It is probably only in the 18th century that guns became easy enough to be used as hunting tools (can't find references about this).
Umm, wheel-locks were being used as hunting weapons in the early 16th century, shortly after their invention.
Note that only the wealthy could afford a wheel-lock, but that worked out well because only the wealthy were legally allowed to hunt in most civilized places at the time.
They would only have to be troops that perpetuate mass imprisonment of Americans. And we've already seen that we are willing to do that
And, oddly enough, at that time, gun control laws existed primarily to keep guns out of the hands of non-whites. Like, say, the Japanese-Americans that were rounded up by the white soldiers....
A semi-automatic weapon can still be an assault rifle by the federal definition.
Do yourself a favor, and actually read the text of the law you think you are referring to.
It NEVER uses the phrase "assault rifle", but instead uses "assault weapon".
It also is inconsistent in its application of even the "assault weapon" label - my mini-14, in spite of meeting all the tests to be an "assault weapon" (I had it specifically modified to meet the definition, just because I was feeling perverse and could legally do so before the ban went int effect), was NOT so classified. It was, in fact, on the "exempt list".
Note that my MAK-90, in spite of having NONE of the specific characteristics of an "assault weapon" (under the definition supplied in the law), was listed as being banned as an "assault weapon".
...He does have medals from his service; however, most of them were routine ones awarded for time of service rather than valor...
That's because the US gives out medals for everything! The guys I used to drink with from the Aussie army would always joke about how useless US medals are, successfully fire a weapon? Medal! Shoot yourself in the foot? Double Medal!
And the Australian Army seems to have just as many (if not more) "I was there medals" as the US Army does.
And oddly enough, the Australian Army has a marksmanship badge as well.
No, a balanced budget is the last freaking thing we or any country needs. National budgets aren't like your personal checkbook, hell they're not even like a companies balance sheet (btw almost no profitable companies have zero debt (a balanced budget)
"Balanced budget" and "no debt" are NOT synonymous.
They're not even related terms.
You, a business, or a government may be $1000 trillion in debt, and still have a balanced budget, so long as your income == outgo.
Or you may have NO debt whatsoever (right this minute) and NOT have a balanced budget, if your income is zero and your outgo is non-zero.
That said, a Balanced Budgtet Amendment is meaningless. It would have to have an emergency clause (to deal with times of war or other calamity), and Congress would dutifully invoke that emergency clause every year to do as they liked.
I wonder what would happen if US colleges (or even earlier in our educational system) let students have free reign,
If they're lucky, they might learn to spell "free rein" (yes, that particular euphemism is derived from stagecoaches/wagons, rather than kings/queens).
Now that the obligatory grammar nazism is done, the main effect would be to produce people who couldn't communicate their ideas effectively enough to be taken seriously - it's all very well to come up with a revolutionary idea, but if the paper you submit to whatever journal describing the idea is semi-literate (at best), getting anyone else to read it, much less understand it, is going to be tough.
is there a possibility to send some nuclear generator, like submarine one or this famous russian lighthouse? Or maybe 5 of them, it might solve some problems
Note that a submarine nuke plant is quite heavy - a moderately large number of hundreds of tons (and it was that light because it could use the whole ocean as cooling fluid for the secondary loop). And still we had "navy showers".
Yes, it would solve a lot of problems, but getting it there isn't going to happen soon (with "soon" defined VERY loosely).
It would probably be quicker and easier to build a Solar Power Satellite in Mars orbit to beam power down to the base....
There's no reason to think water would be that limited on Mars.
No reason to think water would be all that limited on a ship/submarine floating in the stuff. Nonetheless, there's a reason they call it a "Navy shower" (FYI: you run the water long enough to get wet, turn the water off, soap&shampoo as needed, then turn water back on long enough to rinse off).
In case it's not obvious, the real limiter isn't the amount of water nearby, it's the ability to purify the water that provides the limitation - water purifiers/distillers tend to be large and moderately power-intensive.
How hard can it be to melt some rock into the form of a holding tank, set up solar panels, and melt ice?
Not hard at all. Of course, you have to carry the rock-melter to Mars, plus power source for same. Plus solar panels (which will give you less than half the output you'd get here on Earth). Plus the fuel to move all that to Mars - adds a lot to the difficulty of the initial mission.
For a permanent station, expect that you'd do it this way, expanding capability as resupply missions brought you more equipment. But it's pretty likely that if you were serious, you'd be expanding the personnel at least as fast as you'd be adding new equipment, and there'd always be people (to include many/most of the scientists actually on Mars) who'd prefer the lift be used to send more science equipment rather than infrastructure....
