Sgt.Squarehead

Yeah, at this point, with all the problems with the Meuler probe, all the shit that came out about how they gave Clinton a free pass on her crimes because they wanted her to win, and now this, the FBI is at maybe the lowest point in its History.  It is, of course, ironic Karma,  for them trying to help Clinton fix an election. 

FINE. Part threeeeeeee
 
3. Why America Should Keep Her Guns
 
It is an uncomfortable fact that, when it comes to guns, analysis of the problem must bow to the principle of "lies, damn lies, and statistics". That is, the problem of guns, gun violence, and violence in general is such a complex and multi-variable one, that virtually any conclusion can be engineered with legitimate-seeming statistical basis just by omitting a variable or two - although more often many more variables are omitted than just that. This means that neither studies supporting the Left's, or the Right's position on gun control can be trusted without exhausting scrutiny first, and even then no firm conclusions can possibly be reached due to the simple admittance that social engineering is too difficult a problem to address via mere study and statistics. Indeed, social engineering is almost always too difficult a problem for empirical trials, as well, although they have somewhat more success.
 
A broad view of society, which at least attempts to account for all these variables, therefore makes the simple "optimization" perspective on guns seem inadequate to address the issue. How are we to possibly account for all possible outcomes, when this has never been possible before? How can we optimize for a single criteria, when so many others hang in the balance? Should we?
 
The reality is that social engineering has never been more than a laboratory curiosity in any society. Rather than curated terrariums of human life, societies resemble more messy, sprawling compost heaps, ripe with the putrid flavors of chaotic interaction and self-interested motivations latticed together in a moldy 3-dimensional fabric that has always been little more than ad-hoc. Therefore, attempts to engineer society to benefit man seem a bit like trying to change the wind by waving into it.
 
Moreover, there are lines in the sand. There are changes we humans, are not willing to make to optimize our society. So many books, movie scripts, and television episode plots have been written about this that it's a cliche. We aren't willing to join the Borg, even though it would make our lives better, because that would lose what makes us human. We don't geld boys at puberty to reduce crime, because that would infringe upon their freedom and right to life as they choose. We don't restrict the right to vote to a select few, because we believe all men deserve a say in how they are governed. We don't install surveillance cameras in every household, even though we could catch crimes before they start, because our people have a right to privacy and to not have the government spying on them all the time. So it is with the right to keep and bear arms. It's a part of what makes us, not only American, but human. No other animal uses projectile weapons, it is unique to us. A byproduct of our arms and eyes and brains, in that special combination that separates a man from a bear or lion or dog. This is romantic, but so is every other right. The right to free speech, assembly, religion, the right to vote, all these things are not done at the bidding of social engineers, but of human hearts. Perhaps life would be better if none of these rights were granted, but the human heart would be crushed, and the world turned grey and pale. Novels and films have been made about that, too. Experiments with totality that crushed the human spirit, because the social engineers found it too difficult to account for.
 
We can weigh the goodness and badness of our rights in the balance, and create some conclusion from it, but that conclusion will likely be more myth than reality. Maybe we should throw the scale out, instead, and focus on what being American means, and why it's special and unique, and lights in all corners of the world a fire in the hearts of men. And the American right - as uniquely American as the atlatl and slingstone and are human - to keep and bear arms is essential to that. Not an appendage from an 18th Century prototype of the affirmation of rights, but an essential ingredient which every imitator has failed to capture from the original. It is a key part of the bond between the American and his government: A covenant kept from the founding of the nation, that the men of the government see its people, not as subjects, but as equals. From this, they entrust, and have entrusted for well over 200 years, the citizenry with weapons of war. And, it is the final word on the truth and realness of all other rights - I, and each American, can and may back these words up with our will and weaponry, if necessary. That alone is powerful, it stokes those heartfires and holds accountable the officers who administer to them. A feeling of justness, of accountability and fairness, is guaranteed by the right to arms that cannot be guaranteed elsewise. This central point is missed by the social engineers, and for that they have lost the whole problem entirely. For societies are not machines or systems of machines, but a complex and fertile bed of feelings and thoughts, felt, thought, and acted upon by millions of hearts and minds all at once. The social engineer's paradox is this: It is the flicker and sway of the flame inside man that determines the prosperity and success of a nation, not the choice of machinery or style of gears.
 
