I haven’t even glanced at that awful Instahack’s blog in years, and now I am reminded why. Here’s what he has to say about the recent murders at a Sikh temple:
The 6 Sikh temple shooting victims identified; Satwant Singh Kaleka died trying to fight off shooter. Heroic. But it’s too bad he didn’t have a gun.
What? So it’s Kaleka’s fault because he wasn’t carrying a gun? In a temple?
In Instahack’s world, are we supposed to be armed everywhere?
hehe. Nice catch. Maybe they could be shot on a website with verbal jabs.
I was willing to shoot if he rushed me, drew a weapon, or otherwise threatened my life.
He didn’t, I didn’t.
do you even understand what you’re doing here?
Sure they are. An ax is better at chopping wood than a chef’s knife, and the knife is better at dicing vegetables, but both are equally deadly.
any way you put it, you’ve escalated a potential property crime into a potential violent crime, and you yourself admit that you’d have been willing to shoot, and that people who draw guns on other people should expect to be shot.
Emphasis mine.
‘Is it okay to shoot them now? How about now? …How about now?’
The more you try to defend your inherently foolish position, the more foolish you sound.
Do you?
You don’t have much time at all to react to someone going from passive to trying to kill you.
honeycakes, guns are not axes. their sole purpose is to kill, and thus everything that they might do better than other things involves being better at killing.
And guns are better at killing people, but they’re equally deadly as well, because there is no continuum of “dead”.
Don’t know why you are still following this line of argument, it’s incredibly transparent.
this is how a lot of innocent people have been killed, precisely because of idiots like you who escalate for no good reason.
you are part of this culture of violence, and you are viciously defending your right to continue that culture of violence, so don’t bullshit us about how you want it reduced.
We had a case about a year ago where there was a B&E. The homeowner drew a gun, but instead of allowing the would be thief to escape, chased him further into the house, and then shot him when the would be thief wasn’t resisting. Sounds like most gun nuts. Think they can take justice into their own hands…The homeowner should have been tried for attempted murder.
People that come into another person’s home and pull a gun on them should be shot. People who start shooting up random people for no reason should be put down like a rabid dog. I’m glad someone with a gun was able to finally stop the murder in the Sikh temple.
Should we not try to stop people on a killing spree just like we shouldn’t stop someone on a thieving spree? (where “stop” doesn’t necessitate deadly force, merely the minimum force needed for them to cease their actions, which could be deadly force)
Okay, that ‘necessitate’ bothers me more and more. Again:
The trespasser’s intentions would cause the gun to be used. The gun would HAVE to be used, because of the trespasser’s actions. It’s only prudent to carry something that someone else’s actions might cause to produce lethal force upon them.
Why not say what you really mean, bud: “I may decide to shoot another person with intent to kill them based upon my own estimation of whether they’re posing a threat to my life.”
At least have the entrails to quit weaseling about in the third person.
you could win an olympic medal in goalpost shifting. now the thief was a potential mass murderer, in addition to potentially having a gun and potentially being an extremely skilled knife fighter?
you are part of the culture of violence, and you’re defending your right to remain part of that culture, unchanged. deny it until the cows come home, it won’t make it less true.
And if your victims are disarmed, many, many things are as good at killing (if not better in some instances) than guns. Therefore disarming the law abiding populace won’t reduce the murder rate even if you could magically take away guns from the non law abiding populace.
None of that has anything to do with you chasing an unarmed thief around with a loaded gun, or with bows or broadhead arrows, or with knives versus axes, or with anything else you’ve foolishly spouted this evening. And no, you don’t get to murder people on a “thieving spree” because you’ve got such a sick perspective on life that you believe that taking property merits the death penalty without the benefit of trial, judge, or jury.
not as good as. especially since time is a factor you keep on ignoring/denying. you can deny that too, but your bullshittery won’t change reality.
this “therefore”, even if it were actually true, is irrelevant to anything (but you’re welcome to show where I advocated disarmament, to show the relevance of this).
I’ll agree with that with the added caveat that my estimation must be a reasonable estimation in the eyes of a random sampling of my community members.
Someone, unidentified, is in your yard, it is unreasonable to snipe them from the balcony because you thought something bad might happen in the future.
Someone, unidentified, is in your yard, when confronted with a “WTF are you doing here” they draw a gun and aim it at you. I think it is perfectly reasonable to shoot them first. In that situation, the estimation that your life was in danger is quite valid.
