I use #3 or #4 steel shot (3" magnum 12 gauge) for pheasant. When hit after it has traveled a couple hundred yards it hurts a little more than heavy rain but less than small (pea sized) hail. I've had it rain down a couple of times from people who were on the other side of a reasonable size stand of trees who shot over them.

No but that neighbor getting hit with a blast of water from the hose would be expected. Then again in my world the drone would have likely faced a similar fate from the garden hose.

Depends on the local regulations. In the city I live in it is illegal to discharge a firearm within city limits but an air rifle is perfectly acceptable. So I can use my very high powered .22 cal air rifle within city limits, but I couldn't fire a subsonic .22 short from a rifle. They are both very comparable in power and will put a hole through the various yard rodents and are effective against the invasive possum.

You mean like these little guys that were reported on over 2 years ago.

The difference there is that I wouldn't shoot it with my shotgun or rifle but it likely would have a close encounter with my 8lb maul.

It was likely bird shot and that bleeds off energy fast. If it was a slug or buck shot it would much more problematic, but even shotgun slugs and buck shot lose energy pretty fast compared to a regular bullet. Not saying this guy was smart or did the right thing, but just don't believe what you see in movies.

Usually not but there are probably some exceptions. Most Americans are rednecks like this, nor are most gun owners, it is only the really stupid ones you hear about.

Having been hit by some bird shot that was on its way back down it is a little more than hard rain but less than small hail in how much it hurts. It was fired from some hunters on the other side of a reasonable stand of trees (about 100-150 meters wide) so it just arced over and rained down.

But past experience has shown that the end users do an awful lot of beta testing. If things go off without an issue and there aren't any major problems then I may make the switch earlier but as stated earlier past experience would indicate that one should wait a bit. Although it couldn't be as bad as the Windows ME upgrade. It isn't like my Win7 box is going to stop functioning tomorrow if I don't upgrade now.

I will probably make the jump in about 6 months once the dust settles and most of the big bugs have been squashed. I don't want to be a beta tester.

Those blades also have exotic coatings and actually operate at a temperature above the melting point of the metal in them. A couple of weeks ago I heard the BBC Elements program on nickel and they were bringing up its use in jet engines. Jet turbines use the vast majority of the very limited supply (about 70% of 40 tons) of rhenium produced each year and it is one of the most expensive metals so I doubt the cost is an issue.

I think the only ones that weren't were ones that were cheer-leading for the current administration or outright silly. The best example of the "Fuck off" mentality is this petition response. I forget what the issue was in the initial petition but the response of basically go read our long standing stance on the issue and piss off prompted the second one. At that point I basically gave up on the petitions and most people did.