I hope Facebook, Apple, and all others closed-down, proprietary messaging protocols will fail and that open standards will win.
Like IRC? It has been an open standard since 1988 or so. It's low bandwidth. It provides the complete framework one needs for private and group messaging. It was invented in the same country that invented SMS. It's controlled by no central authority and resistant to corporate and governmental censorship.
And guess what? Nobody uses it.
I fear that the internet is taking a huge step backwards, with the centralization of power in a handful of powerful for-profit companies. They're fast becoming the new America Online, complete with walled garden, but in many ways they're actually worse than AOL: At least with AOL you were the customer. Facebook's only "customers" are its advertisers and everything they do is ultimately designed to cater to them.
On the one hand, you worry about the possibility of the FCC being abusive, ignore that the FCC stepping in almost certainly is partly why AT&T's CEO's plan never came to pass
I don't think AT&T had a "plan" per se; I think their CEO foolishly ran his mouth, lamenting that he couldn't double dip, and the net community ran with it. There was a lot of FUD on our side of the issue, best exemplified by this graphic, and for awhile we were conflating long standing peering practices/disputes as network neutrality issues and the like.
Do I think that AT&T would have liked to charge Google for using "his" pipes? Absolutely. Do I think he would have had the balls to actually do it? Can't say. I do feel like we focused on the wrong issues though and I'm not so sure that in 20 years we're going to fondly remember this decision. I'd like to think that we will but only time will tell. Remember, what the FCC giveth the FCC can taketh away.
See my other reply. Most everything that you're worrying about were theoretical abuses. The Netflix issue is the only thing you mention that actually happened and it's still unclear to me how much of that was Reed Hastings trying to offload his cost of doing business onto others -- Netflix does not have completely clean hands here or elsewhere -- and how much was the ISPs being dicks. I suspect a little bit of Column A and a little bit of Column B.
Meanwhile, as I said in my other post, caps and zero rating are fait accomplis, and they're doing real damage to the internet. This is and always was FUD.This and this are real and the FCC is doing nothing about them. Color me skeptical that they're likely to intervene at this point, as I said, they're fait accomplis. We spent a decade fighting over abuses that never actually happened while the ISPs were busy building a fence around one killer app (video) that directly competes with them, while precluding the emergence of future killer apps, and massively increasing their own revenues to boot.
If it's innovation for the sake of innovation you're after, well, one word: Cablelabs.
That's not Comcast specifically, but they're a major player in Cablelabs, and in any event they probably don't see it as their job to "innovate." Verizon Wireless didn't create LTE but they sure had it deployed faster than anyone else. The same with Comcast; they were way ahead of their peers when it came to IPv6 and DOCSIS 3 deployments.
None of this is to say they don't suck donkey balls, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.....:)
I will say that it bothers me that the FCC has successfully claimed this authority for itself. It should bother anyone that truly cares about NN. There's no promise that tomorrow's FCC Commissioner will be pro-consumer. In fact, given the two Presidential candidates currently running, I'd say it's more likely than ever that we get another crony capitalist ex-telecom lobbyist as the next commissioner. Hillary Clinton is the definition of crony capitalist, she owes her personal fortune and political success to Wall Street. Donald Trump is an unknown, I doubt he's given the issue (or any issue for that matter) serious thought, but I'm not betting on him finding another Tom Wheeler. Besides, if he wins NN is the least of our worries.....
Incidentally, NN was born after a few boneheaded remarks by AT&T's CEO, about charging Google and others for access to "his" pipes. It wasn't a response to actual abuse, rather, it was a response to the possibility of abuse. None of what the FCC is regulating against ever came to pass. Might it have, one day? Perhaps. But here in the real world we're seeing broadband costs increase many times faster than inflation, despite lower than ever CapEx, and there's nothing theoretical about caps and zero rating. They exist, in the real world, and they're doing real damage to the internet as we've always known it.
It would be pretty stupid for Russia not to look into the major political contenders of their primary adversary regardless whether they might win or not.
