Alzoc

Well I understand the reasoning: -It makes you feel safer -The state cannot always be there to protect you in an instant and that's true, no matter where you are in the world. But, as for France I think that people would actually feel less safe knowing that anyone around them in the street could be carrying a lethal tool on them, and for all we know completely lacking the required qualifications to be entrusted with such a heavy responsibility. Of course one can get attacked when nobody is around to help, but in the overwhelming majority of case at the very worst you'll be menaced with a knife robbed declare the theft to the police and be done with it, you'll be unharmed. The guy will be arrested afterwards since the police will generally do it's utmost to catch him since he became a violent criminal. It is our belief that bringing a weapon to that kind of situation will only raise the level of violence and increase the (human) damage. Yeah there might be more material damage, but in the end it's only objects you'll replace them. Also yes sometimes criminals do manage to get their hands on prohibited guns, but once again in the overwhelming majority of cases they'll use them on other criminals. In general the root principle for us is that the State has the monopoly on violence, used by anybody else it's illegitimate unless it was in legitimate defense and you only used it proportionably to the threat (and that's to justice to decide if it was). And if the representative (a policeman for example) of the state abuse their power an investigation will be conducted by justice and the IGPN (internal affairs) and both the State and the incriminated agent will be punished if found guilty. We entrust violence to the state because we feel that's it better to entrust it to trained people who will be capable to keep a cool head and avoid escalating the violence to an unnecessary high level. Also we are fine relinquishing violence to State because we have faith in our justice and that if the State or it's representatives abuse their privileges they will be brought to justice in the end. In general there isn't as much checks and balance actually written into the constitution compared to the US. Most of our trust rest on the fact that so far our officials, judges, policeman and politician have respected and hopefully will respect our republican principles. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity Too add a bit of lyrical touch in the end^^

In France it's mostly viewed as a cultural thing. It's part of the history of the country that still have a king, just the same way that we got rid of our, and that's about it. Do whatever you want as long as it's democratic. We still do have royalist party (mostly right to far right wing) but they are too busy fighting between each other to do something significant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orléanist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimists Other than that the vast majority of the population is attached to the Republic. Fun fact, our executive have a huge power (compared to the Legislative and Judiciary power) to the point that our government is often described as a "republican monarchy" in France. And you can also see that in the fact that the president lives in l'Elysée which is a royal palace and that a lot of place of powers are strongly linked to the past monarchy. We still cling a lot to the concept of the "providential man" and thus constitution of the Vth Republic give the president a huge power compared to other democracy, and we are attached to it (although there is a significant will from the far left to go toward a more parliamentary system) Since we had bad experiences with the 3rd and 4th republic, that through the inherent instability of parliamentary system coupled with petty alliances between numerous party led to passivity during both WWII and the Algeria war, we (generally) have a profound distrust for parliamentary system. The good points of the current system is that it keeps the extremes (both far left and far right) away from power and allow the ruling party to implement it's policy without too much interference. The major drawback being that if one extreme party ever win both the presidential and the legislative election (the later generally giving a large majority to the party of the president) it will be very hard to completely stop them within the rules of the constitution. But we still have ways to slow them down, as the parliament can destitute the government (not the president though) but the president can dissolve the parliament in retaliation provoking anticipated elections. Every president that tried to do so that ended up losing his bet as the opposition won the election forcing him to take a prime minister from the opposition. From that point the president cannot do much in terms of proposing laws but can merely delay the application of the laws made by the opposition by delaying the signature of the application decree And by that point I'm seriously off-topic^^

We've got some media over here that reported that it lasted longer than average. Which bring the questions, how long does it takes to settle down usually, and if it indeed lasted longer what's different about this time?

Do you have any source on that? Might gives us some clue on the design KNDS are working on.

Tis is genius!

Do you mean the turret carrying the 120mm FER? Because AFAIK the 105mm turret is the regular TML 105 and the 25mm is the Dragar. First time I see the POLE acronym. What does it stands for?

