no you cannot buy a bumb, but those columbine kids had 99 homemade explosive devices. Your average radical fundamentalist makes IED's and their education level is often crap. I would not be so quick to discard explosives as a serious threat. The issue of knives, sure. Explosives though.... well consider Bellfast in the 80s. ITs hard to regulate. Until oklahoma city bombing, who would have considered using liquid fertalizer. Its like a book i read where they tried to crack down on making methamphetamines. Every time they restrict an ingredient a new method would surface that still got meth manufactured. Chemistry is a bitch to try and regulate.
umm most of these mass killings are at ranges less than 25yards. the ar-15 is being chosen not because of its range, but because they now cost less than $400 and are very reliable. Any handgun you buy for less than $300 will require either A) some tweaking to get it to fire reliably, B) putting 400 rounds through it to break it in so that it _does_ fire reliably, or C) both. The AR-15 is the only open-source weapon i know. The blueprints are public domain and therefore hundreds of different companies manufacture them. Their design, as long as the blueprints are followed, results in a very reliable weapon. But unlike the AKM or AK74, which are also extremely reliable, these are much easier to assemble. Finances are playing a bigger role than anything. There are detachable mag hunting rifles in.308 caliber that are more deadly than an AR15. They just cost $1300 so you dont see much of that getting used.
so you think that you cannot kill 100 people with a handgun? where you a soldier in france? I can absolutely promise you that armed with a Glock22 (.40 caliber) I could easily dispatch 100 people, especially in a gun-free zone. Why would you say otherwise if you really were an ex soldier? Even if you limited my 15rd mag to a 10rd mag I can insert a new mag long before someone hiding, trying not to get shot, can rally and try to charge me.
secondly we cannot buy assault rifles in the united states (unless manufactured prior to 1984). The only thing we own are replica of assault rifles, ie ones that look like the m-16 or m-4. They do not fire 600 rounds per minute like the m-4. They fire about as fast as you can pull a trigger. However, they do often come with a 30 round magazine. But does that really matter? During Vietnam we waged war with the M16A1 and the magazine was a 10 round magazine. It sure as hell did not stop it from being effective and that was fighting against people shooting back at you. In a gun-free-zone scenario, where you are shooting unarmed masses, will the 4 seconds it takes to swap a magazine really make a difference if you had to do it 6 times vs 1 time in order to shoot 60 rounds? If you really were an ex-soldier, and you actually had to use these weapons, surely you practiced how to quickly load a fresh magazine into your battery compartment. How fast did you get?
as far as the right to bear arms, it has nothing to do with muskets. It has to do with evening the odds. If the citizens only get revolvers, then the police should only be able to have revolvers. The supreme court said as much in 1939. Our constitution clearly says _no standing army_. The people, meaning us, were supposed to be armed and WE, the people, the militia, were to be the ones to go to war. Would you go to war with a musket if all the other countries were using lever action rifles? Few understand the point behind the 2nd amendment. Hell if we got rid our illegal standing army and went back to We the People, being the militia, and issued us real asault rifles, most likely we would never EVER get involved in a war unless war came to us. Its one thing to send someone elses kid off to war when your some rich dude or some senator. Its an entirely different thing to yearn for conflict and war when you yourself will have to be the one to pick up your rifle and risk your own life. THAT was the idea of our second amendment.
wasnt the body count on bastille day 86? IT seems that at a certain point, the crowd cant get out of the way because its too big.
Bastille Day Nice massacre July 2016, dead 85, 200 injured due to a heavily loaded delivery truck April 19th 1995, Oklahoma City, during our only assault weapon ban, 2 people using liquid fertilizer and a delivery truck killed 168 people and injured 680 others April 20th, 1999, Columbine, during our only assault weapon ban, several kids armed with pistol caliber semi-automatics as well as pump action and breach-loading shotguns managed to kill 12 people and injure 21. What is really scary is that they had 99 home-made explosives that could have drastically increased this death toll.
what really weird is how we define a rifle vs a pistol
a weapon with a shoulder stock and 16in barrel chambered in 9mm handgun ammo = rifle an AR-15 with a 10" or 7.5" barrel chambered in 5.56x45mm or 300BLK = pistol
at the end of the day its about the ballistics and only the ballistics. any other type of definition and classification irritates me because its clearly not grounded in anything actually scientific or statistical.
something to consider though... this guy was intelligent enough to use the fire alarm. Kids are preconditioned to immediately stand up and walk, calmly, toward an exit and assemble in the parkinglot where the teacher will take attendance. This created a literal shooting gallery like at a carnival. IF they were assembled in a parkinglot i doubt all of them would have gotten away. He probably still could have attained his 17 victim count.
regular handgun? In a school where there is no armed security and the standard operation for dealing with an active shooter is to hide someone? Until the cops show up its fish in a barrel. So what if he has to reload every 10 rounds. Its not like he has to reload the magazine, he just has to put in a new one. He shows up with 10 mags, he can still shoot 100 people as they are huddled trying to avoid getting shot. Columbine was perpetrated with shotguns and carbines that were chambered in pistol caliber rounds (9mm handgun ammo) meaning that though it looked scary, it was nothing more than a creepy looking pistol.
