"I interpret that as meaning that the militia is the non-standing part of the army, ie, people called up on short notice to support the government, maintain the peace, defend against bad guys."
The difference is in the phrasing "well-regulated".
By definition, the general populace is not "well-regulated". Otherwise, it would not have been necessary in Section 8 to say "To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia..."
There is a difference between "the general militia" which in other historical documents is described as "every able-bodied man between 14 and 50...", and a "well-regulated" or "disciplined" militia. It was a standing army that so terrified the founders, which is WHY they defined the general militia to be just about everybody.
"I think the real reason for the "militia" was that there were some writers opposed to gun rights and they managed to mangle the wording of the 2nd amendment so it did not say anything clearly."
That, too, is a "common argument". And yet those who make it consistently fail to point out anywhere else in the Constitution that the Founders "garbled" their words.
The interpretation I gave is historically accurate. "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state..." (a well-regulated army is necessary for the defense of the country) "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." [emphasis mine]
Remember that they had just fought off the army belonging to their own government in order to win their freedom. There is no way in Hell they were going to turn right around and say "We have to establish a Government army and give it all our weapons in order to remain free." The very idea makes no sense.
"The people" appears elsewhere in the Constitution, too. And IN EVERY CASE where it appears, it clearly means you and me, Jane and Joe Public.
Nowhere in the Constitution did they use phrasing that means one thing in one place and something else in another. It is a very consistent piece of work.
"What I meant was that "the militia" are the people most likely to lead the revolt against an oppressive government, according to the most common argument for why the 2nd amendment is worded the way it is."
Yes, that's a valid point. The problem is that "the common argument" is often not a scholarly argument as a result of research. "The common argument" is... well... common. It generally comes from people listening to propaganda on one side or the other, rather than actually picking up a good (well-researched) history book.
I'm not pointing fingers at anybody in particular; this is true of a great many issues. Often the things you hear and see on the news and in the press has little to do with actual history, and is far more related to somebody's political agenda. I wish it were otherwise.
As someone else mentioned in this thread: look up The Battle of Athens. The one in the U.S. in 1946, not the others (Wikipedia lists at least 4 events called "Battle of Athens".)
Ex-GIs did exactly what I was talking about: fighting a government and police that had become corrupt and out of control. If this were to happen on a larger scale, which side do you think most of our military would be on? The side of their own People, or the side of a tyrannical government? Based on your own comment, it appears that YOU would be on the side of the government. That puts you in a minority. (It would also violate your oath to uphold the Constitution.)
And no, it would not take a sudden overthrow. It would only take more of what Obama and friends have provably been doing. Haven't you been reading the news?
"Except that "those people" they are pushing around would be those who are already against the government."
That's STILL a flaw in your logic. Because, see... genuine treason is disloyalty to your country and your people, not disobedience toward your government.
Forgetting exactly that was what led people to bring Hitler to power. And no, that is not a joke or an example of Godwin's Law. It is a simple historical fact.
A large part of the German population felt that patriotism meant loyalty and obedience to Government, not to the people and to the rule of law.
"You are picturing a sudden overthrow of government or declaration of dictatorship. You should be picturing a gradual build up of abuse of power. A slowly boiling frog, and you are already in the pot being trained to tolerate heat."
I am picturing nothing of the kind. I am picturing an increase (gradually OR sudden) of the kind of government we've been actually seeing under Obama.
This was my thought as well. Those projectiles are far too massive for what he's trying to do.
While I haven't done any calculations, it seems to me that a projectile a fraction of that size would be accelerated far better and thus have far greater muzzle energy.
TFA claims it has 3% the muzzle energy of a.22, but it would appear to weigh 10x or more what a.22 slug weighs. Making it smaller and increasing its velocity could massively increase that energy. (If, just VERY rough figuring, you made it 1/5 the weight, it should achieve far more than 5x the muzzle velocity, which could give it (depending on the actual numbers) 10x the energy, bringing it into a range that is halfway respectable.
