Discussion about hot topics trending today

[jelgate]

Yes. Books (since TV didn't exist in the 1700s) have a poor track record in predicting the future

[Annoyed]

I don't really buy the "The founding fathers couldn't conceive modern weapons" argument. What they couldn't conceived is just how self destructive our political system would get. They did conceive the need for constitutional changes. They didset out to make it a difficult process. However, they didn't set out to make it nearly impossible which is kind off what has happened.

They didn't make it impossible. They just made damned sure that a very percentage of the people wanted the proposed change. As far as the 2nd amendment goes, there is no where near that level of support for eliminating it.

What if an issue arose that 80+ percent of the population agreed warranted a change? Do you still think it's impossible?

Working as designed.

[Coco Pops]

Is it really? How much of the technology that we routinely use today would have been the work of fiction even a hundred years ago? Let alone back in the 1700's. Is it really so far fetched that 2 or 3 hundred years from now, weapons technology will have surpassed what we see in today's fiction, let alone what we really have today?

I doubt it.....

I wish we did have ray guns and particle beam weapons now but I don't think that will ever happen, if at all.

[Womble]

What ARE you dribbling about now?
An auto can kill many people very quickly, so could a phaser, that's not an advancement, it's just changing what I kill you with.
When your phaser can clear a room with one shot, we will call it an advancement.
Oh, and just a friendly FYI, slugs have been the standard since the inception of a projectile weapon
Currently, there are no real military "lasers", and going from a physical projectile to a light based one is not "easily foreseen"

Only for a person who has never burned an ant with a magnifying glass. The concept of "death ray" in the form of concentrated light or heat is as old as Archimedes' mirror (whether or not it was actually real).

[Gatefan1976]

Only for a person who has never burned an ant with a magnifying glass. The concept of "death ray" in the form of concentrated light or heat is as old as Archimedes' mirror (whether or not it was actually real).

And flying has been around for centuries as well, right?
Da Vinci dreamed up a helicopter, so it was obviously common knowledge...........

[thekillman]

Only for a person who has never burned an ant with a magnifying glass. The concept of "death ray" in the form of concentrated light or heat is as old as Archimedes' mirror (whether or not it was actually real).

And it has existed all that time as a concept. Sunlight hits the earth at about 1 kilowatt per square meter. Wood burns in around 20-30 seconds with a 30-fold energy density. So a mirror 1.1m across would need to focus down to 30cm. Across several hundred meters. With beaten bronze mirrors. So yea no, it was probably a pipe dream back then. Which also shows why nobody else even tried.

Lasers are fragile things, and no matter what, their fundamental design requires them to be fragile. It requires a lot of energy, and fundamental physics forces it to be that way. Melting stuff requires a lot of energy (steel takes 450 J to heat 1 kg 1 degree. With a melt point of 1500 degrees, you can see how insanely powerful your laser has to be in order to do damage in any meaningful way. Which is why modern industrial lasers have tiny beam sizes and only cut a few mm of plate before they're useless. The muzzle energy of a bullet is somewhere between 0.1 and 1 kJ, so you can instantly tell that a bullet barely heats the metal it impacts. A quick google tells me that a .44 magnum can shoot through 1/8 inch steel, with a muzzle velocity of 1kJ. to melt the same amount of material would require 1.5 kJ, not accounting for ANY inefficiency (like conduction or ablation, or the fact that lasers don't melt but evaporate steel).

Which brings me to the final hurdle: complexity. A gun has few moving parts, and so are reliable. Lasers are not. No kind of laser is. Batteries can't be simple due to design requirements.

So, handheld lasers do poor damage, require more energy and are more complex. Guns are simply better. The only reason we'll ever use handheld lasers, is if any of the other problems with guns can only be solved with lasers. Think about stuff like range, recoil, or damage control.

[Annoyed]

Absolutely, handheld lasers and the like are beyond us at this time. The key restraint is energy storage or generation. The equipment to store or generate the kind of energy required fills a room.

So did computers back in the 60's and 70's.

[Falcon Horus]

the police, on the other hand, are far more likely to have access to far deadlier weaponry, such as fully-automatic rapid-fire type weaponry, tear gas, and other means of pacification

Those are not meant to pacify but to kill (except for tear gas, unless allergic reaction, that won't kill but pacify). Pacification and killing are two different things.

Because a lot of cops get shot. Criminals don't have any respect for laws or the police, and many wouldn't (and don't) think twice about firing on them. In order to retain their capacity to inhale oxygen and exhale Carbon dioxide, police have to assume the worst.

And how many caucasian, gun-slinging people were recently shot dead as opposed to the black men who were handling a cellphone and something that looked like a showerhead?

And they weren't just shot, they were riddled with bullets.

