Ulric

I found a new paperweight for my desk. This will considerably augment the document anchoring capacity of my 37mm M59 projectile.
 

I'll give you the summary, and it will shock no one: Lobbyists and special interest groups have a greater effect on the legislative process than the general population, and have for a long time. In other news, a thug was shot in Chicago today.
 
 

When students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas return to class after spring break next week, they'll be required to carry clear backpacks.
The move is meant to ramp up security measures after last month's deadly shooting in Parkland, Florida, and a series of breaches since.
"Clear backpacks are the only backpacks that will be permitted on campus," said Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie said in a letter sent to parents.
The district will provide the bags for free, he said.  In addition to the new backpack policy, students and school staff will be required to wear IDs at all times while on campus.
 
 
The irony is deafening.

Tactical vote prevention 
 

Russia HACKED Japan weather 

First they came for the dank memers, and I did not speak out for I was not a dank memer

I found a Magach 3 in my garage, so I had to decorate it.
 

I found a Magach 3 in my garage, so I had to decorate it.
 

@Waffentrager
 
Another thing to understand is that typical civilian "training" (i use that word loosely, as there is no codified, official training for this, but it is more of a conclusion that is broadly arrived at through critical thinking) is that in an active shooter situation, most concealed carry holders will not try to "hunt down" the shooter for a great number of reasons. Instead, the correct thing to do is to secure yourself and those in your immediate surroundings, and shelter in place until the police arrive. This allows you to have a good understanding of what direction the threat might come from, and if you have a good spot, it will allow you to spot and identify the threat before they are even aware of your presence. The long and short of it is that you secure yourself and set up an ambush in case the perpetrator finds you. There are stories from any number of these incidents where teachers (or on colleges, students) attempt to secure a room by blocking the door with their body, only to receive several bullets for their heroic effort. Allowing teachers to carry would mean that they might be able to defend their class with more than just their body should the shooter come to their room, and potentially end the incident right there.

As always, the first thing to understand with President Trump is that these are negotiations. He's a negotiator. And I read these tariffs as an opening salvo to get politicians from these various countries to the negotiating table, preferably separately where we as the US have the advantage and not as a trade bloc. There are different strategies to open negotiations, and this is the classic ask twice as much as you want opening gambit.
 
Tariffs helped build American industry, starting from America's founding through the 19th Century Industrial Revolution and into the 20th Century, the "American Century". If we didn't have tariffs, we'd still be exporting cotton and raw materials to Liverpool in return for finished goods. As it is, thanks to the bean-counters and the politicians whom they've bought off since the 1990s, America has been reduced to exporting raw materials to China in return for finished goods. History has not been kind to countries in that predicament.
 
Of course the economists and bean-counters who are outsourcing jobs and factories overseas think they're immune to the lessons of history.
 
Back on subject, another advantage to domestic steel and aluminum production is an environmental one. American factories and foundries are by orders of magnitude cleaner than their Chinese and Indian counterparts. Environmentalists like to talk a big game about saving the planet by shutting down steel plants in Pittsburg and coal mines in West Virginia but all they've done is just out-sourced pollution to China (and India) who give zero fucks about poisoning their rivers and air. In countries with 1.5 billion people apiece, life is cheap.
 
When you think about it, it makes absolutely zero sense from an environmental standpoint to transport scrap metal and coal across the country - past shuttered factories and steel plants - to Seattle and other West Coast ports in order to load them onto cargo ships in order to ship it across the Pacific to China where it has to be offloaded, shipped to foundries and factories, repackaged as finished goods, reloaded into shipping containers, sent back across the Pacific to Seattle and other West Coast ports in order to then ship the goods back across the United States.
 
Another factor is quality of the product. Chinese steel is absolute garbage, as are the mechanical parts and tools made from it. Anyone who has had any experience with construction or mechanical parts made from Chinese steel knows this. Which is why it is zero surprise that the guy sitting in the Oval Office who made his fortune building skyscrapers, hotels, resorts, and casinos using steel doesn't want the country solely dependent on Chinese steel and aluminum imports. Donald Trump's schtick as an eccentric billionaire is that he hob-nobs with his construction workers, hard-hatted guys named Eddie and Vinny and Tony who work with their hands and who aren't afraid to tell their boss "Hey, Donald, dis steel we're getting ain't no gud". 
 
