Funny, the first thing I thought of was long-distance target shooting or hunting, not mass killings.
The fact that you immediately go to the sniper mass killings angle is what I find to be pretty fucked up.
The fact that you immediately go to the sniper mass killings angle is what I find to be pretty fucked up.
Also, read up on rail guns and benchrest shooting; then get back to me on "doing all the hard work for you".
The guys with the rail guns tho, that's a whole 'nother level.
Also, you'd be incorrect about this doing the hard work. They add the concept of "windage" almost as an afterthought, and I can tell you that at long distances, it is anything but.
In long distance shooting, pulling the trigger is the easy part.
Ideally, this weapon would reduce the number of animal injuries, and increase the number of immediate kills.
[edit: Ah, I just re-read your comment - you are actually saying you understand the use of this weapon while hunting, but don't understand the purpose of target shooting with it. Perhaps to prepare for hunting?]
[1] - http://www.gameandfishmag.com/2012/03/28/10-shooting-targets...
[2] - http://www.gameandfishmag.com/2012/03/28/10-shooting-targets...
[3] - http://www.cabelas.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=1314484
It also potentially enables those with diminished eye sight or nearsightedness for greater accuracy.
On top of that, at least as it stands right now, it makes the operation of a long-range rifle safer and more effective. I don't know why that would be considered a negative.
Very, very far down on my list of things to worry about are $17,000 ultra-long range computer aided bolt-action trigger initiated rifles.
[edit - after thinking a bit, I believe I could come up with a list of 500 things that we should be more worried about than this weapon. Just the cost alone means that there will be very few of them in general circulation. In the next 20 years, I wager there will be less than 10 homicides in the United States resulting from this weapon. If you want to get up in arms about something - start with the likely 500,000+ automobile deaths that will occur in the same time period (I'm presuming automobile safety will bring the numbers down to those levels)]
In short, if there is even one intentional homicide in 20 years resulting from this gun (or related technology) I would be extremely shocked.
"X is more dangerous than Y" does not imply "X should be illegal if Y is illegal", due to any number of other factors.
If we wish to act rationally, and make the world a better place, there will be far greater return on our effort, lobbying, and resources, to worry about items higher up on that list, as opposed to some incredibly unlikely events that will occur because of Y.
For some reason, Y grabs our attention though - and I was just trying to pull us all back to realizing, that, in the grand scheme of things, Y is irrelevant to the safety of ourselves, our children, and our community. As such, little to no effort should be put towards worrying about, or legislating Y."
Just because you don't see the practical need for that utility does not negate that such utility exists and (in my opinion) is the express reason for the second amendment.
It seems a valid point to me. Maybe you could give share your viewpoint instead this silly red herring suggestion that the parent is deranged for bringing up the point.
1) Where you claim it makes a more effective killing machine, another might easily say that it makes a much safer hunting weapon, or more easy to use for wounded, injured, disabled or handicapped hunters or veterans.
2) There are many, many ways that criminals could exploit even every day items to achieve extremely deadly results, and until we're ready to ban every single one of them (which admittedly, Mayor Bloomberg seems poised to do), we should not punish the majority for the very unlikely potential criminal use by a very small minority.
3) It's an advancement in technology that I worry may be stifled for private industry and instead hoarded for military application, which will almost certainly lead to slower development in the technology. Imagine further into the future, as the technology evolves, it might be able to distinguish between humans and potential prey. Or even perform sentiment analysis on humans to differentiate between humans at peace and humans that are actively trying to kill you.
Also, for the record, I'm not suggesting that being afraid of the potential for technology such as this is completely unreasonable, but I am arguing that in this country, at least for now, we do have a Bill of Rights that protects our right to bear arms and this, such as it is, classifies as such, and should not be bannable on the meritless assumption that every would-be shooter will now plunk down $17,000 and become a super-villain just because they can.
