homogeneous countries, so you don't have all the race and poverty problems we do. It's a lot easier to get along when you don't have giant groups of people mired in poverty for whatever reason.
These assertions are bizarre. Europe is small, homogenous countries? With no poverty problems? Really? In fact, their race problems are worse than the U.S. right now and have the same cause, lots of bigots who react like animals to anything different than them and inflict suffering on innocent people. It's not race that causes conflict, it's the racists. Aren't centuries of slavery; another of segregation, oppression, and lynchings; and continuing discrimination enough to demonstrate that? And that's just the blacks; don't forget the Catholics (yes, there used to be riots against Catholics!), Native Americans, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, and currently Latinos, gays, and Muslims, etc etc. The bigots simply hate everyone not like them -- and then blame the victims for the problems!
Finally, even here, criminals don't always have guns, because they're not THAT easy to get (thanks to background check laws).
Maybe in Phoenix, though that's not what I understand. Elsewhere, many studies report that it's very easy for anyone to obtain a gun in major cities. Many city governments periodically have gun buy-back programs, where the government buys guns, no questions asked, just to get a few off the streets. Many reports attribute the large numbers of homicides in cities to the easy availability of guns; dumb disputes end in death rather than a black eye because a gun is at hand. Gun rights advocates fight any hint of an attempt to regulate guns, obsessing over one legalistic issue, the Second Amendment of the Constitution (which is vague about personal ownership of firearms), at the expense of many others, including the lives of people dying each year from gun violence. The U.S. has one of the highest murder rates among rich countries, and most of it is poor people killing other poor people of the same race (they live in the same neighborhood).
Both the racist and some (not all) of the gun rights arguments are rationalizations for people to follow their most base instincts, hatred and violence, without responsibility toward the people and society around them. They aren't serious ideas but more a demonstration of political aggression, to threaten anyone how disagrees. And they have a history of backing up those threats with violence.
It should have been obvious that they would never assimilate, and that is exactly what causes racial conflicts. They need to all be sent back to their home countries.
Yeah, we should listen to an overt racist on how to deal with racial conflict.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Are these incidents only self-reported? How would a pilot tell a short visual hallucination from a laser pointer "strike"?
"The "rest of you" don't have the same situation we do. If you're in Europe, you live in small, homogeneous countries, so you don't have all the race and poverty problems we do."
- If you consider the EU compared to the USA, we have a bigger population than you
- we have 25+ nationalities with their own languages and cultures to start with
Even on an individual level, I wouldn't describe Europe as being "small homogeneous countries". May I ask how much European travelling you've done, out of interest?
- my brother taught in a school in London, there were 30 different mother tongues spoken by kids in this school of approx 300 children.
- "small" : well the UK has a population of 60m, France has a population of 65m. Small compared to the whole of the USA but equal to the combined population of several USA states each.
- "small" does not necessarily mean no poverty. I'd guess that your most populous states are not necessarily the wealthiest and the smallest are not necessarily the poorest. Check the level of income of Albania (3m) while you're at it.
- Alas homogeneous as well does not mean free of racism. I think there's quite a lot of evidence to suggest there is a lot of racism in strongly monocultural societies.
- "the rest of you" suggests you feel you are the exception to the rule, that the majority of the world has a different situation and that you need exceptional gun laws to survive. Would you think this is so?
I think you can reduce the number of guns and violence in your society and I wish you luck in doing so. It will be a long path though as your country is so awash with them and exports them freely to neighbouring countries as well. It appears that many Americans don't feel they can go to sleep safely unless they have a loaded gun in the house. I think few Europeans would say they'd sleep a lot better if they had a loaded gun in the house.
Good luck there, be safe. Feel free to visit any time.
The "rest of you" don't have the same situation we do. If you're in Europe, you live in small, homogeneous countries, so you don't have all the race and poverty problems we do. It's a lot easier to get along when you don't have giant groups of people mired in poverty for whatever reason.
There's so much wrong with this post that I was just going to leave it - but this bit right here does a massive disservice to all Americans, as it indicates that all these stories about how insular you are, are really true.
You picked the most xenophobic country in Europe (France) for your comparison. The French have a history of picking on racial/ethnic/religious groups on a national scale - in fact they're doing it right now with the Roma's. It's an old and well used tactic to distract people from the real causes of their problems - problems which always seem to remain, to be blamed on the next minority which attracts attention. Much like the people you pick on in a later post, middle-eastern Muslims, many of whom are living happily and peacefully - when they are allowed to live without constant attacks on their person, something I would've thought an American would understand given your history - in most European countries.
It really does defy all logical sense that you can think this way. I wonder; do you feel the same way about members of the Jewish diaspora who refused to give up their culture and lifestyles but just wanted to live peacefully? Do you use examples of terrorism carried out by Zionist extremists as a brush to tar all Jewish people? Or is that just reserved for Muslims?
"Guns are for self defence" is pure myth. Actually it's worse than that, it's idiocy.
Says the idiot?
Many, many examples of citizens carrying guns as being a plus
to the overburdened police department.
[ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/nyregion/09wheelchair.html?_r=1 ]
[ http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/25792735-41/combs-barista-braziel-affidavit-dutch.csp ]
[ http://www.8newsnow.com/story/13865042/man-thwarts-robbery-by-shooting-at-suspect ]
[ http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-scene/anne-arundel/would-be-dunkin-donuts-robber.html ]
Just do your own googling and draw your own conclusions;
citizen gun shot perpetrator OR robber OR thief [ http://news.google.com/news/search?&q=citizen+gun+shot+perpetrator+OR+robber+OR+thief ]
^ fails hard in bing, no boolean? [ http://www.bing.com/search?q=citizen+gun+shot+perpetrator+OR+robber+OR+thief ]
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Ok, so you are telling us what our social problems are having never visited here. Hmm, sets you at a little bit of a disadvantage there in claiming to know our society....
I suppose this is valid if you can tell us how you've "heard" about the reason for social problems here. Bit of 'citation needed' issue I think.
"Why Europe ever let middle-eastern Muslims come in, I have no idea. It should have been obvious that they would never assimilate, and that is exactly what causes racial conflicts."
Because most of us get along just fine? Why is it 'obvious' that people will never assimilate, when so clearly lots of people do? You really have little experience of walking around European towns do you? Yes, this is personal, my best mate is of Middle Eastern heritage, went to school with him since I was ten, played in the same chess club, differed over football teams (how can anybody support QPR and hold their head high? I'll give you that point ;-) ) been to too many parties together, he met a Norwegian girl, moved there for a while, they've got a beautiful little daughter, we still all hang out 30 years later and the kids all play on the beach in the town we grew up while us oldies chat about the crazy time when me Karim and Andy drove round France and Belgium in Karim's knackered old mini with all our stuff and 2 guitars...
Mate... you've never even been to Europe and you claim to know better than us? Hmmm.... I think you should come and visit some time...
I admit my experience of the USA has been limited, but at least I've seen a few cities, hung out in inner city Detroit with mates there, Spanish part of Manhattan with a mate there, drove from coast to coast and stayed in some small places on the way, been to Texas, seen a few places and talked to a few people...
I've seen green lasers coming out of a military base (local city base not some Area 51 shit). Looked like they were aiming at all kinds of objects. Couldn't tell if they pointed at any planes (couldn't see any), but I wouldn't be surprised.
Can anyone tell me if the (US) military has standard equipment that may be causing this? Or was this just multiple private bought lasers used by off duty soldiers?
Great post, but I will disagree with you on one thing. The Second Amendment of the US constitution is not the only rational that people have for guns. A surprising number of otherwise intelligent people believe that holding a gun will protect them from others holding a gun. Furthermore, they believe that holding a gun will enable them to stop other people engaging in anti-social behaviour. It is almost as if a gun is a magical talisman that turns you into a super hero. Finally, they seem to believe that other people with guns will use good judgement and be able to use these tools appropriately even in very stressful situations. Especially in the US there seems to be a demarcation between "good guys" and "bad guys". The "bad guys" will always be able to get guns so it is important for the "good guys" to have them in order to create balance. They don't seem to have much to say about all the other guys like the "stupid guys", the "insane guys", the "scared guys", etc, etc.
I don't know. I'm not against gun ownership per se, but untrained people using guns for "protection" is a bit wacky to me. If it's OK to carry guns around for protection, why not swords? Surely if someone sees me walking down the street with a katana, they won't bother me, right? And if I see some dude shoplifting I can cut his hands off. Sweet. Let's get the political ball rolling!
Aiming a laser steadily at a target. Gosh darn nabbit, that must be so darn hard. Else the military would be using it all the time to light up targets... oh wait
THEY ARE!
Laser target designation, it has been all the rage since the first gulf war. It really ain't that complicated. You get device with some optics attached and you AIM them. Like say similar to how you aim a gun. You are aware that ordinary rifles pose a threath to aircraft in their range because a reasonably skilled marksman can hit a COMBAT plane? And airliners are big fat slow moving objects going in a straight line. Oh you don't have to correct for the trajectory of a bullet with a laser.
Read up on how the Red Baron was killed.
Are the wussies of slashdot that badly cordinated they can't train a pair of goggles on an aircraft? It really ain't all the difficult. Any cameraman can do it with far heavier equipment.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yes, and auto-pilot can fly an aircraft better for 99% of the time. Pity that 1% is the take off and landing where the risk is the biggest. Back to the drawing board.
Remember that pilot who succesfully landed his airliner on water? Auto-pilot or pilot skill? And how do you think that pilot got skilled? By turning on the auto-pilot?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"resulted in a ban on all laser pointers in the state of New South Wales."
Sigh ... can we please ban 'knee-jerk banning' based on statistically highly unlikely incidents that don't even actually cause safety problems because 'this is why we have co-pilots' (an incident that was probably already illegal in this case)?
Why don't we just ban EVERYTHING, in advance, just in case anyone uses it in a bad way? Woman throws an ashtray at husband's head? Ban ashtrays! Man throws coffee mug back? Ban mugs! A child trips over a LAN cable? Ban LAN cables!
But why wait? Let's introduce a new bill called the "Ban Everything Bill".
I still challenge that lost eyesight is the least of a pilot's worries, but this is the argument that is put forward. The pussies comment was a generalization based upon my opinion of a particular event in the news, because a flight crew came across as especially whiny and were threatening to sue the whole world because of this.