Let's put a "respawn/restock here" point on the map for every petty thug in the city looking for a gun but too clueless to drive a few states away and buy one themselves (possibly even legally, depending on what they've gotten busted for up to that point).
Well, no.
It's actually illegal to buy a gun outside your State of legal residence unless:
1) it is a private sale, not innvolving a licensed dealer (you want to buy a gun from your uncle, no problem, you go into a gunshop, no sale)
or...
the sale is executed through a gun dealer local to you. I had to do this once when I saw a really sweet Mauser hunting rifle while traveling. Only way to actually buy it was to arrange with the gunshop that had it to ship it to a gunshop local to where I lived, and do the actual sale there. And pay sales tax twice, essentially, plus dealer markup twice.
When the 2nd Amendment was written and passed, every town/state had a list of the militia members and the guns they owned.
Why? Because that's how a militia is "well regulated."
Well, no.
Read the Militia Act sometime. Everyone was REQUIRED to own a musket, since every adult male (being defined as 17+ years of age, as I recall) was a member of the militia.
Note also that, "well regulated" meant "trained", as in "regular army", based on other period writing.
Taking a pistol to an automatic rifle fight isn't going to even the odds by much if anything.
Note that there were NO automatic weapons used in that school shooting.
Note further that the advantages possessed by a rifle compared to a pistol evaporate inside a classroom (it's just as easy to kill someone across a room with a pistol as with a rifle).
And all this ignores the fact that, say, a.40 or.45 hits harder than a.223 at close range....
You don't even consider that using drone strikes against people who are not US citizens might be wrong.
It's all "Oh no, Obama blew up an American, how terrible".
Well, we have this whole "due process" thing here. Written into the Constitution, even.
The Fifth Amendment, for instance, seems to preclude blowing up American citizens with drones, absent the whole Grand Jury, Trial, etc.
It should also be noted that most of us aren't too thrilled when we blow up innocent bystanders with drones (or any other weapon, really), though the guys shooting at our guys are considered to be pretty much fair game.
Alas, when the Pres swears his oath, part of it is about upholding the Constitution. And violating someone's Fifth Amendment Rights with a drone seems like a pretty clear violation to many of us.
Me, I would have made sure of a Grand Jury indictment and trial in absentia (which would be questionable, but probably legal) before I tossed a drone his way....
Didn't the latest crazed gunman have almost no Internet presence at all? If this is just an excuse to more closely monitor people online, it's a pretty transparent one.
What?
Did you REALLY think this was going to stop with a ban on scary-looking guns (that are otherwise identical to many hunting rifles, other than using weaker cartridges)?
Last I heard there were such things as movie and game ratings, but the NRA hates gun control.
Probably that whole "shall not be infringed" thing - sort of the way the ACLU spends all its time working against people who mess with the First Amendment (and, oddly enough, any other Amendments except the Second and Tenth)...
Two pistols, a rifle, and a shotgun are hardly "stockpiling weapons". A rifle and shotgun are the minimum many hunters consider acceptable (one for game, one for birds (and usually one more, a.22LR for small game or just plinking), and pistols aren't that uncommon, if you spend any time at a firing range....
Assault rifles are pretty much illegal to own, and have been since before WW2. Scary-looking rifles that resemble military weapons, but are functionally identical to some hunting rifles are legal (and both the subject of the modern debate, and what was used to shoot up that school) are legal.
Note that I own three ACTUAL military rifles today. All three are bolt-action....
In which of the following ways would you have been arrested if your child-self had gone to school today:
1) possession of a chemistry set;
2) possession of a pocket knife;
3) terroristic threatening ("Man, I'm gonna kill you at Mortal Kombat tonight.");
4) all of the above
I'd like to be able to answer "4", but I'm a bit older than Mortal Kombat, so I'll have to answer 1 and 2.
Note that, by the definitions used on this kid, MY kid could be arrested right now - garage has more than enough chemicals to make a bomb right now if anyone wanted to bother, and the kid knows enough to do it if she wants to....
Gonna disagree with you on the shotgun. The magazines are much smaller, and they take much longer to reload
Number 1 buckshot has more than ten balls per shot.
The shot from no.1 buck is more than sufficient to put down a deer with only a single shot hitting a deer.
And this was a school full of small people.
Most shotguns hold more than three shells at once.
It is faster to reload one shotgun shell than to change magazines.