It's pretty damned stupid that Russia thinks of the United States (or more accurately, NATO and the West) as their "primary adversary" when they have a near negative birthrate and 1.3 billion neighbors to the east that are far more likely to come looking for Lebensraum.
I understand the historical reasons for Russia to fear the West -- multiple invasions in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries -- but it's 2016; are the people in Moscow really that stuck in the past? To look at the fat and happy citizens of the West and see an existential threat? I don't think the generation that demands "safe zones" from "microaggressions" is terribly likely to launch Operation Barbarossa II.
I'm trying hard to think no of anything even marginally resembling an innovation which has come from Comcast - but I'm drawing a blank.
You got a cheap +5 there, because Comcast is an easy target, but let me play devil's advocate and give you two things they've done right:
1. They had IPv6 for residential customers years before any other major ISP.
2. They actually invest money in their infrastructure, even in markets where they face no meaningful competition, unlike the asshats at Time Warner Cable. TWC left my hometown to rot on the vine; we didn't see DOCSIS 3.0 until two or three years ago and to this day still have speed/capacity issues at peak times. Go 20 miles to our immediate South, into Comcast territory, and you can get three digit speeds (we top out at 50mbit/s) that are actually consistently delivered to you.
but it's pretty interesting that the anti-free-internet banner has been picked up so thoroughly by the Republicans.
They don't see it that way; principled Republicans see a slippery slope now that the FCC is regulating the internet, which you may recall got to be what it is today largely because it was unregulated. Are such fears grounded in reality? Hard to say; come back in 20 years and let's see what the internet looks like then.
(Unprincipled Republicans are crony capitalists, more worried about their Big Telecom donors than Big FCC; condemn them if you'd like, but be honest enough to admit there are at least as many Crony Capitalists among the Democrats, including the one that is now their presumptive nominee for POTUS.)
They could appeal to the US Supreme Court, but with the current 4-4 split on the court, the best they could hope for is that the USSC would split and leave the Appeals Court ruling standing as is
Unless you're the Oracle of Delphi it's extremely dangerous to try and predict how SCOTUS Justices will swing on any given issue. They rarely break down along predictable partisan lines, even on the highly divisive political issues of the day (e.g., Roberts on the ACA) never mind something as technical as network neutrality and telecom regulation. People who try to politicize the Court miss the point; I suspect Liberals could find more than a few things to admire about Scalia (Kelo v. New London) if they were honest with themselves, as well as a few things to hate about the Justices on "their" side (Gonzales v. Raich). Conservatives could do the same, again, assuming they were willing to be honest with themselves, rather than blindly rooting for the "home team."
Anyhow, I digress. I would not even venture a guess as to how any of them would vote on NN. If you forced me at gunpoint to make a prediction it would be that they decline to issue any sweeping ruling; they'd kick it back down to the Appeals Court, 8-0, with clarification on one or two items of dispute.
The government also used to include assault rifles on that list. One day, it may do so again. Even if that does disgruntle people who think it's very unfair. We can but hope.
Thank you, for proving my point, about the commonalities between you and the pro-life crowd. "Assault weapon" is an invented term, like "partial birth abortion," something that sounds really scary but when you actually examine the issue you quickly learn that it doesn't mean a damn thing.
The difference between an "assault rifle" and a regular rifle is cosmetic. Mini-14 with OEM stock? Legal in all 50 States. Mini-14 with aftermarket stock? Assault rifle. Banned in NY, CA, CT, IL, and a few others, whilst uninformed people seek to ban it on the Federal level. The two firearms have the exact same capabilities. Putting a spoiler on a Honda Civic does not turn it into a Formula One race car.
I think of tens maybe hundreds of countries offering up their best and their brightest for a global national collaboration on a project that may span several generations but promises a lot.
