MChristopherson

I agree, and should have expanded my "not a direct comparison" more clearly to expand on the more nuanced situation. But, I mean my point kind of at the more general level that the topic concerning Amazon often starts at: everyone's (and mine as well) first thought is to mentally compare to a grocery store with own-brand products competing with name-brand versions. In many cases, tho absolutely not all as you correctly point out, the jars of mayonnaise from Kraft and from Safeway are both bought and paid for by Safeway.

So, while that is not an absolutely example (as lots of stuff in the store is still owned by the separate vending companies), it is a good caveat to our first "grocery stores do it" thought that comes to mind when thinking about this Amazon topic.

"Many retailers reserve some of their best shelves paces for their private label products"

A key difference is that in those situations (a grocery store, for example), the marketplace owners have already purchased all the products on the shelves. It's the grocery store's decision to choose what and how the products that they have paid for are presented to customers.

This is not a hundred-percent comparison, of course, but it came to mind in the last number of weeks as this Amazon topic has come up.

Thanks for the correction! Fixed.

That is an important point that struck home with me when I came to realize just how minuscule the amount of carbon dioxide is in the air relative to other gases: it's nigh-on a rounding error.

I think many of us just haven't internalized the percentages of gasses, and probably, like myself, often have it all backwards. An alien doing a fly-through of our solar system would describe our planet as a nitrogen atmosphere.

In descending order:

  Nitrogen: 78 percent
  Oxygen: 21 percent
  Argon: .9 percent
  CO2: a measly 0.04 percent

Groking that last value really helps frame the challenges that CCS has to deal with (and also gives one an appreciation of just how powerful of a greenhouse gas CO2 is).

I agree that an honest debate on the topic is what can lead to a reasonable and valuable process of dealing with the issue in terms of law. And it's because of that that the term "assault rifle" has always bugged me, because, let me be quite honest, I've come to realize that what so many people mean when they say that term is really "anything that looks scary and mean and military-ish".

IE, show them this: http://i.imgur.com/XZmPlGQ.jpg, and the response will be "Yeah! Ban that! Nobody should be able to own that!"

Show them this: http://i.imgur.com/a916R.jpg, however, and the response will be much more muted, perhaps with a bit of "I think my Dad had one like that for hunting or something..."

Of course they are functionally equivalent rifles, each semi-automatic. But one looks scary/bad-ass, one looks like Dad's hunting rifle.

I don't mean this all argumentatively or semantically. I think this issue really matters. If we are going to pass laws based on the outward appearance of something, then that's the kind of law - and legal process - I am very wary of. If, instead, we have an honest and reasoned debate on the issue, going through a process of deciding if, say, semi-automatic weapons should able to be owned by citizens; and if there should be a limit of the number of rounds in a magazine - or if people should be able to own a rifle that accepts a magazine; then that's the kind of process I can get on board with.

I think it's dishonest to ask a voter, "should we ban assault rifles?" I think it's much more honest to ask, in effect, a series of questions about firearms, to get at the meat of the matter in a way that is sensible.

But I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I say that as it stands, people want to ban scary looking guns, and that is the depth to which they evaluate the entire issue.

Was genuinely curious. The term kind of took over in the last couple decades, but I've come to realize that it's a very vague term, with not a lot of actual agreement as to what it means. To be quite honest, I've never been quite clear what the term means.

For example, you mention the AK-47. I consider it to be a fully automatic, with selective fire, machine gun. You hold down the trigger, and the gun rapid fires until you remove your finger from the trigger, or you run out of ammunition.

Interestingly, and as far as I can tell, the author of the article did not make that. He assembled a semi-automatic-only version, based on the type that is available to gun enthusiasts. IE, not a full-auto machine gun.

But anyoo, just to be clear, you would term the following rifles to be assault rifles, correct?

http://i.imgur.com/PXUg1St.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/a916R.jpg

Hunting rifles with magazines are quite common. However, you do zero in on the effective difference between supposed "assault rifles" and semi-automatic hunting rifles: the magazine / number of rounds available.

I think this is an important point, because when you cut through the furor, that really is the only effective distinction. And it's a heck of a lot more minor a distinction than the more common blending of "fully automatic machine gun" with a semi-auto rifle that merely looks bad ass, is covered with Tactical Stuff (TM), and uses a composite stock instead of wood.

He did not build an AK. He built a copy of the defanged, non-fully-autmatic, "for gun enthusiasts" version of the gun. He did not build a fully automatic machine gun. He built something that is in every way equivalent to a hunting rifle you can buy at a sporting goods store: he built a semi-automatic rifle.

Note as well that, as far as I can tell, he did not build an AK-47. He built a copy of the semi-automatic version that is available to gun enthusiasts. He did not build what your average user of an AK would call an AK: a fully automatic machine gun.

How do you personally define "assault rifle" ?

I scanned through the video included in the link. At the risk of sounding like a militia-bound gun nut, the video got me a bit annoyed: "fully functional AK-47" is tossed about rather often, when in fact the guy simply made a rather heavy hunting rifle.

An AK-47, as used throughout the planet, is a machine gun. A fully-automatic machine gun. You hold down the trigger, and the gun begins firing at a high rate until you remove your finger from the trigger, or run out of ammunition.

He did not build that.

He built a semi-automatic rifle that is functionally equivalent in pretty much every way to a hunting rifle you can buy at your local sporting goods chain store.

This harkens back to the "assault rifle" issue, which sees a type of rifle that is in every way equivalent to a semi-automatic hunting rifle labeled as an "assault rifle" because it looks more bad-ass than grandpa's deer rifle.

--edit--

I'm kind of ruefully laughing at myself here, as after three years of reading Hacker News, this is the topic that got me to angrily dive to my keyboard to make an account and comment. This from a total urbanite who gets nervous at being more than three blocks from a taxi stand and a wet bar, and who would probably need counseling if confronted by any woodland creature larger than a mid-sized rat.