Only real question would be the choke on the shotgun allowing sufficient dispersal at the range in question to affect multiple targets per hit.
Do remember that the shotgun he had wasn't a double-barrel - semi-auto (or even pump) shotguns can be fired just as quickly as semi-auto rifles/pistols. And tend to be more controllable due to greater mass of the weapon and expectations of the shooter (most people who don't shoot aren't really aware of how much muzzle jump you get from rapid fire of a semi-auto - you shoot high a lot unless you've practiced).
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Umm, wheel-locks were being used as hunting weapons in the early 16th century, shortly after their invention.
Note that only the wealthy could afford a wheel-lock, but that worked out well because only the wealthy were legally allowed to hunt in most civilized places at the time.
And, oddly enough, at that time, gun control laws existed primarily to keep guns out of the hands of non-whites. Like, say, the Japanese-Americans that were rounded up by the white soldiers....
Do yourself a favor, and actually read the text of the law you think you are referring to.
It NEVER uses the phrase "assault rifle", but instead uses "assault weapon".
It also is inconsistent in its application of even the "assault weapon" label - my mini-14, in spite of meeting all the tests to be an "assault weapon" (I had it specifically modified to meet the definition, just because I was feeling perverse and could legally do so before the ban went int effect), was NOT so classified. It was, in fact, on the "exempt list".
Note that my MAK-90, in spite of having NONE of the specific characteristics of an "assault weapon" (under the definition supplied in the law), was listed as being banned as an "assault weapon".
Alas, the nutjob who mowed down scoolchildren did NOT use full-auto, since his rifle was not capable of same....
And the Australian Army seems to have just as many (if not more) "I was there medals" as the US Army does.
And oddly enough, the Australian Army has a marksmanship badge as well.
"Balanced budget" and "no debt" are NOT synonymous.
They're not even related terms.
You, a business, or a government may be $1000 trillion in debt, and still have a balanced budget, so long as your income == outgo.
Or you may have NO debt whatsoever (right this minute) and NOT have a balanced budget, if your income is zero and your outgo is non-zero.
That said, a Balanced Budgtet Amendment is meaningless. It would have to have an emergency clause (to deal with times of war or other calamity), and Congress would dutifully invoke that emergency clause every year to do as they liked.
And since the shareholders are the owners of the corporation, this would be bad because?
Saving his freedom?? He's been stuck in the Ecuadoran Embassy for six months-plus, last I checked.
Hardly what I'd call "free"....
If they're lucky, they might learn to spell "free rein" (yes, that particular euphemism is derived from stagecoaches/wagons, rather than kings/queens).
Now that the obligatory grammar nazism is done, the main effect would be to produce people who couldn't communicate their ideas effectively enough to be taken seriously - it's all very well to come up with a revolutionary idea, but if the paper you submit to whatever journal describing the idea is semi-literate (at best), getting anyone else to read it, much less understand it, is going to be tough.
Note that a submarine nuke plant is quite heavy - a moderately large number of hundreds of tons (and it was that light because it could use the whole ocean as cooling fluid for the secondary loop). And still we had "navy showers".
Yes, it would solve a lot of problems, but getting it there isn't going to happen soon (with "soon" defined VERY loosely).
It would probably be quicker and easier to build a Solar Power Satellite in Mars orbit to beam power down to the base....
No reason to think water would be all that limited on a ship/submarine floating in the stuff. Nonetheless, there's a reason they call it a "Navy shower" (FYI: you run the water long enough to get wet, turn the water off, soap&shampoo as needed, then turn water back on long enough to rinse off).
In case it's not obvious, the real limiter isn't the amount of water nearby, it's the ability to purify the water that provides the limitation - water purifiers/distillers tend to be large and moderately power-intensive.
Not hard at all. Of course, you have to carry the rock-melter to Mars, plus power source for same. Plus solar panels (which will give you less than half the output you'd get here on Earth). Plus the fuel to move all that to Mars - adds a lot to the difficulty of the initial mission.
For a permanent station, expect that you'd do it this way, expanding capability as resupply missions brought you more equipment. But it's pretty likely that if you were serious, you'd be expanding the personnel at least as fast as you'd be adding new equipment, and there'd always be people (to include many/most of the scientists actually on Mars) who'd prefer the lift be used to send more science equipment rather than infrastructure....
Well, no.