Hundreds of countries? There are only ~180 countries total and the lion's share of them are third world shitholes that can barely clothe, water, and feed their people. When dysentery is still a day to day concern in your country I doubt space exploration is a huge priority. There are only a few dozen countries that can make a meaningful contribution to space exploration. If you consider the EU to be a single country then the number shrinks considerably and we're probably talking about counting them all on two hands. Even in the best of times such international projects tend to be top heavy and inefficient; the ISS has managed to cost many times more than Apollo did, despite relying on existing technology and reaching the same LEO frontier we've been exploring since the 1950s.
Depressed yet? I haven't even touched on geopolitics. The Western World and countries with similar value systems (EU, USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and a few others) can probably be counted on to work together, but if you toss China and Russia (or even India) into the mix the relationship status quickly changes to "It's complicated."
it sucks that this is the case but such is life. So, what do we do? Do we wait for the utopian Star Trek future, where all the problems here on Earth have been figured out, or do we accept that we live in the real world and push forward as best we can? My vote is for the second option.
I agree with you; they're hoplophobes, to borrow a term from Jeff Cooper.:)
That said, it's only fair to point out the stupidity on "our side," like the tone deafness of Wayne LaPierre, who goes on national television a few days after Newton and proclaims that more guns are the answer. Even if you agree with his sentiments that was mind-numbingly stupid, poorly timed, and extremely insensitive. Or the idiots that have ruined open carry, by carrying AR-15s into establishments like Starbucks or Applebee's. Seriously, WTF is the point of that, other than to tweak people? Is Red Dawn going to happen during Happy Hour?
My sister now boycotts Panera and Target, because they asked that people not carry firearms into their establishments. They did not actually post their establishments, even in States where such postingshave force of law; they simply released open letters asking people not to carry firearms. I figured that was a reaction to the aforementioned excesses of the open carry crowd and I have continued to conceal carry at Target and Panera. Out of sight, out of mind.
I think it comes down to the old adage: Just because you CAN do something it does not mean that you SHOULD.
"Some length?" It was one short paragraph out of three. I'll concede that I should have said, "this argument is stupid," rather than "your argument is stupid." For that I apologize.
I really do find this particular argument tiresome when it is used to condemn concealed carry. It's a theoretical, something that to my knowledge has never actually happened in the real world. Is there a single case of civilian blue-on-blue during or immediately after a spree killing? For that matter, law enforcement blue-on-blue during or immediately after a spree killing? The odds of there being a single armed "blue" on-site as a spree killing begins is remote, the odds of multiple blues even more so.
It's much like the oft-repeated claim that a gun in the home is more likely to kill a family member than a home invader, or the oft-quoted statistic that the United States has more gun violence than other Western counties. Even when these claims are true (the latter certainly is; the former is more questionable) they rather miss the point. In the United States you don't get make another person's self-defense choices for them. For better or worse we have the right to keep and bear arms in this country.
Incidentally, what's the point of even quoting the statistic about gun violence vis-à-vis other western countries? Of course the US has a higher rate of gun violence than countries where guns are hard to come by. Duh! I'm willing to wager that Saudi Arabia has a nearly zero DWI rate but I don't see MADD quoting that statistic and/or suggesting that prohibition is the answer for our very real DWI problem. Even those zealots accept the reality that recreational alcohol is here to stay. Why can't the gun-control crowd accept the fact that the United States is never going to be the United Kingdom or even Finland; the strictest American jurisdiction is more liberal than the most liberal of European countries when it comes to firearms regulation and licensing.
Honestly, I'm sick of both sides of the gun debate. "MORE GUNS" is hardly the answer, because the likelihood of an armed "blue" being nearby will always remain remote. It's also fucking tone deaf to go on national television after these tragedies (I'm looking at you Wayne LaPierre, post Newton) and claim that more guns is the answer, even if you earnestly believe that claim. The only thing dumber than the arguments made by these people are the arguments of those on the other side.