If you have a knife, I can wrap my arm in a jacket or towel and try to deflect slashes and bind up the knife if you jab it at me. If you have an ax, I can try to step into the swing and grab for the handle. If you have a gun, I can only hope that your aim is as sound as your reasoning, in which case I will be completely safe, but you or any people standing behind you might wind up seriously wounded.
Swords don’t jam. Sometimes a gun is a worse killing instrument than available alternatives.
whatever happened to “You don’t have much time at all to react”?
again: your logic kills innocents because of wrong split-second decisions, especially because of racism. this is part of the culture of violence. you do not wish to change that, so you’re bullshitting when you were saying that it’s the culture of violence that needs changing
And who’s doing the confronting, third-person-person?
If you want to get all ninja, there are plenty of disarming techniques against guns too.
you really linked to the Aurora shooting? the shooting that the police arrived at in extremely short time? as an argument for how a sword would have been equally deadly?
you’re a bullshitter par excellence
the confronting of course happens automatically. hence the need for the passive voice, since there is no agent involved. agency only matters afterwards, where you get to shoot someone because they reach for their pocket/pants/whatever.
You don’t think that someone wading through a sea of unarmed people at a theater with a sword or two couldn’t have done as much, if not more damage?
of course not, because I’m not a bullshitting idiot from a parallel universe.
90 seconds, ffs.
Really? So a gun is as good as an ax is as good as a knife?
SO WHAT FUCKING GOOD IS IT TO OWN A GUN?!?!?!?!?!
Jeez, the Force is weak with this one.
It’s the Internet Gun-Control Debate Round-Robin! Draw Conclusion B from Premise A, then if Premise A is brought into question, say that Conclusion B still stands because you never claimed Premise A in the first place. A few posts later (or within the same post if you are really good), return to Premise A.
You have a flashlight attached to your gun?
It would appear that guns for these clowns are like gods for the religious; it seems obvious, then, that they’ll use the same bad arguments they do to justify retaining their beliefs.
For fucks sake, grammar trolling is worse than tone trolling.
How about this:
If I hear something in by backyard in the middle of the night I will investigate it. If that something is a person, I will challenge them. If they chose to respond in a way that a reasonable person would interpret as a threat on my life, I will respond with deadly force.
I hope I am never in such a situation. I hope even more that if I were in such a situation, I had a useful tool available to defend myself with.
so why don’t you go confront this trespasser in your yard with a sword, hatchet, or kitchen knife? JUST AS GOOD
Or if you are really really good, try to use Conclusion B as evidence for Premise A.
no, he has a gun attached to his flashlight :-p
You know what makes situations like this much less likely to be deadly? Not having deadly weapons around!
Of course. Shooting at shadows in the night is very irresponsible. How can you make the determination that your life in in danger or not if you can’t see anything? Once that determination is made, how can you shoot back if you can’t see your target?
why?
why?
no, you will preemptively use deadly force, unless you actually wait until the gun is clearly visible and pointed at you, which is of course not the case.
to review: you create a situation in which you end up pulling a deadly weapon on someone who has not shown themselves harmful, with the intent to kill if, when faced with a gun pointed at them, they react the same way you would.
then stop setting them up.
The guy in dark clothes and a hoodie suddenly reaches down and aims to throw something your way. You shoot him dead; it could have been a hand grenade or a knife.
Turns out it was just a drunk kid who thought he’d stumbled into his own house’s backyard and wanted to throw a pebble at you because you were being annoying.
You are part of the problem.
Turns out it was a sober kid on a public street with some Skittles.
you know, even if it was a real thief, one that was in the process of putting something away into a pocket, and ending up getting shot because “he was going for his gun”, that would be pointless murder.
hell, even if the stupid thief had a gun, and reflexively touched it when realizing someone was fucking pointing a gun at them, that would still be pointless murder unless the thief was going to use that gun on someone if our hero chris hadn’t confronted and shot them
no matter how you twist it, chris is setting up situations in which he himself admits he’ll kill a person. for no reason other than because he believes that the only other alternative is to “invite thieves to take whatever they want with no resistance”
Case closed. You’re advocating murdering people for property. If your door is locked, your house has not been breached, and you open your door with a loaded gun in hand, then you are the aggressor. Any violence that happens past that point is 100% your fault.