I could be wrong about this, but if I remember correctly, elephants can remember other elephants and humans for longer than 20 years. So I don't think this is "the longest recorded..." anything.
""Part of the argument is protecting lame user Joe who doesn't know his passwords can be accessed in such a fashion right if he's asked the browser to save them for him. Well how is he to know, if never prompted by firefox, that this is the case and if he is storing passwords he has the option to protect them with a master password?
Yes, it does. You are prompted to enter a master password to be able to access your other passwords. You have to actively check a box to tell it to stop asking you.
"Well, I was going to ask about this, but thanks for the comment. I make a policy of always typing my passwords rather than letting software save it, so that I am forced to learn my own password, but even if I didn't, this would make me delete the data from my system entirely."
You are probably trading one kind of security problem for another one that is arguably worse.
If you are very active on the Web, as I am, there is no way you would remember all your passwords *IF* they are sufficiently different for each site and service. Therefore, you use one password for many sites and services. This is a security problem, and arguably it is worse than one involving physical access to your computer.
If you aren't using a "common" computer (say, in an office somewhere), then physical access to your machine is likely to be far more secure than the SUM OF the security on all the sites for which you use a single password. Vulnerabilities (and mis-management) of those sites are likely to give up one or more of your passwords, which can then be used to access other common sites. It happens all the time.
But how many people are stealing passwords by physically sitting at your computer? Probably not very many.
1) You might need to sign in from a different browser someday, and if you don't know your password, you are stuck.
That argument is not even remotely valid.
If you don't let the browser remember passwords, then you have to keep track of your passwords in some other manner. This is a given. If you use a different browser, then you also have to use a different manner to keep track of your passwords. Again, this is a given.
But putting those things together is NOT a valid argument against letting the browser remember your passwords. Logically (if we ignore your other points), you would gain far more efficiency and convenience by letting your browser remember the passwords AND keeping track of your passwords in another manner.
Your other arguments may be valid, but (1) is not.
"I know it has been discussed many times to password lock access to stored passwords, though because browsers are not user-specific, this has not been done. "
Simply not true. If you have a user account on the machine, then you have a "profile" in Firefox. It's YOUR profile, not accessible to anyone else but an administrator.
If you CHOOSE to install and run Firefox in a system-wide ("administrator") manner, that's your choice. But it isn't a flaw in Firefox.
"They are going to be modifying web pages with this popup crap? They will be actively scanning every page I go to to see if there is a link to something on some master lists somewhere, modify every HTML page I download to include some sort of script to create a pop-up?"
There's no way they could do this even a little bit reliably without breaking the law themselves. Which means: either it's going to be notoriously unreliable, or they'll be breaking the law.
It wouldn't be the first time. Remember when Comcast got in trouble for breaking BitTorrent traffic, with spoofed NAKs or whatever that was?
Also, since you seem to be American, I'll remind you that the phrase "well-regulated militia" implies that there's actual training involved.
It DOES mean training is involved. That's what "well-regulated" means. However, not being the historian that I am, you don't seem to understand what the Second Amendment actually says.
The Founders were terrified of the necessity to have a standing army ("well-regulated militia"), that being THE SINGLE BIGGEST THREAT TO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT, as their recent experiences taught them very plainly (as well as history... they were no dummies).
What the Second Amendment says, in Modern English, is this: "Because we have to have an army ("sell-regulated militia") to defend the country, we are going to let THE PEOPLE be armed, to protect us from that army".
And yes, that IS what it means, despite all the rhetoric from left-wing gun-controllers. It's a historical fact.
"A very large majority of the population is, by and large, satisfied with the job the government is doing, and while they may disagree with the party currently holding the power, they do not believe that armed resistance is necessary."
See... there's just this LITTLE flaw in your logic here...
Maybe lots (not a "majority"... read the recent polls) of people are not too dissatisfied with government right now (not the same as "satisfied" at all... again read the polls). BUT... IF there were military in the streets shoving those people around, you can bet your ass that would change in a heartbeat.
