If certain people can be reliably be determined to be prone to irresponsible use of guns - or for that matter, for anything, then it's not unreasonable for the rest of us to want to limit their access.
Are you really equating a terror attack by two avowed ISIS-loyalists to any of the usual psychotic-break style crazy person attacks? These are two completely different things. Are you asking, "When will the next ISIS devotee do the things that group's religious leader is telling them it's their Islamic duty to do?"... or are you asking, "When will another damaged-goods schizophrenic hearing voices and marinating themselves in media coverage of other killers' results decide it's time to finally snap in a lethal way?"
The risk of the latter remains, as it always has, very low. The risk of the former is increasing daily because of the size of the demographic that supports groups like ISIS, their numbers living in the US, and pure gold they see as all of this media coverage. So, that's going to keep happening more and more often until we treat that problem like what it actually is. The president, who assured the world that we had ISIS "contained," right before they killed 130 in Paris, just said on Wednesday that the US is safe from ISIS-style attacks. Not counting the people that a local ISIS franchise just killed in California, of course. Other than them.
So, mostly what you're doing is drawing attention to a rampant gang problem that's densely located in a few urban areas. Take away the behavior in those three or four toxic urban spots (areas run for decades by liberal legislators/councils and executives, of course) and you'll find that the US is somewhere around 17th in such things among modernized western nations. When some thug in a drive-by pops off a few rounds and four people catch some brick chips or a graze in the ass while standing on a street corner, that's counted in your stats as a "mass shootings." A little perspective, please. Especially since today's event in California looks to have been the act of one Syed Farook, his brother, and a female companion (much to the disappointment of all the people who were screaming all day about white male conservatives obviously being the culprits).
Fewer guns and the rejection of gun culture is a good idea independent of mass shootings.
Those in the "gun culture" are the ones you want to have guns. Because the grow up understanding them, knowing how and when to use them, and because they've been around them since childhood, don't invest in them the sort of cartoonish mystique that not-raised-around-them video game playing idiots do. People who fantasize about getting and using a real firearm to scratch their sociopathic itches aren't part of the gun culture.
Apparently we're still waiting to find out the "why" part. But we now know that it was Syed Farook, his brother, and a female companion that they're still trying to sort out.
I have electric motor aircraft. I know how right I am.
I have a range of electric aircraft, and actually operate them in situations ranging from dead silent to, say, typical suburban background noise levels. I not only know how right I, I have explicitly researched this - first hand, in practice, with uninformed test subjects doing the listening - in order to be comfortable saying what I'm saying (because I also say it to customers, since it's important to some of them). I have large octos that are noisy, hexes that can be, and quads that range from annoying to practically inaudible until they're only feet away. You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own empirically observed facts.
If I start with the drive full of helium, and then some leaks out shouldn't the density of the gas in the drive then be lower? And if less dense gas reduces strain shouldn't the lifetime of the drive then increase?
You're assuming it's under pressure. Exactly the opposite. Helium "leaking out" is really normal outside air leaking in. The atmosphere inside the drive enclosure thus becomes denser, robbing life from the device.
Why is this a problem? You can't file a flight plan electronically?
And get the FAA to respond with your waiver in under 5 minutes? The point of these flights is the under-30-minute delivery. That includes handling the transaction, picking the product at the warehouse, getting it on board and in the air and several miles away. The FAA isn't built for waiving NFZ rules in minutes.
Regardless, you're ignoring the whole no-BLOS part of their regs. They require a certified PIC and a spotter with eyes on the vehicle the whole time. It's taken them years to decide about THOSE rules. Deciding to waive them will take years more if ever.
If you were handy, we'd do a little test. I'll take four different size multi-rotors up to 400' when you're not looking, and then we'll see how well you can tell where they are, which direction they're going, or if you can even hear them at all.
Then, I'll bring one in for a quick vertical landing at the same time a UPS diesel panel truck rolls up next to you to make a delivery, and you can tell me where the drone is, using only your ears.
You're speaking without experience, or deliberately trolling.
So, the ones that are certified and are in use commercially right now and have been for years and don't cost more than a manned aircraft - those are imaginary?
