My point was that if I were behind enemy lines in Germany or the Pacific, I would have not removed that spring any more than I had to. I wouldn't want to be ambushed by the enemy with my weapon inoperable. I'm not saying that someone outside of a war zone should neglect to do that (though I don't believe the spring is designed to be removed frequently, I think it causes undue wear and tear). The army came up with that procedure for combat readiness purposes, I am sure. You can reassemble the rest of the gun in seconds.

With good reason. If you've ever disassembled an M1 you know that its a pain in the butt to put the spring back in. If my life depended on using that weapon, I'd not want to take the spring out very often at all. You could spend 20 minutes just trying to get the spring in if you're not very well practiced.

I wouldn't even point the barrel of a disassembled gun at someone. And certainly would not point the weapon in an unsafe direction during assembly and disassembly. The first thing you do (after pointing it in a safe direction) before cleaning a weapon is to clear the chamber. If its a semi-auto, you should remove the magazine and work the slide several times. If a bolt/pump action, then remove the action continuously until nothing comes out. After that, you visually look inside the chamber, no matter what kind of action the weapon has. If it a revolver, then it should be safe once the cylinder is out. You should still check the cylinders to make sure no ammo is left inside while cleaning (though it would be hard to clean the cylinder with a shell in it!).

Guns are always loaded. I don't care if the slide is back, or the cylinder is out, or there is no magazine. You don't point a gun at anyone ever, unless your intent is to "stop" them (The current opinion of law enforcement is that you never say that you shoot to kill, but that you shoot until the person stops whatever threatening behavior they are exhibiting, but that is a side note).

The first thing you do with any weapon is to point it in a safe direction. There are weapons that are capable of being fired without a magazine installed. I would not trust a mechanical safety either. You don't put your finger inside the trigger guard until you are ready to discharge the weapon, safety or not. Theoretically a mechanical safety could break (though one that blocks the firing pin should be infallible, so long as it gets in front of the firing pin).

In general I believe that reasonable gun control is not only smart, but an ethical responsibility. That reasonable gun control doesn't end at the store. It ends when the weapon has been rendered inoperable. Between the time it is manufactured, and the time it is destroyed, it should be kept in a safe and secure location. The only time it should not be secured, is when it is in use. If you believe guns make valuable self-defense weapons, then in use would mean on your person. Not in your night stand, under your pillow, or on top of the cabinets. If it is not on your person, it needs to be locked up.

I've only seen a compiler issue once in my entire career. Granted, I have probably worked on more mature platforms than some of the cowboys that started the industry but here is what it was: It was using GCC 3 on MontaVista 2.4 Linux. I was building an insanely complex system library w/ a lot of templated code and a large number of classes inheriting from a parent. The problem is that a pthread_mutex_t was not being constructed properly. When we would try and lock the mutex, it would crash the entire application. The exact same code worked flawlessly on our MontaVista 2.6 toolchain, but our flash drive was too small to fit a 2.6 install. We spent weeks working with MontaVista to build a test case that reproduced the issue and could not. So how do we know it was a compiler issue? Well like I said, we knew it worked on all of our other Linux/Windows platforms. We also told the compiler not to assemble the code, and we looked at the assembly output by the compiler. Sure enough it was doing something stupid (I can't remember what). MontaVista said that they had no idea how to fix it. We ended up doing #ifdef for that particular platform and using sem_t in place of pthread_mutex_t and it worked like a champ.

The background checks are supposed to already take your mental health into account. You also have to self-certify that you do not have any mental illnesses (though really, how can anyone really know if they have a mental illness, unless they were diagnosed and told said diagnosis?). In any event, Federal law prevents a 20 year old from buying any weapon with a pistol grip, including the Bushmaster .223 and the two semi-automatic pistols he was reported to have on his person. His mom could buy those items, and transfer them to him after his 18th birthday, but that can also be illegal if she thinks he has a mental illness or if it falls under the rules and regulations barring a straw-man purchase.