Well I wish that instead of playing with penetration value (and soon armor) they would rather play with BR. With a bit of luck they'll increase the max BR with the new tanks coming in and maybe decompress the BR a bit at high rank, change a few BR value here and there giving them more room to use plausible pen

Well given that they already amputated the pen of the OFL 105 F1 by a good 80mm already ^^ Maybe they'll give the Brennus the OFL 105 F2 (or even the G2), who knows? Wait and see I guess.

The problem I have with it, is that they'll most likely put it at 9.0 just because of ERA (since the B2 is already 8.7). An upgraded gen 2 MBT at the same BR than early gen 3 MBT? Sure why not? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Will do (tomorrow though, getting late and I'm too tired to pay enough attention while reading it).

That definitively wasn't my intention but I reckon that I have been patronizing (or at least sounded so). As I said the US is perceived as an anomaly from Europe and each time a mass shooting happen it raise the question again, I though it would be interesting to talk about it since as you said our cultures are extremely different and point of views were bound to be different. However I didn't came with enough knowledge (especially about the legal text associated) and argument while talking to people who obviously had this discussion countless time ^^ I did learned some new thing however for example the FFL system was completely out of what could be acceptable within my own cultural bias and I would have never imagined it.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/ Well I didn't knew that it was a anti-gun association and I should have checked, thanks for pointing it out. The most interesting source in the article was however the "meta study" : https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/ Altough all cited works are not completely neutral either I agree. Well we do have our fair share of BS from Trump or some US media every time a terror attack happen in Europe but that's beside the point. But if I'm getting annoying (apparently yes) I'm sorry as well I'll stop here.

Well it's not about crime it's about casualties, and I know that most death by firearm are suicides (60%) And while you have the right to self defense (so do I) most gun owners fail to defend themselves and more often than not get their own weapon turned against them. If guns may prevent some crimes they also tend to make them more violent. Also even without taking away weapons (which is virtually impossible due to cultural reasons, I get it) states that places restrictions or impose safety measures on them have a lower casualty rate compared to their population and the amount of guns in circulation. http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2017/11/07/les-statistiques-le-confirment-aux-etats-unis-plus-d-armes-a-feu-en-circulation-entraine-plus-de-morts_5211448_4355770.html I'm not saying that guns should be completely banned, but that more restrictions and a more thorough control on who can buy them should be put in place. Here I perfectly agree that a minor cause of death, no matter how horrifying it shouldn't be the number one priority. However since placing restrictions on gun ownership actually reduce casualty why not do it? It doesn't infringe on the right to posses one, simply reduce the risk associated. If the fix is cheap and (rather) simple you have no reason not to do it. Just because there are other more important priority doesn't mean that you shouldn't do the easy fix (within the US legal frame that you know better than I do) on lower priorities. The real question is where do you draw the line on restrictions (too much/not enough ?).

xD good luck actually proving that moral values are objectives and not subjective (and so tied to an individual or a group)

I and respect the decision taken. I'm rather a legalist myself so I won't argue on that point. But in the end what a law can do a law can undo. It's based on a system of values that have no inherent worth and are protected only because the society using those value largely agree with it. Values can change, so can any legal text. Would you say that there is a large consensus on the subject atm? If not, then a public debate on the subject is rather healthy.

Thank you. I see the logic, but I'm not sure that the underlying hypothesis are still valid nowadays. A militia stand no chance against a modern regular army, it will just increase the casualties (most being on the insurgent's side) If we take Afghanistan as an example, while it is virtually impossible to completely subdue all insurgents, the various army that set foot there could have very well assumed direct control of all institutions and over the population relegating the insurgency to a mere nuisance (which can become costly over time I agree). Act of terror (and I say it as a mode of action, without moral values attached) by the French resistant in WW2 didn't freed France, the allies did. Any act of sabotage (bridges, railway, deliberate poor fabrication standard) would have been meaningless without the D-day.