You mean the number that is far lower than the number of people killed through preventable accidents in hospitals? Or in car accidents? That sort of thing? The number that's been going steadily down for 30 years? The number half of which are suicides? The murders that are highly concentrated in just a handful of some sections of some urban areas that also feature high numbers of knifings, beatings, and other kinds of murders? Take those few urban areas (run, every one of them, for decades by progressive lefty legislatures/councils and executives) out of stats, and the murder rate in general (to say nothing of those that happened to involve the use of a firearm) are below 16 other modern western democracies including in Europe. In other words, "Americans" don't want to shoot anything/everything, but there are some urban areas in the US where politcal correctness and lefty politics have cultivated acute local crime problems. These are also the areas with the most draconian gun control laws, of course.
If you think your guns let you defend yourself against the government, you really need some help.
Which comment of mine are you replying to, exactly? Please be specific.
Right. In advance, with a flight plan, and not BLOS. Remind me again how that's going to work on a package delivery to random addresses inside 30 minutes.
Yeah, try operating a commercial UAV at an airport or over Washington DC and see how long it takes for a federal knock on the door and a $10,000 fine per incident. You don't do that with your logo splashed on the side of your delivery vehicle and just hope nobody notices.
Not counting your airport problem, it's quite possible that properties like yours will simply be on the "Sorry, we can't deliver to your address by this mechanism" list. That's going to be true of millions and millions of residences. Probably MOST residences. This will be more useful for exurbs, and for deliveries to places like corporate office parks, hospitals, or other spots that might need rush deliveries and have more reliably plausible LZs. Logistics are likely to be case by case.
Because drones flying over your house are an invasion of privacy
Actually no, no they're not. You might have an argument if the machine is being operated literally feet above your house, or below your treetops. But traversing the airspace above your house isn't any more invasion of your property than is driving by it with a car. Do you feel that your privacy is being invaded when a traffic reporting Cessna flies over? No? Why not? Be specific.
Why do Americans want to shoot anything/everything ?
No, the question is why does everyone else feel the need to keep that meme alive? Is it to make themselves feel better about having given away their own ability to defend themselves? There are plenty of places around the world where people go and spend an hour on the trap and skeet ranges. It's like bowling or golf. Why do all of the Germans, Swedes, French, Italians, Japanese, British, Russian, Brazilian, Spanish, Chinese, Australian, Latvian, and everyone else who do that want to shoot everything? Or is that maybe not really a reasonable characterization, as it turns out?
Really? How do you use an airport in a no-fly zone?
Don't be an idiot. You know perfectly well what the GP is referring to. The FAA says no UAS activity within 5 miles of an airport. To the extent that one can make advance arrangements - including special permission, a filed flight plan, etc - per flight, you might be able to get away with that. That completely rules out on-demand delivery services like those being discussed. In every practical sense, that makes the five miles surrounding airports UAS delivery NFZ's. The entire DC metro area and many other spots are also completely, permanently off limits.
Ok, so the WMDs in Iraq, used by Saddam to kill thousands of people in Iraq - those didn't exist? This sort of nonsense is supposed to make you sound credible? Who do you think your audience is - people just like you, but even dumber, who won't wonder if you paid any attention whatsoever to stacks of dead people killed with Iraq's chemical weapons? Man, it must be really annoying to be you, with reality being such a constant irritant like that.
Sadly, EULAs and the like tell them they can do this. Courts have upheld it. Which means taking them at their word is pretty much useless.
What? If the user who wants to participate in online discussions on a private company's web site agrees to a EULA that states that the owner of the web site reserves the right to change the conditions of using the site, then that's exactly what you signed up for. The only "sadly" involved is users sadly not reading what they agree to. Most people in the gimme-dat-free-stuff mindset don't think things through anyway.
Real names policies exist because companies say "what value can I get from selling the fact that SuitWrinkler53 commented on the website?" and deciding that they can't sell that information.
Or, if you're a publisher, those policies exist in order to spare the publishers huge ongoing legal expenses in dealing with inquiries and even subpoenas related to digging out real names or other information about trolling, libelous, or otherwise criminal users.
And then you realize they don't know much about the underlying technology, and are probably using something like WordPress.
No, then we realize that you're talking out of your ass and haven't bothered to so much as view the source on one of their pages in order to see that you're wrong. And that the paper - like so many who can't afford to go about it in any other way - are using a third party SaaS solution. Which means a single code base for many clients, which means no, customizing it for one customer isn't always desirable or even do-able.
They just have to remind you it's technically private property, and that the license says they can change the terms if they wish.