How do you think we read the instruments- by Braille? Instrument lighting has a rheostat so you can turn it down at night. I keep them dim so that it's easier to spot traffic- one bright light in the cockpit will drown out faint lights outside.
How about this: I'll put you on a dark road and break your headlamps: Now you only have your parking lights to see the road markings by; enough under normal circumstances if there are no other lights out there.
Now I'm going to shine a laser in your eyes. Don't worry, it's only a Class II, so it won't actually burn your retina, just overload your rods. Now you can't see. Please drive at 75mph. Don't want to? Oops, I put some epoxy under the accelerator pedal. ("This is glue. Strong stuff.")
This is what it's like when you get hit. You can't really see and you can't stop or slow down. You revert to basics and stare at the attitude indicator while blinking like mad, trying to see through the spots and ignore 'the leans'.
Before you opine about the tendencies of professional pilots, try flying five days (nights) a week for a few years. Oh, my credentials: Airline Transport Pilot and Multi-engine Instructor certificates, Beech 1900 type rating, 135 Check Airman, 4500+ hours total time, 1500+ night, 700+ instrument.
No, they don't. There has not been a single case of a pilot blinded by lasers, nor is it likely there ever will be.
Strawman argument. The issue is not permanent blindness, but disorientation, temporary blindness, or injury. There are multiple reports of pilots being injured by lasers:
Burned retina: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/sep/28/20040928-111356-3924r/
Ruptured blood vessels: http://www.marconews.com/news/2011/jan/03/collier-sheriff-helicopter-pilots-injured-laser/?partner=yahoo_feeds
Unspecified possible injury: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/11/25/319357/pilot-injured-in-american-md-82-laser-incident.html
You might not be impressed because there's no blood, but an eye injury can be a career-ender for a pilot. Disorientation is the most common result of lasing incidents, with some cases of temporary blindness. Reduced vision, even temporarily, is a Big Deal when flying.
I'm with you. In the UK, after they banned guns, home invasion went through the roof and they're an "island country." Today, you must use proportional force when defending your home and even then the homeowner is thrown in jail for hurting the perp. Burglary is only a ticket able crime. They don't even bring you in. That's where this stuff leads, insanity.
True Story
Firstly, dates back to the mid '80s, and is set in the UK.
Hear a noise at the door at the rear of the house I was renting at the time, realise someone is trying to force the door, I grab my 'hunting' knife (4" blade) sneak down the stairs to the rear door, confirm that there's someone trying to get in, throw open door from the inside yelling like a loony and chase the buggers who were trying to break in down the street. Report incident to my Landlord, he reports it to the police, get a visit a couple of days later from el CID, basically told 'we don't care what you do to them once they break in, that's self defence, but don't chase them onto the streets with a knife, we'll have to arrest you.'
Sad thing is, this knife (and I still have it, it's sitting beside the monitor as I type) was purchased from a gunshop whose owner was the victim of a cruel paradox created by the UK gun laws - surrounded by weapons with which he *could* have defended himself with but was unable to, thanks to the rules regarding having the guns doubly secured and the ammo stored in a safe, he was murdered by a couple of shitheads who robbed his shop looking for guns. Shot, I seem to recall.
Murdered, but he didn't break the law, a fat lot of comfort that was for his family.
Sadly the only people you can recruit as pilots are humans. And humans have this impractical optical sensor called "eye" that simply is not made for quick changes of dark and light.
captcha: chipmunk
It may not blind someone but have you ever had a laser pointed at your face? It makes you want to duck and close eyes and look away. If you were a pilot and a laser was pointed at you, I be your reaction would be the same. I'd think to myself "someone is pointing a gun in my face and I'm about to be shot." or at a minimum "a laser will blind me (even though it probably won't do shit) so I better duck and cover"
Mark
If you're in Europe, you live in small, homogeneous countries, so you don't have all the race and poverty problems we do. It's a lot easier to get along when you don't have giant groups of people mired in poverty for whatever reason.
You evidently know squat about Europe. We have the same race and poverty problems here - just go into the suburbs of Paris for example. This is typical American dumb-ass talk purporting that the US somehow is different where it is not in order to defend a particular viewpoint.
What's to stop someone with say, a 120mW infra-red laser and a night-vision monocular from blinding pilots permanently, and essentially invisibly?
Curious as I own both of these items...
A 100mw "Laser Pointer" for what, burning holes in the heads of you audence who may have dosed off?
4mm to 8mm divergence at 3 miles, how much did you spend for the collimator?
How a device like this works its way into the public sector labeled at a "Laser Pointer" is beyond me.
I looked around and 100mw green lasers do seem easy to aquire, which is surprising as it was my understanding that publicly accessible "Laser Pointers" had a emission cap of 5mw which is plenty for "pointing".
There are a ton of regulations that have to be followed when putting on a laser show utilizing such power levels.
Gotta disagree with the example though. You must have had some bad experience with focusable lasers or a laser that was poorly manufactured. Green laser >20mw are fairly easy to make out on a while reflective surface flying through the night, and they at most cover the section of the tail. You can even see the dispersion of the laser beam as it travels if the laser is powerful and the night is really dark.
When seconds count, the Police are only minutes away.