2) Come on, seriously? You say "even every day items". It makes less sense to ban every day items than it does to ban extravagant items that very few people, if any, need or even want. I can kill someone with a fork. More people have been killed with forks than with this weapon. Are you willing to (digitally) stand here and suggest to all of us that it doesn't make sense to ban this rifle until we ban forks?
And where is your line? Every rational person has a line at which they say "X weapon clearly should be illegal for every day people to own." So where's yours? Do you not feel high explosives should be regulated? If farmers decided sarin gas (since it was mentioned elsewhere in this conversation) was a good pesticide, would you be all for it? Wherever you draw your line, it's just as arbitrary as anyone else's.
3) I'm simply not seeing any novel technology here. Motion tracking? It's been done. Servos being controlled by a microprocessor? It's been done. Distance gauging? Trajectory adjustment? Where is the new technology that we'd all miss out on?
Regarding the note about the bill of rights, what a horribly conceived piece of writing is the second amendment. It asserts the right to "bear arms" but doesn't give any hint as to the definition of "arms". An H-bomb classifies as an "arm" just as perfectly as this firearm does. We've outgrown that short-sighted text.
US v Miller, another landmark case regarding the second amendment, defines protected weapons as those being of use to a militia. Before we go down that rabbit hole, a milita is defined by 10 US Code § 311 as all men aged 17 to 45, and has been expanded by the Supreme Court to include women as well.
As for the tech, I agree that the individual components are nothing new, but the aggregate of the parts is something new and noteworthy. For what it's worth, I also consider the Gibson robot tuner as noteworthy, as well as the Raspberry Pi, though clearly neither was exactly groundbreaking on the grand order of things.
If by civilians you mean the French, you would be accurate. The idea of a civilian warship or artillery piece is as ludicrous then as now. It's not like people have this stuff just lying around the farmhouse. France spent billions of livres fighting the British in that period, more than 1 billion directly on the American conflict. It is entirely accurate to describe the Revolutionary War as a proxy war.
From the NRA's magazine[0]: >The New Hampshire shipments equipped much of the Patriot army at Saratoga in October 1777, and, by 1778, the majority of Washington’s regiments had replaced their earlier disparate mix of arms with French ones.
There is a staggering amount of historical revisionism to minimize the role of France in this war, and to omit any context or ulterior motive for them doing so. France was the world's major military power, as well as the largest and most populous country in Europe, and had been for centuries. War between England and France was more often than not the case for nearly 500 years between 1337 and 1815. The American war was by no means the largest or most important of these conflicts.
There's a reason that the treaty ending the war was signed in Paris, and it's not because of their fabulous wine and cheese spread. Speeches from the British Parliament will attest that they knew their enemies were Bourbon, and not American. Which should surprise no one except, lamentably, most Americans.
[0] http://www.jaegerkorps.org/NRA/The%20Revolutionary%20Charlev...
Few if any of the supplied ships were warships, fewer answered directly to the Continental Navy, and none were Ships of the Line, which meant their combat utility was, shall we say, limited. What I read here[0] about the supply of cannon is pretty dismal and does not really support your claim. It is rather abundantly clear that, to the degree that arms and equipment were contributed freely by private citizens, this happened very early in the war, and had no effect on the outcome. You may feel free to show otherwise.
[0] http://www.history.army.mil/books/RevWar/risch/chpt-12.htm
You may not think the automation this gun provides is exotic enough to warrant being illegal, but surely you can agree that reasonable people could interpret "in common use" in that way?
That was, effectively the case in Heller, because DC had banned all handguns completely, making them clearly NOT in common use, which they felt allowed them to perpetuate their ban. DC's law was overturned on that logic.