Oh, so you DO get it. What are you bitching about, then?
The reason why Saddam was under that disposal and inspection regime was *because* of those things
You mean, the things that didn't exist? What are you saying exactly? You're trying to have it both ways.
What Saddam did in the past and was under restrictions for is itself not a valid pretext for invasion.
Sure it is, because he refused to comply with the requirements that arose from everything that went before. And you're STILL pretending that his forces never ceased to target those protecting the no-fly zone, wasn't robbing from UN food and relief funds to buy more weapons, and so on.
Where was the evidence of WMDs? None.
I know, I know, you're trying to wish away the deaths of thousands of people killed with exactly those non-existent WMDs that you simultaneously say were the basis for the inspection regime. I suspect you're don't actually listen to yourself, in order to avoid realizing how silly you sound.
Almost 15 years past we have not found any evidence of hidden/buried caches
Right, just the places where they USED to be, and which were blocked from inspection while he was still in power.
Do you mean waterboarding? The very same technique to which thousands of US military people have subjected themselves during routine training? That sort of thing?
And "behind the Irag invasions"... what? Do you meant the invasion conducted by dozens of allies following Saddam's attempt to take over Kuwait? Or do you mean the follow-up invasion that occurred because Saddam never met any of his obligations following the cease-fire has his invasion was pushed back, and as he continued to fire on aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones over the territories occupied by the ethnic minorities he'd been systematically killing with air strikes and WMD's? Silly me, of course you know all of that, and you're just a cowardly anonymous troll out to re-write history and, as a another lying little lefty, trying to distract everyone from the fact that the party you want in power will be run by Hillary Clinton, who saw all the same intelligence and supported (through her own votes and vocal support) both the original conflict and the second one that completed it. Hint: people actually pay attention, so just lying about it doesn't actually change history.
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If certain people can be reliably be determined to be prone to irresponsible use of guns - or for that matter, for anything, then it's not unreasonable for the rest of us to want to limit their access.
So, the Pre-Crime Department? Please be specific.
Are you really equating a terror attack by two avowed ISIS-loyalists to any of the usual psychotic-break style crazy person attacks? These are two completely different things. Are you asking, "When will the next ISIS devotee do the things that group's religious leader is telling them it's their Islamic duty to do?" ... or are you asking, "When will another damaged-goods schizophrenic hearing voices and marinating themselves in media coverage of other killers' results decide it's time to finally snap in a lethal way?"
The risk of the latter remains, as it always has, very low. The risk of the former is increasing daily because of the size of the demographic that supports groups like ISIS, their numbers living in the US, and pure gold they see as all of this media coverage. So, that's going to keep happening more and more often until we treat that problem like what it actually is. The president, who assured the world that we had ISIS "contained," right before they killed 130 in Paris, just said on Wednesday that the US is safe from ISIS-style attacks. Not counting the people that a local ISIS franchise just killed in California, of course. Other than them.
So, mostly what you're doing is drawing attention to a rampant gang problem that's densely located in a few urban areas. Take away the behavior in those three or four toxic urban spots (areas run for decades by liberal legislators/councils and executives, of course) and you'll find that the US is somewhere around 17th in such things among modernized western nations. When some thug in a drive-by pops off a few rounds and four people catch some brick chips or a graze in the ass while standing on a street corner, that's counted in your stats as a "mass shootings." A little perspective, please. Especially since today's event in California looks to have been the act of one Syed Farook, his brother, and a female companion (much to the disappointment of all the people who were screaming all day about white male conservatives obviously being the culprits).
Fewer guns and the rejection of gun culture is a good idea independent of mass shootings.
Those in the "gun culture" are the ones you want to have guns. Because the grow up understanding them, knowing how and when to use them, and because they've been around them since childhood, don't invest in them the sort of cartoonish mystique that not-raised-around-them video game playing idiots do. People who fantasize about getting and using a real firearm to scratch their sociopathic itches aren't part of the gun culture.
So, we have no idea who did it or why.
Apparently we're still waiting to find out the "why" part. But we now know that it was Syed Farook, his brother, and a female companion that they're still trying to sort out.
But it seems like an unlikely choice for a political attack
You mean, like a restaurant or a concert?
Sorry but you're wrong.
I have electric motor aircraft. I know how right I am.
