Gun Control and Ornithopters

Several people are mentioning This Turd By Paul Helmke entitled “Who Would Oppose Closing the Gun Show Loophole?” Its been their recent Meme they’ve been trying out along the lines of modifying their cause with the adjectives “Sensible”, “Reasonable”, and “Moderate”. Why wouldn’t you want “Sensible Gun Control?” Reading this hog wash an image came to mind:

Leonardo Da Vinci’s schetches of Ornithopters.

Leonardo, born in Vinci, Italy, possessed a genius which went far beyond simply being a remarkable artist. He was, perhaps, the first European interested in a practical solution to flight. Leonardo designed a multitude of mechanical devices, including parachutes, and studied the flight of birds as well as their structure. About 1485 he drew detailed plans for a human-powered ornithopter (a wing-flapping device intended to fly). There is no evidence that he actually attempted to build such a device, although the image he presented was a powerful one. The notion of a human-powered mechanical flight device, patterned after birds or bats, recurred again and again over the next four centuries.

Da Vinci was a smart guy, and he knew there would be a way for humans to break their earthly bounds and fly. Being a smart guy he looked at stuff that CAN fly, birds, bats, insects, ect and tried to copy them. Of course humans are NOT birds, bats or insects, we’re built very heavy for strength and durability of terrestrial travel, we’re big creatures (and when you look at the wingspan of Da Vinci’s machine the creation was unnaturally large, and our musculature is built for distance walking, not wing flaps (hell humans are even shitty runners compared to most things in the animal kingdom).

Of course humans Did learn to fly, and its a success. So much that on September 11th when the nations air travel was grounded after the terrorist attack, many of us were suprised at how eerie the sky looked without the sign of a passing airliner.

While we have Helicopters, Airplanes, hovercraft, rockets, and gliders, there are no successful Ornithopters for manned flight. Again Da Vinci was a smart man but he didn’t know all the physics and biology in the late 15th century that we knew in the early 20th century.

Turns out that no matter how smart Da Vinci was, building a “Bird Machine” was just a bad idea and would never work.

As a former supporter of Gun Control I get how non-evil people can support it. It does seem like a good idea when oversimplified on paper…just as Da Vinci’s sketchbook gives us wonder and hope even today, only when you try to put it in reality it just doesn’t work, and can often backfire so badly as to exacerbate the very problems it attempts to solve.

Why do I oppose closing the so-called “Gunshow Loophole”? Well besides the obvious fact that the “Gunshow Loophole” laws are never about gun shows, nor do they address a loophole in the law, even when implemented (Like here in Massachusetts) is accomplishes NOTHING. It doesn’t and won’t work. Its a goddamned ORNITHOPTER!