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echo1

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Everything posted by echo1

  1. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    Well, if the weapons cannot leave the premises, does it matter? I think the argument that people would make are that they want to collect or tweak the weapons, and don't want to use some weapon that everyone else is going to use and abuse. I guess what I'm talking about is a range, except you have to keep the weapons you own in it.
  2. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    Exception that vindicates the rule... Same with cigarettes. If either of those things were invented today, they would probably be banned (definitely in the case of cigarettes) The banning of cigarettes will inevitably happen in Western countries, albeit not any time soon. Attempts to ban alcohol have failed because it is something that has ingrained (to pardon the unintentional pun) itself in human civilization. I don't we are attached to guns in the same way. Again, look at countries with strict gun law - they aren't exactly collapsing into anarchy. So basically you're shifting the blame for gun crime onto the victim for not defending themselves? I think a case could be made for private ownership of stuff like heavy machineguns if the weapons were stored, and only allowed to be fired, in a specially designated premises.
  3. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    There's a necessity value associated with cars that you don't have with private ownership with guns. And for those who are going to inevitably try and make a case for guns being essential, look at... well, just about any western country outside of the US.
  4. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    And why didn't you just say college in the first place?
  5. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    So what are you lot going on about when you're talking about bringing guns into school?
  6. echo1

    NOH-6A - The forefather of the ULB

    Didn't they produce variants of that helicopter that had no tail rotor at all?
  7. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    In case anyone hasn't noticed, schools and colleges (the younger college students anyway) tend to be full of people either in, or just coming out puberty. Hormones make them a bit tetchy and emotional. Combine this with the amount of bullying and fighting that goes on in schools, and you have a recipe for disaster. Seriously - the odds of someone losing control of themselves and shooting someone over a minor dispute are thousands of times higher than the odds that a Columbine scenario is going to occur. In the former situation, letting people carry guns turns gun crime from a premeditated crime into a spur of the moment mistake. If you want to kill the guy who you don't like in school, ordinarily you'd have to go home, get your gun, load it and probably wait till the next day to do anything. The odds are that 90% of people will cop on by that stage and not go ahead with it. Encourage everyone to go around with guns? You don't have that cool down period. In a moment of strong emotion, you just take out the gun and kill without properly considering what you are doing. So yeah, people who suggest that guns should be brought into schools are either trolls, or those who have put zero thought into what they are saying. Not sure which is worse... Again, this is the problem with American attitudes towards guns (on both side of the fence) - it's all based on fringe cases, without any assessment of the regular realities of the situation that just don't happen to get as much air time on Fox News.
  8. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    This HAS to be a troll.
  9. Here They'll probably make a new version with the sort of solid state used in the anti-air laser in the original post.
  10. echo1

    War with Iran.

    No shit Sherlock. My point was that there is at least one nuclear-armed power in the world that is far more unstable, yet the US doesn't seem to care. Seems like they have their priorities wrong.
  11. They've declared it inviable. Just a toy for testing really.
  12. echo1

    War with Iran.

    Could be worse, a country like Pakistan could have nuclear weapons. Oh wait...
  13. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    Easy and legitimate access. Sure, some (maybe even a lot) will be able to get their hands on them through the black market. But it's like anything - should we not illegalize cocaine because people can still get their hands on it?
  14. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    But surely making it excessively easy for someone to get their hands on a gun just exacerabates that problem? You say that most murders are commited by those with a history of crime... shouldn't there be laws to prevent such people getting their hands on a gun?
  15. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    I'm an idiot. I got confused and thought that thing about the right to revolution within the Declaration of Independence that was part of the 2nd amendment. That line didn't work all that well for Timothy McVeigh...
  16. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    The bit I have trouble with is the 2nd amendment. Armed militias to overthrow the government? Sounds like the Somali constitution. I hear shooting bears out of helicopters is all the rage though.
  17. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    If certain high-risk jobs require people to carry guns, that makes sense. I just don't think anyone who so wishes to have a gun should be allowed to carry one around. Without necessity, you just end up with a lot of paranoid people running around with guns. Not good. As I said in my post above, the sale of cheap, low-quality guns, and the lack of restriction makes it easy for random thugs to get their hands on guns. Such people commit the sort of 'spur of the moment' gun crime which I'm sure accounts for a greater percentage of gun crime related deaths than serious criminals carrying out premeditated crimes. The odds are that if you are into recreational shooting, you are going to buy a gun that is at least half way decent, and that it isn't going to inconvenience if the local police have the details of the guns you own, and your purchase is subject to you not having a criminal/psychological record. Cut down on 'saturday night specials' and have a regulated and properly enforced system for regulating the sale of guns, and you really cut into gun crime where you actually can. I really don't see why things like automatic weapons cannot be legally owned by the public if their sale and use was properly regulated (albeit to a higher level than regular rifles and shotguns) A substantial percentage of people who get shot in their homes in the US are shot with their own weapons. I'm pretty sure that there's a similar statistic for US policemen being killed by their own weapon. Very much the double edged sword. I think the problem is moreso one of those hard to quantify "cultural/societal" issues than simply what sort of guns you're able to buy, and how/how not you can carry them.
  18. echo1

    Gun laws in the United States

    I think laws against cheap weapons, and controls on how the weapons are bought and used make an awful lot more sense than laws against things like large-cap magazines and automatics. It seems to me that the anti-gun lobby in the US promulgates moral panic about "assault weapons" predicated on things like Columbine or the North Hollywood bank robbery, when the real gun crime problem is when two-bit imbeciles get their hands on cheap weapons without any proper regulation, and end up killing someone on the spur of the moment in a crime of opportunity. The former cannot really be stopped with laws, but the latter can be quite easily - if someone needs an AK-47 or silencer or both for a planned crime, odds are that they can get one whether they are legal or not. The real issue is how you prevent stupid people getting their hands on guns and using them in stupid ways. But yeah, people carrying concealed pistols is stupid, it just normalizes mass paranoia, and is going to lead to unnecessary violence when someone with a gun gets twitchy and shoots someone, or worse, misses and kills a bystander. I doubt the average "concerned citizen" has the training or cop-on to use guns in such a scenario.
  19. echo1

    War with Iran.

    I think Baff was being somewhat hyperbolic. Nonetheless, the rocket didn't explode. It just caused a gas tank to catch fire. So it all started with a fire really...
  20. echo1

    War with Iran.

    You could always put it out of action... ---------- Post added at 07:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:45 PM ---------- Eat moar history
  21. You'll need to go to the ASUS website and find a BIOS update for your motherboard to support the newer chips. There should be one. Also, when upgrading the BIOS on an ASUS motherboard DO NOT use the updater tool for Windows. Make the boot disk or whatever the alternative is.
  22. echo1

    Gamespy = Adware

    Microsoft is still in business. Anyone else can survive. I'll throw in my usual recommendation for the MSE.
  23. That's not true. Seasonic only makes Corsair PSUs up as far as 650W. For anything larger they use a different OEM. The other OEM is not bad, but is pretty mediocre.
  24. echo1

    DLC- What do YOU want?

    Clearly we need to have BIS spend all their time making every conceivable weapon, uniform and vehicle. If only we had one of the most active modding communities for any PC game, and a developer who is highly supportive of said community... Oh wait! We do!
  25. Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4 Get a good PSU like the Corsair HX650 too.
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