Probably^^ Regardless of my ignorance and the possible methods to make sure that guns don't falls in the wrong hand, I would still like your views on the interpretation of the 2nd amendment. For me using it as an argument to defend gun ownership seem fallacious. Granted it is only one interpretation of the law (mine, which may very well be poor), but given the historical context I feel like the purpose of that text have been bent. In then end it's only an oustide view from Europe and the general opinion (for European citizens I mean) is "Why the hell haven't they banned gun already?" After every mass shooting in the US everybody is wondering why nothing has been done already. I'm not an American citizen (even if, since I was born there, I could be if I ever bothered doing some paperwork) and I have no right to ask for your law to change, can still give an outside "opinion" I would say.

So we would need to normalize it by the crowd density and maybe other parameters (like the number of exits, the lethality of the weapons, etc) ? Or simply say that the "tool" should be chosen depending on the target (outdoor/indoor seem to be the most important parameter at first glance). But that would be tricky and is not the really the point of the discussion anyway

Yep, a vehicle terror attack will be a one trick pony. (You run into people once, and chances are your vehicle end up wrecked by crashing into something). With a gun attack the perps can keep shooting as long as he doesn't get caught and be much more accurate in who he will target A truck attack will only work against a dense crowd, and the number of victims will be strongly correlated to the density of the crowd. My point is that, on average, the killer have a much higher chance to screw up with a vehicle than with a gun.

That nuts will be nuts I won't disagree with that. But it's obvious that they will do less damage with a knife or a vehicle than with a firearm. I know that a full war weapons ban is practically impossible because the US will be the US, but a first step would probably to severely reduce the amount of license delivered and to make it harder to obtain one in the first place. Like, for example, bringing proof that you belong to a shooting club and bring a medical proof that you are sane both body and mind before you are authorized to get a license. Over the years, the number of weapons in circulation should decrease naturally. It doesn't infringe on the "right" for a person to own a weapon, but it make it harder for deranged people or criminals to get one in the first place (sure they can always bypass that but it will cost them more than just buying one in a store). Then on the argument that having a weapon is a constitutional right, I call it not respecting the spirit of the law. AFAIK the second amendment authorize the People to own weapons in order to be able to create militia aimed at defending the Nation against another state (in that period of time the UK) or against their own government if things go south. It has nothing to do with self-defense, at it's root the 2nd amendment carry the idea of an army of citizens like in all democracy over the world. Nowadays the context has changed, defending the Nation is the job of the professional army (but still composed of citizens) not the one of various militia.

Try with some ceramic floor tiles, I remember that some of them add enough to the background radiations to have something measurable. IRC the process they go through tend to increase the concentration of naturally occurring radionuclide. Though I don't remember which radionuclides in particular Obviously you won't be able to do a calibration with it but it it should be enough to get the needle moving.

Ségolène Royal and the ADEME what did you expected? Numbers based on overly optimistic assumptions (and that's an understatement), pushing intermittent renewable forward just because nuclear power is evil even if it's still much cheaper and cleaner than said "green" energy. They are either incompetent (Royal is for sure) or knowingly lie (ADEME). At least I give credits to Nicolas Hulot for that. Even if he had to close Fessenheim because it became too political, at least he seem capable to hear what his advisors say and publicly stated that reducing the share of nuclear power down to 50% of our electricity wasn't achievable in the target delay without significantly increasing our CO2 emissions. And the most comic part was when Royal accused him of not respecting the law that was passed in order to reduce the share of nuclear. Pro tip: Physics don't care about the law, neither does the economy.

You know me too well xD But at least the Merkava do that while having actual armor on the turret sides (for the more recent versions at least) so it makes more sense.

Wouldn't that risk just making thing worse? As it stand now you have one extremely vulnerable side and one which seem rather safe so far. By putting the ammo in the middle you might end up making both sides vulnerable, (there is also the problem of ergonomy).

Well because there is ammo on the left and not on the right: (Didn't checked if the values are accurate but the layout should be mostly correct, @SH_MM should be able to answer that)