>>> a Hi-Point 995 9mm carbine with thirteen 10-round magazines, a sawed-off Savage 67H 12-gauge pump shotgun, and a sawed-off Stevens 311D double-barreled shotgun (the boys also had 99 home-made explosives and 4 knives) – were all purchased for them by Dylan Klebold’s girlfriend, 18-year-old Columbine student Robyn Anderson >>>
If you're going to draw the line anywhere... im not sure rifle vs pistol, as the 1968 gun law did, makes sense. If your goal is to lower the rate of fire to give authorities time to arrive on scene, maybe 18-20yr olds only get to own revolvers, bolt action, and pump action. Reserving semi-auto to those of age 21 and, hopefully, more mature. However, given the fish-in-a-barrel situation, even a 5round pump action shotgun is going to turn into a blood bath. So he stops to put in more shells... who is going to try to tackle him? In a highschool, maybe someone like the ROTC kids we are learning about. But a school of children? Until armed security show up, he could esentially use a breach-loader and commit a massacre. Without speeding up the part where armed security arrive, I dont think its going to effect the change you believe it will.
you're probably just another russian trollfarm posting as AC.
Anyone truly intelligent, as someone subscribing to slashdot should imply, can see with their own eyes that its not one party doing this shit, its everyone working in DC at this point. They've managed to turn a position of public service into a position of elitism and entitlements and dont give a shit about the rest of us until its time to hold another election. In the past 25 years there have been multiple times where one party, and then the other, controlled all branches of government. Yet even holding this power they campaign on 'dealing with these issues' right after the next election cycle. It's ALWAYS after the next election cycle. They care more about staying in power than serving the public. So take your anti-GOP shit somewhere else, because if you truly thought that the DNC was as righteous as your comments imply, you're not intelligent enough to post here on Slashdot and simply are not wanted as you add nothing to intellectual conversation.
and where is it you live? in some european countries, random psychos are just using stolen delivery vehicles to commit mass killings instead. its hard to regulate crazy. Crazy and dumb is not as difficult as crazy and intelligent. Those crazies always manage to find a way. Lets not forget what 2 crazy people did with some liquid fertilizer and a rented truck.
maybe in other states, but our schools have, for the last decade, have all the exterior doors locked during school. The only entry point is via a security door near the principals office. The person must buzz for access, they are identified by a camera and examined (ie, is he holding a rifle?), upon being buzzed in, they can only get through the first set of doors and must immediately turn to enter the office, access to the rest of the school is still another buzz door away. They then must present indentification to do things like pick up their kid for a dr appointment etc.
Also in my county, since 1971, we have our own department of police for the public school system. So at any time the highschools have 3 armed police officers. Courthouses are gun-free zones too, but nobody shoots them up, as there are several armed sheriff's deputies in the building.
its actually very easy. Thanks to the gun control act of 1968, only one small part constitutes 'the gun'. You make that part and you simply buy the rest and assemble them. There are no restriction on buying gun parts. just 'guns'. Take a look at whats referred to as 80% lowers. IT does cost more this way though. I can buy a stripped, fully anodized, lower for an AR platform for $39 with a background check. To build a non-serialized one I need to spend at least $60, plus all the tools whether thats a drill press, or a router which one typically used to edge patterns into cabinet doors. If money is not an issue, but merely a background check is, take a look at 'ghost gunner'. Its a CNC milling machine for around $1200 that will perfectly turn an 80% lower into completed unit inside of 5 minutes. All you have to do is press a button.
in all honestly its not that these so-called 'assault weapons' are more efficient than other firearms. Its that they are very inexpensive. You can get a basic AR platform for less than $400 now. Granted there are a lot of things one would want to modify that come with some of the more expensive flavors, but if the goal is to shoot into a crown of people who are less than 25yards away its more than sufficient.
its not the gun, its the ballistics. They target 'assault weapons' because they look like a replica of a military issued weapon. The reality is that there are non-replica guns out there that shoot the same ammo and are never considered as part of a ban (such as the ruger mini-14). The US military did not switch to 5.56x45mm because it was more efficient at killing. They did so because it was lighter and you could carry more ammo. The previous ballistic round, which is still in use to some degree, is the.308 Winchester round, aka 7.62x51mm. There are many semi-automatic hunting rifles that have never once been suggested as part of any ban that would be absolutely devastating in a mass shooting.
Take for example the Browning BAR mk3 DBM. It has a standard hunting style stock, no pistol grip, and a simple 10 round detachable magazine. The.308 round can take down Elk. IF a shooter were to use this at a school, there would not be reports of 100rds fired and 17 people dead, many more wounded. It would be a report of just about every shot that hit someone resulted in their death. I doubt very much that there would be any wounded count. It penetrates through walls much more effectively also reducing someones ability to take cover.
Another rifle that looks like something reassured they would not ban is the Springfield Armory M1A1 Scout. Its also.308 and we litterally won WWII using the Springfield M1A1 and M1 Garand (a 30-06 round).