It's actually illegal to buy a gun outside your State of legal residence unless:
1) it is a private sale, not innvolving a licensed dealer (you want to buy a gun from your uncle, no problem, you go into a gunshop, no sale)
or...
the sale is executed through a gun dealer local to you. I had to do this once when I saw a really sweet Mauser hunting rifle while traveling. Only way to actually buy it was to arrange with the gunshop that had it to ship it to a gunshop local to where I lived, and do the actual sale there. And pay sales tax twice, essentially, plus dealer markup twice.
Note that sales of AR-15 type rifles has zoomed way up since the Dems started talking about banning them.
Which is giving a nice boost to gunshop owners as well as gun manufacturers.
Hell, I don't own an AR-15 or analog, but I'm considering it, just because they might be banned next year.
In other words, the proposed gun bans are having the opposite of the intended effects already. Too funny (but predictable)....
Well, no.
Read the Militia Act sometime. Everyone was REQUIRED to own a musket, since every adult male (being defined as 17+ years of age, as I recall) was a member of the militia.
Note also that, "well regulated" meant "trained", as in "regular army", based on other period writing.
Second?
True enough, till they decide that not enough people are using the E15, and make it mandatory.
Note that there were NO automatic weapons used in that school shooting.
Note further that the advantages possessed by a rifle compared to a pistol evaporate inside a classroom (it's just as easy to kill someone across a room with a pistol as with a rifle).
And all this ignores the fact that, say, a .40 or .45 hits harder than a .223 at close range....
"millions of civilians" is a bit of an exaggeration, since there were fewer than 1.5 million German civilian casualties of that war.
Or were you perhaps thinking of the 14+ milllion Soviet civilian deaths caused by the Germans?
Well, we have this whole "due process" thing here. Written into the Constitution, even.
The Fifth Amendment, for instance, seems to preclude blowing up American citizens with drones, absent the whole Grand Jury, Trial, etc.
It should also be noted that most of us aren't too thrilled when we blow up innocent bystanders with drones (or any other weapon, really), though the guys shooting at our guys are considered to be pretty much fair game.
Alas, when the Pres swears his oath, part of it is about upholding the Constitution. And violating someone's Fifth Amendment Rights with a drone seems like a pretty clear violation to many of us.
Me, I would have made sure of a Grand Jury indictment and trial in absentia (which would be questionable, but probably legal) before I tossed a drone his way....
What?
Did you REALLY think this was going to stop with a ban on scary-looking guns (that are otherwise identical to many hunting rifles, other than using weaker cartridges)?
Probably that whole "shall not be infringed" thing - sort of the way the ACLU spends all its time working against people who mess with the First Amendment (and, oddly enough, any other Amendments except the Second and Tenth)...
Two pistols, a rifle, and a shotgun are hardly "stockpiling weapons". A rifle and shotgun are the minimum many hunters consider acceptable (one for game, one for birds (and usually one more, a .22LR for small game or just plinking), and pistols aren't that uncommon, if you spend any time at a firing range....
Assault rifles are pretty much illegal to own, and have been since before WW2. Scary-looking rifles that resemble military weapons, but are functionally identical to some hunting rifles are legal (and both the subject of the modern debate, and what was used to shoot up that school) are legal.
Note that I own three ACTUAL military rifles today. All three are bolt-action....
In which of the following ways would you have been arrested if your child-self had gone to school today:
1) possession of a chemistry set;
2) possession of a pocket knife;
3) terroristic threatening ("Man, I'm gonna kill you at Mortal Kombat tonight.");
4) all of the above
I'd like to be able to answer "4", but I'm a bit older than Mortal Kombat, so I'll have to answer 1 and 2.
Note that, by the definitions used on this kid, MY kid could be arrested right now - garage has more than enough chemicals to make a bomb right now if anyone wanted to bother, and the kid knows enough to do it if she wants to....
Number 1 buckshot has more than ten balls per shot.
The shot from no.1 buck is more than sufficient to put down a deer with only a single shot hitting a deer.
And this was a school full of small people.
Most shotguns hold more than three shells at once.
It is faster to reload one shotgun shell than to change magazines.
Only real question would be the choke on the shotgun allowing sufficient dispersal at the range in question to affect multiple targets per hit.
Do remember that the shotgun he had wasn't a double-barrel - semi-auto (or even pump) shotguns can be fired just as quickly as semi-auto rifles/pistols. And tend to be more controllable due to greater mass of the weapon and expectations of the shooter (most people who don't shoot aren't really aware of how much muzzle jump you get from rapid fire of a semi-auto - you shoot high a lot unless you've practiced).