Dude, I was being very very very factious. I figured that quote would get a laugh out of you, not an explanation.:D
Personally, I don't understand the fascination with so-called assault weapons on either side of the issue. I feel no need to own one; they're excessive for my self-defense needs and they cost too much. I can defend my person quite effectively with my 1911, thank you very much. I also don't see why they need to be legislated against. The fact of the matter is that handguns are the most popular weapons used to commit crime, for obvious reasons (easy to conceal), and that rifles of any sort are rarely used for nefarious purposes.
Sometimes I think the gun-control crowd borrows tactics from the pro-life crowd. They support any legislation aimed at guns, no matter how little sense it makes, or even if it's effective. The point is to slowly steer the ship of state towards their desired outcome. I'll never forget my United States Senator, Gillibrand, voting against allowing firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak; that vote had nothing whatsoever to do with gun violence and everything to do with proving her bonafides to the gun control crowd.
I pointed out to the Principle one day that the two main front doors are made of full size sheet glass... the locks are for appearance, a gunman could simply shoot the glass.
She looked at me with a blank expression like that thought had never occurred to her.
Maybe she used to be your English/spelling teacher and that's what the blank expression was about?:D
Similarly, no special precaution should be taken if religious person's home catches on fire. Them religious books sure ain't gonna start exploding and whizzing around the neighborhood.
Ammunition does not work that way. It relies on the structure of the firearm (specifically the chamber and barrel) to contain the expanding gases from burning powder and utilize them in a useful way. Without such containment the gases dissipate before imparting a meaningful amount of energy on the projectile. Ignite the powder in a non-chambered round and the cartridge will simply blow apart, with the projectile flying one way and the cartridge another. Either can inflict minor injuries (burns and/or bruises) but they can not kill or seriously injure. The lion's share of the potential energy is lost, since there's nothing to contain the expanding gases.
Ammunition left chambered within a firearm is potentially dangerous in a house fire. Mythbusters tested this is an episode, igniting ammunition both in and outside of a firearm. The ammunition ignited inside a firearm (a revolver left inside a common kitchen oven) had a significant amount of force behind the projectile, though less than it would have if properly discharged. Ammunition ignited outside of a firearm simply blew itself apart.
Congratulations on reading my post without actually reading my post.
I would not have had a firearm in that situation. I stated -- quite clearly -- that I do not feel the need to be armed everywhere I go. There is no "false confidence" here; my ability to identify friend from foe is quite irrelevant if I am unarmed, as I almost certainly would be in a night club setting. As an aside, I've availed myself of enough training to take this matter quite seriously. I've known people who have taken human life, have seen what it does to their souls and mental well-being, even though they had no choice in the matter, and I have no desire to join that "club." My first inclination would be to run away; deadly force of any kind is an absolute last resort in my eyes, when one's back is against the proverbial wall, and it's truly kill or be killed.
I simply dispute the oft-repeated notion that the "good guys" will automatically start shooting each other in such a situation. It's a frequently repeated argument of the gun control crowd, meant to condemn those who wish to carry as "gun nuts" or whatever other disparaging terminology you wish to use. It speaks to the mindset of that crowd that they do not approve of the use of firearms for self-defense, no matter what the circumstance, and they feel the need to belittle those that do.
I'm sick of the extreme idiots on both sides of this argument. The "MORE GUNS EVERYWHERE" crowd and the "NO GUNS ANYWHERE" crowd are equally obtuse, in my not so humble opinion. There's no room for rational discussion on this issue, because of people like you, who rush to repeat themselves over and over again without even bothering to read what they're replying to.
Slashdot Mirror
Hack: To gain access to (a computer file or network) illegally or without authorization: hacked the firm's personnel database.
I hope Facebook, Apple, and all others closed-down, proprietary messaging protocols will fail and that open standards will win.
Like IRC? It has been an open standard since 1988 or so. It's low bandwidth. It provides the complete framework one needs for private and group messaging. It was invented in the same country that invented SMS. It's controlled by no central authority and resistant to corporate and governmental censorship.
And guess what? Nobody uses it.