So why dont these shooters go buy one of these? Well for starters the base models are $1200 - $1400. Thats more than 3x the cost of an entry-level AR platform. I believe finances are playing a big role in the recurrence of a specific weapon. For a time, it was the AK platforms appearing all the time, you could get them for $350. Now the AK platforms are more expensive than the AR platforms so we see those more prevalent. Cheap handguns are not as reliable. Ive owned several Taurus, which are not actually that bad of a gun, but until you go put 300-500 rounds through it, you end up with mis-feeds and jams. Its not till you shell out $500+ on a pistol that you get something super reliable straight out of the box.
Im not sure I would go that far. This is my perspective, as someone whose served during wartime and who has seen the evolution of games like call of duty. When you shoot someone, in your first real armed conflict, it leaves a ghostly impression on your mind and consciousness. Seeing someone ripped apart from small arms fire takes a toll on your consciousness and who you are. Some call this your soul. Whatever it is, you feel the impression and you just aren't ever the same person. It is an innocence you will never get back. Repeat engagements have a dulling effect like surgeons that become dulled to the sight of blood and body parts. It is a desensitization and a way your brain compartmentalizes it to save you from going into shock. In a way it becomes non-real, at least as events are unfolding. You react based on training, a part of you is detached to what your doing.
Ive seen these video games, they are scarily accurate in gore and detail. Merely watching people play them gets my heartrate and blood pressure elevated. It brings back images I would rather forget. Its not exactly comfortable.
Here is my concern as it relates to a mass shooting. As you said, 'well adjusted people', which we can agree these mass shooters were anything but. In many cases, going all the way back to columbine, these kids played these games for countless hours and, in my opinion, were desensitized in a similar manner that live combat desensitizes you. If this element were removed, these not-so-well-adjusted people most likely would experience this trauma and shock after they shot their first victim, and quite possibly, lose the resolve to continue with their plan. The pre-training and desensitization, in my opinion, has given them the conditioning required to continue carrying out such a brutal act.
There is a reason these games have ratings on them. M+ clearly is defined as 18yr and older. Why is it, even when these shooters are 18, we learn that they've been playing this crap since they were 13 and 14? Shall we disregard decades of research pointing to the fact that in the early adolescent minds are very impressionable? Am I to really believe its OK to let a 14yr old continue to play a game rated M+ because studies were conducted on well-adjusted adults? Thats crazy. In my opinion, that would be like saying its OK for kids at the age of 14 to watch hard-core porn with realistic rape scenes and expect it also to not scar them psychologically and not impact their ability to have a meaningful relationship.
I dont think the suggestion is to ban the content. However, there needs to be an acceptance by parents that its NOT ok to continue to buy this stuff for their kids, ore more accurate, leave this stuff around for the kids to play and/or watch their parents play. I think the ratings system that does exist needs to be taken more seriously. I think it does deserve consideration, not because a law needs to be enacted, but because parental awareness is not strong enough. This is not the 80s. Many of the parents of todays kids still play video games, many that are rated M+. I think the mistake is that, as adults, we assume that since its not affecting us, it probably isnt affecting our kids, and this could be the tragedy.
cobalt-60 doesnt occur because the planet was born with an abundance of it. by that logic it would never occur anywhere... yet it does. Using your logic we should not be able to find uranium 235 anywhere since its half life is 700million years old. that means it would be completely gone in 3.5 billion years. Except that other isotopes are still decaying into uranium-235 all the time. Why would you assume that the planet started with X amount of anything and it only decays out of existence from there? The single biggest threat of being in a reactor room, not while running, is cobalt-60. They sure as hell didnt build the power plant with cobalt in the stainless steel:-) Fe59 becomes Fe60 which then beta-minus decays into Co60.
you assume that there were no outside influences. How much iron exists near the cobalt? Iron-59 absorbing a neutron becomes iron-60 which then beta-minus decays (proton turns into a neutron) into cobalt-60. This happens all the time in nuclear plants. While its unlikely they are using nuclear power in the mine, the possibility of other radiological surveying existing is still possible. Most of those surveys use radioactive source material to expose materials to testing. Even a gamma-emitter could in turn cause another isotope to emit a neutron. Unstable isotopes can turn protons into neutrons (or vice versus), they can capture electrons, they can give up a neutron, throw out an alpha particle (helium atom with no electrons), or can give off an electron/positron. That mine stopped being 'naturally occuring' once industry moved into the area:-)
i guess you do not fully undestand half-life. Half-life is how long it takes for half of it to decay, not all of it. It takes 5 half-lives to to 'effectively' decay away. However, other nuclides decay up and down the chart all the time... neutron decay, proton->neutron decay, neutron->proton decay, etc. Then there are proton-> neutron etc. So there are plenty of things that can keep things around. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years, but the earth is 4.5 billion years old, yet uranium-235 is still able to be refined. Other things decay into other isotopes all the time. Cobalt-60 will exist anwhere a nuetron emitter of any source comes in contact with iron-59. I am sure they conduct radiological surveys of these mines. Lets be real, any place employing children are not likely to take safety precautions of any gamma emitter that in turn triggers a neutron decay of a nearby material.