There are 100 people in this country for every military man, and there is a gun for each one of them. PLUS, you can also bet that most of the military would NOT be out there trying to fight their own people for some tyrannical President. So the odds just get worse from there.
No, the U.S. military would not have a snowball's chance in Hell against its own citizens. Count on it.
"Current law bans marijuana which is easily grown yourself, and while I pretty strongly disagree with said law I wouldn't go nearly so far as to decry it as Orwellian."
Why not? According to the historical record, Federal marijuana laws were first put in place as an attempt to control the "uppity" hispanic and black populations, who were, at the time, the vast majority of marijuana users. For that reason, making marijuana illegal gave authorities an easy excuse to harass and arrest blacks and hispanics. Thus the government-sponsored films "Reefer Madness" and "Assassin of Youth", which were two films intended to pound into peoples' heads that good worthy white folks should not use marijuana.
"Not really. Few animals (humans included) want things to get more violent than they need to be, for obvious reasons, and a criminal has no particular desire to carry a gun unless he thinks he'll otherwise be confronted by someone with a larger weapon."
While this might be all good philosophically, one thing we *know* is that it doesn't work in the U.S.
While no cause-effect relationship has been firmly established, correlations are clear: the areas of the U.S. with the strictest control of firearms are consistently the areas with the highest gun crime (including murder). And this is not just over 1 or 2 years, but over the many decades that the government (not some hack on one side or the other) has been keeping statistics on it.
And that also holds for changes: in areas where the firearms laws were made stricter, firearms crime went up. In areas where the restrictions were relaxed, firearm crime went down. There have been a few minor exceptions here and there over the decades, but that is all they have been: rare exceptions.
But I should also throw in: this is not unique to the US. After the last "big" firearms ban in the UK (and this is according to UK government published statistics), firearm crime went WAY UP and stayed way up for something like 8 years, before it began to settle back down again. And that later downturn in crime cannot be responsibly attributed to the gun laws, because crime in most of the other "modern, western" nations was going down also... including in the U.S., where gun ownership went up over that period.
So don't misunderstand me: what you say may have some merit. But the hard numbers don't lie. Firearms restrictions in the US do not deter crime.
"With that said, the post titles were 'patented blanks' so obviously we're not talking about generic schlage or kwikset keys you can get at home depot. "
I repeat: the thread I was responding to (comment #1 I mentioned above) WAS very obviously talking about exactly that.
I had thought YOUR comment was also in that context. So part of the mixing-context blame might lie with me. But given that those earlier comments (1 & 2) were the context my comment was meant in, I still don't see where I wrote anything that was incorrect.
I am willing to chalk it up to a misunderstanding. But that's as far as I will go.
Correction: I mistyped. My comment was in the context of "IF you could obtain a controlled blank" (I didn't say it was easy), AND that you could cut the key with a milling machine.
What it did not say, though, was that you really don't need a blank. If you have a milling machine you don't NEED a blank; you can just build the whole thing from scratch (as I stated in the comment above).
"Yeah, you strongly implied someone was a moron for claiming that DND keys were hard to copy because by god you did it once"
Not even close. Someone said, quote:
"Before the printing game this worked 100%..."
And my reply was: nonsense, no it didn't. Because... it is nonsense, and no, it didn't. I didn't say or even imply anybody was a "moron". I simply stated that sentence was untrue. Because it is untrue.
It was nowhere near 100%. It is rather easy to do, *IF* (as I clearly stated before) you can get the right key blanks. And if you can't get the right ones, it is often not hard to modify another similar blank to fit. And I didn't just "do it once". I did it many times. But why and where are a discussion for another day.
"The only problem is that everyone else in the thread was talking about hard to obtain, source restricted blanks"
No, they weren't. Let's follow the ACTUAL thread I was replying to, eh?
1 I have duplicated dozens of keys with that admonition on it. Not a single refusal from locksmiths, Home Depot staff, etc.
2 what the lock companies do is they patent the blanks.
that's why lock companies come up with a new scheme every so often. and to buy those blanks you need to sign a contract that you wont copy without permission of the lock owner.. which is hard to check anyways.