I have a range of electric aircraft, and actually operate them in situations ranging from dead silent to, say, typical suburban background noise levels. I not only know how right I, I have explicitly researched this - first hand, in practice, with uninformed test subjects doing the listening - in order to be comfortable saying what I'm saying (because I also say it to customers, since it's important to some of them). I have large octos that are noisy, hexes that can be, and quads that range from annoying to practically inaudible until they're only feet away. You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own empirically observed facts.
If I start with the drive full of helium, and then some leaks out shouldn't the density of the gas in the drive then be lower? And if less dense gas reduces strain shouldn't the lifetime of the drive then increase?
You're assuming it's under pressure. Exactly the opposite. Helium "leaking out" is really normal outside air leaking in. The atmosphere inside the drive enclosure thus becomes denser, robbing life from the device.
Why is this a problem? You can't file a flight plan electronically?
And get the FAA to respond with your waiver in under 5 minutes? The point of these flights is the under-30-minute delivery. That includes handling the transaction, picking the product at the warehouse, getting it on board and in the air and several miles away. The FAA isn't built for waiving NFZ rules in minutes.
Regardless, you're ignoring the whole no-BLOS part of their regs. They require a certified PIC and a spotter with eyes on the vehicle the whole time. It's taken them years to decide about THOSE rules. Deciding to waive them will take years more if ever.
If you were handy, we'd do a little test. I'll take four different size multi-rotors up to 400' when you're not looking, and then we'll see how well you can tell where they are, which direction they're going, or if you can even hear them at all.
Then, I'll bring one in for a quick vertical landing at the same time a UPS diesel panel truck rolls up next to you to make a delivery, and you can tell me where the drone is, using only your ears.
You're speaking without experience, or deliberately trolling.
So, the ones that are certified and are in use commercially right now and have been for years and don't cost more than a manned aircraft - those are imaginary?
The massive amount of people killed each year
You mean the number that is far lower than the number of people killed through preventable accidents in hospitals? Or in car accidents? That sort of thing? The number that's been going steadily down for 30 years? The number half of which are suicides? The murders that are highly concentrated in just a handful of some sections of some urban areas that also feature high numbers of knifings, beatings, and other kinds of murders? Take those few urban areas (run, every one of them, for decades by progressive lefty legislatures/councils and executives) out of stats, and the murder rate in general (to say nothing of those that happened to involve the use of a firearm) are below 16 other modern western democracies including in Europe. In other words, "Americans" don't want to shoot anything/everything, but there are some urban areas in the US where politcal correctness and lefty politics have cultivated acute local crime problems. These are also the areas with the most draconian gun control laws, of course.
If you think your guns let you defend yourself against the government, you really need some help.
Which comment of mine are you replying to, exactly? Please be specific.
It says not without clearance
Right. In advance, with a flight plan, and not BLOS. Remind me again how that's going to work on a package delivery to random addresses inside 30 minutes.
Yeah, try operating a commercial UAV at an airport or over Washington DC and see how long it takes for a federal knock on the door and a $10,000 fine per incident. You don't do that with your logo splashed on the side of your delivery vehicle and just hope nobody notices.
To be fair, those are 1.5 ton trucks at most. UPS makes (or has made) their own custom Aluminum bodies.
OK then, you're right. Completely harmless.
Not counting your airport problem, it's quite possible that properties like yours will simply be on the "Sorry, we can't deliver to your address by this mechanism" list. That's going to be true of millions and millions of residences. Probably MOST residences. This will be more useful for exurbs, and for deliveries to places like corporate office parks, hospitals, or other spots that might need rush deliveries and have more reliably plausible LZs. Logistics are likely to be case by case.
they're going to be like having snowmobiles and dirt bikes overhead
Take an hour and hang out with some people operating this sort of equipment. And then post again when you realize how very wrong you are.
Because drones flying over your house are an invasion of privacy
Actually no, no they're not. You might have an argument if the machine is being operated literally feet above your house, or below your treetops. But traversing the airspace above your house isn't any more invasion of your property than is driving by it with a car. Do you feel that your privacy is being invaded when a traffic reporting Cessna flies over? No? Why not? Be specific.
Why do Americans want to shoot anything/everything ?
No, the question is why does everyone else feel the need to keep that meme alive? Is it to make themselves feel better about having given away their own ability to defend themselves? There are plenty of places around the world where people go and spend an hour on the trap and skeet ranges. It's like bowling or golf. Why do all of the Germans, Swedes, French, Italians, Japanese, British, Russian, Brazilian, Spanish, Chinese, Australian, Latvian, and everyone else who do that want to shoot everything? Or is that maybe not really a reasonable characterization, as it turns out?