Sorry, I simply do not believe that you would be able to wait until you had certain proof of lethal danger, i.e. a gunshot whizzing past your ear.
You’ll shoot when you see him making a sudden movement that looks like he’s aiming something in your direction, which might be a phone, or a beer can, or a pistol.
Modest proposal: every handgun, assault rifle, hunting rifle etc. comes with a Moral Rectitude Safety. If the trigger should be pulled, the Moral Rectitude Safety will instantaneously decide whether the gun should fire or not based on a reasonable-person-majority standard that’s totally not racist, sexist, biased or error-prone, and is capable of determining the legal and situational specifics and whether the gun happens to be pointed at a deserving or undeserving target (for a morally proper definition of ‘deserving’) or a proper lethal area of a food species that is permissible to hunt.
…Instead of the system currently in place, which supposedly determines all those conditions pre-emptively and/or after the fact regardless of reality. *spits*
(Though IMHO, it *would* be rather funny to see Christopher confront some intruder or other, draw and point his weapon, pull the trigger, and hear *BEEEEP* “Your shooting attempt is unjustified.” )
Pteryxx,
Counter-proposal: every gun owner who makes the claim that a shooter could have killed people just as easily with another weapon will have their guns confiscated and replaced with the very largest version of that other weapon, which they will then be forced to carry on their person for no less than 2 years. I would LOVE to see a bunch of morons toting huge battle axes and ridiculously long broadswords every-damn-where.
to review: you create a situation in which you end up pulling a deadly weapon on someone who has not shown themselves harmful, with the intent to kill if, when faced with a gun pointed at them, they look from your perspective, for maybe a second or two, as if they were about to react the same way you would.FIFM
Can I get a rainbow farting unicorn to go with it?
Its been fun. TTFN.
Well, you know, as they say: “4000 throats may be cut in one night by a running man.” That’s a good 12 or so people in 90 minutes, assuming an 8 hour night.
Of course, unless he was really good at aiming for throats, the sword would have probably got caught in a collarbone or sternum within 5 or 6 people, unless he was well-trained.
Erm, 90 seconds, not 90 minutes.
ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE
http://bronies.memebase.com/2012/03/27/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-brony-fire-the-twilight-gun/
Shorter Chris: I am justified to react with deadly force against people who might react with deadly force at my threat of deadly force. But my deadly force is justified. Theirs is not. Because guns save!
vaiyt,
You left out the part where knives and axes and swords and machetes are as good as guns, except when they aren’t, except when they are, except when they aren’t, any way the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me.
To me.
Christopher:
Not that guns are scary. Thanks for mischaracterizing what I said.
Guns are useless for doing anything other than killing something. That’s what I said.
But nice to know you’re willing to mischaracterize your opposition. It fits right in with the rest of the arguments against unfettered gun ownership.
Not so. You can also threaten to kill something, hit people or things with them, blast holes into things which can’t be killed, or threaten to blast holes into those same kinds of things. Also, they have magical powers which turn tyrants into nice, reasonable people who understand democracy and want to govern people fairly. And if you wave one around for a while and talk about freedom, you may become aroused. (Call your doctor if it lasts longer than four hours.)
consciousness razor:
You are correct. I have over-generalized in the “putting holes in otherwise-perfectly performing living beings” bit.
nigel hangs his head in shame.
There a lot of comments so maybe this has been mentioned. But Sikhs are required by their religion to carry a knife for self-defense. I don’t know if that adds anything, just thought it was interesting considering the comment.
Christopher:
And you just shot at a cop. RIP Isaac Singletary.
Christopher:
Can you think of a better way of causing someone to go from passive to trying to kill you than threatening them with deadly force by, say, pointing a loaded firearm at them? I can’t.
Hate to tell you, but the overwhelming majority of guns used in crimes in the US start off as guns that are legally produced for legal sale. The largest source of guns for crimes are ‘straw purchases’. This is where a person goes into a gun store and buys a gun, perfectly legally, then turns around and gives it or sells it to someone who cannot legally own a gun, or simply wishes to get one anonymously. The next largest source of these weapons are simply from corrupt gun dealers willing to bend or even outright break the rules if the price is right. Then there’s simple theft of legally obtained weapons. Things like hand-made guns or smuggled guns come way, way down the list. This means that, if the supply of legal guns were cut off, the supply of illegal guns would be, at the very least, massively reduced.