I wonder what percentage of the cobalt in that mine is Cobalt-60. That's some particularly nasty shit with a 7.8MeV photon decay and a half-life of 5.27 years. They probably will die of cancer much faster than global climate consequences.
yes he did! he got fired as an FBI informant because he did EXACTLY that... he leaked his memo to Yahoo News in the UK and that was exactly what got him removed as a paid informant. THEN the FBI continued to use said dossier AFTER his firing, and failed to disclose that not only was it paid for by a campaign, but the source was FIRED for a huge breach in their policy.
she will be dead before being president. We might have a madame president but it wont be her. That 'cold' she has had for the last 2 years..... its still there. Besides why would you WANT her? She ACTUALLY IS guilty of collusion and conspiracy to meddle in an election. They didnt even deny they colluded with the media to rig the primary elections. Thats what started the whole screaming about russian hacking to begin with. Podesta fell for a fake email that tricked him into signing into a fake website with his real password. Hell even the then-chairman of the DNC released a book outing the illegal stuff the HRC campaign did. If you try to put her back into the election cycle you're going to end up with someone else you dont like. Pick someone without so much damn baggage for fucks sake
they arent invalidated... do you even read or is this some bad bong hit for you? Even if every allegation turns out to be true, it was the ELECTORAL COLLEGE that voted for president trump. Unless you can prove that the ELECTORAL COLLEGE was being bribed by the russians, the election of 2016 will STAND. You are down to President Pense, ASSUMING you can get SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of the SENATE to CONVICT on an indictment. The fucking senate cant even rally TWO-THIRDS majority to overcome a fucking VETO or FILLABUSTER. What makes you think they will EVER get 75%? You should be made to re-take the citizenship test.
it doesnt make it right, but i keep seeing a lot of post (a fuck ton of them AC btw) with statements like 'If i see a russian im going to punch him in the dick". They are angry and honestly, HONESTLY, believe this is an unprecedented and unprovoked attack on our government. Clearly these AC must be millennials. Nobody could be that niave and that isolated unless they grew up in a entirely online existence. And btw the crime is NOT collusion.... the word collusion implies two groups working together. the indictment said the exact opposite. It said no americans were aware that this was being done. So the crime is INTERFERENCE.... NOT COLLUSION. stop using the word collusion or you end up becoming part of the fake news. I agree there was INTERFERENCE. I do not agree there was COLLUSION. The swift-boat ads were an example of this... it wasnt collusion, it was a bunch of ex military that got really pissed at John Kerry's testomony in congress during vietnam and waited for his run for president to run ads to interfere in his bid. I see this as the exact same thing, only this time a foreign government was involved.
being Anti-Hillary is not the same as Pro-Trump. Lets face it, this election was between the Never-Hillary group and the Never-Trump group. The Pro-Trump group and the Pro-Hillary groups probably amounted to 15% of the total electorate in this election. Too bad she colluded with the media to steal the primary election. We might be talking about President Sanders had that not happened.
they staged opposite rallies in the same city. That sounds more like trying to start a fight. IF they cared that much why did the same Internet Research Group immediately start running anti-trump ads and protests the day AFTER he got elected instead of just closing up shop. I'll grant you they wanted HIllary to lose, but they were probably more about hurting hillary than helping trump. Afterall she did manage to sucker $500million dollars in extortion for the sale of Uranium One. Someone probably had to cover that expense wand wanted some payback.
well they did pay her 'charity' in canada 500 million before the state department approved the sale of Unranium One. Surely that isnt a conflict of interest. Just curious.... do you believe the Executive branch has the legal obligation to follow and enforce ALL laws passed by congress and therefore cannot PICK and CHOOSE which laws they wish to obey? I am curious what your answer is, because you probably wont like my response either way. I for one believe its Congress' job to MAKE laws, its the Executive Branch's job to ENFORCE them, and the Judicial Branch's job to research the constitutionality of them. You are pigeon holed in on this one. If Trump is a bastard for not following the laws, then everyone else is going to take a fall too. This whole DREAMER crap is 100% about Congress NOT fixing the law and instead insist that the president CONTINUE to break the law by selectively telling his agents to ignore bills signed into law decades ago. So if Trump is breaking the law over sanctions, then arrest Obummer too for the DREAMER dereliction of duty. The only reason Congress wants to throw this back at POTUS is because they KNOW this is a political minefield where nobody is going to be happy and they are afraid of losing their job. The truth is if their solution leaves EVERYONE unhappy, they actually probably did their jobs right for once.
IMO its not out of guilt. I think he knows he has nothing to do with this. I think its narcissism that does it. The same that created a pissing match on day 2 over the size of the inauguration attendance. And before you point out that it makes him unstable, bear in mind that SHE also is a huge narcissist and had already been caught conspiring with the media to rig the primary election away from Sanders. I specifically voted against HER just because of that alone. My conscious is still clean, I voted Gary Johnson and there was no way in hell I would vote Killary. I _Would_ have voted DJT if Gary had not been on the ballot.