Note: this practice has been used for decades. And it HAS NOT resulted in "strictly controlled" key blanks, for the reasons I mentioned. True, keys like the ones OP discussed have been hard to obtain, but (again according to comment #1 above) those ARE NOT the ones under discussion here. Certainly not the ones I was discussing.
If that's what YOU meant, when you said "Before the printing game this worked 100%", you would still be wrong. Because those keys can be AND HAVE BEEN made on milling machines. There is no "100%" about it. Your statement was simply wrong. No 2 ways about it.
But back to MY comments: I was not discussing the kinds of keys in OP's post. I was responding to the context brought up by comments #1 and #2 only.
"Now you feel kinda silly, and have digressed to belittling peoples education and intelligence."
I don't feel silly at all, and I belittled nobody. You misunderstood me, plain and simple. Stop pointing fingers, and accept that YOU could be wrong. And here's a great example:
"The only thing the specific "high security" keys OP wrote about brought to the table is the difficulty of cutting a copy"
"It is not true, the Primus blanks are source controlled. At least admit to yourself that you were wrong, and move on."
It IS true, and you took that out of context. Here is the WHOLE statement:
"The only thing the specific "high security" keys OP wrote about brought to the table is the difficulty of cutting a copy. You aren't going to do it by hand with a file in a short period of time. But *IF* you had a blank, you could cut it with a milling machine or a drill press with a cutting head without too much trouble."
My comment was CLEARLY in the context of cutting one with a milling machine, NOT in the context of obtaining "controlled" blanks.
"It's amazingly arrogant to suggest that simply because nobody has yet achieved immortality, you will? Interesting."
That isn't even close to anything I actually wrote. I understand what you are saying, but is (A) not even slightly relevant to my own comment it was apparently supposed to be in reply to, and (B) a pretty long and thin stretch from anything I was really discussing.
"You're the kind of person who won't take any amount of evidence as fact. You'll continue to handwave and hem and haw no matter how stacked the facts are against you, because you're one of those hopelessly optimistic types that actually thinks the universe gives a fuck what happens to you."
Your unjustified comments about my character (A) don't follow from the actual evidence, (B) are incorrect, and (C) are unnecessarily and rather rudely insulting. My own comments have only been about your comments. You, on the other hand, are getting personally insulting. I see no need to further put up with this kind of garbage.
"The Pee Wee Herman defense. Interesting. You're not just arrogant, stupid, and incapable of critical thinking, you're actively hostile to anyone who isn't."
It wasn't "a defense", at all. It was a bit of satire about your own comment. And again, you get unnecessarily personal. Those aren't comments about my comments, rather they are personal disparagements.
Did nobody ever teach you how to engage in a logical, factual discussion? Hint: that ain't it.
In any case, I see it is pointless to continue this. I had no idea that merely saying your posts have tended to be pessimistic would lead to childish personal attacks. Defensive a bit, are we?
"No, you talked shit about how easy a hard thing was, and only later realized that you are full of shit."
Bullshit. Anybody with a high school education can read my words and see what I actually said. And it wasn't that.
"Cutting a copy of a regular key that has an easy to obtain blank (and in fact nobody gives a crap why you did it) is nothing compared to copying a key on a manufacturer controlled blank that also has a security gimmick feature."
No shit, Sherlock. Nowhere did I say anything that disagrees with that. Go back and read it again, or maybe get some lessons in reading comprehension.
I used to work as a locksmith and passed the certification exams. Have you done the same?
"Well, 40-year low is possibly a bit misleading if you intend to imply there's a downward trend. "
Well, first, I corrected this to 30 years. And second, I wasn't suggesting a downward trend, but a persistent dip in ACE for a number of years. It is my understanding that it has actually been up a bit, on average, over the last few years but that we are still at a relatively low spot in the long-term record.
Slashdot Mirror
"I interpret that as meaning that the militia is the non-standing part of the army, ie, people called up on short notice to support the government, maintain the peace, defend against bad guys."