I’m assuming you realise that, if they are a threat, they wouldn’t politely wait for you to draw your gun and fire, so you already have your gun pointed at them. In which case, from their point of view, an unidentified someone is threatening them with deadly force, so they’re reacting by drawing their weapon to defend themselves, which, if you’re being consistent, you would agree is a perfectly valid and proper thing to do, but which you’ve now stated you would shoot them for doing. So, basically, because you’ve gone out your door with the assumption they’re up to no good, they’re lying dead at your feet, and, for all you know, they’re actually in your yard because they’re looking for their friends house down the street and walked into the wrong yard.
re. #496, Improbable Joe, The law that Christopher is refering to is called the Castle Doctorine, I believe it is in effect in all 50 states of the USA. Basically it states that you have the right to use deadly force to protect your life or property or others lives on your property or in your home, from felonious criminal conduct. The circumstances varies from state to state on the type of criminal acts and wether it is an appropriate defense to manslaughter or murder charges. Basically it states that you do not have to back down in your own home.
#500 JadeHawk, semantic nuances are wonderful things in a reasoned debate but have little power in the heat of the moment. You point a gun at someone for compliance. That you pointed a loaded weapon at someone pretty much implies that you are willing to shoot them. Aiming, pulling the trigger, and hitting them proves that you are able to shoot them.
Oh, and I should say that if, as you say, ‘many, many things are as good at killing than guns’, then there should be no problem with ‘disarming’ law-abiding people – they can just turn to these ‘just as good’ alternatives to defend themselves. In the meantime, you’re getting rid of things from society that have zero purpose other than to kill or injure.
so, what are nyou going to do about explosives ?????
waiting ??????
how about improvised chemical weapons……
or good ole HFl……
or DMSO with a compatible leathal agent in a super soaker ?
or gasoline and sulfuric acid ???
Every single one of these examples is regulated and monitored more stringently than guns in America.
Thank you, keresthanatos, for making an excellent argument in favor of gun control.
my pleasure, except they are not that highly regulated, DMSO can be purchesed at almost any feed and seed store, The same for Nicotine sulfate, HFl can be eveolved from common items that you can find at any Wall Mart. Improvised chemical weapons I really can’t talk about because of Fedral restrictions. Sulfuric acid is really easy to make, think burning sulfur, and gasoline you can pretty much buy all over the nation, and as far as explosives ever heard of a little thing called ANFO ????
You failed HS chemistry, didn’t you…..
Oooh, I managed to find some wrongness that hasn’t been stomped on!
Christopher:
See, even more evidence that you’re really itching to shoot someone. An armed intruder confronted thus may well give you your excuse to kill. Why not “Stand still, I’m armed and will shoot you!” or any variant thereon? Be clear and quick in telling the intruder that you intend to shoot given the provocation. Is it sure to work? No, but it is far more likely to elicit compliance than not being damn clear you’re aiming a deadly weapon. If you can’t think to phrase the challenge thus when calmly posting on the web, do you think you would in the heat of the moment? Do you remember exactly how you confronted your petty thief?
Most of the police in the UK do not carry firearms, and those that do have extremely strict protocols they must follow before discharging a weapon. This includes a fairly precise script about how to warn criminals and any bystanders not to do stuff that may get them shot. Even if a criminal aimed a gun at an officer who then shot in self defense, said officer should be in a deep pile of shit if he/she had the opportunity to give these warnings and did not do so correctly.
It’s not just safe use and storage of guns that prevents their use in unnecessary killing. Unless you have mandatory training in how to minimise the risk of an armed confrontation ending with shots fired, more guns at home mean more unnecessary gun deaths.
But aren’t guns durable goods? Given the massive numbers of handguns that already exist in the US, I’m not sure how much good stopping the increase would do.
[Emphasis mine.]
No, they really aren’t, unless you’re using the deeply dishonest tactic of claiming that since they can both kill, they’re “equally” deadly.
If I had the choice between using a knife to defend myself or an axe, I’d choose the knife.
Every.
Single.
Time.
Due to weight, an axe will always be slower than a knife, and due to physics, an easy counter to an axe is to get right next to the axe-wielder. It’s really hard to use an axe to kill someone who’s literally in your face.
Knives have no such problem, plus they rely much less on brute strength than an axe. Most 9-year-olds wouldn’t pose much of a threat if they came at you with an axe, but they could seriously mess you up if they came at you with a knife (if they knew what they were doing, of course).