Sun usually only reflects from buildings during the day. At night, the pilot's pupils are dilated more, so their eyes are a lot more sensitive. And yes, lightning does blind pilots from time to time. When flying in the vicinity of thunderstorms at night, we usually turn the cockpit lights up to the maximum to decrease our sensitivity as much as possible. Pilots have had permanent eye damage from lightning strikes at night. And bird strikes on the windshield? Yep, they can be very startling too. At 250 knots, they sometimes even crack the outer windshield layer. Any other questions?
"So yeah, European countries have race and poverty issues, and they've been dealing with them without guns because social problems like racial tension and poverty often can't be solved by guns."
Europe has not been "dealing with" their problems. They've been ignoring them, passing laws to stop people from talking about them, telling police not to enforce the laws, blaming the victims of violent crime. Anything to avoid dealing with the problems caused by a large population of unassimilated, violent, xenophobic immigrant population.
Could those problems be solved by guns? Ask the folks who had their cars set on fire in Paris, their property destroyed in riots, or the police who fear to enter parts of London because they know the bad guys there will kill them.
The incidents are real, all over the world, many airports have NOTAMs on it (Notice To Airmen), and in my company alone we receive several Air Safety Reports (reports from pilots) per month on this issue. Recently, one pilot even had to take medical leave for a week because of a black spot in his eyesight that would not go away. Others have been blinded for 10 seconds or so. Good thing there are two pilots on board...
In short, none of these have been verified, and there's a quite high possibility that the pilots are either lying, having harmed themselves, or were suffering from psychosomatic injuries.
Let's look at the first example. The pilot was 5 miles away from the airport when "struck". As you know, during approach, you can't really see much of the ground closer to you than the airport, but OK let's be generous and say 2 miles minimum distance to any visible ground object.
This 200 mW green laser (which almost certainly was far more powerful than what the kid had, but let's be generous again) has a no-harm distance of 100 m. The minimum distance the pilot was away was THIRTY-TWO times that. The power diminishes by a factor of a square of the distance, so at that range, it's less than a thousandth of the strength needed to cause damage.
Never mind the utter infeasibility of being able to keep the laser on the cockpit glass for more than a fraction of a second, and the dampening effect of the cockpit glass itself.
Again, there are alternative explanations (see my first sentence) which I find far more plausible.
Sure, you can get startled by the eerie light from a laser, but if they really were that damaging at that distance, every soldier would have been outfitted with a laser pointer a long time ago.
Perhaps people who can't deal with momentary distractions shouldn't be pilots? Gods know what they'd do if they ever saw sun reflected from a building, or hit a bird, or saw lightning.
Of course pilots should be able to deal with momentary distractions. Does this mean we need to add more momentary distractions? Especially when they may be landing?
... they want your money and no witnesses.
FTFY
I found this chart to be enlightening. It's from 2003, but the trend should still hold (and the arguments haven't changed since then anyway). Almost 4 times as many people die in car accidents than are murdered by guns (11,920 by gun, 43,340 by car accident) and suicides by gun are about 50% higher than murder by gun (16,907 suicides). So, statistically, you're more likely to die by your own hand by a gun than to be murdered by one. That's...surprisingly comforting.
Heck, accidental poisoning (19,457) is more likely to get you than murder. The point is, I think we over-react to the problem. Gun violence is splashy, but on the decline. The current laws are fine, we don't be legislation by emotion.
Apparently at long ranges, the laser beam is quite wide. Also, the laser beam scatters when it hits the cockpit window. So the probability of the laser hitting the cockpit is a lot higher than you think. Also, it only takes a split second of light to distract the pilot. I can easily imagine a pilot getting significantly distracted from a laser. When a plane is landing, the last thing I want is a distracted pilot. Maybe planes and helicopter should have special coatings that will reflect or absorb the green laser light. Catching the people doing this will be very difficult.
Reports of popcorn filled houses across the world.
Most laser pointers are polarized. Why isn't the glass in airfraft fitted with a polarizing filter.
The odds of someone's handheld laser (which is subjet to random orientation) being able to replicate the exact polarization of a windshield is very very small.
criminals almost always want easy money, not conflict
Then they wouldn't enjoy robberies. Most violent criminals are sadists. You're welcome to trust in their kindness, but the rest of us don't enjoy taking a beating or begging for our lives as much as you might.
obsessing over one legalistic issue, the Second Amendment of the Constitution
The USA is the Constitution. Saying it is a trivial matter that should weighed amongst other considerations is advocating something between anarchy and despotism.
gun rights arguments are rationalizations for people to follow their most base instincts, hatred and violence, without responsibility toward the people and society around them. They aren't serious ideas but more a demonstration of political aggression, to threaten anyone how disagrees.
Here on Earth human beings are animals. Society is created and maintained through violence, and there will always be someone pointing a gun at you, if only the political elite. Guns are as much a promise of peace as a threat of aggression.
...we can't have nice things.
Just arm the airplanes with those smart bomb things. That'll take care of the little bastards.
(captcha: snuffs)
The company I work for makes coated lenses for military aircrews with a notch filter that blocks targeting laser light wavelengths and have done so for years. I've known pilots that can tell you about the guys that don't wear them and lose eyesight. Maybe these pilots need similarly coated lenses.
> unless you have first-hand experience with violent criminals, I think your opinion is worthless.
