GigaBuist

I'm certainly not trying to combative with the parent poster in this matter but I should try and dispell a few myths about gun owners and shooting intruders. Technically speaking we have far more to think about when it comes to shooting an intruder than you do when throwing a knife. This is highly dependant on where you live but honestly the thought process doesn't really change that much. I too live in an apartment. Some gun owners (okay, most of them) live in a house. We not only have to select our target but we must evaluate, within split seconds, where that bullet is going to land if we miss the intruder or if it passes through them. Where I live I have very few positions which I could possibly fire on an intruder to save my life and not effect anybody else. I take many measures and repeadly remind myself of various tragectories which are safe in such a situtation. I'm not alone in this matter either -- if you visit pro-gun boards like http://www.thehighroad.org you'll see many discussions about what types of rounds and calibers are suitable for such situations. Very much thought goes into these decisions. With a throwing knife you most certainly have to select your target but that is largely because you have a limited capacity in which to "fire" upon the individual. If you must concern yourself with your knife traveling through an entire house and into another building then, sir, I would like to shake your hand and become your student.

The thing I find interesting about this post is how it relates to the often heard mantra of "if crime is bad in your area, just move." This seems to show that that isn't always a good idea. Presumably the burglar lived in a high crime area and moved to a low crime area for his activities because people there were not as vigilant. That's why I dont' like the "just move" idea. It forces the situation onto somebody else. The better idea is to do something to stop crime. Many theories exist on the matter and I applaud any social action that seeks to stop crime at the root of the problem. However, an armed society is a strong deterant in my mind. If everybody is armed there's nowhere for crime to go. This is not the final solution the problem but a reasonable measure to take regardless of crime levels.

I've never been in a birdman suit (and won't be for a fairly long time)... but what about elastic or rubber hoses attached to your body and your arms to help "pull" them into the right position? Maybe they could take 10-15lbs of pressure off each arm? If the bands were attached to the wrists using a quick-releae velcro perhaps at deployment time you could bring your hands in to undo them and free your arms up entirely. Of course, that's assuming it's okay to move in such a fashion. I have no idea. if you can't move your arms like this then what about a pin release on one arm that would have a cord velcro'd on your left or right shoulder. You could nab it with your mouth and yank the pin, free your arms, and take care of business. Of course, now you have a problem with two 3 foot long bungee cords flying past your head. Attach the bungee cords running from your body to your arms to two more cords anchored around your ankles with high elasticity that could grow to 6-7 feet in length but shrink back to 2 feet to pull the stronger cords back under your body and out of the way of deploying bag. Where does this fit in with landing it? Makes it easier to hold the proper position with an even bigger wingspan I guess.