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no you cannot buy a bumb, but those columbine kids had 99 homemade explosive devices. Your average radical fundamentalist makes IED's and their education level is often crap. I would not be so quick to discard explosives as a serious threat. The issue of knives, sure. Explosives though.... well consider Bellfast in the 80s. ITs hard to regulate. Until oklahoma city bombing, who would have considered using liquid fertalizer. Its like a book i read where they tried to crack down on making methamphetamines. Every time they restrict an ingredient a new method would surface that still got meth manufactured. Chemistry is a bitch to try and regulate.
umm most of these mass killings are at ranges less than 25yards. the ar-15 is being chosen not because of its range, but because they now cost less than $400 and are very reliable. Any handgun you buy for less than $300 will require either A) some tweaking to get it to fire reliably, B) putting 400 rounds through it to break it in so that it _does_ fire reliably, or C) both. The AR-15 is the only open-source weapon i know. The blueprints are public domain and therefore hundreds of different companies manufacture them. Their design, as long as the blueprints are followed, results in a very reliable weapon. But unlike the AKM or AK74, which are also extremely reliable, these are much easier to assemble. Finances are playing a bigger role than anything. There are detachable mag hunting rifles in .308 caliber that are more deadly than an AR15. They just cost $1300 so you dont see much of that getting used.
so you think that you cannot kill 100 people with a handgun? where you a soldier in france? I can absolutely promise you that armed with a Glock22 (.40 caliber) I could easily dispatch 100 people, especially in a gun-free zone. Why would you say otherwise if you really were an ex soldier? Even if you limited my 15rd mag to a 10rd mag I can insert a new mag long before someone hiding, trying not to get shot, can rally and try to charge me.
secondly we cannot buy assault rifles in the united states (unless manufactured prior to 1984). The only thing we own are replica of assault rifles, ie ones that look like the m-16 or m-4. They do not fire 600 rounds per minute like the m-4. They fire about as fast as you can pull a trigger. However, they do often come with a 30 round magazine. But does that really matter? During Vietnam we waged war with the M16A1 and the magazine was a 10 round magazine. It sure as hell did not stop it from being effective and that was fighting against people shooting back at you. In a gun-free-zone scenario, where you are shooting unarmed masses, will the 4 seconds it takes to swap a magazine really make a difference if you had to do it 6 times vs 1 time in order to shoot 60 rounds? If you really were an ex-soldier, and you actually had to use these weapons, surely you practiced how to quickly load a fresh magazine into your battery compartment. How fast did you get?
as far as the right to bear arms, it has nothing to do with muskets. It has to do with evening the odds. If the citizens only get revolvers, then the police should only be able to have revolvers. The supreme court said as much in 1939. Our constitution clearly says _no standing army_. The people, meaning us, were supposed to be armed and WE, the people, the militia, were to be the ones to go to war. Would you go to war with a musket if all the other countries were using lever action rifles? Few understand the point behind the 2nd amendment. Hell if we got rid our illegal standing army and went back to We the People, being the militia, and issued us real asault rifles, most likely we would never EVER get involved in a war unless war came to us. Its one thing to send someone elses kid off to war when your some rich dude or some senator. Its an entirely different thing to yearn for conflict and war when you yourself will have to be the one to pick up your rifle and risk your own life. THAT was the idea of our second amendment.
wasnt the body count on bastille day 86? IT seems that at a certain point, the crowd cant get out of the way because its too big.
Bastille Day Nice massacre July 2016, dead 85, 200 injured due to a heavily loaded delivery truck
April 19th 1995, Oklahoma City, during our only assault weapon ban, 2 people using liquid fertilizer and a delivery truck killed 168 people and injured 680 others
April 20th, 1999, Columbine, during our only assault weapon ban, several kids armed with pistol caliber semi-automatics as well as pump action and breach-loading shotguns managed to kill 12 people and injure 21. What is really scary is that they had 99 home-made explosives that could have drastically increased this death toll.
what really weird is how we define a rifle vs a pistol
a weapon with a shoulder stock and 16in barrel chambered in 9mm handgun ammo = rifle
an AR-15 with a 10" or 7.5" barrel chambered in 5.56x45mm or 300BLK = pistol
at the end of the day its about the ballistics and only the ballistics. any other type of definition and classification irritates me because its clearly not grounded in anything actually scientific or statistical.
something to consider though... this guy was intelligent enough to use the fire alarm. Kids are preconditioned to immediately stand up and walk, calmly, toward an exit and assemble in the parkinglot where the teacher will take attendance. This created a literal shooting gallery like at a carnival. IF they were assembled in a parkinglot i doubt all of them would have gotten away. He probably still could have attained his 17 victim count.
regular handgun? In a school where there is no armed security and the standard operation for dealing with an active shooter is to hide someone? Until the cops show up its fish in a barrel. So what if he has to reload every 10 rounds. Its not like he has to reload the magazine, he just has to put in a new one. He shows up with 10 mags, he can still shoot 100 people as they are huddled trying to avoid getting shot. Columbine was perpetrated with shotguns and carbines that were chambered in pistol caliber rounds (9mm handgun ammo) meaning that though it looked scary, it was nothing more than a creepy looking pistol.