That's a bad way to look at it. You have more experience with the problem than most of us, so your voice carries more weight. But it doesn't make you an exclusive authority, and the opinion of others can be of value. For example, the airplane captain who landed his plane in the Hudson had previously written on how to land a plane in a river in case of a mid-air emergency. He'd never done it before, but that didn't mean his opinion of how it should be done was worthless.
The appeal to authority adds weight and a higher likelihood of correctness to opinion or to information, but does not render the opinion or information correct. I can tie my shoes inefficiently all my life, and still be shown at the end a better way to do it by a five-year-old.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Yes, well, we'll just make sure everyone who's going to break the law by pointing lasers at a plane will follow the rule that they do it from a safe distance. Frankly, I find your first sentence ignorant, insulting, and ludicrous Why would someone lie and risk losing their medical certification, ending their flying career?
Question about the 'safe distance'- is that oblique exposure or direct, focused exposure? Do they test on a real human eye? What was the ambient lighting conditions? Does Wicked Lasers have a vested interest in selling their product as safe? In short, I doubt the testing replicated or was designed to mimic the conditions experienced by pilots.The natural reaction when flying (and I speak from experience) is to look at an unexpected flash of light- it might be a strobe from another aircraft. If you're looking directly at the point from which the laser originated and a second beam hits you, your eye will be focusing that light on one point in your retina rather than being exposed through peripheral vision.
You use a convenient example of a distant exposure with plenty of distance for the beam to scatter and be attenuated. Note that the helicopter pilots in Naples were hit at low altitude (500 ft or less) and they were taken off flight duty. If you're not a pilot, you may not be aware of the nature of the FAA. There is no right to a pilot's license- the FAA is authorized by an act of Congress and all certifcates are considered privileges, not something you have a right to. The FAA can revoke your pilot or medical certification at will and there is very little recourse. On the medical side, the FAA can demand exhaustive medical testing prior to approving a medical certificate, and often those will be subject to limitations that effectively end a pilot's career.
All that being said, I agree that the primary danger is not permanent injury or disability but temporary blindness or disorientation. However, I speak from the perspective of someone who flies for a living. Electricians like to lock out power panels prior to working on wiring so that an accidental flip of a switch won't electrocute them; professional pilots also don't like to gamble with their livelihoods.
Whenever you ban something, only the COPS own them. Criminals that own banned utilies are hindered by Corpus Delecti, not opinions on what property can be owned. Bans only work on regions where the people are either sitting on land they don't own or are in a regulated conduct to another's privilege. Freedom? Liberty? Says who by what threat of violence?
The only reason laws change is because lawyers invent an artificial world animated by adminstrative trustee "Judges" (not judges, but Judges) where money is blood and every object in sight is addressable as an entity just because it is represented by atomic matter in the real world.
Blow it our your ass, because where Dundee was murdered by you felons, Duke Nukem will prevail.
"it would have far less of an impact than a quick glance at the sun, something people frequently do."
At night??
I do know that criminals almost always want easy money, not conflict -- they want your money, not you.
Sure, not every time, but sometimes they do, and you can go to hell if you think you can dictate what i can and cant do in order to prevent it. You can take chances with your life, its your right. But its my right not to be a victim ( dead or alive ) if i don't want to.
Pointing a gun at a criminal greatly increases your chance of getting shot; the mentally unstable (either natural or drug-assisted) may freak out and shoot. A tip for the inexperienced: If they want your money, give it to them; it's just money, it's not worth your life or health.
If you are to the point of having pointing a gun at someone and not in the process of shooting them, then you are irresponsible.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's actually a very clever insight. I can't think of a single benefit of having the cockpit on top...
Perhaps you should have the experience of being lased at night while flying. The effect is not momentary. Reflected sunlight is not coherent and happens in bright ambient lighting conditions, when your iris is already contracted, so the overall effect is vastly mitigated. Most laser illuminations happen at night, when the eye is wide open, and the desensitization of the eye happens before either the blink or iris reflex can limit exposure.
Lightning can do the same thing- it will completely overload your retina and makes seeing anything hard until your eye re-adapts.
Compared to that, most bird strikes are non-events- you only find out when you find a dent or find a few feathers stuck in a seam.
... they want your money and no witnesses.
An interesting theory, but not true in practice. Of all the property theft in the country, very little ends in murder.
When seconds count, the Police are only minutes away.
I'm not against gun ownership, but I don't think this argument is so cut and dried.
The same could be said of medical care in the case of a heart attack, which you are probably thousands of times more likely to experience. Do you carry a defibrillator and, in case that doesn't work, a scalpel?
It's very unlikely that you'll ever be in a situation where you need police in seconds to save you from serious harm, where having a gun will help you, and where you will use it successfully. It's arguably more likely that you will misuse a gun.
I'm not saying you do this, but society as a whole: If we really want to curb violence, we should address poverty in a meaningful way. Oh, sure we have "programs" for that, but they are designed to do as little as possible without creating the embarrassment of having people die of hunger in the streets. Typically they are full of tricks and traps that make it practically impossible to get off of them once on. Quite often that's the result of political forces that can't wipe them out outright as they would like to, so they instead sabotage them so they can later point and say "I told you it would fail".