I fear that the internet is taking a huge step backwards, with the centralization of power in a handful of powerful for-profit companies. They're fast becoming the new America Online, complete with walled garden, but in many ways they're actually worse than AOL: At least with AOL you were the customer. Facebook's only "customers" are its advertisers and everything they do is ultimately designed to cater to them.
On the one hand, you worry about the possibility of the FCC being abusive, ignore that the FCC stepping in almost certainly is partly why AT&T's CEO's plan never came to pass
I don't think AT&T had a "plan" per se; I think their CEO foolishly ran his mouth, lamenting that he couldn't double dip, and the net community ran with it. There was a lot of FUD on our side of the issue, best exemplified by this graphic, and for awhile we were conflating long standing peering practices/disputes as network neutrality issues and the like.
Do I think that AT&T would have liked to charge Google for using "his" pipes? Absolutely. Do I think he would have had the balls to actually do it? Can't say. I do feel like we focused on the wrong issues though and I'm not so sure that in 20 years we're going to fondly remember this decision. I'd like to think that we will but only time will tell. Remember, what the FCC giveth the FCC can taketh away.
Come up with an original app that Apple is less likely to steal and claim as its own.
Obligatory.
See my other reply. Most everything that you're worrying about were theoretical abuses. The Netflix issue is the only thing you mention that actually happened and it's still unclear to me how much of that was Reed Hastings trying to offload his cost of doing business onto others -- Netflix does not have completely clean hands here or elsewhere -- and how much was the ISPs being dicks. I suspect a little bit of Column A and a little bit of Column B.
Meanwhile, as I said in my other post, caps and zero rating are fait accomplis, and they're doing real damage to the internet. This is and always was FUD. This and this are real and the FCC is doing nothing about them. Color me skeptical that they're likely to intervene at this point, as I said, they're fait accomplis. We spent a decade fighting over abuses that never actually happened while the ISPs were busy building a fence around one killer app (video) that directly competes with them, while precluding the emergence of future killer apps, and massively increasing their own revenues to boot.
If it's innovation for the sake of innovation you're after, well, one word: Cablelabs.
That's not Comcast specifically, but they're a major player in Cablelabs, and in any event they probably don't see it as their job to "innovate." Verizon Wireless didn't create LTE but they sure had it deployed faster than anyone else. The same with Comcast; they were way ahead of their peers when it came to IPv6 and DOCSIS 3 deployments.
None of this is to say they don't suck donkey balls, but even a broken clock is right twice a day..... :)
You want no regulation?
I didn't say anything about what I wanted. :)
I will say that it bothers me that the FCC has successfully claimed this authority for itself. It should bother anyone that truly cares about NN. There's no promise that tomorrow's FCC Commissioner will be pro-consumer. In fact, given the two Presidential candidates currently running, I'd say it's more likely than ever that we get another crony capitalist ex-telecom lobbyist as the next commissioner. Hillary Clinton is the definition of crony capitalist, she owes her personal fortune and political success to Wall Street. Donald Trump is an unknown, I doubt he's given the issue (or any issue for that matter) serious thought, but I'm not betting on him finding another Tom Wheeler. Besides, if he wins NN is the least of our worries.....
Incidentally, NN was born after a few boneheaded remarks by AT&T's CEO, about charging Google and others for access to "his" pipes. It wasn't a response to actual abuse, rather, it was a response to the possibility of abuse. None of what the FCC is regulating against ever came to pass. Might it have, one day? Perhaps. But here in the real world we're seeing broadband costs increase many times faster than inflation, despite lower than ever CapEx, and there's nothing theoretical about caps and zero rating. They exist, in the real world, and they're doing real damage to the internet as we've always known it.
It would be pretty stupid for Russia not to look into the major political contenders of their primary adversary regardless whether they might win or not.
It's pretty damned stupid that Russia thinks of the United States (or more accurately, NATO and the West) as their "primary adversary" when they have a near negative birthrate and 1.3 billion neighbors to the east that are far more likely to come looking for Lebensraum.
