It's not because they look scary. They ARE scary. I'm sure any sane government would go further if they could. Sadly for the US, a constitutional amendment enshrined a right intended for one purpose and it's been co-opted for another.

I expect antivirus companies, just like government agencies have registered hundreds or thousands of email addresses all over the world on different service providers and domains with the express purpose of harvesting spam. Therefore they're likely to receive legitimate links to phishing sites or be able to identify ones which are protected by per-mark unique urls. And of course the likes of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo et al who run their own webmail services could roll as many spam traps as they liked and analyse spam going to users too.

So while it might afford some protection to the phishing site, it doesn't seem very likely that it would protect them from further scrutiny.

I think a bigger benefit for phishers is they can identify users who click on these links they can focus their attention on them rather than on users who don't. Somebody dumb enough to click on these links and fill in data is obviously a more valuable target than someone who never responds.

Personally I think the best way to combat phishers would be for major mail providers to work with banks and credit institutions to poison phishing sites with bogus data and flagged cards / accounts.

1) We're not talking about self defence, but about assault rifles. The two issues are not related.

2) The only violent crime rates in Europe which exceed the USA are former Eastern bloc countries where other factors clearly play some part. Western Europe's violent crime statistics are all lower than the United State's and often by a large margin. And all these countries have some form of gun control even if some issue permits for certain activities. e.g. The UK's figure is 1.2 intentional homicides per 100,000 per year compared to 4.8 per 100,000 in the US. That doesn't even account for death by accident or suicide from firearms where the figure in countries with strict gun laws is going to be very small (farming or hunting related mostly).

And the fact that these are deadly weapons implicated in shooting after shooting including massacres isn't a good reason?

And happily most of them are extremely infective when applied to the task of murdering as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time.

I suppose those 3.7% homicides are meaningless, despite two very prominent gun massacres which have occured just recently and been facilitated by assault weapons. And if you want a rifle for competition or recreation, why does it need to be stored anywhere but at the range that it is used on?

The spirit of the 2nd amendment is a well regulated militia to bear arms protect against a tyrannical power. i.e. the British coming back for another go at their ex-colony. If you want to see a well regulated militia visit Switzerland because you certainly won't see it in the United States or in the way that the intent and spirit of the 2nd amendment has been corrupted.

I think that about sums it up. There is no rational reason for these guns at all in a domestic setting except for their own sake.

Unless the long barrel made it extremely inconvenient to move around inside a building, or if you ended up killing family members by accident thanks to the high velocity rounds it fires through walls, ceilings etc.

And naturally you need an assault rifle for this right? I thought not.

Some idiot trying to mix up their own explosives is more likely to blow themselves up than others. There is a reason that weapons, especially automatic weapons are used in these sorts of massacres - because they're easy to obtain off the shelf and they kill lots of people in a short amount of time.

Explosives are illegal for a reason too.

Are baseball bat killing sprees common in the United States? If not, I think your slippery slope argument ends in a brick wall.

FEAR certainly had a more advanced game engine than DOOM and AI but it was undermined by levels which bordered on the generic - office corridors, warehouse docks, rooftops, a pathetically derivative horror story which I found neither scary or interesting, and the same linearity as Doom 3 which encourages the same advance, trigger, fight, save, advance, trigger, fight save mentality. DOOM 3 had a good engine for its day but I didn't think it was put to good use. Far Cry was a far more impressive game by miles (despite its generic plot and some crappy cutscenes) which is shocking considering the pedigree of Id at the time.

DOOM 3 and FEAR (and Bioshock) also used one of the laziest forms of story telling there is - the expository voice mail / message / tape recording conveniently placed around on levels. That cliche really needs to die but it's still being used in some games.

SSDs haven't been around long enough to judge their reliability or longevity. I bought a bunch of LED bulbs for my house which claimed 30 year lifespan and about 6 or 7 have failed already in the course of 3 years.