Sure, it's not the same sort of poverty as people starving to death somewhere, but it is the sort that makes it clear that there are two mostly seperate societies in this country and they're not in the enjoyable one.
criminals almost always want easy money, not conflict
Then they wouldn't enjoy robberies. Most violent criminals are sadists. You're welcome to trust in their kindness, but the rest of us don't enjoy taking a beating or begging for our lives as much as you might.
No idea what your basis is that criminals 'enjoy robberies' and are sadists. It doesn't match my sense of it, and I've never heard that. I'm sure some do and some don't, but I'd need to see some data or expertise that indicates that it's overhelmingly sadists (that's a lot of sadists).
obsessing over one legalistic issue, the Second Amendment of the Constitution
The USA is the Constitution. Saying it is a trivial matter that should weighed amongst other considerations is advocating something between anarchy and despotism.
I didn't say it was trivial at all, but it's just one issue, and one interpretation of one clause in the Constitution, among many. There's much more to our country than one legal document; while I agree it's very valuable and fundamental, our responsibilities don't end there (or start there) and most of what I do during the day is not related to it; most of the world functions without it.
People often use it to justify what they already want to do, just like many use the Bible. On one hand, they aren't really arguing for the authoritative document, but for their interpretation of it. Nowhere does the Constitution say, 'without regulation whatsoever, you have the right to own a handgun, as much ammo as you want, and to use it according to your judgement'. It says only, A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.. You could argue that we're restricted owning and using arms as part of a militia.
But I don't think that's really the issue. When people reach for some higher authority to justify themselves, often it's because they can't come up with their own reason. Why should gun laws be so liberal? 'Because I want to use guns' isn't convincing, though it's the truth for many. 'Because the Constitution says so' (akin to the old, 'because the Bible says so') is more powerful.
Again, I'm not against gun ownership, but I think these arguments are weak.
gun rights arguments are rationalizations for people to follow their most base instincts, hatred and violence, without responsibility toward the people and society around them. They aren't serious ideas but more a demonstration of political aggression, to threaten anyone how disagrees.
Here on Earth human beings are animals. Society is created and maintained through violence, and there will always be someone pointing a gun at you, if only the political elite. Guns are as much a promise of peace as a threat of aggression.
You're justifying people turning to hatred and violence, and away from their greater responsibilities? Is that something you support?
I think your depiction of society is false. Societies are people interacting based on a variety of motivations, from altruism to enlightened self-interest to short-sighted greed; probably every person experiences all of them. Humans are naturally social and naturally want to further their communities. How do you explain all the good works and self-sacrifice in our society? In an ironic example, how do you explain police and soldiers, who take great risks for our society and gain very little personally?
The society you describe may exist in Mogidishu, but the great majority of humanity goes about their days without it. Violence is a necessary part of society, but only on rare situations. To explode that into the basis and operational means of our society is ridiculous.
(If people are so violent and selfish, how and why did the political elite write the Constitution in the first place?)
you can go to hell if you think you can dictate what i can and cant do in order to prevent it
That's insight and deep thinking for you. Consider this: Can I dictate that you can't shoot someone on the street because you think he's threatening? That you can't use hand grenades?
The 'go to hell' comment is what I mean by political aggression. It's an attempt to intimidate anyone who would challenge your ideas. Almost like firing a political gun, I suppose ... Well, welcome to democracy and society, where people can act and think in ways you don't like (and who made you God and your opinions godlike, that your dissenters are damned?) without going to hell.
I definitely agree; not only does our society not really help people in poverty, it instead sets up social programs that do more harm than good. But contrary to what you say, they don't even keep people from dying of hunger in the streets: lots of homeless people die every year in the streets in America, while society, instead of trying to fix this problem, instead tries reorienting public benches to make them stop panhandling and go away. But while these people are dying of exposure, other people collect welfare checks and sit at home watching TV because they've figured out how to work the system.
There is no way your laser pointer spot is 4-8mm wide at a range of three miles.
\frac{\lambda z}{d}
Plug in the numbers, it's several meters in diameter and probably closer to around 10 m since it isn't diffraction limited.
I wouldn't be too hard on the ones collecting the check and watching TV. The screwy tricks and traps teach them to do that. If they do more, they end up with much less and they end up on the streets with their kids.
But yes, you are correct that we don't even manage to prevent people from dieing of poverty in the streets. Much of the effort there is expended on making sure they die out of sight and get cleared away before too many people see the corpse.
Please don't speak about Europe. Racists have been held on a pretty short leash the last 30 years here. Neo nazis are a sad small group living in the margin that have no voice. We have BIG integration problems and the problem are the immigrants that are unwilling to integrate. We have Turks that are basically extreme nationalists in someone else's country. They form a subculture, they do however tend to stay out of crime, get reasonable education and the second generation does speak the language. You have Moroccans which are a very troubled people (second and third generation, in netherlands belgium and france), they have no respect for the country they live in and are poor on education, high on crime. They cope with a heavy identity crisis and have not many good rolemodels, unlike the Turkish there is no family bond to keep youngsters in check. These people also are in very low standing with the original population(including me, I couldn't care less about the alliancyless bastards) . Since the 90's we've got a whole new batch of fugetives from several African countries which will give us many problems in te coming decades for integration of thes large subgroups is a slow and painful process.
The mass immigration in europe is something very different from the assimilation of ex-slaves.