Well, it's not mine, but my younger brother has an amusing one. Typical yellow smiley face with the "Have a Nice Day!" thing around it... on his right ass cheek. I'll get a picture if y'all want one; but his behind is not very flattering so consider yourself warned. I pray he never ends up in prison.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply anybody thought Austrlia was perfect. I've neve heard a native say it was nor would I try and put words in anybody's mouth. From the stats I quoted, yes, you do have less of a gun violence problem. That's noble, but there is still a violence problem. If you remove the violence problem guns are no longer a problem. it's a lofty goal for any nation to achieve high gun ownership and a low crime rate. I admit, no I have not spent any time in Australia and I've only been in Atlanta for a flight layover. Given the nature of every Austlian I have met however I can assure you I'd feel more comfortable there than I would in most US cities. I will concede on that point easily. I agree entirely here. Stats will always be slightly skewed depending on who took them. The manner in which they were collected if often not a bit point in their press releases either. For the record I do not trust anything that the NRA puts out point blank. I'll question stats from any organization and take them with a grain of salt. The debate is about gun problems, but if you read my previous posts you'll see that I'm more concerned about crime than gun crime in general. I'd rather be shot to death than beaten down with a baseball bat honestly. A violent crime is a violent crime in my mind. Elimination of violent crime would eliminate gun crime. I'm not saying that I think you disagree with me on this at all; it's my premise. I definately agree that things are categorized differently depending on your locale. What we call domestic distrubance here is probably assult in many other countries. However I feel I should point out that "assualt" was incrased in AU during this period. Unless the definition changed from 1995 until now that is indicitive of a problem. It's "nice" that the rate of gun related robberies has decresed, but at what cost? If i'm unarmed and 3 guys bust into my house with baseball bats I'm basically screwed. I'm a small guy tipping the scales at 140lbs bare naked. If I'm physically assualted there's very little I can do about it unless I have a firearm. If they're armed, and I'm armed, I at least stand somewhat of a chance. The laws passed down under certainly have removed guns from the picture but they cannot, from the above, be accredited with reducing crime. Violent crime is violent crime. I'd rather be prepeared and armed for such confrontations. Crime here is probably higher. I'll admit that in a hearbeat without any stats to show otherwise. Even if crime here isn't higher crime here is still to high for my personal tastes. I am totally against violent crime. I'm against violence in general too. However, given that my posts earlier about this being a culturlal problem have seemingly been ignored I'll don the hat of something I absolutely do not agree with but could be used, statistically, in the same manner that the anit-gun crowd uses. We'z got a problem with niggers in this country. It's the niggers causing all of the crime. Everywhere you look, if there's crime there's niggers. Us white folk in urban america with guns coming our of our asses don't kill eachother. It's them niggers doing it. If we get rid of the niggers we don't have no more crime. Niggers is the problem. In case you missed it: I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE ABOVE! However, it does fit into the argument. Some blame the item used to commit violent crime. It's easy to get rid of, as we don't really need guns many people say. Some people honestly think if we got rid of "niggers" the problem would be solved. Others could say that we just flat out don't need black people in this country. If we got rid of them then we'd have far less crime in the country. Get rid of the Mexicans too while we're at it, some of them commit crimes too. BOTH are absurd. The latter has not been brought up in this forum, except for me, and I am very happy about that. However, I see both as very simplictic views of the real prolem: violent crime. I don't care if it's done by a honkey with a baseball bat of a black fellow with a gun, they're both bad. I want both to stop. Now. i still fail to see how telling me, a peaceful American citizen that removing the guns from my house will actually help the situation. It's as non-sensical to me as saying that if I shoot random "niggers" on the street that the crime problem would go away. I appologize emphatically to anybody who may have been offended by my choice of words above. I stress that I do not at all adhere to such idiotic propositions. I have heard them before, however, from people that certainly do give credence to them. Also, to the anti-gun crowd I am certiainly not comparing you to racisists. I am only comparin the train of thought. There hasn't been a single person in this thread that has expressed such views. I only bring it into the picture becaus I have heard it before (from pro-gun people) and disagree with it in the same manner that I disagree with anti-gun arugments.

Space Cowboys?

A quick google search gives me this: click here A little more digging gives this; straight from the Australian government: click here A quick quote from there: "The assault victimisation rate increased by 44% from 563 to 810 per 100,000 population between 1995 and 2002. Assault was the only offence category to show a consistently increasing trend in the rate of victimisation over this period. The sexual assault victimisation rate increased from 69 to 91 per 100,000 population between 1993 and 2002 and was at its highest level since the commencement of the collection in 1993. In contrast, murder, attempted murder and manslaughter victimisation rates remained fairly stable over this period and were 2 per 100,000 population, 2 per 100,000 population and less than 1 per 100,000 population respectively in 2002. " The number of victims appears to be rising down there. It's very easy to find stats that show Australia isn't any better off than it was before, and easy to find stats thta show it's worse off. Finding something that shows Australia to be the pinnicale of society with no violent crime is probably going to be quite hard. Like I said before in reference to the Swiss -- it's not the guns that are the problem, it's the crime.

Revenge of the Nerds.

Your adrenal glands sit on top of your kidneys. When they start kicking in in anticipation you tend to feel as though you need to urinate. It happens to me in all manners of sporting events. Even after hundreds of wrestling matches I still get that feeling every single time.

