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Post your funny pictures here!!! part Deux

Started by Nam, July 26, 2014, 08:19:18 PM

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Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Mike Cl on November 18, 2021, 11:44:28 PM
You mean the m16 I had in the Army only fired semi-auto???  I wonder what the fully automatic fire was all about?? 
My buds gave me a .50 cal. M2 when I retired. (The serial numbers indicated that it was in S.E.A. when I was, so maybe...) And the CO gave me a federal firearms license, no expiration. Such sweet guys.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

PopeyesPappy

Quote from: Mike Cl on November 18, 2021, 09:50:34 PM
I still don't think anybody needs a fully automatic weapon.  Did not mention machineguns.  I was thinking of assault  ​rifles.  What would anybody need a banana clip or any large clip for an assault rifle?  Combat soldiers would, but who else?

Any firearm that fires more than one time with a single operation of the trigger is by definition under US law a machinegun.
Save a life. Adopt a Greyhound.

PopeyesPappy

Quote from: Dark Lightning on November 18, 2021, 11:29:12 PM
Fully automatic firearms are called machine guns, generally. Assault rifles are semi-automatic, meaning that they will only fire one round with a squeeze of the trigger, and will not fire another round until the trigger is squeezed again (and do not require a manual bolt to cycle the spent round out of the chamber and the new round in). The difference between "assault rifles" and "hunting rifles" is vanishingly small. I will agree with you that in general, no civilian needs a large magazine.

The original definition of assault rifle was, "An assault rifle is a selective fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine." The term was adopted first by the media then by the general public to include their semiautomatic clones marketed to civilians. So no, assault rifles are not semiautomatic, but the term has been applied to semiautomatic scary looking guns.
Save a life. Adopt a Greyhound.

Shiranu

#9723



"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Hydra009

Quote from: Shiranu on November 19, 2021, 11:11:08 AMHonestly, yes.
Whew.  That's a relief.  For a second there, I thought you were...

*rereads*  *spittake*


Shiranu

Quote from: Hydra009 on November 19, 2021, 10:45:21 PM
Whew.  That's a relief.  For a second there, I thought you were...

*rereads*  *spittake*

Cars put off toxic gas during use, regardless of who's property it is on, that affect all of us... so I agree with regulations over that. I also think they need to have safety regulations so the company doesn't intentionally cheap out on a put people's lives at risk.

But the regulations on what guns you can buy, to compare to guns, would be like the government telling you the only cars you can buy are capped out a 30mph and covered in bubble wrap because other people find cars scary.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Hydra009

Pointing out that they're...a bit concerned...without specifying why (the 19-ton purple elephant in the room) runs dangerously close to dishonestly asserting that they're concerned for no reason.  Was that an intentional oversight?

Shiranu

They are concerned that it will be use for nefarious purposes; that's a perfectly valid concern, but in regards to assault rifles it's an unfounded one; over the last 5 year, less than 500 people are killed with one every year.

"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Hydra009

Do you think the cause of concern is the <500 killed/year or the approx 14,000 killed/year?

Shiranu

Quote from: Hydra009 on November 20, 2021, 12:17:02 AM
Do you think the cause of concern is the <500 killed/year or the approx 14,000 killed/year?

What is the 14,000 killed by?
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Hydra009

#9731
Quote from: Shiranu on November 20, 2021, 12:26:32 AM
What is the 14,000 killed by?
edit for clarity - ~14,000 firearm homicides (out of ~39,000 total gun deaths that year)

Shiranu

#9732
Quote from: Hydra009 on November 20, 2021, 12:28:41 AM
edit for clarity - ~14,000 firearm homicides (out of ~39,000 total gun deaths that year)

Ahh, okay.

If you take a look at a graph of gun violence by state, and a graph of states by poverty level, you will see essentially the same graph. In terms of gun homicide rates, African-Americans are 15 times more likely to be involved in a gun homicide than whites, presumably because of their tendency to have been forced into poor socio-economic neighborhoods and lives. A large percentage of homicide by gun is carried out by gangs, not your average, law-abiding citizen.

The states with the highest gun-ownership also trend in the upper-half of lowest gun deaths; Arkansas, Missouri, and Alabama are the exceptions to the rule, but they are also 3 of the most impoverished states, particularly for African-Americans who make up a large percentage of the population.

To me that indicates that the fundamental problem is poverty and low socio-economic living standards. Take the guns away, and they just find new ways to kill one another; provide a better standard of living, and they stop the violence all together.

To me solving the problem is a better choice than taking away innocent people's rights for a band-aide fix.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

drunkenshoe

#9733
OK. Thanks, Shir.

"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

Hydra009

#9734
Quote from: Shiranu on November 20, 2021, 12:57:48 AMAhh, okay.

If you take a look at a graph of gun violence by state, and a graph of states by poverty level, you will see essentially the same graph. In terms of gun homicide rates, African-Americans are 15 times more likely to be involved in a gun homicide than whites, presumably because of their tendency to have been forced into poor socio-economic neighborhoods and lives. A large percentage of homicide by gun is carried out by gangs, not your average, law-abiding citizen.

The states with the highest gun-ownership also trend in the upper-half of lowest gun deaths; Arkansas, Missouri, and Alabama are the exceptions to the rule, but they are also 3 of the most impoverished states, particularly for African-Americans who make up a large percentage of the population.

To me that indicates that the fundamental problem is poverty and low socio-economic living standards. Take the guns away, and they just find new ways to kill one another; provide a better standard of living, and they stop the violence all together.

To me solving the problem is a better choice than taking away innocent people's rights for a band-aide fix.
Poverty is indeed part of the problem, but not the whole of it.  Problems can have more than one cause, obviously.

By and large, poverty and gun violence are correlated among countries, but there are exceptions.  The US is certainly unusual in that it ranks fairly high in gun homicide rate (17th, more akin to South American countries than Western Europe or Canada) but somewhat low in poverty rate (106th).  Could another factor be at work here?

Blaming it all on poverty - which sounds convincing, so no doubt some may find it convincing for this reason alone and not think about it too much - conveniently ignores the ease of access of firearms and comparatively little oversight (as I subtly pointed out earlier, there is a national registry required for car owners, but to my knowledge, no such registry exists for gun buyers)

If you would like me to accept that people would kill each other anyway and that gun policy has nothing to do with homicide rate (a stance the gun lobby has certainly invested large sums of money in, since such a mentality absolves them in any deaths and doesn't threaten arms sales), I would very much like to hear your thoughts on Australia's experience with the same problem:

QuoteIn April 1996, 35 people were killed in Port Arthur, Tasmania, by a gunman using military‐style semi‐automatic rifles. Within 12 days, the Australian government and all state and territory governments agreed to a new national gun law standard and to initiate a mandatory buyback of newly prohibited firearms. Within a year, 659 940 semi‐automatic rifles and shotguns had been purchased and destroyed. Between 1996 and 2015, at least one million privately owned firearms â€" one‐third of the estimated national total â€" were seized or surrendered, and decommissioned.

The Australian policy response was followed by a decline in the number of gun‐related deaths, from a mean rate of 3.6 per 100 000 population during 1979â€"1996 to 1.2 per 100 000 during 1997â€"2013
Source:  https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2021/215/9/gun-violence-australia-2002-2016-cohort-study

In this scenario, do you think the homicide rate stayed the same from year to year, since people would "just find new ways to kill one another"?  Let's find out.

[spoiler]https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide[/spoiler]