Well. The comments here have taken the common and extremely dopy turn toward a zero-sum no-guns or all-guns argument–with people carping at each who’d probably like each other if they took a minute from their egos or insecurities. Anyway, I just want to pop in to say that I like shooting guns at paper targets and small game. I used to have a basement range for 10m air rifle and air pistol. I sometimes shot my “hunting” air rifles in it; they produce almost as much power as a low-power rimfire would. Dumb or not, I never had complaints nor an accidental discharge. I was at the time a member of the Green party, and I worked on the Kucinich presidential campaign. So pretty liberal, for American, and shooting “guns” in the basement AND supporting stricter regulation of firearms. The earth didn’t crack open, and god didn’t strike me dead.
Violence is fungible. Ban the guns, you may reduce the overall death/violence statistics in somewhat negligible way. The really bad cases will just move to other means.
Solve the real problems, not the easy-looking symptoms.
Check out hot glue bullets. Yes, you can have homemade ammo for safe indoor practice. No powder, the primer itself is enough to accelerate the lightweight projectile. Has its limits but is good enough for quite some fun.
…thought: 3d-printed glue-bullet Gatling gun!
…more thought: extrudable primer-grade propellant for automatic projectile making. Perhaps ignitable with a semiconductor laser, which further simplifies the design of both the “gluethrower” and the projectile casing.
…could it be useful as a less-lethal automated perimeter-guarding sentrygun?
When I was shooting competitively in high school, we used something similar for our 10m air rifle matches, and we would normally use gymnasiums for the competitions. Was on the ROTC rifle team for three years, travelled a long way for some of the matches, and had a blast. For this, .22 subsonic would be relatively safe, and lead-free rounds are available from at least some .22 manufacturers.
We get waaay to emotional about guns. To people who know them, they’re useful tools - entertaining things to compete with, a way to go get food, and, if all else fails, a way to survive a very dangerous situation brought on by someone wishing to do you harm.
For people who are not familiar with guns, they are scary, dangerous, noisy things that only criminals and jackass rednecks care about, and need to be destroyed to keep people safe.
The real thing is, we have a lower death rate from guns than from automobiles, and we’re fine with cars. Keep that in mind when debating statistics…
Even in Virginia, one of the bastions of the South, we still have to deal with ATF, background checks, and buying limits for pistols. We have pretty tight regulations of firearms - some of which is pretty asinine, left over from the assault weapons bans that have been passed over the years.
Bartlett has (had?) one too!
Adjacent to the gym, tucked out of the way behind some doors that made it look like a storage room. Some googling suggests it’s still active, but they only use air weapons now:
That reminds me. I shot a guys gun, I believe it was an HK91 in .308/7.62 mm. It was set up to use these cool plastic practice bullets. It was a 10 grain projectile, but I could hit a man sized steel plate at 75 yards with out trying. The internals have to be swapped out between it and real bullets, but it was really neat to fire something with such low recoil.
You can shoot those out of an unmodified .308 or 7.62 x 51, but they probably won’t cycle the action on a semi-auto. Also, they certainly will cause era damage or kill you if you get hit by one, so all the rules for regular cartridges apply.
Still, they are cheap and must easier (low recoil) to shoot compared to standard ammo.
I have been reading Boing Boing since before it was online, and I take offense at being called a gun nut. A basement shooting range could, I think, be done safely, and Boing Boing seems like quite a good place to discuss how to do that: What kind of ventilation, backstop, collection of fired projectiles, etc. should be done. It’s a fascinating “maker project.”
I have some experience with outdoor shooting ranges, and created and ran the Flamethrower Shooting Gallery at a fire arts festival in Oakland, California (2008, 2009) and at the Burning Man art festival (2008, 2009, 2013) using 4 small gasoline-fueled flame throwers with over a thousand people having had the chance to shoot without any safety incidents.
Doing dangerous things, safely, is fun, educational, and often quite inspirational.
I had a basement range much like this that I had built. I used .22 Short and 9mm plastic practice rounds. I have a legal 9mm suppressor for my SIG so I wouldn’t disturb my neighbors. A gun is a very finely crafted piece of mechanical design. That is why I collect them and pocket watches. The fact that they are fun as hell to shoot is a happy byproduct.
Please do tell, I am not a fan of the new layout either.
That really has got to be as cool as it sounds.
I used to shoot .177 darts at a dartboard in the garage with my dad’s ancient air pistol…
Ah, nostalgia. It was one of these.
Dare say it’s still in my parents’ loft.
@pixleshifter But the laser scanner at the checkout DOES take a 3D scan of your face and upload it to the CCTV’s autonomous facial recognition and tracking network so they can keep an eye on you for public safety reasons.
@Shuck How else are you supposed to hold off the Man when he comes to take away your ability to defend your homestead and your God given rights?
We’ll never know since the “mah gunz!” crowd will never let us find out.
and if we did ban guns and there was no appreciable change in crime or murders would you let us unban them?
Well, I’m not calling for the banning of guns so this is a “did you stop beating your wife question.”
If we actually heavily regulated gun ownership, licensing, and use (which, contrary to some on this thread, we’ve never done), I don’t see why we would actively want to make guns less safe. Of course, I don’t believe for a minute that heavy gun control combined with a zero tolerance policy for illegal gun use wouldn’t have an impact. If you’re going to go to jail for the rest of your life for committing a crime with a gun, I think you’ll find that folks will eventually use something other than a gun (or self select out of the population).
But, generally, I’m not calling for any more gun control than EVERY OTHER WESTERN NATION has.
Mod note: Stay on topic and pull back on snark.
I am one of those constitutional fetishists and am well aware that it has been amended, not altered, 27 times. That’s one of the things I love about it. It can be amended but the process is not so simple that it can be done on a whim. While we are on the subject of the constitution, Jefferson’s opinion of it is somewhat moot - He was not one of the authors and he was a leader of the anti-federalists who opposed adoption. Jefferson is also one of those who believed that the vote should be restricted to the landed gentry so maybe we should stop fetishizing him instead.
A regulation, once put in, tends to stick around even if it is proven inefficient. (See the War on Selected Drugs for a nice example. (Edit: also see the sodomy laws.))
There are way too many fun things beyond just guns. It’s in the best interest of everybody to keep the discourse in the guns-vs-no-guns field, so the ban-happy do-gooders get a cause to stick to and won’t find more emotionally charged issues and won’t spoil more fun.
In the cultural battles of the War on Fun, the gun-friendly people provide the important service of holding up the perimeter. I don’t consider guns my primary interest (even if they are fun), but will vastly prefer to support their afficionados so they can avoid losing their battles. If they lose, the do-gooders, empowered with their victory, will move on and may start spoiling MY funs.
Better to hold the dynamic equilibrium where it is. If the negligible increase of the gun-death risk (almost entirely avoidable by avoiding gang conflict zones) is the price, it’s quite a bargain.
(Same goes for supporting free speech. Stand up for the ones whose speech you don’t like, as if they lose the battle, you can find yourself in the front lines instead of in comfortable rear.)
If you want to discuss the constitution, start a new thread.