[Emphasis mine.]
Yeah unless you’re fighting underwater (or again using the dishonest false equivalency that I mentioned above), then no.
Please, by all means, fill us in: what are these “things” you keep talking about that are “as good at killing” as guns, and in what specific “instances” (besides the underwater thing) are they better at it than guns?
Because that’s some information I’d really like to have.
Oh, and about the second part of that quote:
[Emphasis mine.]
If we posit, just for the sake of argument, that your claim is 100% correct, then why would disarming the law abiding populace (either magically or by other means) make them any less safe? If guns have no impact on the murder rate, then how do they “protect” anyone from being murdered?
Or do they somehow only work to prevent other violent crimes?
[Emphasis mine.]
Yeah, so you keep saying.
I’ll grant you that there are some very specific instances where that’s true (under da sea! [/Sebastian]), but for the vast majority of circumstances that’s manifestly false. Killing someone is surprisingly hard to do (well, surprising to folks who’ve internalized the Hollywood version of conflict); we have a number of weak points in our physical bodies, but we’re remarkably sturdy in most other areas.
With a gun, you’re pretty much going to put a hole in (and often through) whatever part of the body you hit (baring armor, of course); even using a knife, it takes a fair amount of skill to do anything more than leave some gashes on someone.
You’re not likely to get through bone with a knife, especially in a fight, but you’ve got pretty good chance of going through bone with a bullet.
Yes, there are, and my sifu taught me about a half-dozen of them.
He also taught me what he assured me was the only effective technique to use against a gun-wielding opponent who was more than 6 feet away: throw them your wallet.
Think about that for a moment, dude. This is a man who spent more than 50 years training in martial arts; a man who could hold his own when sparring with Shaolin masters (not just students, but masters); a man who could kick my ass in about 3 seconds flat even after I’d been training with him for 8 years; a man who had dedicated his life to martial arts training since the age of 7.
And in all that time, the most effective technique he knew of to deal with an attacker armed with a gun who wasn’t stupid enough to be in range of his hands or feet was to give them his freaking wallet.
Remind me again how loads of other things are just “as good at killing (if not better in some instances) than guns.”
For another example of how effective guns are against hand-help weapons or highly trained martial artists, why don’t you google “The Boxer Rebellion”?
No, I really don’t, and since I have a fair bit of training with swords (a year and a half of kendo and a couple of years of dao training with my sifu) I’m pretty sure I know more about that than you do.
Besides, in a crowded theater like that, you’d be better off with knives. Swords require more room to wield than knives, and when you’re swinging them around, they’re more likely to get caught on bone (the sword equivalent of a jammed gun) than knives are (unless you’re being stupid and swinging your knife around like a sword, of course).
I challenge you to find a really sharp sword and seventy sides of beef, then demonstrate how you can deliver 12 lethal blows and 58 wounding ones in 90 seconds. By all means, show us that you’re not totally full of crap on this. Please.
Hell, you could post the video on YouTube and watch the Internet fame come rolling right in!
Quinn Martindale:
This is true if the one and only action the police force, etc, would do is banning guns. However, if they also did common sense things like, you know, trying to find out where illegal guns were, and actually seizing any they do learn about, this would not just stop the increase, but actually reduce the numbers in circulation, whilst simultaneously making it much harder for criminals to replace them. Of course, it’s still a matter of debate whether such an outright ban is a good idea, but, unlike what many gun nuts would have you believe, carrying out this ban would do more than simply ‘disarm the victims’.
Wow, Christopher started off reasonably put-together for a pro-gunner and then slowly but surely, the mask chipped away and he went Full Gun Nut, coming up with arguments at least as ridiculous as koko’s. Voltaire’s prayer, works every time.
Quinn:
My thoughts tend to be along the same lines. The UK is undeniably safer than the US (in the sense we’re discussing) due to its strict gun control and relative rarity of guns. Unfortunately, as the old joke about asking directions goes, if the US wants to get to where the UK is, “I wouldn’t start from there”. I doubt the political and social resolve exists to last the significant time it would take before the existing stockpile of guns dwindled sufficiently, even if enough were present to start the process.