I agree whole heartedly here. The Swiss are an excellent example of a heavily armed society that doesn't have the homicide problems that the USA has. The difference is entirely cultural and not a matter of how many guns are actually owned by citizens. Again, I agree entirely. Something has to be done about this problem. I'm not sure what exactly however. It's a social problem and I have no understanding or desire to delve into the psychology of a nation. I'd be happy to help out though if I can. Well, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 22,000 firearms laws across this country. That doesn't really seem to be helping. Besides, I thought you stated earlier that this is a cultural problem? Decreasing firearm ownership is unlikely to reduce crime. See Britian and Australia for examples. I will admit that it may reduce the number of homicides by gun. Scratch that, I'll admit that it may reduce the number of people commiting homicide by gun. The best way to reduce homicides is: to reduce homicides. How we do that exactly? I don't know, but it probably has something to do with a cultural shift that removes people's desire to ever commit such a crime. Why do people feel that they -need- to kill another person? Solve that problem and we'll be as peacful as the Swiss. Something's horribly awry with our culture, but me having a rifle in my home isn't the root cause of the problem. If it was the countries like Switzerland and the rural area I grew up in (which was teeming with firearms) would be high crime areas. Firearms do not create crime. Firearms are meant to kill but they are not soley devoted to crime. Something else is creating our crime problem and the number of illegal firearms in this country (either purchased illgally or stolen) provides a horribly ugly end result. I'd rather not, but I'll use some stereotypes here. Take your average crack head with criminal tendencies with a gun. This is a problem. Now, lets look at somebody responsible, like AggieDave or myself, and we have a gun. The criminal should not have the gun. We should take that away from him. We keep on trying to do this but it just doesn't work. There's too many guns out there for him to steal, perhaps from an AggieDave or myself. The anti-gun crowd comes across, to me, in this situation and says "get rid of the guns! Do that and there will be less of a problem." The real answer is to get rid of the crack head criminal. A town full of AggieDave's armed to the teeth isn't a problem. A town full of criminals armed to the teeth is. Our nation is like a naked man running through a field of barbed wire. Once across the field some call for better bandages and less sharp barbed wire. I say we tell the fool to stop running through the field of barbed wire. It doesn't matter how much protection you shroud the nation with, eventually something is going to rip through and the bleeding will start. Guns do not create violent crime. Crime creates violent crime. That is the root cause of our troubles. Our nation was fine with gun ownership when it was founded. Something has changed, and blaming gun ownership on it is only a stop-gag measure. If we return our nation to a body of peacable citizens the whole problem magically goes away. The right to bear arms is not outdated and it never will be; our nation's moral fibre has changed since the revolution though and that needs to be adressed. I see this in my own family. I own guns, I have a cousin that owns guns. The difference is that I'm a reasonable person willing to work for my living. He's a drug dealing degenerate that thinks little of shooting at another person over a sour drug deal. If you remove the firearms you still have one crack piping degenerate running around. I don't care if he's armed or not, a bane on society is a bane on society regardless of how well he is armed. I assure you that if you removed his firearms, hands, and feet, this steaming pile of shit would still find a way to harm another human being. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there just like him too. I would hope that the pro-gun and anti-gun crowds here could at least agree on these ideas. While some may think that removing arms is a good idea, and some are dead set against it can't both sides agree that the real solution is to stop the crime rather than remove the "tools of trade"?

Strange Brew.

Rhino, this is why there was a bit of contention over the definition of "assault rifle". To me it's any small calibre rifle that has the ability to fire in burst or full auto mode. Apparently the US government and it's citizens don't agree with me. That's why the rules Luv2Fall wrote about are above. Apparently that AK-47 sitting next to me is a sporting rifle right now. If I put a folding stock on it though -- watch out! It's now become a weapon too powerful for the American citizen to own. I can buy a folding stock for it... I can buy a tap and die set, I can buy a grenade launcher, etc... but I can't put them on the gun! It's a bit silly. It's not like we really "need" them. I'll admit that although I'm sure as heck not going to ever get rid of them. What scares me, and probably plenty of ther DZ.com people, is an elected official that doesn't trust me enough to have them. Why should it matter to them? I'm not a violent criminal. What's so scarey about peaceful citizens owning firearms? The idea of a president (or congress or senate) saying to the general population, "Ok, we control your lives now. Could you give us your guns now? You're not safe enough to handle them." is a bit well, odd, if you ask me. I was intelligent and responsible enough for this person to let me vote, but I can't have my guns? That's why I won't vote for somebody who holds such views. If they don't trust me why should I trust them?

My brother stuck a bug-zapper INSIDE his trailer for entertainment once. Apparently they make special indoor-friendly ones.

Don't sweat the small things -- pet the sweaty things. Shit happens. Keep moving. I'd rather be remembered as an idiot than an asshole. The good Lord keeps the animals and plants of the world alive; he'll do the same for me. Life's too short for cheap beer.... unless you've already got 10 good ones in you. No matter what you always have a choice. You just might not like all the options. The Lord won't give you anything you can't handle. Sometimes I wish he didn't trust me so much though. (I think that's a Mother Theresa quote -- paraphrsed). Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing. Always ask yourself, "What will I regret more in 30 years? Doing this or not doing this?"