The difference is in the phrasing "well-regulated".
By definition, the general populace is not "well-regulated". Otherwise, it would not have been necessary in Section 8 to say "To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia..."
There is a difference between "the general militia" which in other historical documents is described as "every able-bodied man between 14 and 50...", and a "well-regulated" or "disciplined" militia. It was a standing army that so terrified the founders, which is WHY they defined the general militia to be just about everybody.
"I think the real reason for the "militia" was that there were some writers opposed to gun rights and they managed to mangle the wording of the 2nd amendment so it did not say anything clearly."
That, too, is a "common argument". And yet those who make it consistently fail to point out anywhere else in the Constitution that the Founders "garbled" their words.
The interpretation I gave is historically accurate. "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state..." (a well-regulated army is necessary for the defense of the country) "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." [emphasis mine]
Remember that they had just fought off the army belonging to their own government in order to win their freedom. There is no way in Hell they were going to turn right around and say "We have to establish a Government army and give it all our weapons in order to remain free." The very idea makes no sense.
"The people" appears elsewhere in the Constitution, too. And IN EVERY CASE where it appears, it clearly means you and me, Jane and Joe Public.
Nowhere in the Constitution did they use phrasing that means one thing in one place and something else in another. It is a very consistent piece of work.
"What I meant was that "the militia" are the people most likely to lead the revolt against an oppressive government, according to the most common argument for why the 2nd amendment is worded the way it is."
Yes, that's a valid point. The problem is that "the common argument" is often not a scholarly argument as a result of research. "The common argument" is... well... common. It generally comes from people listening to propaganda on one side or the other, rather than actually picking up a good (well-researched) history book.
I'm not pointing fingers at anybody in particular; this is true of a great many issues. Often the things you hear and see on the news and in the press has little to do with actual history, and is far more related to somebody's political agenda. I wish it were otherwise.
As someone else mentioned in this thread: look up The Battle of Athens. The one in the U.S. in 1946, not the others (Wikipedia lists at least 4 events called "Battle of Athens".)
Ex-GIs did exactly what I was talking about: fighting a government and police that had become corrupt and out of control. If this were to happen on a larger scale, which side do you think most of our military would be on? The side of their own People, or the side of a tyrannical government? Based on your own comment, it appears that YOU would be on the side of the government. That puts you in a minority. (It would also violate your oath to uphold the Constitution.)
And no, it would not take a sudden overthrow. It would only take more of what Obama and friends have provably been doing. Haven't you been reading the news?
"Except that "those people" they are pushing around would be those who are already against the government."
That's STILL a flaw in your logic. Because, see... genuine treason is disloyalty to your country and your people, not disobedience toward your government.
Forgetting exactly that was what led people to bring Hitler to power. And no, that is not a joke or an example of Godwin's Law. It is a simple historical fact.
A large part of the German population felt that patriotism meant loyalty and obedience to Government, not to the people and to the rule of law.
"You are picturing a sudden overthrow of government or declaration of dictatorship. You should be picturing a gradual build up of abuse of power. A slowly boiling frog, and you are already in the pot being trained to tolerate heat."
I am picturing nothing of the kind. I am picturing an increase (gradually OR sudden) of the kind of government we've been actually seeing under Obama.
This was my thought as well. Those projectiles are far too massive for what he's trying to do.
.22, but it would appear to weigh 10x or more what a .22 slug weighs. Making it smaller and increasing its velocity could massively increase that energy. (If, just VERY rough figuring, you made it 1/5 the weight, it should achieve far more than 5x the muzzle velocity, which could give it (depending on the actual numbers) 10x the energy, bringing it into a range that is halfway respectable.
While I haven't done any calculations, it seems to me that a projectile a fraction of that size would be accelerated far better and thus have far greater muzzle energy.
TFA claims it has 3% the muzzle energy of a
I could be wrong about this, but if I remember correctly, elephants can remember other elephants and humans for longer than 20 years. So I don't think this is "the longest recorded..." anything.