>>>
a Hi-Point 995 9mm carbine with thirteen 10-round magazines, a sawed-off Savage 67H 12-gauge pump shotgun, and a sawed-off Stevens 311D double-barreled shotgun (the boys also had 99 home-made explosives and 4 knives) – were all purchased for them by Dylan Klebold’s girlfriend, 18-year-old Columbine student Robyn Anderson
>>>
If you're going to draw the line anywhere ... im not sure rifle vs pistol, as the 1968 gun law did, makes sense. If your goal is to lower the rate of fire to give authorities time to arrive on scene, maybe 18-20yr olds only get to own revolvers, bolt action, and pump action. Reserving semi-auto to those of age 21 and, hopefully, more mature. However, given the fish-in-a-barrel situation, even a 5round pump action shotgun is going to turn into a blood bath. So he stops to put in more shells... who is going to try to tackle him? In a highschool, maybe someone like the ROTC kids we are learning about. But a school of children? Until armed security show up, he could esentially use a breach-loader and commit a massacre. Without speeding up the part where armed security arrive, I dont think its going to effect the change you believe it will.
you're probably just another russian trollfarm posting as AC.
Anyone truly intelligent, as someone subscribing to slashdot should imply, can see with their own eyes that its not one party doing this shit, its everyone working in DC at this point. They've managed to turn a position of public service into a position of elitism and entitlements and dont give a shit about the rest of us until its time to hold another election. In the past 25 years there have been multiple times where one party, and then the other, controlled all branches of government. Yet even holding this power they campaign on 'dealing with these issues' right after the next election cycle. It's ALWAYS after the next election cycle. They care more about staying in power than serving the public. So take your anti-GOP shit somewhere else, because if you truly thought that the DNC was as righteous as your comments imply, you're not intelligent enough to post here on Slashdot and simply are not wanted as you add nothing to intellectual conversation.
and where is it you live? in some european countries, random psychos are just using stolen delivery vehicles to commit mass killings instead. its hard to regulate crazy. Crazy and dumb is not as difficult as crazy and intelligent. Those crazies always manage to find a way. Lets not forget what 2 crazy people did with some liquid fertilizer and a rented truck.
maybe in other states, but our schools have, for the last decade, have all the exterior doors locked during school. The only entry point is via a security door near the principals office. The person must buzz for access, they are identified by a camera and examined (ie, is he holding a rifle?), upon being buzzed in, they can only get through the first set of doors and must immediately turn to enter the office, access to the rest of the school is still another buzz door away. They then must present indentification to do things like pick up their kid for a dr appointment etc.
Also in my county, since 1971, we have our own department of police for the public school system. So at any time the highschools have 3 armed police officers. Courthouses are gun-free zones too, but nobody shoots them up, as there are several armed sheriff's deputies in the building.
its actually very easy. Thanks to the gun control act of 1968, only one small part constitutes 'the gun'. You make that part and you simply buy the rest and assemble them. There are no restriction on buying gun parts. just 'guns'. Take a look at whats referred to as 80% lowers. IT does cost more this way though. I can buy a stripped, fully anodized, lower for an AR platform for $39 with a background check. To build a non-serialized one I need to spend at least $60, plus all the tools whether thats a drill press, or a router which one typically used to edge patterns into cabinet doors. If money is not an issue, but merely a background check is, take a look at 'ghost gunner'. Its a CNC milling machine for around $1200 that will perfectly turn an 80% lower into completed unit inside of 5 minutes. All you have to do is press a button.
in all honestly its not that these so-called 'assault weapons' are more efficient than other firearms. Its that they are very inexpensive. You can get a basic AR platform for less than $400 now. Granted there are a lot of things one would want to modify that come with some of the more expensive flavors, but if the goal is to shoot into a crown of people who are less than 25yards away its more than sufficient.
its not the gun, its the ballistics. They target 'assault weapons' because they look like a replica of a military issued weapon. The reality is that there are non-replica guns out there that shoot the same ammo and are never considered as part of a ban (such as the ruger mini-14). The US military did not switch to 5.56x45mm because it was more efficient at killing. They did so because it was lighter and you could carry more ammo. The previous ballistic round, which is still in use to some degree, is the .308 Winchester round, aka 7.62x51mm. There are many semi-automatic hunting rifles that have never once been suggested as part of any ban that would be absolutely devastating in a mass shooting.
Take for example the Browning BAR mk3 DBM. It has a standard hunting style stock, no pistol grip, and a simple 10 round detachable magazine. The .308 round can take down Elk. IF a shooter were to use this at a school, there would not be reports of 100rds fired and 17 people dead, many more wounded. It would be a report of just about every shot that hit someone resulted in their death. I doubt very much that there would be any wounded count. It penetrates through walls much more effectively also reducing someones ability to take cover.
Another rifle that looks like something reassured they would not ban is the Springfield Armory M1A1 Scout. Its also .308 and we litterally won WWII using the Springfield M1A1 and M1 Garand (a 30-06 round).