Nobody else mentioned this, but here's the slightly techy details of how it works. 1) get domian name. Network solutions, Go daddy, register.com, etc, they all work. I like register.com (even if it's not the chepeast)... their website is usually easier to navigate than Network Solution. 2) Find hosting provider... you'll need DNS an web for this. You'd be best off keeping the domain name -yours- and not registered by a 3rd party if you ask me. It's more hassle, but you can move stuff around more freely. Get a web hosting provider, setup your site there and then use your website (network solutions, go daddy, whatever) to point your primary and secondary DNS entries to whatever they tell you to. 3) Build webpage, upload to their site. That's about it for a website really. I'm a little lucky here since I've got a contract gig with a guy I went to high school with that runs his own ISP so I dump DNS onto his machines and point my website/mail back to a machine in my apartment at the end of a DSL line w/ static IP. I love it. I've seen a server get slashdotted with my own eyes even. That's fun... if you're a nerd. Like me.

I'm a Mozilla bigot I suppose; I stuck with NS4.x way too long and when Mozilla became usable I was all over it, somewhere around M18 if memory serves. I pretty much had to use Mozilla/Netscape though because my home desktops have been Linux since 1998 which is around the time I started doing web development and actually getting paid for it. Now, back in 1998 development sucked. There were no good standards really do to the things people wanted to do then so you ended up with a very hacky looking HTML to get IE4.0 and NS4.x to do the same things. Thankfully that's not the case anymore -- it's fairly easy to use the same code and same logic in any decent recent browser. Bugs exist in all of them so you should work around them only when needed. When I did web development the thought of people making an "IE only" project out of something that didn't need to be was absurd. It still is absurd and here's why: How in the world do you know what IE 7 will work like? If you're just fumbling around in the dark how do you know if your JavaScript's manipulation of the DOM is even reasonable? If you code to documented and ratified standards you have a pretty good idea that they will be around in the next version. Using two or three seperate browsers helps to ensure that people agree with how you interpreted the specs and validators will reinforce that. If you code an "IE only" site you've really coded for what you can test with and that's it. You don't really have a clue if sp2 for IE6 will break things.... and you probably coded to IE on Windows only -- the Mac version is an entirely different beast. They share the name Internet Explorer and that is it. On a corporate desktop though you'll almost certainly need IE. I've seen plenty of in-house apps that are buggy as shit and only work with IE version X patchlevel Y. Lets say your app works when it's done on current IE and the then released Mozilla. Maybe 3 years down the road IE8 will be entirely unusable with your project -- at least you still have Mozilla! You can't keep more than one copy of IE on a Windows box because of the brain damaged design that made it part of the OS. You can keep multiple copies of Mozilla running on your machine though. This scenario only holds up in the event that today's standards are tossed by the side and future versions stop supporting them. It's not likely, but it could happen. If sites are coded to standards it's a reasonable assumption that anybody on any platform at any given date in the future will be able to pull up software that can use it. When you tie your development/testing/release cycle to a single product without regards to the standards set forth by the community the W3C you're really just shooting yourself in the foot. Would you throw the STL away when doing C++ work for some custom flavor-of-the-day replacement? I hope not -- unless you had a really good reason and you knew that library would be around for some time. Would you assume in your C project that 'int' will always be a 32 bit integer? Scratch that ... most people are dumb enough to do that. You shouldn't though. Actually most people would be dumb enough to write C++ with alll disregard for portability in the future ... and we all know that way too many "developers" think that IE is the One True Browser out there. I once worked at a web development shop (2002-2003) where I was the only one out of 12 techs that had a Mozilla or Netscape install on their machines. Hell I had a WebTV emulator just to see if things would work on that platform. "But... it works with the IE install on my box!" just doesn't cut it with clients that are out there. Throw IE in the trash and never ever use it (if you're a developer) unless you need to test your own work or need it for your daily work. Turn it into your 2nd class browser. You'll save yourself time in the long run. Turn your thinking the other way around and you'll stop seeing problems as Mozilla problems but IE problems. Here's one for you developers out there. I'll attach an HTML file for you to save. Evaluate what it should do -- it's really simple. When you click the button it should show you what 2+2 is, right? Right? It will -- if you're browser isn't a braindead pile of dung. IE gets it wrong -- dead plain wrong. Why? Because the W3C standards for DOM (I forget which level) specifiy a recalc() method off the document object! And, IE being the good little fellow that it is, assumes that you want to naturally call stuff hanging off document... so it calls document.recalc() to rebuild your in-memory DOM tree. That's just horse shit. Does Mozilla do stuff wrong? Yes. Does IE? Yes. Code to standards and backpedal from there. Test with multiple code streams (time permits this. Stop bitching -- you WILL save time in the long run and you'll learn what NOT to do). I'm going to blow a gasket the next time some web monkey says, "But, coding for Mozilla is haaaaaard!". I call bullshit... coding for IE is hard too when you assume your browser will do something logical 100% of the time. At least when there's a Mozilla bug -- you can look it up and SEE what it is, what it affects, who's working on it, when it's slated to be fixed, etc. You can'd do that with IE.... you just take a crapshot in the dark with regards to whether or not you've found a bug that will be fixed or if it really is a bug. Developers that pull stupid IE-only tricks are just hurting themselves. Your code is no easier than standards compliant code and it's usually a heck of a lot harder to follow. No, you cannot embed stuff between and Stop doing that.... no you cannot just interject a tag into the middle of a freacking . Stop that... it's stupid to begin with and can only be a child of or . Lay things out logically. The standards writers didn't do this stuff to stroke their own ego. They wrote it that way for a reason -- consistency... and there is no reason you need to pull half the stupid thing that are neccessary. Web developers here are (or already have) taken what coudl be a respectful job title (as in specializing in platform agnostic thin client applications delivered over a WAN) and turned it into something looked down on (as in I'm too stupid to write any real application so i just code in HTML). They're taking what could be a valid profession and making it look like any schmuck can do it right -- sorta like off-shore (ie: India) shipping of other development. Nothing againist Indians, worked with plenty, but I see a lot of slop coming out of there. I don't blame the people, I blame the do-it-cheap and do-it-fast mantra. Young web developers tend to get sucked into this too. Wow, that was a hell of a rant. But yeah, never take IE off the desktop on a Windows box. Give 'em Mozilla/Firebird if you want but it'll probably a useless addon.