""Part of the argument is protecting lame user Joe who doesn't know his passwords can be accessed in such a fashion right if he's asked the browser to save them for him. Well how is he to know, if never prompted by firefox, that this is the case and if he is storing passwords he has the option to protect them with a master password?
Yes, it does. You are prompted to enter a master password to be able to access your other passwords. You have to actively check a box to tell it to stop asking you.
"Well, I was going to ask about this, but thanks for the comment. I make a policy of always typing my passwords rather than letting software save it, so that I am forced to learn my own password, but even if I didn't, this would make me delete the data from my system entirely."
You are probably trading one kind of security problem for another one that is arguably worse.
If you are very active on the Web, as I am, there is no way you would remember all your passwords *IF* they are sufficiently different for each site and service. Therefore, you use one password for many sites and services. This is a security problem, and arguably it is worse than one involving physical access to your computer.
If you aren't using a "common" computer (say, in an office somewhere), then physical access to your machine is likely to be far more secure than the SUM OF the security on all the sites for which you use a single password. Vulnerabilities (and mis-management) of those sites are likely to give up one or more of your passwords, which can then be used to access other common sites. It happens all the time.
But how many people are stealing passwords by physically sitting at your computer? Probably not very many.
1) You might need to sign in from a different browser someday, and if you don't know your password, you are stuck.
That argument is not even remotely valid.
If you don't let the browser remember passwords, then you have to keep track of your passwords in some other manner. This is a given. If you use a different browser, then you also have to use a different manner to keep track of your passwords. Again, this is a given.
But putting those things together is NOT a valid argument against letting the browser remember your passwords. Logically (if we ignore your other points), you would gain far more efficiency and convenience by letting your browser remember the passwords AND keeping track of your passwords in another manner.
Your other arguments may be valid, but (1) is not.
"I know it has been discussed many times to password lock access to stored passwords, though because browsers are not user-specific, this has not been done. "
Simply not true. If you have a user account on the machine, then you have a "profile" in Firefox. It's YOUR profile, not accessible to anyone else but an administrator.
If you CHOOSE to install and run Firefox in a system-wide ("administrator") manner, that's your choice. But it isn't a flaw in Firefox.
"They are going to be modifying web pages with this popup crap? They will be actively scanning every page I go to to see if there is a link to something on some master lists somewhere, modify every HTML page I download to include some sort of script to create a pop-up?"
There's no way they could do this even a little bit reliably without breaking the law themselves. Which means: either it's going to be notoriously unreliable, or they'll be breaking the law.
It wouldn't be the first time. Remember when Comcast got in trouble for breaking BitTorrent traffic, with spoofed NAKs or whatever that was?
s/sell/well
Bit of a Freudian slip there. You're welcome, Halliburton.
Also, since you seem to be American, I'll remind you that the phrase "well-regulated militia" implies that there's actual training involved.
It DOES mean training is involved. That's what "well-regulated" means. However, not being the historian that I am, you don't seem to understand what the Second Amendment actually says.
The Founders were terrified of the necessity to have a standing army ("well-regulated militia"), that being THE SINGLE BIGGEST THREAT TO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT, as their recent experiences taught them very plainly (as well as history... they were no dummies).
What the Second Amendment says, in Modern English, is this: "Because we have to have an army ("sell-regulated militia") to defend the country, we are going to let THE PEOPLE be armed, to protect us from that army".
And yes, that IS what it means, despite all the rhetoric from left-wing gun-controllers. It's a historical fact.
"A very large majority of the population is, by and large, satisfied with the job the government is doing, and while they may disagree with the party currently holding the power, they do not believe that armed resistance is necessary."
See... there's just this LITTLE flaw in your logic here...
Maybe lots (not a "majority"... read the recent polls) of people are not too dissatisfied with government right now (not the same as "satisfied" at all... again read the polls). BUT... IF there were military in the streets shoving those people around, you can bet your ass that would change in a heartbeat.
There are 100 people in this country for every military man, and there is a gun for each one of them. PLUS, you can also bet that most of the military would NOT be out there trying to fight their own people for some tyrannical President. So the odds just get worse from there.