It's the difference of buying something "cheap" at Walmart, knowing you'll have to throw it away after a couple months versus dropping a little bit extra on a quality item that can last years (or a lifetime). Take the Craftsman tool line for instance. Craftsman used to put out a good made in USA product that was affordable and which would theoretically last a lifetime. And if it didn't, you returned the tool for a new one, no questions asked. Well, just like everything, the Craftsman line got sold off piecemeal by Sears in a blatant profit grab by its corporate board, the tools are now made in China, with a joke of a warranty, and the things fall apart after one or two uses. I had to buy a ratchet set once upon a time after this happened and the thing fell apart in my hands while I was working on my 'Stang.
 
Of course economists, bean-counters, and politicians who have never gotten their hands dirty in their life and who don't know how to even change their oil, let alone an alternator, or a battery, or a fuel pump don't understand or care. And the crazy thing is, these "cheap" Chinese parts which are supposed to be so much affordable than American aren't even cheap. Look up the price of a Chinese made car battery. It's ridiculous. 
 
Finally, in my TLDR post, there is the trickle-down effect of protecting American manufacturing jobs. It is written in stone as part of the Republican Ten Commandments that tax cuts are GOOD, and trickle-down economics works, so if you give a tax break to the rich (and middle class) this will help the economy since folks will spend money and yada yada. 
 
So it is always confusing that the biggest proponents of trickle-down economics, the sort of guys who jerk off each evening to a picture of milton Friedman, HATE tariffs. They're the sort who'd sell out their country and fellow citizens in order to save twenty bucks on a flat screen TV. 
 
What is ignored, is the societal costs of not having a thriving industrial base. Particularly in a continental power of 310 million people. We're not Norway or Portugal or Austria who can get by on a one-trick economic pony, relying on oil profits, or wine, or exporting Austrian economic theories to gullible Libertarians. The US economy has to be multi-faceted because of the diaspora of our population across multiple climatic and economic zones. 
 
If I have to spend $10 extra dollars on an American made washing machine so my fellow American in Scranton can have a good job, that means I'm not sending $20 dollars to the state and federal government to pay for that man's food stamps and welfare checks. If that man has a good job, it means his son and daughter are all the more likely to get a good upbringing and good education. If that man doesn't have a job it means he's more likely to divorce his wife. it means his son is more likely to engage in a life of crime. That son will rob from me. I have to pay for a police officer to arrest him,  two lawyers to defend and prosecute him, and money to jail him.  It means his daughter will be all that more likely to have kids out of wedlock herself. Or get an abortion.
 
And what slays me is that many of the same people who oppose protecting American industry, great "thinkers" like William Kristol, or the brainiacs at National Review, or Ben Shapiro who's never worked a real job in his life, all profess to be good, godly Christians (or Orthodox Jews) who are so holy and saintly. And yet when it comes to American manufacturing jobs, these guys are like the shitters in an online video game telling their team to "Git gud". As if everyone wants to spend six figures on a college education so they can sit in a cubicle typing code the rest of their lives.
 
Of course the real reason the aforementioned intellectuals who are so much smarter than everyone else hate blue collar manufacturing jobs is because those people voted for Donald Trump.
 
(Gotta go IRL) Finally, there is the very real "multiplier effect" of manufacturing jobs. The sort of men (and women) who work at a factory tend to have a more positive effect on the economy.  Even the raving liberals at HuffPo seem to feel that way.
 
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-jasinowski/jobs-multiplier_b_4002113.html

Kristian Saucier, the former U.S. Navy sailor who served a year behind bars for taking photos of classified areas in a nuclear submarine, has been pardoned, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday.

http://www.wtsp.com/article/news/atf-investigating-after-congressional-candidate-cut-apart-ar-15/291-526898428
 
Looks like that video finally got the attention of the ATF.
 
VIRGINIA-BEACH
  ATF investigating after congressional candidate cut apart AR-15
Karen Mallard of Virginia Beach posted a video on social media that shows her sawing an AR-15 rifle into pieces.   Author: Staff Published: 6:21 PM EST March 8, 2018 Updated: 6:21 PM EST March 8, 2018 VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WVEC) -- The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is investigating congressional candidate Karen Mallard after she posted a video on Facebook that shows her cutting apart an AR-15 rifle.
The school teacher and Democrat is running for Virginia's 2nd Congressional District, hoping to oust Republican Congressman Scott Taylor.
  In the video, as Mallard introduces herself, she says, "I grew up in Wise County, surrounded by guns. Our family had guns my whole life. We use them for hunting, for protection, and recreation."
She goes on to explain that she wasn't happy when her husband bought the AR-15 "a while back." Mallard adds that after the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida on February 14, and the renewed outcries for stricter gun control that followed, she and her husband agreed they didn't want the AR-15 in their home.
The couple later decided they didn't want it it anyone else's house, either.
"So, today, we're going to destroy it," states Mallard before taking a handheld power saw to it.