Instead of ls try "ls -a" .. there might be a "dotfile" in there that is considered hidden by a Unix platform. Might be an .htaccess file or something.

OK -- this falls under the "just plain weird" category but I'll try and explain it; or at least make take on it. No. Absolutely not possible. Bohle's law (did I spell that right)... pressure and volume vary inversely with each other. If I have a ball of gas that's at 2atm (atmospheric pressure units) and sits in a 10cm cubed sphere ... but I "dump" it into something that's larger the pressure goes down. I think it varies in a logrithmic fashion but I'm not too keen on my physics formulas these days. Now, it looks to me like my toilet lid is around 1.5 square feet in surface area that touches my bum. We'll say 2 square feet to keep things nice and even. My body weighs 140lbs, maybe 150 if I just ate and I'm fully clothed. We'll go with 150. That's 150lbs over 288 inches. the pressure to equalize this would be: .5psi above ATM -- that would keep me "floating" To accelerate (and lift) you need more of this -- and that one definately grows exponentially. To launch a 10lb object 2 feet in the air takes more than 2x the energey to launch it 1 foot in the air. I really wish I studied Newtonian physics right now and stopped piddling around with Quantum stuff "for fun" :)... The amount of gas you'd have to place in that bowl to lift you wold be far too much for your body to contain. Take the above general numbers and run with them and you'd probably find you'd need to basically put as much air in your ass as a car tire to even gain a small amount of lift. I don't know about you but if I stuck in air compressor hose in my behind for 3 minutes there's no way my body could contain that gas. The muscles there just aren't rated for 45psi... assuming I have enough room in my guts to contain the same square area as a tire. I don't think I can ram a tire in my behind and into my guts so I'd wager I'd need 4x that pressure ratio -- and 120 pounds/inch is a bit unbearable for my spincter. One of the fun parts about thinking about such problems is that you need to take them to extremes to illustrate the point. Well, you don't need to but it often brings you to a conclusion much easier. Assume a gigantic toilet bowl -- the pressure in the bowl would need to be the same as the little bowl to blow you off it. The same holes true for an infinately small bowl too -- it's just a pressure diffential that would blow you off it. the PSI againt your ass checks will blow you across the room just the same regardless of the mass behind it. So, to take it to the small extreme lets assume you had a perfectly fitting ass cover that was securely anchored to the earth. Hook an air compressor to the docile end of this cover and try and keep yourself anchored to it. Unless you an place 1000lbs of weight on your arsehole you're going to start taking on air before you have enough pressure to actually "hop" off the thing... let alone gain any real altitude. This reminds me way too much of my discussion with a skydiver (before I tried the stuff) about the terminal velocity of a horse... time to go :)