Someday, maybe the time will be right and a Constitutional Amendment will be passed that repeals the Second Amendment. But after that, the country will not be the same, and I don't think the American fire will burn quite as hot.
 

2. The Nature of Terror Attacks and Mass Shootings
 
It is rightfully concerning that so many attacks have occurred in recent years, often in quick succession and with significant death tolls. To understand why they happen, we need to identify two nested categories. One, is what I will call "Domestic Attacks" (DAs), which encompasses any deliberate action taken with any tools or weapons, which intentionally causes mass death in one or multiple simultaneous or sequential events. For this category, the Nice truck attack would qualify, as would the Florida shooting, as would 9/11. However, serial killings would not qualify, nor would domestic homicides, nor would all of Al Qaeda's planned attacks count as one event, even though they were planned by the same group. Nested within this is a category I call "Rampage Shootings". This refers specifically to a deliberate, mostly indiscriminate (i.e., not targeted, like an assassination) attack which specifically uses a firearm to cause casualties, although other tools or weapons may also be used. However, the firearm or firearms must be the primary instrument of death. This would include the Florida shooting, the Pulse nightclub shooting, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but not the 2008 Mumbai bombings, as those were a broader planned attack using explosives as well as firearms.
 
One thing we must remember is that the broad spectrum of DAs occur all over the world, which indicates that simply restricting guns will not necessarily reduce death. The argument "a gun will kill much better than a knife" fails to account for the intense creativity and determination of these attackers, who pick their targets very carefully to maximize damage with the tools they have at hand. Bombs (which are illegal, but which can be constructed easily by any reasonably intelligent teen with readily available materials), vehicles, fuel, fire, etc. are all widely available methods for conducting attacks like these. Morbid an exercise as it is, "wargaming" DAs considerably clarifies and highlights the tools which can be used by attackers to cause mass death. Restricting material availability through bans may be effective at reducing the incidence rate of one such attack, but it cannot prevent all types of DAs, as there are simply too many ways to cause death on a mass scale, if the target is chosen properly.
 
RSes, however, are a slightly different animal. From what I've studied, it seems evident that each domestic RS in the United States is essentially a copycat crime, specifically copying the 1999 Columbine shooting, or a shooting that itself was a copy of that shooting. However, the Columbine shooting is widely misunderstood. It was not intended to be a classic "school shooting" as we are familiar with today, but rather a coordinated attack much closer to the Oklahoma City bombings or the later 2008 Mumbai bombings. Harris and Klebold were not simply frustrated teens taking out their rage, but seriously disturbed individuals plagued by megalomania, god complices, and other problems, who intended to cause massive cultural change with their actions. Their plan called for not only shooting, but the detonation of explosive devices (which failed), and car bombs which would kill rescue workers. They aimed for a death toll close to 1000, and hoped their actions would shock the country into a cultural shift. In this way, Columbine itself, though it provided the mold, was actually much closer to a classic terror attack in motive and (attempted) execution.
 
It is conspicuous, then, that almost every subsequent RS killer has not copied Harris and Klebold's actual mission, but only the fictitious version of their story which was created by and told through the media. Rampage shooters fantasize endlessly about their attacks, but rarely plan them well, and go in with little more than rage and a gun to assist them in conducting their murder. And most times, they see themselves as kindred spirits to the Harris and Klebolds of NBC, ABC, and CBS - people who never actually existed. (A major exception to this was the Vegas shooter, who planned his attack extremely well, was older, and had motives we are still trying to untangle). 
 