Gaebolga, I don’t think it actually takes much skill to seriously wound someone with a knife. A stab to the abdomen with a twist may not prove instantly fatal but it will ruin your day. Similarly, as long as you know to hold the blade horizontal to minimise the chance of catching on ribs, an off centre stab to the chest is likely to puncture a lung if it doesn’t hit the heart. Assuming you’re attacking someone without the skill to disarm or immobilise you, either wound is incapacitating.
keresthanatos:
So, basically, you’ve listed a few things that require somewhat specialised knowledge and/or time to make dangerous (even your example of ANFO requires the commercial-grade stuff you can buy freely as fertiliser to be refined), whereas, with a gun, it’s dangerous as soon as you get it, one of these things you even admit is restricted, like guns, and all of these have legitimate other uses than killing or injuring people, unlike guns, and somehow concluded these things are a legitimate argument for not having tight gun controls.
While it’s certainly true that any of the wounds you mentioned would be grievous, they’re not as easy to pull of as they may seem if your opponent (or victim) isn’t standing still. Especially the strikes to the chest. While holding the blade horizontally can reduce the chances of it catching on a rib, when someone is twisting or dodging or putting their arms up defensively or trying to block, you’ll need to adjust the angle of the blade very quickly and very precisely to actually avoid striking the ribcage.
Stabbing in the stomach is probably the easiest and safest bet of the strikes you listed, but as you noted, it’s also the least immediately deadly, which means you still have to deal with an opponent who is potentially still a threat. I found out early on that you can’t necessarily count on pain incapacitating an opponent. (I accidentally kicked one of my fellow students in the nuts – hard – during sparring one time, and he just grinned at me before kicking me across the room. Not a lesson I’ll ever forget.)
Obviously, a skilled combatant facing a less-skilled opponent is going to generally fare much better, but when combatants are equally unskilled, it really is remarkable how ineffective a lot of fighting moves are, armed or not.
Unless the arms in question are guns, of course.
Interesting how when the gun nuts showed their ugliness, somebody came along with the non-sequitur of chemical weapons. Which aren’t ever used for “home defense” as they don’t have the selectiveness of firearms, and will probably take out those using them without the proper PPE too. One typically doesn’t wear Tyvek hooded/booted suits, nitrile gloves, supplied air respirators while lounging at home.
Actually it does take skill to *reliably* seriously wound someone with a knife. Read some criminology with wound analyses – an unskilled knife attack has almost random odds of causing anything from a serious, potentially fatal injury to a minor flesh wound. Unskilled knife attackers who fully intend to kill their victims, in domestic violence cases for example, generally have to attack them over and over and over again and leave an obvious pattern of ineffective wounds before they manage to kill them. (The exception’s if the attacker can get the victim to hold still while their throat’s being cut.)
keresthanatos, if people are actually making guns from common hardware-store products in their garages with instructions from the internet in numbers that are actually sufficiently high numbers to be a problem then your asinine chemistry examples might actually be relevant. Except that it would only be relevant as an argument for even more stringent gun control regulations.
HFl and sulfuric acid are only dangerous in sufficiently high concentrations and their sale in such concentrations is highly regulated. Trying to make either from easily available reagents in such concentrations without hurting yourself takes significant skill.
DMSO by your own admission must be combined with compatible lethal agents to be dangerous and as such is completely irrelevant and mind-bogglingly dishonest of you to even bring up.
Incidentally, I aced High School chemistry with a perfect score.
It actually takes significant skill to wound someone seriously with a knife without also injuring yourself, unless your knife was specifically designed for combat with a hand guard on the hilt (but those kinds of knives are actually subject to regulations and restrictions on their sale).
Attack wounds on the hands is a common way for police investigations to identify the assailant in a knife attack case.
Gee, although I strongly suspect answer, what does HFl stand for, as it doesn’t appear in acronym dictionaries, and I haven’t run across it in my professional work?
*whistles tunelessly to self*
@keresthanatos
DMSO is harmless unless you combine it with other poisonous materials that are toxic and highly regulated and is therefore mostly irrelevant to the list. Nicotine sulfate is not sold in pure form and is usually packaged with stabilizing ingredients and in my country, purchases of it are monitored (as in most countrys, as far as I know). Evolving HF requires specialized equipment to avoid killing yourself (the purchase of which is highly regulated, and which would require extensive skill and gear [some of which itself is restricted] to make at home), the know-how to use said equipment, and restricted chemicals. Large quantities of sulfur are hard to come by in my country, and production of sulphuric acid requires an expensive and regulated catalyst to obtain it in any decent yield or amount (since most combustion of sulphur yields the useless-to-sulphuric-acid-production sulphur dioxide, rather than sulphur trioxide), and further as with HF, the production of sulphuric acid also requires restricted and expensive equipment to avoid killing yourself in the process and the know-how to use such equipment. Ammonium nitrate in my country is restricted, closely monitored, and not sold in pure form to end users anymore. Stores authorized to sell it even communicate with others in the area to see if they’re getting someone buying a large quantity and trying to hide it with a large number of smaller purchases (shocking concept, I know).