So why dont these shooters go buy one of these? Well for starters the base models are $1200 - $1400. Thats more than 3x the cost of an entry-level AR platform. I believe finances are playing a big role in the recurrence of a specific weapon. For a time, it was the AK platforms appearing all the time, you could get them for $350. Now the AK platforms are more expensive than the AR platforms so we see those more prevalent. Cheap handguns are not as reliable. Ive owned several Taurus, which are not actually that bad of a gun, but until you go put 300-500 rounds through it, you end up with mis-feeds and jams. Its not till you shell out $500+ on a pistol that you get something super reliable straight out of the box.
are you any less dead because you were stabbed to death?
Im not sure I would go that far. This is my perspective, as someone whose served during wartime and who has seen the evolution of games like call of duty. When you shoot someone, in your first real armed conflict, it leaves a ghostly impression on your mind and consciousness. Seeing someone ripped apart from small arms fire takes a toll on your consciousness and who you are. Some call this your soul. Whatever it is, you feel the impression and you just aren't ever the same person. It is an innocence you will never get back. Repeat engagements have a dulling effect like surgeons that become dulled to the sight of blood and body parts. It is a desensitization and a way your brain compartmentalizes it to save you from going into shock. In a way it becomes non-real, at least as events are unfolding. You react based on training, a part of you is detached to what your doing.
Ive seen these video games, they are scarily accurate in gore and detail. Merely watching people play them gets my heartrate and blood pressure elevated. It brings back images I would rather forget. Its not exactly comfortable.
Here is my concern as it relates to a mass shooting. As you said, 'well adjusted people', which we can agree these mass shooters were anything but. In many cases, going all the way back to columbine, these kids played these games for countless hours and, in my opinion, were desensitized in a similar manner that live combat desensitizes you. If this element were removed, these not-so-well-adjusted people most likely would experience this trauma and shock after they shot their first victim, and quite possibly, lose the resolve to continue with their plan. The pre-training and desensitization, in my opinion, has given them the conditioning required to continue carrying out such a brutal act.
There is a reason these games have ratings on them. M+ clearly is defined as 18yr and older. Why is it, even when these shooters are 18, we learn that they've been playing this crap since they were 13 and 14? Shall we disregard decades of research pointing to the fact that in the early adolescent minds are very impressionable? Am I to really believe its OK to let a 14yr old continue to play a game rated M+ because studies were conducted on well-adjusted adults? Thats crazy. In my opinion, that would be like saying its OK for kids at the age of 14 to watch hard-core porn with realistic rape scenes and expect it also to not scar them psychologically and not impact their ability to have a meaningful relationship.
I dont think the suggestion is to ban the content. However, there needs to be an acceptance by parents that its NOT ok to continue to buy this stuff for their kids, ore more accurate, leave this stuff around for the kids to play and/or watch their parents play. I think the ratings system that does exist needs to be taken more seriously. I think it does deserve consideration, not because a law needs to be enacted, but because parental awareness is not strong enough. This is not the 80s. Many of the parents of todays kids still play video games, many that are rated M+. I think the mistake is that, as adults, we assume that since its not affecting us, it probably isnt affecting our kids, and this could be the tragedy.
cobalt-60 doesnt occur because the planet was born with an abundance of it. by that logic it would never occur anywhere... yet it does. Using your logic we should not be able to find uranium 235 anywhere since its half life is 700million years old. that means it would be completely gone in 3.5 billion years. Except that other isotopes are still decaying into uranium-235 all the time. Why would you assume that the planet started with X amount of anything and it only decays out of existence from there? The single biggest threat of being in a reactor room, not while running, is cobalt-60. They sure as hell didnt build the power plant with cobalt in the stainless steel :-) Fe59 becomes Fe60 which then beta-minus decays into Co60.
you assume that there were no outside influences. How much iron exists near the cobalt? Iron-59 absorbing a neutron becomes iron-60 which then beta-minus decays (proton turns into a neutron) into cobalt-60. This happens all the time in nuclear plants. While its unlikely they are using nuclear power in the mine, the possibility of other radiological surveying existing is still possible. Most of those surveys use radioactive source material to expose materials to testing. Even a gamma-emitter could in turn cause another isotope to emit a neutron. Unstable isotopes can turn protons into neutrons (or vice versus), they can capture electrons, they can give up a neutron, throw out an alpha particle (helium atom with no electrons), or can give off an electron/positron. That mine stopped being 'naturally occuring' once industry moved into the area :-)
i guess you do not fully undestand half-life. Half-life is how long it takes for half of it to decay, not all of it. It takes 5 half-lives to to 'effectively' decay away. However, other nuclides decay up and down the chart all the time... neutron decay, proton->neutron decay, neutron->proton decay, etc. Then there are proton-> neutron etc. So there are plenty of things that can keep things around. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years, but the earth is 4.5 billion years old, yet uranium-235 is still able to be refined. Other things decay into other isotopes all the time. Cobalt-60 will exist anwhere a nuetron emitter of any source comes in contact with iron-59. I am sure they conduct radiological surveys of these mines. Lets be real, any place employing children are not likely to take safety precautions of any gamma emitter that in turn triggers a neutron decay of a nearby material.