Ps you're liberal prick :P
They are not my ideas, they are the very foundation of our country. Try reading them sometime. Don't like the rules here, get the hell out of my country. ( as if you don't agree with the constitution, its not your country and you don't deserve to be here )
( yes. I'm making the assumption that you are an American. If you aren't, then take your socialist ideals and shove them.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'd posit that calling the second amendment "vague" falls into the area of rationalizing a personal ideal as well. Otherwise, you have a solid point. ;)
Pointing a gun at a criminal greatly increases your chance of getting shot; the mentally unstable (either natural or drug-assisted) may freak out and shoot.
So shoot first and aim for the head with your shotgun. When the police arrive, show them the forced entry evidence and explain that you shot the home invader in self defense. It's your word against a headless corpse with evidence of forced entry. After all, almost nobody questions the right of an honest citizen to shoot first and ask questions later when a home invader crashes through a window or breaks down the door.
Both the racist and some (not all) of the gun rights arguments are rationalizations for people to follow their most base instincts, hatred and violence, without responsibility toward the people and society around them.
In some cases the rights of individuals trump the common good. I will not submit myself to be disarmed because you live in fear of criminals. If you want to cower in fear of criminals and guns then do it without involving me. What's next? Should we ban cars because lots of people, including pedestrians, die in automobile crashes every year? Give me a break.
They aren't serious ideas but more a demonstration of political aggression, to threaten anyone how disagrees. And they have a history of backing up those threats with violence.
Disagreement is fine, but your right to disagree verbally does not give you the right to deprive law abiding citizens of a reasonable and effective means of defense which necessarily includes firearms. The police cannot be everywhere all of the time and the courts have ruled time and again that the police, and by extension the state, cannot be held liable for failing to protect any individual citizen with whom they did not have a specific prior agreement (i.e. witness protection). It falls then to individual citizens to protect themselves because the police are mostly not available to do that for us during the split second that we have to act. They arrive after the crime has already occurred to collect the bodies and photograph the crime scene, not to protect those who are already dead. I don't care that the police "get their man" if I'm already dead, so I prefer to have the opportunity, like Han Solo, to shoot first in defense of my life and my home. Personally, I don't think that's unreasonable or too much to ask.
It's very unlikely that you'll ever be in a situation where you need police in seconds to save you from serious harm, where having a gun will help you, and where you will use it successfully.
And yet there are many factual cases of people successfully defending their homes, lives and loved ones because they had access guns when they needed them and knew how to use them. Every law abiding citizen, once they reach the age of majority, has the right to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to exercise their individual 2nd amendment rights.
It's arguably more likely that you will misuse a gun.
Society doesn't ban things merely because somebody might possibly misuse them. If we did that, we would be living in a kindergarten play room full of Fischer Price toys getting nothing useful done. If a responsible and law abiding citizen wishes to own a gun, for whatever reason, he or she is entitled to do so until actions demonstrate otherwise. Here in America we judge people based upon what they do, not what they might do.
They are not my ideas, they are the very foundation of our country. Try reading them sometime. Don't like the rules here, get the hell out of my country. ( as if you don't agree with the constitution, its not your country and you don't deserve to be here )
Ha. I'm not sure if you're a troll, but just for the heck of it:
Yes, I'm a proud American. The foundation of the society is that we decide things democratically. Everyone likes to think their ideas are privileged for one reason or another, just like you do, and everyone gets as many votes as you get.
I note you didn't answer my question, you just responded with more threats and intimidation. It must be hard to live in a democracy if you can't respond better to disagreements. Tough luck.
There must already BE a solution to this from the DoD, or we'd have simply equipped all of our infantry with green laser pointers to make any enemy ground-attack by aircraft impossible, especially considering that a ground-attack track would be directly at the user, making the targeting of the pilot's eye that much simpler.
Seeing that we haven't done so suggests that there's some sort of glass coating or visor coating that pretty much prevents it.
-Styopa
Aren't you the same person who, below, said he's above the law, called me a coward, and whose solution to high-risk difficult situations is to talk like John Wayne and recklessly shoot people (bragging about literally shooting someone's head off). It seems you can't tell the difference between action scenes in movies and reality.
Why should I take seriously anything you say? With your judgement, I really hope you don't have a firearm.
Ah, you're going to blow their heads off, I'm a coward, and you're going to break the law. Yet we should take seriously your ideas and judgement about life-and-death issues?
I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that it could be a "career-ender" for everyone on the plane.
at 532 and 650 nm installed on sunglasses for one of the pilots. Problem solved.
Obviously this behaviour is unsafe, and not to be condoned; but we must remember that many people have suffered years of noise nuisance from overflights. Indeed in some areas constant overflight by police helicopters is a deliberate method of harrassment used against suspects.
If an amateur astronomer can get a clear photograph of the space station, an object with an angular diameter of about 50 arc seconds which traverses several hundred arc seconds per second, I think someone in direct line with a helicopter or aircraft on approach to an airport would have little trouble, especially since beam spread on cheap laser pointers is pretty terrible and since windows are thick (as you mentioned) even a tight beam would create a largish bright spot in front of the pilot.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090116.html
http://www.liquida.com/blog-news/15450896/solar-eclipse-oman-thierry-legault/
We can't count in physics or geometry or thick (though transparent) windows to protect pilots from stupid people with laser pointers and I don't think we can retroactively remove all of these cheap devices from stupid people. There are, however some possible solutions:
- laser profiling: Spectrum, beam stability, polarization and other characteristics of lasers can be characterized and traced to device.