So, no, it’s not as easy to get and use this stuff as you think it is. Most of the stuff that is restricted isn’t restricted because the government wants to prevent people from blowing things up, but rather because most people who screw around with this stuff kill or maim themselves in horrible ways. Ie, it’s not restricted to protect people from those who use it, it’s restricted to protect those who would like to play around with it from their own ignorance and stupidity.
Could always use a realistic looking tranq gun, or something like a tazer. You can, of course, get the latter, but the tranq gun, ironically, would require a special license, because, you know, that would, ironically, be dangerous, and might kill someone….
Of course, there is a slight flaw in that logic, when applied to say.. the resistance of citizens, against their own government. Which one, exactly, “just gets up and leaves”?
gosh, I just can’t resist. zmidponk, ischemgeek, HS Chemistry, one of our requirments was to make sulfuric acid from scratch. Then we had to purify it and refine it until the desired molarity (?? been a long time) was reached. Started with agricultrual grade sulfur I guess it helped that our teacher had a Doctorate in one of the organic chemistries. In the 8th grade I fabricated a photo voltaic cell from scratch (not really started with a refined silicon wafer) etched cleaned etc. with several reagents including HF and used thermal diffusion to dope the wafer(P)(B). All in a poor podunk school in backwards SC, USA. Knowledge is power !!!
This summer, to rid my small garden of bean beatles, and potato bugs, I wandered about and collected about three pounds of wild tobacco and made a crude nicotine poison. Seemed to have a kill rate of about 100%, but I was not very rigorus in my observations.
I have in the past synthsized and purified nicotine sulfate to downright scarry levels of purity.
Nerd of Redhead, sorry my bad Hydrofloric acid, not liquified HF gas (shudder, cold sweat just thinking about it). and they let train car loads of this stuff just roll around most countries.
Jade Hawk, you you have brought up the most sallient of points when you mentioned our “culture of violence” and hatred. I see this as the problem. Unfourtanly, it seem to be promoted to insane levels by all forms of media in this country. We are an inately violent and dangerous species. Why stir the pot, turn up the heat and not expect it to eventually boil over.
yes. it’s the fucking videogames and tv that’s at fault here.
watch me roll my eyes.
As an aside, my Tyvek suit was yellow with lots of EB red tape to tape it to my yellow gloves and yellow booties and EBA . It had purty magenta writing and symbols on it, I liked it and wanted to wear it every where I went but THEY wouldn’t let me. I had to leave it where I wore it :(
But I do have a white one now, with a Scott Airpak and blue booties and gloves and lots of metalized duct tape(mostly around my head and crotch, gotta be real carefulabout that nasty ionizin EM radiations from themHARP, but my socialworker wont stay long where I live and the Morman boys on Mission run from me, and the Jehova’s Wittness just leave all their magazines, and purses, and umbrellas and stuff and just run away too….why won’t anybody be my friend,…. but I digress.
no , it’s not tv and video games, it is the whole culture that desensitizes us to terrible act of cruelty to one another within our own groups
then don’t single out the media, as if that mattered. FYI, foreigners watch US media without developing aggressive, violent gun cultures.
so in your opinion, what is the root cause of our culture of violence ?
why are you asking me? I’m not even the one who blamed everything on it. that was chris the backyard-rambo.
but as an aside, the way you asked that makes it look as if you thought media were the root of your culture of violence. which makes you look silly and ignorant. just sayin’.
no, not the root, just the shoots and ugly flower. as far as silly and ignorant, busted. but I try to improve.
keresthanatos:
-snip-
Still missing my point – what preparation do you need to make a gun dangerous? You put the bullets in it. And that’s it. All the knowledge that’s needed is how to load it, and no time or any significant effort required.
Oh, and, as an aside, there are usually state and federal regulations controlling how, when and where schools can use these kind of substances, so, even when you were conducting these experiments in school, your use of these substances was probably regulated and controlled.