So what does this tell us? Well, two things:
 
1. You cannot stop every attack. We hear things like "we must prevent this from ever happening again". Nope, sorry. It will happen again. Maybe not exactly the same way, but for the same reasons, or different ones. It would be impossible to stop all future DAs from happening, even with a system that was brutally oppressive and tyrannical. We know this because DAs happen all the time even in brutal, tyrannical regimes. 
 
2. Rampage shootings are "memes". These are ideas planted inside the heads of their perpetrators long before they ever decide to conduct such attacks. Columbine occurred in 1999, the year Nikolas Cruz was born. He probably grew up hearing about school shootings, and that that's what disturbed, troubled kids do. And he's enough of a psychopath to actually do it. Preventing these ideas from soaking into the culture of society even more will be difficult, especially since the phenomenon does not seem to be slowing down.

TBC

OK, so there are really a few issues we need to tackle here. I'll try to make this brief, so please look into these subjects yourself for additional info. I am trying to keep it to 1-2 paragraphs per issue.
 
1. Gun Law in the USA
 
The United States is a totally unique country in that it has a right to bear arms which is uninfringeable, that is to say, guaranteed as part of the compact that allows the country to exist, and which cannot be removed or eroded without Constitutional Amendment. Two other countries, Guatemala and Mexico, also have constitutional rights to bear arms, but these are each much less broad and absolute than the Second Amendment in the US. Many students of Constitutional scholarship have argued that the Second Amendment in fact guarantees a right to keep and bear arms with no restrictions whatsoever, although this has never been supported in formal courts. However, in the United States there is some judicial recognition that the "arms" referred to in the Second Amendment do indeed mean for personal defense/martial purposes, and not just for hunting or sporting use. In this way, the United States is totally unique among the nations of the world.
 
We must also take a quick moment to understand the organization of the US itself. The United States is a federalized republic, in effect 50 independent countries with their own governments, unified by a single Federal Government. While each state (and even county, city, etc) may have their own gun laws, we will only discuss gun laws at the Federal level. This will give you a general sense of gun laws in the US, as most places have few restrictions beyond Federal law. Also, the "Constitution" refers to a specific document in US law (rather than the whole body of US law), the US Constitution of 1787, which has been amended 27 times from 1791 to 1992. The first ten amendments (passed in 1791) are referred to as the "Bill of Rights", and collectively are thee model upon which virtually every other country's system of rights is based. The US Constitution is the oldest active constitution in the world.
 
The Second Amendment in the US is regulated and restricted by three major Federal laws: The National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, the Gun Control Act  (GCA) of 1968, and the Firearm Owner's Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986. The National Firearms Act introduced the first substantial restrictions, which were applied to fully automatic weapons (called "machine guns" in US law, regardless of whether they meet the military criteria), short barreled weapons (rifles and shotguns), silencers/suppressors,  and "destructive devices" (bombs, grenades, cannons, etc). The NFA established the NFA registry, whereby these weapons and items must be registered and a $200 tax paid for a citizen to manufacture, transfer, or own them. The Gun Control Act established the concept of "prohibited persons" (e.g., felons, those who have been adjudicated insane), as well as the current system of firearms transfer. The GCA's provisions created what is called the "Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) network", which is a system of licensees who are capable of transferring firearms to any private individual, regardless of whether that individual also possesses an FFL. Therefore, the way this works is that firearms purchased by private individuals must first go through an FFL, who will run a background check and have the purchaser fill out a Federal form (called a "Form 4473"), and, if this is approved by the FBI, the purchaser can take their gun and go home. Therefore, in the US, licenses are not granted for firearms ownership, but are granted to dealers authorizing them to transfer firearms in large scale to purchasers. A typical example of an FFL would be a gun store, but FFLs can exist without a storefront. For example, the FFL I use to buy firearms is just a guy who does some gunsmithing on the side. There are different kinds of FFLs which determine which kinds of weapons the license holder can deal in. In most states, it is perfectly legal for one individual to transfer a firearm to another individual without going through an FFL, this is called a "private transfer", and is encoded in law via the 1968 GCA. However, this cannot be a business or significant source of revenue for the seller, or else they need an FFL.

