A modern firearm cannot kill you if you drop it. Unless of course it has a bayonet attached and it was dropped from a ladder or something. Then you were technically killed by a bayonet and not a gun. Modern semi autos have firing pin safeties and modern revolvers have transfer bar safeties. The firing pin can only be engaged by pulling the trigger, even with the hammer down.

The only guns that go off when you drop them are for the most part curios are relics and those aren't seen as tools they are collector items. I just don't see someone using a vintage Colt Single Action Army revolver as a personal defense weapon. Or even something more recent like a Tokarev TT33 for that matter.

Heck, even the old 1911 has a grip safety; it cannot fire unless the grip safety is depressed. That means someone has to be holding in their hand. Some firearms have trigger safeties; the trigger can't be pulled unless the center of the trigger is depressed. Some firearms also have manual safeties that lock the trigger and the firing pin when engaged.

As for the issue of "if you think it's unloaded", the very first rule of firearm safety is "treat all guns as if they are loaded." Even if you don't follow that rule, if you follow the others you'll be fine. Rule 2 is never point a gun at something you are not willing to shoot. Rule 3 is keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire. Rule 4 is be aware of your target and what is behind it.

As for the "kill your pregnant stepmother" bit, you can do that a lot more silently with a socket wrench than you can with a gun. If you're arguments held any weight we would see record deaths because firearm ownership is at an all time high. Firearm sales have been through the roof lately yet somehow people are NOT magically deciding to turn into murderers just because they own a gun or 2 or 10. Guns ARE tools. They do not inherently alter your psyche. They do not change your personality any more than a utility knife does. If you are not a murderer, buying a gun isn't going to change that. You are not going to shoot someone in a heated argument any more than you would beat them to death with a wrench or stab them to death with a kitchen knife or even strangle them with your bare hands.

Interestingly enough though, defensive uses of firearms ARE increasing and crime rates are down in areas where gun ownership is increasing.
On a side note, I have a Ramset and a nailgun that very much could kill me if I dropped either one. Both are intended as construction tools and certainly not meant for killing. They are not as safe as modern firearms.

Around 1:45PM give or take 10 minutes our office building did a nice little shimmy. It was enough for them to evacuate the building for a couple hours.

Cooridnates: 40.611916, -75.537497

The role of PA AG is very limited. Corbett's ability to prosecute is limited mainly to corruption in state government and organized crime. He cannot prosecute violations of state law committed at the local level; that's for local DA's. In fact ironically, municipalities in violation of state pre-emption laws cannot be prosecuted for that violation until the local DA takes them to court. Since the local DAs are usually the original source of those laws violating pre-emption in the first place, good luck getting that to happen.

In fact, the AG's lack of prosecuting violators of state pre-emption is a huge source of criticism from people in the Republican party against Corbett because few people understand just how limited the PA AG's powers are with respect to prosecution. The AG office is actually a fairly new one in PA. The office didn't even exist prior to 1980.

I live in PA and I've been following the Bonusgate scandal for a while. There are numerous Republicans and Democrats getting nailed for corruption in this case. The current investigation is into politicians who have been using public funds (read: taxpayer money) to fund their own campaigns and to pay campaign workers (usually friends and relatives). Millions of dollars stolen to fund campaigns, nevermind how much of that "campaign" money was then pocketed. This is stuff that makes Ted Stevens look saintly. Both sides of the isle here, this is a rather broad corruption scandal. The guys involved are VERY high up on the totem polls of their respective parties.

Corbett is making a lot of enemies during this process. What you are seeing here is not a violation of PA law, not an infringement of free speech; it's a spinjob by the very very powerful scumbags that Corbett is nailing in this case. The Twitter accounts are being used by defendants in the case (and those working for the defendants) to poison the well for the trial. That's illegal. Corbett is issuing subpoenas for these two. If it turns our they are in fact defendants or working for defendants, then that means the law is being broken. If not, then it just means an investigative line was incorrect; it happens.

What is sickening is how much the media has bought into the whole freedom of speech violation bullcrap. These are agents of corrupt politicians who have been stealing from the public for years and have been using Twitter to mess with the jury pool and derail the investigation. These are not noble people voicing their political opinions. These are corrupt scumbags breaking ANOTHER law in order to get away with breaking a hundred others. And now that the AG has caught wind of what they are trying and is doing what is in his power to stop this new illegal tactic; they are fighting back with a spin campaign against him.