In any event, I would not consider the mom to be a responsible gun owner. You should have everything properly secured that you are not presently using. If she was using one of those weapons for self-defense, it should have been on her person. If you leave your guns out, they can be used against you, as she likely learned prior to her death./P.

*raises eyebrow* Are you sure you didn't accidentally hit the fast forward button? I don't see why Google's DNS would cause videos to play almost twice as fast... But I suppose they could be injecting JS to hit the fast forward button for you. ;)

Bath works at Newport News naval ship yard will take car of all our spaceship needs.

Not just anyone can buy a pistol in the United States. You have to be legally eligible to own any firearm, and must be 21 years or older. There are all sorts of other restrictions, as well. Furthermore, you cannot legally own an automatic weapon in the United States, unless it was specifically manufactured before a certain time period. Those weapons are very rare and expensive. Anyone who wants to own an automatic weapon in the US must have a Class III license from the federal government, which is very difficult to get. In fact, a person cannot get a class III license. Only a registered business / shooting club / etc, can obtain one. They may only obtain one if the local and state governments authorize it (zoning, etc).

Anyone can look up the recipe for bomb making on the internet. I doubt that it is very hard. Connecticut appears to have a 2 week waiting period on all weapons purchases, except in certain exceptions. Unless the gunman already had the weapon laying around, it's possible that he had been planning this for some time. If he did not already have a weapon, and purchased one legally, he could have used that same time to plot and plan a bombing. He could have also gotten a nice big truck and ran kids down while they were on the playground for recess. There are a lot of things he could have done that require only a credit card.

It is a right that can be revoked. Federal law bars anyone from owning a gun who has committed a felony, or had their constitutional rights revoked. You are also not allowed to buy a gun if you have ever been diagnosed with a mental disorder, have been convicted of domestic violence, and a few other crimes that may not be felonies. There are plenty of people that are legally restricted from buying a gun, and many states have far more restrictions than those imposed by the federal government. Its quite possible that this guy was already legally barred from buying a gun in the US in the first place.

So you don't count the 82 democrats that voted for Iraq? What about the invasion of Afghanistan, which only had one representative out of the entire house (and no senators) oppose it? Do none of these people count as democrats? In fact, the Democrats could have stopped the Iraq resolution from passing in the Senate, since they controlled 50% of the vote, and several Republicans and an Independent voted against it.

Oh I didn't know Grey Davis was a republican. How many billions of dollars of a California budget surplus did he spend on Enron in just a few short months? Wasn't it $40B? Why do you guys always throw politics into places they don't belong? Both parties waste. Both parties make dumb decisions. The fact of the matter is that neither party seems to show the fiscal responsibility that we need, and most of the constituents have such limited understanding of finance that they don't know what to ask for.

*Shrug* Every time I've used it, it has only shown me Prime eligible movies and shows. There is a filter option for that, I know. I don't use it that much, but I don't really watch a lot of TV. I do know that they always have at least 1 big new release movie that is prime eligible, but I never watch those either.

I hope, for your sake, you are never accused of and tried for criminal charges. Context is key. The lady had already been tasered and was on the ground in the video. You have no idea what happened to lead to them using the taser. Perhaps she did threaten someone, attacked someone, or even attacked the officers? If she did any of those things, the taser use may have been justified.

I say context is key because you could have 3 teenage thugs jump you some day. Perhaps you will defend yourself and one of them ends up in the hospital. Now all 3 of them turn around and say that you attacked them without cause. Would you want a bunch of internet pundits accusing you of assaulting poor teenagers? You're a grown adult. You shouldn't have to hit 3 teenagers. Yet if someone made a video of just 2 minutes of you beating the kids senseless, you would certainly look like the wrongdoer, wouldn't you?

This is no different. The nice thing here is that the mall and Apple store should both have plenty of surveillance video where we can really see what the woman did and how she acted before the officers even reached for the taser. If she did nothing but refuse to leave the store, then yes they used excessive force. But until everyone gets to see the video and the woman has a chance to sue (or ask for criminal charges), the officers should be given the same innocent until proven guilty rights that everyone else in the US deserves.