Finally, the 1986 FOPA improved some of the provisions created in the 1968 GCA (for example, according to the GCA, if you were traveling with a weapon that was legal in your own state, but illegal in the state you went to or were passing through, you could be arrested in that state and tried - the FOPA repealed this), but also included a provision (snuck in at the last minute) called the Hughes' Amendment, which closed the NFA registry for machine guns. This means that no new machine guns can be registered as "fully transferable" weapons, and this has dramatically driven up the price of legal automatic weapons since 1986.
 
TBC

I guess Utah has Houthi elk now or something.

http://www.azfamily.com/story/37456891/amateur-sketch-helps-police-identify-theft-suspect
 
"Amateur sketch helps police identify theft suspect"
 

Heavy Metal reboot looking good
 

Although the Duke boys' new machine wasn't quite as fast as the General Lee, Rosco was nonetheless presented with an entirely new set of problems.
 

Hey, nice to see you back, I probably came at that last conversation a little hard and got a little out of hand.  Many of the old timers around here will jump all over each other at times but it is not personal because we know each other well enough, I was out of line jumping so hard on you.  Please accept my apology, and I'll play nice in the future. 
 
Thank you for the compliments on the images, I'm glad to hear the modeling community is getting some use out of them. I'm going to have some great stuff on the R975 soon. 

Nice build, and the camo scheme is very cool.
 
Dropped in to say the BM Sherman GB is underway, if you fancy joining in, it's here:  http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/forum/611-m3m4-medium-tank-stgb/
 
Massive Kudos to you @Jeeps_Guns_Tanks  While we might not agree on Korea much, your site and especially your beautifully cleaned up images are proving a godsend to us.

First completed build of the year!
 





 

Love it.....You've read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy at a guess? 
 

So would the Soviets. 

Yeah, true, but I didn't think it had much relevance to my point, and I'd rather be playing Warthunder if you can believe that shit.  

Just to start, this is pretty basic, and true, but it leaves out a whole lot that sure makes the article sound better  with it missing. if you have an idealistic view of history and act like there was some evil corporate intent to what in many cases was just how things played out, it may make sense to you but that's just not a realistic view of history. It also implies the reason we're totally economic, and ignores the illegal invasion of China, and then the atrocities committed, caused even more tensions, and then a riverboat was attacked. The US was an Ally of the Nationalist Chinese, and had interest in China that do not seem particularly evil, and we supported them right up to their civil war. Where in this is A: the main goal of US foreign policy in China was to enrich corporate America, and I don't buy it was resources, because before the Japanese took them, most of the important resources were under the control of US Allies.  This point of this leftist whine fest is to show America didn't need or have to be there, but fails to point out how much worse off the pacific nations would have been under Japanese rule, or it's off i'm fairy land, the place were countries don't invade each other if they don't have a big army or big allies, and not on this planet in the 20 and 30s. We also didn't always oppose them, we were selling them steel and oil right up to the point they started slaughtering the chinese for fun.  So to summarize this point, it's a whiny leftist distortion of history or best and straight up stupidity from the originator at worst. Now, when I run into stuff so blatantly wrong, in such a blatantly political way, I normally write it off as shit on move on. But since you insist there is value in this, and actually think the whole thing is good, we can keep going. 
 
 
 
Ok, so, do you not see how this little bit implies the war started because of tensions, and a failed election, and not because with Russian approval and supplies massed and then invaded south Korea? Someone ignorant of the subject might think the country was not already split between the West and East on the 38th Parallel, and that the election "fraud" election caused the war.  Do you have some sources on this election problem, cause I am not going to take this shit article of proof it was true cause you know, we all know really, Leftist lie about history all the time, that's why their history articles are shit. 
 
