Tam has an amusing piece up on the Remington Hit Piece.
She notes that the story centers around a old gun that was very likely modified by an amateur, that discharged when dropped. She points out that modern drop safeties are a VERY new development, and we still teach in safety class that you don’t do shit with loaded guns like climb fences or getting into a tree-stand. Her analogy is great!
Complaining that a 1920s firearm may not have been drop safe when you were actively ignoring two or more of the Four Rules of firearm safety is like complaining that you drove your Ford Model A head-on into a brick wall and the airbags didn’t deploy.
Sean happens to note a similar short-sighted comment.
Apparently Mr. Winkler is unaware of why loaded guns were banned in Boston buildings in the Revolutionary War era. It’s because they were flintlock muzzle loading muskets. That means that they didn’t have what we think of as safeties. They were inherently unsafe because any spark near the breech end could set them off.
I also noted that in 18th Century Boston even on warm days it wasn’t uncommon to have a naked flame from a fireplace or a candle in many of the rooms of public or private buildings. Naked flames and loaded and/or primed flintlocks is VERY dangerous. If an ember finds your flash pan, or your touch-hole, your gun is gonna go “BOOM”.
But Mr. Winkler thinks that makes it perfectly reasonable to ban the safety-laden modern guns, with self-contained ammunition into buildings that are now lit by electric lights, and heated by various methods that DON’T involve a naked flame.
This is a VERY common way for people to think. You’ll often hear a story that happens in flyover country where somebody does something stupid with a gun on private property, and a pointy-head in New York or California will ask “Was the gun Registered? Did the person have a license?”, because obviously the stupid laws in New York are in effect in Wyoming or Montana.
Same goes for whatever local laws your idiots passed. Like Massachusetts blue laws. Until recently it was illegal to open your retail store on Sunday here. It was also illegal to sell alcohol on Sunday. It is STILL illegal to buy beer or wine in ANYPLACE but a LIQUOR store. People think this is reasonable, and some how assume that EVERYPLACE else is like that, and if we allow somebody to buy a six-pack at the 7-Eleven, Massachusetts will become some horrible drunken Petri dish.
Another great example is this XKCD comic. The rollover for that comic is “An ‘American Tradition’ is anything that happened to a Baby Boomer twice.”
The same can be said about the whole “Global Warming” fiasco. You’ll hear some Woodstock Alumni talking about how much colder the winters were when s/he was a kid. Maybe they were colder, and the snow higher…or maybe you were three feet shorter, and Gore-Tex and Thinsilate hadn’t been invented yet.
Either way this gets me thinking that so many “Progressives” seem to think the world started the day before they were born…yet they chide Creationists for Thinking the Earth is only a Few Thousand Years Old.
If you’re going to chide them for their exceedingly short sense of history, don’t forget that they’ll make fun of people for not believing in self-organizing biological systems, but refuse to accept the idea of self-organizing economic systems…
Ah yes the old Social Darwinists versus Social Creationists.
Course Social Darwinist is really just a slur Eugencists came up with to tar those that were against the goverment regualting breeding.
I remember a funny (almost) argument with a date years ago when she stated that “People are not allowed BY LAW to buy more than one gun a month”. The only reason for the “almost” was that, after a quick try to convince her that no such law existed here in Florida, I let it drop. She just “KNEW” that that was the law and no amount of me saying anything would convince her otherwise. I never did figure out where she got that notion.
I know, funny subject for a date, but it came up because she was flabbergasted that a cousin of her’s had just broken said “law” and she was pretty mad about it. She was wondering if she should report him or not. (again, not sure why it would matter to her either way, but apparently it did)
Needless to say, I merely said “Listen to your inner Jimney Cricket” and dropped her off early. You can’t fix stupid, and that one wasn’t worth the effort of trying.
s
Good move. Its one thing being anti-gun out of ignorance….I was one of them, and I married one of them. We both got better. But we’re people who are ASHAMED of Ignorance. Those who embrace it, or have pride in how narrow their minds are are best left alone…preferably on a small island with no vegetation….
Winters when I was a child were undoubtably colder than winters now.
When I was a child I lived in Iowa.
I now live in Florida.
Clearly; catastrophic anthropogenic global climate change.
Weerd of course the Libs mock the Creationists for thinking the Earth is thousands of years old!
Every sensible person knows it’s just 400
http://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2012/04/17/young-earth-liberals/
LOL WOW!
If I may offer another bit of misinformation from media experts:
http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/2012/04/20/20120420mesa-police-mushroom-offer-leads-drug-arrest.html
From AZCentral.com:
“During the search, Moore arrived at the apartment, near U.S. 60 and Gilbert Road, and was holding a .25mm handgun, police say.”
Let’s see;
.25mm=.0098″ That’s a damn fine size for a high E electric guitar string, but it would take 8.3 of them little bastards to equal the diameter of my toothpick.
On the other hand, I’m guessing that the penetration would be astounding at supersonic speeds. Kinda like a bee sting. (if bees stung at 5000 feet per second) Less kill ’em all, and more piss ’em off a plenty.
Why. Oh why do people insist on publishing “news” that they know nothing about which ends up as a public display of their their ignorance of the subject matter.
LOL! To be fair the whole caliber/mm thing eludes most people, even many who shoot.
Still if you’re writing a story you should be held to a higher standard!