No, the U.S. military would not have a snowball's chance in Hell against its own citizens. Count on it.
"Using..."
I think I'm liking this Guinness person. Maybe we should name a beer after him. But what's a "beaumont"?
"Current law bans marijuana which is easily grown yourself, and while I pretty strongly disagree with said law I wouldn't go nearly so far as to decry it as Orwellian."
Why not? According to the historical record, Federal marijuana laws were first put in place as an attempt to control the "uppity" hispanic and black populations, who were, at the time, the vast majority of marijuana users. For that reason, making marijuana illegal gave authorities an easy excuse to harass and arrest blacks and hispanics. Thus the government-sponsored films "Reefer Madness" and "Assassin of Youth", which were two films intended to pound into peoples' heads that good worthy white folks should not use marijuana.
If that ain't Orwellian, I don't know what is.
"Not really. Few animals (humans included) want things to get more violent than they need to be, for obvious reasons, and a criminal has no particular desire to carry a gun unless he thinks he'll otherwise be confronted by someone with a larger weapon."
While this might be all good philosophically, one thing we *know* is that it doesn't work in the U.S.
While no cause-effect relationship has been firmly established, correlations are clear: the areas of the U.S. with the strictest control of firearms are consistently the areas with the highest gun crime (including murder). And this is not just over 1 or 2 years, but over the many decades that the government (not some hack on one side or the other) has been keeping statistics on it.
And that also holds for changes: in areas where the firearms laws were made stricter, firearms crime went up. In areas where the restrictions were relaxed, firearm crime went down. There have been a few minor exceptions here and there over the decades, but that is all they have been: rare exceptions.
But I should also throw in: this is not unique to the US. After the last "big" firearms ban in the UK (and this is according to UK government published statistics), firearm crime went WAY UP and stayed way up for something like 8 years, before it began to settle back down again. And that later downturn in crime cannot be responsibly attributed to the gun laws, because crime in most of the other "modern, western" nations was going down also... including in the U.S., where gun ownership went up over that period.
So don't misunderstand me: what you say may have some merit. But the hard numbers don't lie. Firearms restrictions in the US do not deter crime.
"With that said, the post titles were 'patented blanks' so obviously we're not talking about generic schlage or kwikset keys you can get at home depot. "
I repeat: the thread I was responding to (comment #1 I mentioned above) WAS very obviously talking about exactly that.
I had thought YOUR comment was also in that context. So part of the mixing-context blame might lie with me. But given that those earlier comments (1 & 2) were the context my comment was meant in, I still don't see where I wrote anything that was incorrect.
I am willing to chalk it up to a misunderstanding. But that's as far as I will go.
It has been a pretty rotten 11 years.
Correction: I mistyped. My comment was in the context of "IF you could obtain a controlled blank" (I didn't say it was easy), AND that you could cut the key with a milling machine.
What it did not say, though, was that you really don't need a blank. If you have a milling machine you don't NEED a blank; you can just build the whole thing from scratch (as I stated in the comment above).
"Yeah, you strongly implied someone was a moron for claiming that DND keys were hard to copy because by god you did it once"
Not even close. Someone said, quote:
"Before the printing game this worked 100%..."
And my reply was: nonsense, no it didn't. Because... it is nonsense, and no, it didn't. I didn't say or even imply anybody was a "moron". I simply stated that sentence was untrue. Because it is untrue.
It was nowhere near 100%. It is rather easy to do, *IF* (as I clearly stated before) you can get the right key blanks. And if you can't get the right ones, it is often not hard to modify another similar blank to fit. And I didn't just "do it once". I did it many times. But why and where are a discussion for another day.
"The only problem is that everyone else in the thread was talking about hard to obtain, source restricted blanks"
No, they weren't. Let's follow the ACTUAL thread I was replying to, eh?
1 I have duplicated dozens of keys with that admonition on it. Not a single refusal from locksmiths, Home Depot staff, etc.