Nothing explains the most difficult part of the operation, public acceptance of something potentially noisy and dangerous
You mean, like a 5-ton brown diesel panel truck rolling into your driveway? That sort of noisy, dangerous thing?
Really? How do you use an airport in a no-fly zone?
Don't be an idiot. You know perfectly well what the GP is referring to. The FAA says no UAS activity within 5 miles of an airport. To the extent that one can make advance arrangements - including special permission, a filed flight plan, etc - per flight, you might be able to get away with that. That completely rules out on-demand delivery services like those being discussed. In every practical sense, that makes the five miles surrounding airports UAS delivery NFZ's. The entire DC metro area and many other spots are also completely, permanently off limits.
No, there were no WMDs in Iraq
Ok, so the WMDs in Iraq, used by Saddam to kill thousands of people in Iraq - those didn't exist? This sort of nonsense is supposed to make you sound credible? Who do you think your audience is - people just like you, but even dumber, who won't wonder if you paid any attention whatsoever to stacks of dead people killed with Iraq's chemical weapons? Man, it must be really annoying to be you, with reality being such a constant irritant like that.
Sadly, EULAs and the like tell them they can do this. Courts have upheld it. Which means taking them at their word is pretty much useless.
What? If the user who wants to participate in online discussions on a private company's web site agrees to a EULA that states that the owner of the web site reserves the right to change the conditions of using the site, then that's exactly what you signed up for. The only "sadly" involved is users sadly not reading what they agree to. Most people in the gimme-dat-free-stuff mindset don't think things through anyway.
Real names policies exist because companies say "what value can I get from selling the fact that SuitWrinkler53 commented on the website?" and deciding that they can't sell that information.
Or, if you're a publisher, those policies exist in order to spare the publishers huge ongoing legal expenses in dealing with inquiries and even subpoenas related to digging out real names or other information about trolling, libelous, or otherwise criminal users.
And then you realize they don't know much about the underlying technology, and are probably using something like WordPress.
No, then we realize that you're talking out of your ass and haven't bothered to so much as view the source on one of their pages in order to see that you're wrong. And that the paper - like so many who can't afford to go about it in any other way - are using a third party SaaS solution. Which means a single code base for many clients, which means no, customizing it for one customer isn't always desirable or even do-able.
They just have to remind you it's technically private property, and that the license says they can change the terms if they wish.
Oh, so you DO get it. What are you bitching about, then?
The reason why Saddam was under that disposal and inspection regime was *because* of those things
You mean, the things that didn't exist? What are you saying exactly? You're trying to have it both ways.
What Saddam did in the past and was under restrictions for is itself not a valid pretext for invasion.
Sure it is, because he refused to comply with the requirements that arose from everything that went before. And you're STILL pretending that his forces never ceased to target those protecting the no-fly zone, wasn't robbing from UN food and relief funds to buy more weapons, and so on.
Where was the evidence of WMDs? None.
I know, I know, you're trying to wish away the deaths of thousands of people killed with exactly those non-existent WMDs that you simultaneously say were the basis for the inspection regime. I suspect you're don't actually listen to yourself, in order to avoid realizing how silly you sound.
Almost 15 years past we have not found any evidence of hidden/buried caches
Right, just the places where they USED to be, and which were blocked from inspection while he was still in power.
Do you mean waterboarding? The very same technique to which thousands of US military people have subjected themselves during routine training? That sort of thing?
... what? Do you meant the invasion conducted by dozens of allies following Saddam's attempt to take over Kuwait? Or do you mean the follow-up invasion that occurred because Saddam never met any of his obligations following the cease-fire has his invasion was pushed back, and as he continued to fire on aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones over the territories occupied by the ethnic minorities he'd been systematically killing with air strikes and WMD's? Silly me, of course you know all of that, and you're just a cowardly anonymous troll out to re-write history and, as a another lying little lefty, trying to distract everyone from the fact that the party you want in power will be run by Hillary Clinton, who saw all the same intelligence and supported (through her own votes and vocal support) both the original conflict and the second one that completed it. Hint: people actually pay attention, so just lying about it doesn't actually change history.
And "behind the Irag invasions"