Reminds me of soemthing I heard called the Swedish cold remedy. Take a big red stocking cap and put it at the foot of your bed on a post. Curl up into bed all nice and warm with a big bottle of schnaps. Drink the schnaps until you can't see the red cap anymore. By the time you wake up and recover from your hangover you'll be feeling fine. Not a good idea if you're planning on jumping of course... especially if you're doing tandems. Thera-Flu is pretty good... though tea and ancetometophin (Tylenol) pretty much does the same thing if you pop some decongestants along with it. Teas taste better too IMHO.

Let us not forget "She's Fat, I'm Drunk, It's on!" and "I Made Linda Lovelace Gag".

This is a very weird issue. You see, in 1994 Clinton got a ban on 'assault' weapons passed through the legislature that banned military-looking weapons. The key word here is "looking". A weapon that was assembled, or collected, in the pre-ban area doesn't fall under the same set of restrictions as a post-ban weapon. A common pre-ban vs. post-ban weapon is the AR-15 which is the base model for the M-16. A post-ban model may only have two of the following: Pistol Grip Detachacble magazine Bayonette lug (for attaching a bayonette) Grenade launcher Folding stock (to make it easier to conceal) Flash supressor or a threaded barrel that would allow a flash supressor to be attached. Any "assault" rifle that's post ban contains a pistol grip and a detachable magazine. You can get around this a little bit by removing the pistol grip for a "thumbhole" grip that acts just like a pistol grip but looks akward and a little less scarey though. That'll let you toss a grenade launcher or a bayonette onto it if you wish. We all know how many drive-by bayonetings we've had so thank God that they stopped that from appearing on civilian arms. If we had the ability to put a grenade launcher on our guns to launch... well.. shit we can't buy... all hell would break loose. it's basically a farce, the whole pre-ban vs. post-ban thing. I own a post-ban AR-15. There are zero restrictions on me purchasing an "upper" for this though that contain all of the bad thing above. I just can't put the two together. I cah have both of them in my home, I can have them 2 inches from eachother, but once I put them together I'm in violation of the law. So, I can buy all of the "evil" parts but I can't put them together. I'm sure this has done a whole lot to keep criminals from doing it. All it really does it keep law abiding citizens on their toes and inspecting everything they buy to try and keep themselves within the law. The weapons in question are not used for crime. Something like 1% of all crimes were commited with guns that are considered "pre ban" weapons. A gang-banger does not go out and spend $1500 on a decked out AR-15 with all the nuts and bolts to do a drive buy. They just don't. People that want to defend their homes, or to have something fun to shoot on the weekend do however. I could take my AR-15 upper to somebody with a good grinder, half a brain, and a die set and get that barrel threaded to allow me to attach a muzzle break. Muzzle breaks's are legal too -- but because I threaded it I -could- attach a flash supressor so now it's illegal. I don't do it because I'm not a criminal. When the 1994 ban sunsets though (and I really hope it does) my ass it out the door buying a new upper for this thing with all the nuts and bolts I want on it pronto. That ban did nothing to stop crime. You'll see it again and again in the news now that it's up for renew but I assure you it did nothing good and only made people like me have to tiptoe around the law to do things we should have never ever have thought twice about doing. I want to own a gun, a good gun, with all the trimmings. I'm not a criminal, I'm not a violent man, and am the -last- person you'll see use a firearm without due cause but I still have to abide by rules that no criminal would ever abide by. It's insane. Purely insane. A post-ban is no less deadly than a pre-ban gun. Apparently the ability to attach a 6" knife to the end of my gun makes it insanely more deadly. Both spit out .223 calibre rounds at the same rate... but watch out for that little knife! It's just plain nuts. I could go on for hours if I wanted to in person about the whole matter. None of it makes sense and I'm really pushing for the 1994 ban to sunset. it should; it did no good at all. All it did is turn perfectly normal people into criminals for wanting to own something they have the consittutional right to own. .. the rest of the post is meant to be funny ... Once I've got my "A" and I'm at boogies I'll be happy to debate the issue in person. I look either like the Notre Dame mascot, Abe Lincoln, or an Amish guy. I'm typically wearing an NRA hat too. I'm easy to spot and my avatar doesn't look that much unlike me. If you think it's me just yell something like "Hey, Jebidiah!". I'll know who you're looking for. The real funny part is it could take me a -real- long time to get that 'A' considering my recent student performances