I understand the historical reasons for Russia to fear the West -- multiple invasions in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries -- but it's 2016; are the people in Moscow really that stuck in the past? To look at the fat and happy citizens of the West and see an existential threat? I don't think the generation that demands "safe zones" from "microaggressions" is terribly likely to launch Operation Barbarossa II.
I'm trying hard to think no of anything even marginally resembling an innovation which has come from Comcast - but I'm drawing a blank.
You got a cheap +5 there, because Comcast is an easy target, but let me play devil's advocate and give you two things they've done right:
1. They had IPv6 for residential customers years before any other major ISP.
2. They actually invest money in their infrastructure, even in markets where they face no meaningful competition, unlike the asshats at Time Warner Cable. TWC left my hometown to rot on the vine; we didn't see DOCSIS 3.0 until two or three years ago and to this day still have speed/capacity issues at peak times. Go 20 miles to our immediate South, into Comcast territory, and you can get three digit speeds (we top out at 50mbit/s) that are actually consistently delivered to you.
but it's pretty interesting that the anti-free-internet banner has been picked up so thoroughly by the Republicans.
They don't see it that way; principled Republicans see a slippery slope now that the FCC is regulating the internet, which you may recall got to be what it is today largely because it was unregulated. Are such fears grounded in reality? Hard to say; come back in 20 years and let's see what the internet looks like then.
(Unprincipled Republicans are crony capitalists, more worried about their Big Telecom donors than Big FCC; condemn them if you'd like, but be honest enough to admit there are at least as many Crony Capitalists among the Democrats, including the one that is now their presumptive nominee for POTUS.)
They could appeal to the US Supreme Court, but with the current 4-4 split on the court, the best they could hope for is that the USSC would split and leave the Appeals Court ruling standing as is
Unless you're the Oracle of Delphi it's extremely dangerous to try and predict how SCOTUS Justices will swing on any given issue. They rarely break down along predictable partisan lines, even on the highly divisive political issues of the day (e.g., Roberts on the ACA) never mind something as technical as network neutrality and telecom regulation. People who try to politicize the Court miss the point; I suspect Liberals could find more than a few things to admire about Scalia (Kelo v. New London) if they were honest with themselves, as well as a few things to hate about the Justices on "their" side (Gonzales v. Raich). Conservatives could do the same, again, assuming they were willing to be honest with themselves, rather than blindly rooting for the "home team."
Anyhow, I digress. I would not even venture a guess as to how any of them would vote on NN. If you forced me at gunpoint to make a prediction it would be that they decline to issue any sweeping ruling; they'd kick it back down to the Appeals Court, 8-0, with clarification on one or two items of dispute.
The government also used to include assault rifles on that list. One day, it may do so again. Even if that does disgruntle people who think it's very unfair. We can but hope.
Thank you, for proving my point, about the commonalities between you and the pro-life crowd. "Assault weapon" is an invented term, like "partial birth abortion," something that sounds really scary but when you actually examine the issue you quickly learn that it doesn't mean a damn thing.
The difference between an "assault rifle" and a regular rifle is cosmetic. Mini-14 with OEM stock? Legal in all 50 States. Mini-14 with aftermarket stock? Assault rifle. Banned in NY, CA, CT, IL, and a few others, whilst uninformed people seek to ban it on the Federal level. The two firearms have the exact same capabilities. Putting a spoiler on a Honda Civic does not turn it into a Formula One race car.
It blows up on the launchpad?
Wait, my apologies, you asked for the worst case scenario, not the best.....
Stop feeding the troll. "Space nutter" was in his first reply; he's not interested in an actual dialogue....
its creators say that each buyer will receive the X5 device, a USB cable for charging and data transfers, and 20 blank plastic cards.
My last smartphone didn't come with a cable OR a charger. Fuck you HTC. ;)
I think of tens maybe hundreds of countries offering up their best and their brightest for a global national collaboration on a project that may span several generations but promises a lot.
