But… but… this is teh interwebz…
The really rather odd 2nd amendment already weakened it. I mean, what does it even mean? “Well regulated militia”? “being necessary”? Really? It’s a really strange piece of drafting, out of line with the language used in your constitution which causes a lot of problems.
Hey have you done that before? I’ve been meaning to ask someone. That is an old Scottish sport, right? What were they doing with telephone poles long before the invention of the telephone?
Some concerns are also about the lead and mercury from lead-azide and mercury-fulminate primers. The products can be so finely aerosolized they can be considered gaseous for practical purposes.
The question is, however, if the dispersed amount from both the projectile and the primer is high enough to pose any reasonably high level of risk (in comparison with other daily risks) to warrant concerns, in a minirange that is not in full-time use.
Some ban-happy people “cleverly” removed lead from solder alloys, and now the joints are often naturally dull (so a non-shiny joint won’t mark a potential cold joint anymore on optical inspection) and the alloys melt at higher temperatures (read: higher thermal cycle load on the parts, which may impair reliability in a myriad of mechanisms) and are less plastic (read: more prone to brittle failure and to growth of fatigue cracks due to thermal cycling during use). If there are no specific contradictions (food-contact, other alloy containing bismuth, etc.), prefer the tin-lead alloy; also good for repairs, where you sometime have to suck off the original alloy off the broken joints and then replace it with the real stuff that will then last, often for decades, in usable form. Removal of lead from gasoline, good idea; from solder alloys, not so good idea. But I digress here (again).
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And I love how anti gun advocates don’t want to talk about solving the problems of violence unless it involves banning guns.
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My example was perhaps a bit inaccurate, but they do seem to have quite restrictive laws around cutlery. https://www.gov.uk/find-out-if-i-can-buy-or-carry-a-knife
At the time I wrote that I was thinking about a article I recently read about a 17 year old not being able to buy spoons because cutlery laws, it did say something about registering knives but that may have been inaccurate.
And while I cannot speak directly to the experience of buying a knife if Britain as I have not done that, I can say that it is most certainly a reality in other countries, such as Singapore for example where I had fill out a three page form to buy a blunt tipped diving knife.
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Here is a description of risks associated with lead exposure, published by one of the leading ammunition manufacturers in the US: http://www.precisioncartridge.com/lead.html
The article is specifically addressed to range owners and managers.
I think building and using a home shooting range would be really cool if done safely. The backstop is probably the easy part, especially if underground (one would only need to reinforce the ceiling.) Ventilation and handling of the spent projectiles would, I think, be the hard part.
Here is a booklet on managing lead exposure, produced by the National Shooting Sports Foundation: http://www.usashooting.org/library/Youth_Development/HS_and_College_Programs/Lead_Management_-_NSSF.pdf
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Scaring the piss out of Romans and trouser-wearing Sassenach, that’s what! The caber was a weapon before it was ever sports equipment… you’d be surprised how much damage you can do to a square formation with a big heavy log, from uphill anyway.
(as any True Scotsman would have known 
)
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@albill It’s also not an anti-gun site, by and large, particularly when said guns are 3d-printed.
That said, I do not see the hate in the post; I do see hyperbolic apoplexy over some – by today’s standards – ridiculous safety choices. One would also assume the same magazine running articles suggesting the widespread dispersal of DDT before during an after a garden-party, or baby shower, f’r instance.
I came here to make sort of the same point, although I loved the post and it was hilarious, I know boingboing isn’t the onion, but it is mostly entertaining. While the post about the indoor shooting range is funny, and I assume that was part of the purpose. I assumed it also just missed the point of an indoor shooting range. Which is almost certainly only going to be used to fire a .22 rifle, probably caps at that. A great many “City-Folk” which of course in this century don’t have to live in a metropolitan area, have simply never shot, or been around guns much, and they see a mass murderer with big scary assault rifle, they’re imagining some fifties era dad in his basement blasting away with an AK47, bullets coming up through the kitchen floor and making a hole in the dogs water dish, that kind of thing.
I was actually thinking about a different kind of indoor “range”. Not for target practice, but for development and testing of ammo and improvised ballistic protection.
Think a three-segmented assembly, from thick-walled flanged pipe of large internal diameter.
Part for catching the projectiles (e.g. filled with sand or other energy absorbent).
Part for the projectile-target interaction (which can be a block of ballistic gel, or a piece of material being tested for its shock-load properties). With optional viewports for high-speed cameras (expensive, but a single-shot images can be made on the cheap) and other target monitoring sensors (material behavior can be inferred from other (and easier/cheaper obtainable) data (piezo sensors, acoustics, highspeed strain gages…) than just highspeed images).
Part with the projectile accelerator (in which a barrel with the breech block and projectile and propellant are housed). With instrumentation for measurement of the projectile velocity (and therefore energy, we know the mass). With easily replaceable “guns”; these can be single-shot and can be therefore as simple as a screw-on breech block with a firing pin and a spring-loaded hammer, on an assembly that cannot be closed in place before the breech block is safely screwed on. (Always count with tired operators that make mistakes.) The accelerator does not even have to be based on conventional propellants; anything that gets the desired projectile moving at desired speed (e.g. a compressed gas, or perhaps even water flashed to steam with an electric discharge) will do.
The whole assembly should be made robust enough (half-inch steel, perhaps) that the worst case of energy release of the propellant charge cannot lead to fragments escaping out of the setup (cover also the breech block for case of its failure, and pay attention to (and mount baffles on, and orient them in safe direction) instrumentation and observation ports) and causing mayhem on the laboratory equipment or personnel. The sound can be effectively suppressed using conventional tricks with baffles and patterns of small holes, thus the tests would not even have to be noticed by the neighbours.
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IMO, “zero tolerance” is always a bad idea. Seriously, I can’t think of a single time where that’s worked out.
The problem started in the 70’s when the press whipped everyone up into a state of fear through creative use of anecdotal reporting. Point out some bad decisions that judges make, and we’ll take their decision making ability away from them.Take the human face away from the justice system – and yes, humans make mistakes – and make it into a machine, with the mistakes baked in.
Bad stuff, I think…
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This.
Best we can hope for in 60 years time is to be considered “quaint.”
Regardless of politics, we should all know from the public school-related posts here that zero-tolerance means “I’m too lazy to consider the facts of the case at hand.” Shame on you.
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Lead Styphnate is a primary explosive used in primers. It makes some lead vapor.
It is quite possible to safely operate a firearms range in your own home as long as you are building it correctly for the type of round you will be shooting.
I’ve been a gun owner since the age of 15, Qualified Marksman First Class when I was 40. And gun fetishists still are some funny, scary people.
See, this original article was written back when America wasn't a land full of whimps that believe that guns just go off willy-nilly and that even if you aim the gun there is no telling where the bullet will go!Back before we had >30,000 gun deaths a year, and more than 100,000 non-fatal shootings.
But them guns sure are sexy!
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