We occupied the country at the same time the soviets occupied the north.  Had we not, the south would have been subjected under communism. This article really seems to be off in dream land, because there was zero chance the people of Korea could, or were going to get control of the country right when the war ended. Left to their own devices they probably would have starved. Since we live in the real world though,  it is clearly better to not be under communist control, so warts and all, the US occupation, and the blood they spilled to keep South Korea free outweighs in sick deals our mythical evil corporations got out of it. My god man, the last few lines are almost comical in how stereotypical it is of the Hate America first crowd. 
 
 
 
 
So there it is again, you think the whole thing is interesting, but you don't want to cover specifics, while being snarky and not actually discussing anything.  Posting links without comment is considered bad form around here, and only one of those links is really relevant to the conversation or your simplistic view of world and US history.  In my world view, when you find several glaring errors in something that's supposed to be journalism, the rest is shit too, not just because might be factually incorrect, but because the thinking of the author will be bad, if his facts are all wrong, and that means it's shit that one shouldn't waste time on.
 
I'm not sure where you got the idea I thought you were defending best Korea, it's clear your defending a shit article you feel has merit, but aren't willing to point out specific parts that you think make it that way. Why are you on a discussion forum and defending an article you posted, while also refusing to discuss the actual content? Seems a little trolly. I'm surprised you're actually worried world about WWIII starting in Korea, well, less surprised now that I see the type of journalism you find interesting. The only way war is going to start again in Korea, is if Rocketman set it off. 
 
 
The first link is behind a paywall, and isn't really related anyway, jumping around like this is discouraged.  The second is something even the mainstream outlets quietly cover, when they are not spinning their own brand of bullshit.  I mean really, this is a surprise, Trump has the state department working on a diplomatic  solution? 
 
 

Which part is 'wrong'?  You may not agree with the author's conclusion, nor his choice of where to place blame (incidentally I never believe there's just one cause for these things), but the fact that the US & Japan were placed on a collision course by their (mutually exclusive) foreign policies is surely not up for debate?
 
 
Once again, which part is 'wrong'?  You may not agree with the works in question, but you don't explain why they are incorrect, or supply any alternative argument.  To suggest that I or the article were defending the Japanese policy is ridiculous, hence my response.  This is not a zero-sum game, being critical of American policy does not in any way suggest that I (or the author) support the policy of the Japanese (or North Koreans for that matter).
 
As for picking out parts of the article that I found 'really interesting'.....Well I did link the whole article, as I thought that much of it might have relevance to the general discussion in this thread (please note the added disclaimer, I did not for one minute believe that the opinions expressed would be universally popular).  If you think I'm defending that pot-bellied loon in NK or attacking the US, you are way off the mark, what I'm interested in is a long term solution that doesn't involve mushroom clouds.  Frank and open discussion of the mistakes (crimes if you will) of the past (on both sides) is critical to achieving that end and nothing will improve if both sides bury their heads in the sand (once again I'm not taking sides here, just pointing out that there are more than one).
 
PS - Re: Smedley Butler.  Wonder what his thoughts would be on this:  https://www.ft.com/content/7f435f04-8c05-11e2-b001-00144feabdc0
 
PPS - On a positive note, this:  http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/11/01/u-s-quietly-pursuing-direct-diplomacy-north-korea/

I've decided this argument is too boring, so I've called in the big guns.

You're not going to have an easy time arguing this, I reckon. But I won't stop you; lay on.

FUCKING BEHOLD! The Army's Future Soldier concept.

And more:  https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/saudi-ambassador-to-the-u-s-vows-to-keep-hitting-yemen-no-matter-what/
 

And more:  https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/saudi-ambassador-to-the-u-s-vows-to-keep-hitting-yemen-no-matter-what/
 

I just realized this song is about how alternative medicine is a scam:
 
 

Ta-152 Working Drawings
Ta-400
Focke Wulf PTL 021
Evolution of the F-16

A Chinese Armata?
 

 
http://gurkhan.blogspot.co.uk/
 
http://www.vestnik-rm.ru/news-4-21821.htm

It is not sensible. They are trying to resurect one of most expensive Soviet monster project. And it is not like it will be very/more efficient than other alternatives either.