Explain how that works?

[Annoyed]

Those are not meant to pacify but to kill (except for tear gas, unless allergic reaction, that won't kill but pacify). Pacification and killing are two different things.



And how many caucasian, gun-slinging people were recently shot dead as opposed to the black men who were handling a cellphone and something that looked like a showerhead?

And they weren't just shot, they were riddled with bullets.

Explain how that works?

Again and again and again. Not everything is about race. Just last week in a nearby city, a white 80 year old geezer was shot dead by police after he pointed an unloaded weapon at the police. They were responding to a call about the guy threatening to kill his wife, they seen him in the yard with the weapon, he looked like he was bringing it to bear and they pumped in excess of 10 rounds into him.

I am not black, and I said early on in this discussion that I wouldn't risk being armed in an encounter with police.

It's not about race, it's about being stupid enough to be in a situation where the police could even think you are going to turn a weapon on them.

[LtColCarter]

Again and again and again. Not everything is about race. Just last week in a nearby city, a white 80 year old geezer was shot dead by police after he pointed an unloaded weapon at the police. They were responding to a call about the guy threatening to kill his wife, they seen him in the yard with the weapon, he looked like he was bringing it to bear and they pumped in excess of 10 rounds into him.

I am not black, and I said early on in this discussion that I wouldn't risk being armed in an encounter with police.

It's not about race, it's about being stupid enough to be in a situation where the police could even think you are going to turn a weapon on them.

As usual...you fail to realize the facts. The facts are that more people of color are shot by police than white people.

Police in the U.S. killed 1,129 people so far in 2017, and a quarter of those killed were black—even though they comprise just 13 percent of the population, according to a new report.

In addition to being 25 percent of the victims, black people are also three times as likely to be killed by police as white people, according to the report, “Mapping Police Violence,” which was released Thursday.

“Today is an important day to remind you that police violence is far from over,” tweeted one of the report’s creators, Brittany Packnett.

By Josh Saul On 12/29/17 at 12:24 PM
Newsweek

[Annoyed]

As usual...you fail to realize the facts. The facts are that more people of color are shot by police than white people.

Blacks are also over represented in the criminal justice and prison systems, even though they are a minority of the population. That is because in proportion, they commit crimes more frequently then whites.

Perhaps, in proportion, they place themselves in dangerous situations when it comes to armed encounters with the police more often than whites do?

I'm not saying that there are not a few instances where bad cops do bad things.

But how much of this problem is behavioral, rather than racial?

[Gatecat]

I would much rather let the trained professionals handle it. But with response times being what they are, the situation will likely be over and done with by the time they get there.


Because a lot of cops get shot. Criminals don't have any respect for laws or the police, and many wouldn't (and don't) think twice about firing on them. In order to retain their capacity to inhale oxygen and exhale Carbon dioxide, police have to assume the worst.

You're avoiding the question. Not everyone is a criminal. Or is every person guilty until proven innocent?

[Womble]

And flying has been around for centuries as well, right?
Da Vinci dreamed up a helicopter, so it was obviously common knowledge...........

Moving the goalposts. If the question is whether the founders of the American state could conceive that firearms would evolve into something like modern automatic weapons, the question of "common knowledge" is irrelevant. Automatic firearms are an evolution of multiple-barrel guns, which were old enough that 18th century people could foresee them developing further.

[Annoyed]

You're avoiding the question. Not everyone is a criminal. Or is every person guilty until proven innocent?

No. But in the eyes of the police, every person has the potential to try to harm them. So, in order to do that job and have the best chance of going home at night, they have to be on a hair trigger. IF something even looks like it might be a gun or weapon, they are trained to shoot first and ask questions later. If they are indeed facing a shooter, it is the best way for them to live through the encounter.

So, as a citizen, I have to understand that, and take great care that I don't ever present myself as possible danger to them. It's just common sense.

[Gatefan1976]

Moving the goalposts. If the question is whether the founders of the American state could conceive that firearms would evolve into something like modern automatic weapons, the question of "common knowledge" is irrelevant. Automatic firearms are an evolution of multiple-barrel guns, which were old enough that 18th century people could foresee them developing further.

You brought laser gunz into the equation, so don't cry goalpost moving now.
Oh, and Auto's are NOT an evolution of gatling style weaponry, that would be gatling guns, which had a different design trajectory.
Again, as I said to Annoyed, you certainly can project weapon evolution, but only to a certain point. Past that point it becomes a far more far-fetched a notion.
If you told a FF that one day, a soldier with a gun could shoot at roughly 80 times the speed of a musketman, I doubt they would believe you.
If you told them you could buy them as a private citizen because of how people interpret what they wrote, I think a certain amendment would have gotten a re-write.