Hundreds of countries? There are only ~180 countries total and the lion's share of them are third world shitholes that can barely clothe, water, and feed their people. When dysentery is still a day to day concern in your country I doubt space exploration is a huge priority. There are only a few dozen countries that can make a meaningful contribution to space exploration. If you consider the EU to be a single country then the number shrinks considerably and we're probably talking about counting them all on two hands. Even in the best of times such international projects tend to be top heavy and inefficient; the ISS has managed to cost many times more than Apollo did, despite relying on existing technology and reaching the same LEO frontier we've been exploring since the 1950s.
Depressed yet? I haven't even touched on geopolitics. The Western World and countries with similar value systems (EU, USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and a few others) can probably be counted on to work together, but if you toss China and Russia (or even India) into the mix the relationship status quickly changes to "It's complicated."
it sucks that this is the case but such is life. So, what do we do? Do we wait for the utopian Star Trek future, where all the problems here on Earth have been figured out, or do we accept that we live in the real world and push forward as best we can? My vote is for the second option.
I agree with you; they're hoplophobes, to borrow a term from Jeff Cooper. :)
That said, it's only fair to point out the stupidity on "our side," like the tone deafness of Wayne LaPierre, who goes on national television a few days after Newton and proclaims that more guns are the answer. Even if you agree with his sentiments that was mind-numbingly stupid, poorly timed, and extremely insensitive. Or the idiots that have ruined open carry, by carrying AR-15s into establishments like Starbucks or Applebee's. Seriously, WTF is the point of that, other than to tweak people? Is Red Dawn going to happen during Happy Hour?
My sister now boycotts Panera and Target, because they asked that people not carry firearms into their establishments. They did not actually post their establishments, even in States where such postingshave force of law; they simply released open letters asking people not to carry firearms. I figured that was a reaction to the aforementioned excesses of the open carry crowd and I have continued to conceal carry at Target and Panera. Out of sight, out of mind.
I think it comes down to the old adage: Just because you CAN do something it does not mean that you SHOULD.
"Some length?" It was one short paragraph out of three. I'll concede that I should have said, "this argument is stupid," rather than "your argument is stupid." For that I apologize.
I really do find this particular argument tiresome when it is used to condemn concealed carry. It's a theoretical, something that to my knowledge has never actually happened in the real world. Is there a single case of civilian blue-on-blue during or immediately after a spree killing? For that matter, law enforcement blue-on-blue during or immediately after a spree killing? The odds of there being a single armed "blue" on-site as a spree killing begins is remote, the odds of multiple blues even more so.
It's much like the oft-repeated claim that a gun in the home is more likely to kill a family member than a home invader, or the oft-quoted statistic that the United States has more gun violence than other Western counties. Even when these claims are true (the latter certainly is; the former is more questionable) they rather miss the point. In the United States you don't get make another person's self-defense choices for them. For better or worse we have the right to keep and bear arms in this country.
Incidentally, what's the point of even quoting the statistic about gun violence vis-à-vis other western countries? Of course the US has a higher rate of gun violence than countries where guns are hard to come by. Duh! I'm willing to wager that Saudi Arabia has a nearly zero DWI rate but I don't see MADD quoting that statistic and/or suggesting that prohibition is the answer for our very real DWI problem. Even those zealots accept the reality that recreational alcohol is here to stay. Why can't the gun-control crowd accept the fact that the United States is never going to be the United Kingdom or even Finland; the strictest American jurisdiction is more liberal than the most liberal of European countries when it comes to firearms regulation and licensing.
Honestly, I'm sick of both sides of the gun debate. "MORE GUNS" is hardly the answer, because the likelihood of an armed "blue" being nearby will always remain remote. It's also fucking tone deaf to go on national television after these tragedies (I'm looking at you Wayne LaPierre, post Newton) and claim that more guns is the answer, even if you earnestly believe that claim. The only thing dumber than the arguments made by these people are the arguments of those on the other side.