There is a very serious corruption problem in Pennsylvania right now. The AG is making a huge breakthrough in eliminating a large chunk of that corruption. Given the power and influence of those being brought down, any attacks on the AG and the AG's office should be viewed with intense scrutiny and suspicion.

I expect to be modded down for this post. Corbett is a Republican and Republicans don't seem to be too popular here on slashdot. Hopefully there are people who can see through the smokescreen and understand what is really going on in this situation. This media story is a load of spin from very powerful and extremely corrupt politicians who are looking for every single trick in the book to avoid being convicted of the serious crimes they've committed.

We'll trade media, art, and novelties. No seriously. That's about all that would stand the test of time, so that's what we'd trade. It's also all we'd purchase from them, since by the time the traders get back to Earth, that's all that would be valuable. Since trips to far off planets cost so much, the items they bring back would definitely be highly prized by the rich and wealthy of the Earth.

So traders will bring them Gone With the Wind, recordings of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, and Yankees bobbleheads. They'll bring back Yagblorts book of poetry and some hood ornaments from a Froznoz 7000 series hovercraft.

We have the technology to go 1% the speed of light. Maybe even 10%. But the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prevent us from using that technology. It's called nuclear propulsion. We had the technology in the 1950s to create a ship capable of transporting as many as 10,000 people to anywhere in our solar system in a relatively short amount of time. Just look up the Orion Project. It involves using small nuclear bombs to propel a ship and tests were quite promising. The test ban treaty put an end to the project.

Project Daedelus and other similar more recent projects have looked/are looking for ways to bring back nuclear propulsion using "bombs" that produce no radioactive fallout.

Anyway, the point is that we have the technology NOW to do it, but we have political barriers preventing us. It seems somewhat unlikely that all civilizations who have developed such a technology would be restricted by the very same political barriers.

Wireless alarms at all windows and doors. They are amazingly inexpensive and super easy to install. The only way to get in without tripping an alarm is break through a wall. My house is made of brick and stone so I imagine the noise that would cause would wake me up as well. For intruders that are not deterred by alarms or the homeowners being awake, I have some hollow point 357 rounds with their name on them and a Castle Doctrine which allows me to legally act with lethal force in the event of a home invasion. My wife and I both have a lot of range time with the Ruger to ensure we know how to use it in the event we have to (it's also a TON of fun).

Of course none of that matters if I'm not home. My primary concern is the safety of my family though, so the system I have takes care of that. In any event, the alarms are loud enough you can hear them a block away. It's quite deafening. The neighbors would be alerted in the event of a break-in and they're all the type that would call the police in that situation. We'd do the same for them.

The total cost of the alarms was under $100. That's total. The maintenance is the cost of batteries which have to be replaced once every couple years. It took about 30 minutes to set all of them up and required no technical knowledge. Heck, installing them was about as brainless as it gets. I'm surprised more people don't have a similar setup.

In any case, sadly England does not afford its citizens the same liberties to defend their house and home. I'm very glad to hear the police got the culprit. It could have ended much worse.

Deficit: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

You cannot allocate money towards the deficit since the deficit is defined as the amount of money we are spending that we are not collecting. You don't "apply money to deficit reduction", because that's simply "not spending money." i.e. it's called cutting spending.

Deficit neutral means that the deficit stays the same. So if you cut spending from one program and increase spending to another program by the same amount, then you're being deficit neutral. If you cut spending to one program but increase spending to another by a GREATER amount, you are increasing the deficit. if you are increasing spending to the other program by a LESSER amount, then you are decreasing the deficit. The debt is still going up, but the deficit is smaller.

Let's draw a personal budget analogy. let's say you make $5000 per month. Let's say you spend $6000 per month. You have a monthly deficit of $1000. You're debt could be any number at all, but your monthly deficit is $1000. If you cut your monthly barhopping budget by $500 and increase your monthly food budget by $500 you are being deficit neutral; your deficit has not changed, you are still spending $1000 more per month than you make.

