Agreed. I'd rather be at least 15-20 feet back. That's also why I'd rather have a shotgun for home defense.

No, because it isn't science.

And here lies the genesis of anti-gun attitudes: I can't be trusted with one, so the rest of you can't be, either.

I can assure you that children who can reach a high shelf are old enough to learn what guns are, how they work, and what happens when you fire a .357 Magnum at a watermelon, because that's exactly what my father did with me. I've been shooting since I was six, got my own BB gun at seven and a .22 at ten. Always had maximum respect for weapons, because it was drilled into me. And I intend to do exactly the same thing with my kids. Shooting and hunting are great hobbies (though I don't care for hunting myself), and self-defense is a fundamental human right. I'd rather have a daughter who knows how to shoot than one whose only hope is that the rapist won't kill her afterward.

He was an experienced detective, IIRC 20+ years on the force. One of those guys who gets to break the rules (in any organization) because, well, who the hell are you to tell him how to be a cop, rookie?

But your reaction is the same one the rest of us had - what an idiot! Wasn't just any suspect, either - the guy was arrested for murder. Dumb.

Side effects are generally predictable, and generally have a slow onset that leads to discontinuation of the drug before things become a serious problem. Failure of a self-defense gun to fire is like a new analgesic that causes instant fatal arrhythmias seconds after the first dose.

Not if you ask them. Go see if you can get away with no-knock raids in the middle of the night and killing all your neighbors' dogs before you assert that.

If they're standing close enough to you to be able to pull the gun out of your hands before you have shot them, you need to back up. Reaction time matters and in a real life-or-death situation you need to account for it.

I cannot comprehend how it is that people come up with ideas this bad. You do realize that batteries can fail for a variety of reasons, right? And that the lawful gun owner is not the problem, right? I mean, the criminal who is going to commit armed robbery does not care if you also convict him of failure to keep his batteries charged when you pick him up.

You can't guarantee that the gun will always fire if an authorized user has it without restricting your safety mechanisms to simple mechanical ones.

And now, in an article about science, you quote someone's own sources to prove them wrong, you get downmodded. But it's not a religion...

So you're either religious about it or a deliberate liar. (The FDA says it's safe enough to eat, but you choose to ignore that.) Which one?

My point was that the left wingers in question do not actually "accept" the science; they just happen to have religious beliefs that match the science on a few points. It is not a stretch to imagine that when the promulgated solution to every problem is "fewer people with less industry", regardless of what that problem might actually be, that people who disagree with you will recognize that those beliefs are religious or political rather than scientific. At the point at which science is reduced to a tool of politics, it loses credibility.

Um, OK. Would you care to share any evidence on that? I don't think we're actually vaporizing styrene when pouring hot liquids into it, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

Well, way to prove my point about it being a religion. You are either ignorant of the content of the reports you linked, or you are deliberately lying.

The EPA report linked by "nasty chemicals" doesn't actually talk about anything involved in the manufacture of styrene, just the end products made from it (e.g., ABS, Styrofoam), and some of its uses, such as "an FDA-approved synthetic flavoring agent and adjuvant for ice cream and candy" (better watch out for those FDA-approved ingredients!). The same source informs us that

In water,

In soil,

And in living organisms,

Which is to say that the half-life of the styrene monomer, should any dissociate from the polymer, is on the order of a few weeks at most, and that's when it's buried. Unless it's horribly toxic, it's really not anything to worry about.

As for cancer, the EPA classifies it as a possible carcinogen, not a probable or even likely one, as does the IARC - as it says in your link to highcountryconservation.org. From the same EPA report you mentioned

If that's the level of evidence that we've got - contradictory stories in animal models and nothing at all in humans - for the monomer, it's going to be hard for me to get too worked up about the even more inert polymer.

I want a nice clean environment, but I've seen what paper plants put out, and frankly dioxins are a bigger problem in my book than styrene.

What do you think is trapped in polystyrene foam?

Well, now that we're talking aesthetics rather than science...

If this is how you talk to people who agree with you, I think I can see the problem you have with convincing those who don't.