Dude, I was being very very very factious. I figured that quote would get a laugh out of you, not an explanation. :D
Personally, I don't understand the fascination with so-called assault weapons on either side of the issue. I feel no need to own one; they're excessive for my self-defense needs and they cost too much. I can defend my person quite effectively with my 1911, thank you very much. I also don't see why they need to be legislated against. The fact of the matter is that handguns are the most popular weapons used to commit crime, for obvious reasons (easy to conceal), and that rifles of any sort are rarely used for nefarious purposes.
Sometimes I think the gun-control crowd borrows tactics from the pro-life crowd. They support any legislation aimed at guns, no matter how little sense it makes, or even if it's effective. The point is to slowly steer the ship of state towards their desired outcome. I'll never forget my United States Senator, Gillibrand, voting against allowing firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak; that vote had nothing whatsoever to do with gun violence and everything to do with proving her bonafides to the gun control crowd.
I pointed out to the Principle one day that the two main front doors are made of full size sheet glass... the locks are for appearance, a gunman could simply shoot the glass.
She looked at me with a blank expression like that thought had never occurred to her.
Maybe she used to be your English/spelling teacher and that's what the blank expression was about? :D
There's not much even a highly trained "good guy with a gun" can do do against a bad guy with an assault rifle.
Bullshit.
I don't want to take on an AK-47 with my .45, but I'd rather face one with my .45 than my cell phone.
Please explain the functional difference betwen an "assault weapon" and the Kel Tec SU-16ca.
The assault weapon has a shoulder thing that goes up. I thought everybody knew that?
Similarly, no special precaution should be taken if religious person's home catches on fire. Them religious books sure ain't gonna start exploding and whizzing around the neighborhood.
Ammunition does not work that way. It relies on the structure of the firearm (specifically the chamber and barrel) to contain the expanding gases from burning powder and utilize them in a useful way. Without such containment the gases dissipate before imparting a meaningful amount of energy on the projectile. Ignite the powder in a non-chambered round and the cartridge will simply blow apart, with the projectile flying one way and the cartridge another. Either can inflict minor injuries (burns and/or bruises) but they can not kill or seriously injure. The lion's share of the potential energy is lost, since there's nothing to contain the expanding gases.
Ammunition left chambered within a firearm is potentially dangerous in a house fire. Mythbusters tested this is an episode, igniting ammunition both in and outside of a firearm. The ammunition ignited inside a firearm (a revolver left inside a common kitchen oven) had a significant amount of force behind the projectile, though less than it would have if properly discharged. Ammunition ignited outside of a firearm simply blew itself apart.
Congratulations on reading my post without actually reading my post.
I would not have had a firearm in that situation. I stated -- quite clearly -- that I do not feel the need to be armed everywhere I go. There is no "false confidence" here; my ability to identify friend from foe is quite irrelevant if I am unarmed, as I almost certainly would be in a night club setting. As an aside, I've availed myself of enough training to take this matter quite seriously. I've known people who have taken human life, have seen what it does to their souls and mental well-being, even though they had no choice in the matter, and I have no desire to join that "club." My first inclination would be to run away; deadly force of any kind is an absolute last resort in my eyes, when one's back is against the proverbial wall, and it's truly kill or be killed.
I simply dispute the oft-repeated notion that the "good guys" will automatically start shooting each other in such a situation. It's a frequently repeated argument of the gun control crowd, meant to condemn those who wish to carry as "gun nuts" or whatever other disparaging terminology you wish to use. It speaks to the mindset of that crowd that they do not approve of the use of firearms for self-defense, no matter what the circumstance, and they feel the need to belittle those that do.
I'm sick of the extreme idiots on both sides of this argument. The "MORE GUNS EVERYWHERE" crowd and the "NO GUNS ANYWHERE" crowd are equally obtuse, in my not so humble opinion. There's no room for rational discussion on this issue, because of people like you, who rush to repeat themselves over and over again without even bothering to read what they're replying to.
I mean, have you ever heard of an atheist murdering people?
Pretty sure you're being rhetorical, but can't resist the obvious reply. :D