In a matter of hours, the video drew hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of comments.
Many of those comments were negative. Some people accused Mallard of political grandstanding.
Several others said Mallard broke federal law by taking a legal firearm and altering it, making it into an illegal one. Many of them referred to details contained within the Sawed-Off Shotgun and Sawed-Off Rifle Act which, in part, prohibits people (except for those permitted by the act) from having a rifle that has been "modified to an overall length of less than 26 inches."
Virginia Firearms Statutes and Codes by 13News Now on Scribd
Mallard said she followed legal procedure, writing in her Facebook post:
And yes for all the NRA trolls out there, I finished the job according to regulation and turned it over to the police. Why are you more outraged about me taking a gun out of circulation than about our children being murdered in our schools?
  Master Police Officer Tonya Pierce, spokeswoman for the Virginia Beach Police Department, confirmed that the rifle was in the department's possession. Pierce told 13News Now the ATF was looking into the situation.
Mallard concludes her video with the promise she will fight for comprehensive gun control and states:
And to those students in Florida and across our country, keep standing up and speaking truth to power. These gun owners heard you, and we're gonna stand by you.

So, [gun owners] basically have had two options: slowly and incrementally give up our rights over the course of several decades, or give them all up at once. According to this fruit loop, we blew our chance at the first one, because we weren't willing to "compromise" (surrender) on "reasonable" (by the metrics of the zealots proposing them) gun "reforms" (registration, limitations, and ultimately confiscations). So now we have to capitulate to their ultimate goal, or else what?
 

back to back salt in War Thunder this morning, a good start to a good day.
 
Both from wehraboos, too.
 

You mix them up because you have no spatial reasoning or world knowledge, which probably means that you shouldn't be allowed to drive or vote.

Sadly, what I wrote in all chat doesn't show up the replays. Like a British gentleman, you must use a corny, but polite one liner after making a shot like that.
 
In true Bond fashion, I said "Charmed, I'm sure." It would have been more fitting if I was driving a Chally 1, but that's not in the game yet....

I know, if we stop arresting people, then we won't have any more criminals! Why didn't we think of this before!
 
So, these kids are going to have a serious problem. They grow up without experiencing any consequences for their actions, and this don't learn how to function in society. Then they get to society and learn the hard way that large portions of our culture doesn't tolerate that kind of shit, especially coming from snot-nosed entitled little brats. Sadly, there are people in our society who keep pushing for less and less punishment for criminal behavior. We see the effects of this already, and the worst part is that those people want to protect the criminals at all costs, it works seem. This stems from the thought as multiculturalism; that there is no right or wrong behavior, better or worse behavior, just different, and anyone who judges that is a closed minded racist bigot doo doo head.

Ok, raising the age, whatever. It's stupid, about as stupid as 18 year olds are, but it's not a ban. Mostly I hate the idea of giving up anything to anti gun crowd. Bump stocks are idiotic, but let's at least get the registry reopened if we are going to give something up.

I know, if we stop arresting people, then we won't have any more criminals! Why didn't we think of this before!
 
So, these kids are going to have a serious problem. They grow up without experiencing any consequences for their actions, and this don't learn how to function in society. Then they get to society and learn the hard way that large portions of our culture doesn't tolerate that kind of shit, especially coming from snot-nosed entitled little brats. Sadly, there are people in our society who keep pushing for less and less punishment for criminal behavior. We see the effects of this already, and the worst part is that those people want to protect the criminals at all costs, it works seem. This stems from the thought as multiculturalism; that there is no right or wrong behavior, better or worse behavior, just different, and anyone who judges that is a closed minded racist bigot doo doo head.

FIFY

It's been said before, but the ideal compromise is to make bump stocks, cranks, binary triggers, etc machineguns, but reopen the registry so you aren't forcing people to sell/turn in/destroy them.

The wording in this memo is crafted to sound like he is wanting to have bump stocks reviewed as to whether or not they are machine guns, but if you read it with a legal mindset, the two are never connected. He wants to review how the ATF regulates bump stocks. Easy peasy, that is just taking a look again at their process for defining them. This is the ATF, though, so they do change their minds 20 times a day, but they should arrive at the same conclusion. Then he says that they need to issue a notice that basically enforces the law as it already is. Devices that turn legal weapons into machineguns are already classified as machineguns in and of themselves by law. At no point are bump stocks and machineguns conflated.

I put the 1:35 scale MiG-21 on the back burner in favor of my new 1:1 scale RPK kit.
 

@RobotMinisterofTrueKorea
 
Prepare thine body.
 
https://warthunder.com/en/news/5323/current/