- laser id, registry and profiling: All new pointer lasers would emit pulses representing its ID pattern every 100ms. When a person buys a laser, their identity is entered into a database along with the laser's pattern code.
- Dichroic filters on pilots glasses (this is a cheap, easy and highly effective solution which could be available right now)
- Dichroic filters on aircraft windshield (expensive but it would work)
- Darwin's laser (Lower the cost of high powered excimer lasers, give away burning infrared CO2 lasers at monster truck events and wrestling matches. Let Darwin do the rest)
- Please do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"Those risks increase with night vision goggles, which the deputies were wearing Saturday."
What?! Collier county sheriffs should turn down the brightness of their night vision goggles. They're supposed to magnify dim starlight and moonlight into the visible range, they aren't supposed to be able to amplify a laser into something brighter than a laser!
Aren't you the same person who, below, said he's above the law, called me a coward, and whose solution to high-risk difficult situations is to talk like John Wayne and recklessly shoot people (bragging about literally shooting someone's head off). It seems you can't tell the difference between action scenes in movies and reality.
I didn't call you any of those things, I merely pointed out that if I choose to own a firearm and use it in defense of my own home, which is perfectly permissible under the law, that's nobodys' business but my own.
Why should I take seriously anything you say? With your judgement, I really hope you don't have a firearm.
With my judgment? You don't even know me. Are you one of those types who always sits in judgment of others? Perhaps you believe that you know what's best for everyone, including people you don't know and haven't met. I suppose it'd be best if I didn't mention that I do indeed own several firearms, after all, I wouldn't want to ruin your day...
Perhaps it would be constructive to ask why it bothers you so much that some people own guns and might use them under appropriate circumstances to defend their lives and property? Maybe I'm assuming something that isn't true in your case, but when people argue that gun ownership is not permissible they often follow that up by advocating for the confiscation of all guns in private ownership or some intermediate step towards that goal. Is it not possible, in your opinion, to possess a firearm without being a violent racist?
I didn't call you any of those things
Ah, you were referring to a different reply. Yes, I should have chosen my words more carefully and I apologize.
IMHO, that shows character. Thanks. I'm not offended, I'm just not willing to spend my time discussing things on that level.
Perhaps it would be constructive to ask why it bothers you so much that some people own guns and might use them under appropriate circumstances to defend their lives and property? Maybe I'm assuming something that isn't true in your case, but when people argue that gun ownership is not permissible they often follow that up by advocating for the confiscation of all guns in private ownership or some intermediate step towards that goal. Is it not possible, in your opinion, to possess a firearm without being a violent racist?
(I appreciate your comments in your other post; thanks.)
Yeah, assuming isn't such a good idea. I support gun ownership -- I'd strongly object if they were banned -- and I support people using them appropriately. Guns are obviously dangerous and like most dangerous things they should be regulated; their distribution controlled, licensing required, etc. Without knowing much about it, I'd probably consider banning weapons unnecessary for self-defense or hunting (e.g., assault weapons, large clips, automatic weapons, etc.), restricting distribution to stringently licensed sellers (including serious penalties for violating distribution rules), and make licensing and training owners much more stringent. Buying and owning one should be a serious matter.
But given the right to own one, is it a good idea? My judgement is that for the vast majority, it's so unlikely that they'll ever use the gun appropriately that mistakes are a bigger threat than attackers; i.e., on average the gun does much more harm than good. Appropriate use requires all of the following: A significant threat to life, limb, or arguably property; the owner's presence; the gun's presence; the police unavailable; shooting and risking killing someone is the best option (!); the opportunity to use the gun (maybe the attacker sees you first); the owner assesses the situation correctly (tired? drunk? bad mood? just not too bright? almost certainly terrified?); and they use it effectively (e.g., without getting shot first, without missing, without shooting the wrong person, etc.). How many times will that happen in your life? It almost certainly won't. An error (a kids steals it, an attacker steals it, the owner shoots their drunk neighbor, the owner is drunk and misjudges, someone uses it for suicide, etc.), is much more likely than appropriate use; it's a tragic mistake waiting to happen. I'll probably never own a gun and never miss it, just like I fly on planes without a parachute. Now your judgement may differ and that's fine -- buy a gun, but absolutely be sure to prevent those errors -- but my point is that the self-defense argument isn't cut and dried at all.
Certainly few gun owners are racist or violent; I have friends who are part of that silent, mature, and vast majority of gun owners. But the racist and violent ones sure like to rant on the Internet, and that's what I object to.
My post was an argument against the violence, irresponsibility, racism, and intimidation that permeate the debate (and the post I responded to). I'm well aware that it's trendy to get online and blow your top and I think it's very destructive to our society -- it prevents real discussion and creates a society that's permissive of hatred and violence. To let it go unchallenged creates the appearance of silent approval; I'm not willing to be permissive about it.
Countries need to keep to themselves and stop trying to establish empires. It never turns out well; just look at the history of Rome.
Rome stood over a thousand years. Over two if you count the Byzantines as Romans. Which non-expansionist countries would you say "turned out well" in comparison, by, for example, lasting longer?
I mean don't they all wear them all the time?