That said, how do you prevent the banning of every new type of gun/handgun/rifle/taser/whatever if the claim is that "Well, it's never been sold, so it's obviously not in common use, so it can't be bannable?" In reality, this isn't even really a gun at all, but a complicated aiming system. The gun it's attached to is the Surgeon equivalent of a Robot tuner on a Gibson guitar (which is why I brought it up elsewhere). According to the ATF, the lower receiver of a gun like this is the only part that is the 'gun'. What this means is that I can buy the lower receiver by itself, with no firing group, no barrel, no butt stock, etc., and that constitutes the sale of a firearm. As such, as it seems that all the tech for this thing is basically in the reticle (except for the trigger group, which is still not technically part of the gun), this is really just an accessory.
People hold up the Bill of Rights as if the amendments were etched in stone by God.
Whether any given weapon should or shouldn't be legal depends on a lot of things, including the state of the country at any given time. The idea that the right to bear firearms (some arbitrary invention) belongs on the same document as eternally useful rights like the right of free speech is silly and was a huge mistake.
I think that the fact that the right to bear arms IS on the same document means that it was intended to be. You don't have to appreciate all the rights of Americans, but I really wish you wouldn't try to curtail them, especially as there are plenty of other places you could move that have, aside from the second amendment, similarish rights to those of America. (Not suggesting you GTFO or anything, but y'know, if you hate it that much, there are places you could go).
I think for myself. You get your marching orders from some parchment. It's people like me who made this country. It's people like you who bowed to King George.
I won't speak for bmelton but it's disingenuous to label second amendment supporters as folks who "get [their] marching orders from some parchment". Most I know recognize the right to self-defense as merely being guaranteed by the constitution rather than granted by it. The confusion I suspect is from the "parchment" often being used as a convenient argument - many in this country take for granted uniform agreement that the document does in fact bind the government; ergo to them the argument is trivially won by quoting it.
They do not always realize that those they argue against view the constitution as a "living" document subject to interpretation, and may summarily discard arguments that appeal to it's guarantees. It is also damaging to their argument that so many are willing to to support the government's disregard of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th amendments while fervently supporting the 2nd.
The main thing that's polarizing it though, is that the ACLU supports all of the bill of rights except for the second amendment, so those that support the second feel like they're the only ones that are.
Maybe it's polarizing, but there really are only two sides in this fight. There's no middle ground here - there is the ideal of freedom or there is "compromise". Not a compromise in the proper sense of the word, though. It is a pure loss, for you have less freedom than you started with and nothing in return. Votes cost nothing, so this compromise can be (and is) demanded over and over again. The end result is what we face in Maryland, never-ending iterations of legislation with no rational link to the real world, and thousands (like myself) who dream of moving to a state that is slightly more free.
It often seems like people that support the second amendment care about none of the others, and I'm sure in part that is true for a number of reasons, but that doesn't discount that there are many more "second amendment supporters" who are concerned with the broader spectrum of civil liberties, but whose views aren't necessarily represented because there are groups like the ACLU that represent "all civil rights except that one" and the like.
Are you also in Maryland? Have you considered (or are you already) joining Maryland Shall Issue?
I am in Maryland, Carroll County specifically. I'm a member of MSI, SAF and the NRA and have been engaging as much as possible with our senators and delegates over the last few weeks.
I'll likely be retreating to Pennsylvania or Virginia in the next couple of years - I'm sure many others will be as well. In the meantime, keep your powder dry and perhaps we'll meet one day on the range. :)
I wasn't implying that hated 'the place', but you clearly seem to have issues with the second amendment. You're of course welcome to try to change things, and I would argue in fact that it is your patriotic responsibility to work for the government you want. That said, a big distinction between America and most other first world countries is wrapped up in the second amendment, so if I were in your shoes, I would likely consider moving. As I said, I'm not telling you to get out, and I'm not calling you unpatriotic, I'm just suggesting that voting with your feet is an option available to you. As there aren't any first world countries that respect the right to bear arms for me to go to, that regrettably isn't an option for me. I'm jealous of your position, if anything.
I don't know how either of us "made this country", and surely neither of us are old enough to have bowed to any King, so I'm not really sure what your point is with your last sentence.