Or we could, you know, borrow $100,000,000 less every year. I know that's outside the box thinking and all, but where the hell has this dichotomy come from where, when we have a spending problem, we always hear, "Well, it's better than spending $VALUE on $INITIATIVE?" Military and social spending BOTH have to come down, and revenue (somehow) has to come UP if we're to get out of the mess we're in. I'm all for basic research (as someone else up thread noted, nothing in history has paid dividends like it) but the barrel has a bottom, we have a crisis of unprecedented historical proportions, and no one in government seems to give a fuck about fixing it.

...and once an expert builds out the program for the tool, any idiot can load it and run it.

They're called "mod points." If you posted logged in, you might receive some from time to time.

Ok, so:

• Posting something on the internet, on a public feed, for the entire world to see: This is obviously private, and you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking otherwise.
• Saying something quietly to the guy sitting next to you: This is obviously meant for all.

Got it.

I don't disagree with anything you're saying, and I think maybe you took my comment above the wrong way? All I was responding to was the comment, "and a time machine."

Strictly speaking, this is not true. "NFA" covers suppressors, short barreled shotguns, destructive devices, etc, and those can still be made today. Even a machine gun can still be made, though, of course, you'd have to be a SOT to possess it, and you'd have to be making it for some entity that was legal to buy one (like law enforcement), or for some other purpose allowed by law.

For the sake of argument, let's say we did what you suggest--hell, that we went even further than that and we took every red cent that they "control." We would pay for this year's budget deficit, and that's about it. Now what?

I've never been in a car in Germany where the (German) driver drove 100kph in the 100kph zone. Ever. Typically, "100kph" means "120kph" at a minimum, unless there's a speed camera nearby, in which case they slow down just to pass the camera, then speed back up.

One thing I will say is that they NEVER, EVER speed through a residential area. When the 50 or 30kph signs show up, they WILL honor them (within 10% at any rate), and I do find that a refreshing change from the US where people by and large just don't give a fuck.. I used to live across the street from a school, and the road ended in a T-intersection (a concrete wall, to be precise) and it never ceased to amaze me how fast people would drive past my house. I lived on one corner, the T-intersection was at the other corner, the block was about 200 yards long, and tires would SCREECH at both ends.

I'm guessing the GP was very much aware of that, and was calling the US uncivilized. Which, in this case, I can't help but agree with. If "ignorance of the law is no excuse" then it's a piss poor system that makes you have to pay to read the law (which court decisions are, i.e. "case law.")

You're actually wrong on both counts. It's unlawful for an unlicensed person to transfer a firearm (be it handgun or longarm) to an unlicensed person who is not a resident of their state, and it is perfectly lawful for an unlicensed person to acquire a longarm (though not a handgun) from a licensee in any state. See the BATF FAQ.

While I'm not a fan of abortion, I'll point out that Roe v. Wade rests on the right to privacy, "whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."

I also would point out that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" sounds an awful lot like privacy to me.

As addressed in my comment, you are one of the 'many shooters" who have been "exposed to the concept." I'll ask directly:do you habitually practice these techniques? The answer may be yes (I know several people who do), but the most likely answer is "no." I still stand behind my statement that this is not the "standard training for putting down a threat."

Also, if your "concealed carry" class (by which I assume you mean the class that many states mandate before you can obtain a carry permit) is teaching this, it's definitely not your run of the mill class, because no state requires such training, thus most classes (honestly, none that I have ever heard of in the state of Tennessee) don't teach it. If you're talking about a level I or II defensive handgun class, this is more normal, but I'll guarantee you spent a LOT more time on other things like basic accuracy, retention, malfunction drills, cover, etc, and did not spend the necessary time training muscle memory.

"Shoot it to the ground" has been harped on in every defensive class I've ever taken. NOT, "Two to the chest, one to the head" or similar.

I'm throwing this back at you, AC, in that I doubt you've had any real firearms training, either. Double taps, failure drills, etc, are NOT standard training by any stretch of the imagination, and are typically only practiced by those who kill people and break things for a living. Police, regular military, civilians leaning armed self-defense, are typically trained to shoot center mass, and keep shooting until the target is no longer a threat (i.e. until they hit the ground). I'll grant that more advanced techniques are taught in more advanced classes (I've been through a few), and many shooters have been at least been exposed to the concepts and (briefly!) run through them, but this is by no means "standard."

I agree with almost all of this, except for:

• Tablets. These are not going anywhere, I think--we've finally hit the point where computing power, battery life, weight, etc have hit a "good enough" point and produced a genuinely useful, handy device. They will get lighter, and (once they are light enough and foldable) larger, and most people five years from now will not have a "PC" on the desktop.
• Car interfaces. Nav systems are definitely obsolete (especially the "insert the DVD into the optical drive to use me" types), and these will go away over the next few years (but not THIS year--it will take a while for them to die). That said, while touch screens are suboptimal in cars, I expect to see more of them and not less. They're everywhere, and the lack of them will be seen as a cut-rate/budget/obsolescent option, and undesirable to most of the advertising influenced public.

Final thought: when did slashcode stop properly handling the <UL> and <OL> tags?

Its more likely this is actually modelling the passage of a new batch of guns through the criminal underworld.

I always find it hailarious that you in the states cite the ability to own firarms as something that keeps you safe when your obscenely high murder rate points to the opposite in my opinion.

The state of New Jersey requires one to have a permit to own firearms, and an additional permit to purchase a handgun. One needs to obtain a new permit for each handgun, there is a fee, a fingerprinting process.etc. Carrying a handgun in the state of New Jersey is effectively illegal, essentially requiring one to either be a retired police office, private detective, security guard, or politically connected.

Yet somehow criminals manage to get firearms anyway. It's amazing to me, because of the laws I mentioned above--it's almost like these criminals have no respect for the law, and are just circumventing it (which is a rather fatal flaw in the "you need more laws" argument).

That said, I agree with you that the murder rate in the US is abysmal. The sad truth is that we just seem to like killing each other--take away the guns, and we STILL kill each other at rates far exceeding the rest of the civilized world. Michael Moore touched on this in Bowling for Columbine, but instead of exploring the reasons, he decided to blame the whole thing on an old man with alzheimers disease instead.

So, given the following: 1. many americans are violent, and 2. many criminals have or can easily obtain firearms, I propose that the law abiding should also be free to arm themselves, so as to afford some measure of protection.