Interestingly enough, there are already laws on the books which call for this but they aren't being enforced. The Clayton and Sherman anti-trust acts make it illegal to bill different amounts to different groups for the same product or service in such a way as to give one group a serious competitive advantage. Since the difference between what a private insurance company pays and what an uninsured person pays is usually an order of magnitude, I'd say that qualifies.

Too bad anti-trust laws haven't been enforced seriously in decades.

Sometimes the answer isn't more laws or more regulation. Sometimes the answer is simply enforcing the laws you already have.

If I make $1 in income, I will be taxed on that $1 and end up receiving much less than $1. It will certainly be less than $0.85 (Capital Gains tax is 15%). However, if after receiving that $1 I "donate" it, but still get to use $0.90 however I see fit, I've gained from donating because the $1 is no longer taxable.

While saving 5 cents may seem like nothing, when talking about this kind of money, it gets big. It's not always "charitable foundations" though. Typically the money is spread somewhat evenly amongst various tax shelters. A little bit in a CRT, a little donated to the family foundation, a little bit in some variable universal life insurance, etc.

No offense, but I'm in the position to know the financial dealings of some tens of thousands of wealthy individuals, and I can tell you flatly and honestly that the primary purpose of the vast majority of those "donations" is to dodge taxes. The majority of such donations are to "foundations" which are run by agents who answer directly to the person who "donated" their funds. Such foundations need only use a small fraction of their donations on actual charitable work. In most cases, the work done is very questionably charitable to begin with.

Don't let actual charitable individuals like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet fool you. Wealthy people by and large donate because there is a net gain in it for them.

I would urge you to especially look into information about Charitable Remainder Trusts.

Did you see the Amanda Knox trial? This is the same legal system that convicted 2 obviously innocent people of murder with no evidence and sentenced them to prison for over 20 years even though they had already CONVICTED SOMEONE ELSE FOR THE SAME CRIME!

My wife and I had planned on visiting Italy in the next few years. After watching the trial, we changed our minds. Italy's legal system has ... "flaws."

As the AC who posted before me stated, bottle caps were the currency of Fallout 1, a game by Black Isle. They switched in Fallout 2 and it was one of the changes people didn't like. When Bethesda did Fallout 3, they switched the currency back to bottle caps.

If you're going to call something "sheer genius", please give the credit where the credit is actually due: the folks from Black Isle. I loved Fallout 3 and think Bethesda did a great job, but there is very little in Fallout 3 that Bethesda actually came up with conceptually on their own; it's nearly all expanding on Black Isle's previous work (it IS after all a sequel).

The true value of college for the most successful people in the country is not education, it's networking. Who you befriend in college and the contacts and connections you form are the greatest value you can gain from college. Successfully taking advantage of networking opportunities requires one NOT be socially inept or awkward. Being younger than everyone else puts one at a disadvantage in such situations. You only get one shot at undergrad college really. If you take that shot while too young, you'll never get the most out of it. Sure you may get an education, but you won't get the same friends.

So sure, someone who goes to college early may enter the workplace earlier as well. They are more likely to enter the workplace at a lower point of entry though. Someone who enters college at the appropriate age will have greater social opportunities in college and thus greater potential for forge contacts and connections which will in turn land them a much better job when they graduate. Obviously this is provided they take advantage of those opportunities. Someone younger will simply not have those opportunities presented.

Networking is the real value of ivy league schools. Truthfully, the difference in what you learn at an ivy league school and what you learn at a "decent" university is marginal (based more on the student than the college). The true value of ivy league schools is that they are full of rich kids. Rich kids have rich parents who frequently hold positions of power. Befriend a rich kid and their parents and your likelihood of landing an extremely high paying position after college increases dramatically. I would go so far as to argue that most executive positions are only available to such people and that without those connections you will likely NEVER be able to land such a position.

Anyway, to sum it up, college's true value isn't just education; it also has social value. A younger individual may be ready for a college education, but such a person will be at an extreme disadvantage socially. In turn this puts them at a disadvantage for life rather than giving them a "head start." If giving someone a "head start" is the real concern, then you might as well drop out of high school at 16, get a GED, and get a job. You'll be working at 16 instead of "losing years" in high school and college. Landing a good job isn't just about your education, it's about your connections.