I wonder what percentage of the cobalt in that mine is Cobalt-60. That's some particularly nasty shit with a 7.8MeV photon decay and a half-life of 5.27 years. They probably will die of cancer much faster than global climate consequences.
yes he did! he got fired as an FBI informant because he did EXACTLY that... he leaked his memo to Yahoo News in the UK and that was exactly what got him removed as a paid informant. THEN the FBI continued to use said dossier AFTER his firing, and failed to disclose that not only was it paid for by a campaign, but the source was FIRED for a huge breach in their policy.
she will be dead before being president. We might have a madame president but it wont be her. That 'cold' she has had for the last 2 years..... its still there. Besides why would you WANT her? She ACTUALLY IS guilty of collusion and conspiracy to meddle in an election. They didnt even deny they colluded with the media to rig the primary elections. Thats what started the whole screaming about russian hacking to begin with. Podesta fell for a fake email that tricked him into signing into a fake website with his real password. Hell even the then-chairman of the DNC released a book outing the illegal stuff the HRC campaign did. If you try to put her back into the election cycle you're going to end up with someone else you dont like. Pick someone without so much damn baggage for fucks sake
they arent invalidated... do you even read or is this some bad bong hit for you? Even if every allegation turns out to be true, it was the ELECTORAL COLLEGE that voted for president trump. Unless you can prove that the ELECTORAL COLLEGE was being bribed by the russians, the election of 2016 will STAND. You are down to President Pense, ASSUMING you can get SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of the SENATE to CONVICT on an indictment. The fucking senate cant even rally TWO-THIRDS majority to overcome a fucking VETO or FILLABUSTER. What makes you think they will EVER get 75%? You should be made to re-take the citizenship test.
it doesnt make it right, but i keep seeing a lot of post (a fuck ton of them AC btw) with statements like 'If i see a russian im going to punch him in the dick". They are angry and honestly, HONESTLY, believe this is an unprecedented and unprovoked attack on our government. Clearly these AC must be millennials. Nobody could be that niave and that isolated unless they grew up in a entirely online existence. And btw the crime is NOT collusion.... the word collusion implies two groups working together. the indictment said the exact opposite. It said no americans were aware that this was being done. So the crime is INTERFERENCE.... NOT COLLUSION. stop using the word collusion or you end up becoming part of the fake news. I agree there was INTERFERENCE. I do not agree there was COLLUSION. The swift-boat ads were an example of this... it wasnt collusion, it was a bunch of ex military that got really pissed at John Kerry's testomony in congress during vietnam and waited for his run for president to run ads to interfere in his bid. I see this as the exact same thing, only this time a foreign government was involved.
being Anti-Hillary is not the same as Pro-Trump. Lets face it, this election was between the Never-Hillary group and the Never-Trump group. The Pro-Trump group and the Pro-Hillary groups probably amounted to 15% of the total electorate in this election. Too bad she colluded with the media to steal the primary election. We might be talking about President Sanders had that not happened.
they staged opposite rallies in the same city. That sounds more like trying to start a fight. IF they cared that much why did the same Internet Research Group immediately start running anti-trump ads and protests the day AFTER he got elected instead of just closing up shop. I'll grant you they wanted HIllary to lose, but they were probably more about hurting hillary than helping trump. Afterall she did manage to sucker $500million dollars in extortion for the sale of Uranium One. Someone probably had to cover that expense wand wanted some payback.
well they did pay her 'charity' in canada 500 million before the state department approved the sale of Unranium One. Surely that isnt a conflict of interest. Just curious.... do you believe the Executive branch has the legal obligation to follow and enforce ALL laws passed by congress and therefore cannot PICK and CHOOSE which laws they wish to obey? I am curious what your answer is, because you probably wont like my response either way. I for one believe its Congress' job to MAKE laws, its the Executive Branch's job to ENFORCE them, and the Judicial Branch's job to research the constitutionality of them. You are pigeon holed in on this one. If Trump is a bastard for not following the laws, then everyone else is going to take a fall too. This whole DREAMER crap is 100% about Congress NOT fixing the law and instead insist that the president CONTINUE to break the law by selectively telling his agents to ignore bills signed into law decades ago. So if Trump is breaking the law over sanctions, then arrest Obummer too for the DREAMER dereliction of duty. The only reason Congress wants to throw this back at POTUS is because they KNOW this is a political minefield where nobody is going to be happy and they are afraid of losing their job. The truth is if their solution leaves EVERYONE unhappy, they actually probably did their jobs right for once.
IMO its not out of guilt. I think he knows he has nothing to do with this. I think its narcissism that does it. The same that created a pissing match on day 2 over the size of the inauguration attendance. And before you point out that it makes him unstable, bear in mind that SHE also is a huge narcissist and had already been caught conspiring with the media to rig the primary election away from Sanders. I specifically voted against HER just because of that alone. My conscious is still clean, I voted Gary Johnson and there was no way in hell I would vote Killary. I _Would_ have voted DJT if Gary had not been on the ballot.