2 what the lock companies do is they patent the blanks.
that's why lock companies come up with a new scheme every so often. and to buy those blanks you need to sign a contract that you wont copy without permission of the lock owner.. which is hard to check anyways.
Note: this practice has been used for decades. And it HAS NOT resulted in "strictly controlled" key blanks, for the reasons I mentioned. True, keys like the ones OP discussed have been hard to obtain, but (again according to comment #1 above) those ARE NOT the ones under discussion here. Certainly not the ones I was discussing.
If that's what YOU meant, when you said "Before the printing game this worked 100%", you would still be wrong. Because those keys can be AND HAVE BEEN made on milling machines. There is no "100%" about it. Your statement was simply wrong. No 2 ways about it.
But back to MY comments: I was not discussing the kinds of keys in OP's post. I was responding to the context brought up by comments #1 and #2 only.
"Now you feel kinda silly, and have digressed to belittling peoples education and intelligence."
I don't feel silly at all, and I belittled nobody. You misunderstood me, plain and simple. Stop pointing fingers, and accept that YOU could be wrong. And here's a great example:
"The only thing the specific "high security" keys OP wrote about brought to the table is the difficulty of cutting a copy"
"It is not true, the Primus blanks are source controlled. At least admit to yourself that you were wrong, and move on."
It IS true, and you took that out of context. Here is the WHOLE statement:
"The only thing the specific "high security" keys OP wrote about brought to the table is the difficulty of cutting a copy. You aren't going to do it by hand with a file in a short period of time. But *IF* you had a blank, you could cut it with a milling machine or a drill press with a cutting head without too much trouble."
My comment was CLEARLY in the context of cutting one with a milling machine, NOT in the context of obtaining "controlled" blanks.
Learn to read, and get off my ass.
"It's amazingly arrogant to suggest that simply because nobody has yet achieved immortality, you will? Interesting."
That isn't even close to anything I actually wrote. I understand what you are saying, but is (A) not even slightly relevant to my own comment it was apparently supposed to be in reply to, and (B) a pretty long and thin stretch from anything I was really discussing.
"You're the kind of person who won't take any amount of evidence as fact. You'll continue to handwave and hem and haw no matter how stacked the facts are against you, because you're one of those hopelessly optimistic types that actually thinks the universe gives a fuck what happens to you."
Your unjustified comments about my character (A) don't follow from the actual evidence, (B) are incorrect, and (C) are unnecessarily and rather rudely insulting. My own comments have only been about your comments. You, on the other hand, are getting personally insulting. I see no need to further put up with this kind of garbage.
"The Pee Wee Herman defense. Interesting. You're not just arrogant, stupid, and incapable of critical thinking, you're actively hostile to anyone who isn't."
It wasn't "a defense", at all. It was a bit of satire about your own comment. And again, you get unnecessarily personal. Those aren't comments about my comments, rather they are personal disparagements.
Did nobody ever teach you how to engage in a logical, factual discussion? Hint: that ain't it.
In any case, I see it is pointless to continue this. I had no idea that merely saying your posts have tended to be pessimistic would lead to childish personal attacks. Defensive a bit, are we?
"No, you talked shit about how easy a hard thing was, and only later realized that you are full of shit."
Bullshit. Anybody with a high school education can read my words and see what I actually said. And it wasn't that.
"Cutting a copy of a regular key that has an easy to obtain blank (and in fact nobody gives a crap why you did it) is nothing compared to copying a key on a manufacturer controlled blank that also has a security gimmick feature."
No shit, Sherlock. Nowhere did I say anything that disagrees with that. Go back and read it again, or maybe get some lessons in reading comprehension.
I used to work as a locksmith and passed the certification exams. Have you done the same?
"Well, 40-year low is possibly a bit misleading if you intend to imply there's a downward trend. "
Well, first, I corrected this to 30 years. And second, I wasn't suggesting a downward trend, but a persistent dip in ACE for a number of years. It is my understanding that it has actually been up a bit, on average, over the last few years but that we are still at a relatively low spot in the long-term record.