OK... so I don't stack up to many posters in this thread but I'm only 23; I've got time to build my own arsenal. In the order I purchased them: CZ-75B, 9mm semi-auto pistol. 3 15rnd mags 1 20rnd. Glock 21, 45 ACP semi-auto postil. 2 13rnd mags, 2 10rnd. Remington 870 Synthetic Express 12 ga shotgun. Post-ban AR-15 (Bushmaster, 16" barrel). 2 40rnd, 5 30rnd, 1 10rnd mag. Unfortunately most of the mags don't work for crap because of bad springs. I probably have 3 good 30rnd mags. Egyptian AK-47 (post ban but still has a pistol grip). 2 30rnd mags. Soviet m44. This one's neat. Made in 1946, locked away in a crate for years and I 'm the first person to shoot it. 7.62x54mm rounds. I paid a bit much for it (USD 130) but it's still a bargain. Load of fun and has a bayonette. It's time to get another one (been about 6 months)... just don't know what to get next. Me thinks a Glock 26.

I'll bite. I'll keep it short and simple too. What you probably heard is from a study which stated that people that have guns in their home are more likely to die from a firearm than those that don't. This is true. Very very very true. However the studies are skewed. They do not take into account the background of the individual owning the firearm. Basically they never took into consideration whether or not the person had a criminal background. Drug dealers, members of the mob, etc. have guns in their houses. They are likely to be killed by firearms too. They do dangerous things and are outside the law. The studies do not seperate these people from peacable citizens who own firearms for pleasure or protection. I know plenty of firearm owners living in my area. I only know one that had a gun pulled on them in their own house. That would be my drug dealing cousin whom I don't associate with. He shot them before they got him (everybody lived)... but this is a guy who keeps a gun by his couch not because he's worried that somebody will show up with a gun but because he knows somebody will show up with a gun. Food for thought.

I'm a pretty small guy, my hand's aren't usually that much bigger than a woman's, so I can relate. I've got one more year until I qualify for CCW (got a little misdemeanor) but my sights, no pun intended, are set on a Glock 26. It's a sub-compact 9mm. The Glock 27 is a possibility but I'd like to try one out to see if I can double-tap something comfortably with it. I've never found a revolver that set well in my hands, probably because I'm so used to semi's. Though, all I've ever touched there are .357 magnums, .44's and .454's. A snub-nosed .357 might be a bit more comfortable though. I know Smith and Wesson make a "Lady Smith" that's marketed toward women. I've met some serious shooters that got one of their wife. The real trick, I think, for small people that want to carry is finding a place to hide the darned thing. Sure, if I'm wearing a sweatshirt of a sweater I can stick a full sized semi in the front of my pants but that's only going to work about 6 months of the year where I live. Just make sure you can find something that meets the following criteria in order: Reliable You can shoot well You can conceal well No rough edges to snag on clothes Has adequate stopping power. I wouldn't go any lower than 9mm here. The 'rough edges' thing isn't something I've seen anybody here but me mention thus far but it's certainly something to think about. You don't want to delay your draw because your pistol is stuck in your shirt or something. It's somethinig that can be worked on post-production too and will probably need to be unless you got something specifically built for concealed carry. Kahr arms makes a number of polymer frame sub-compacts too but I don't see too many around here so I haven't gotten a chance to try one out first hand. If you can get in touch with an NRA instructor for your CCW course they could probably set you up with a local womens' only shooting organization -- they've probably got some pretty good opinions on the matter.

This month's issue of "America's 1st Freedom", an NRA publication, brought to light a town in Georgia that's had it's crime rate drop by 89% in the past 21 years. It's accredited to a local ordinance passed in 1982 that required the head of every household to maintain a firearm and ammunition in the home. Sure makes for some interesting thinking.