Uvalde Shooting Spotlights Daniel Defense

Note that some of those same industrial safety people will tell an industry that hasn't had a serious accident in decades, that they aren't "safe enough", and that not having an accident in a long time means that they are "overdue" for one.

Now, sure, numbers don't lie, but they can be interpreted incorrectly or inaccurately. And, frequently, they ARE....
 
Our rifle club has been there since 1936 and there has never been a shooting there. Bee stings and a couple of snake bites (one serious), yes - but nobody shot.

Could mean we are "due" for an accident as you say; or it could mean that everybody is on their best behavior.

That may be because of inculcated safety rules, or because everyone knows that one serious (firearm) accident will get the club shut down, and nobody wants everyone else mad at him for causing that.

The article I linked claims - with the math shown (but I'm not sharp enough to find the flaws) that there is a significant chance that we could have a violent problem - here is a "fair use" quote:

Two qualifying events in 340 years is a 0.5882% annual chance of nationwide violent revolution against the ruling government. Do the same math as we did above with the floodplains, in precisely the same way, and we see a 37% chance that any American of average life expectancy will experience at least one nationwide violent revolution.
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The two qualifying events to which he refers are the American Revolution and the Civil War.

Again, I'm hoping he is totally off base and, as Rodney King requested, we can "all just get along" - but I will not leave my jack and spare tire at home, even though I have only had one flat (on the road - several in the garage from nails/slow leaks over night) in 692k miles. Nor will I willingly give up my rifle.
 
44 AMP said:
Note that some of those same industrial safety people will tell an industry that hasn't had a serious accident in decades, that they aren't "safe enough", and that not having an accident in a long time means that they are "overdue" for one.

Now, sure, numbers don't lie, but they can be interpreted incorrectly or inaccurately. And, frequently, they ARE....
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Remember what Mark Twain said (or wrote): "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
 
Two qualifying events in 340 years ....
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I'm sorry, but being off by 1/3 (100 years) in the opening statement does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling about trusting their math.

My calculator says 1776 to 2022 is 246, which is a LONG way from 340.

And, if its just a misprint, that doesn't make me feel any better about their math, either. If they didn't catch and correct such an obvious error, what OTHER errors might they have also missed???

If you want to look at numbers and likelihood of something happening, consider this, 50/50. Something happens, or it doesn't.

Go beyond that and you're making assumptions about things that may be different than you assume them to be.

Remember the law of averages. By the math, half the people creating the statistics are below average intelligence.....:rolleyes::D
 
OK, my mistake - I should have quoted the entire paragraph, like this:
Stepping through this, the average year for colony establishment is 1678, which is 340 years ago. Two qualifying events in 340 years is a 0.5882% annual chance of nationwide violent revolution against the ruling government. Do the same math as we did above with the floodplains, in precisely the same way, and we see a 37% chance that any American of average life expectancy will experience at least one nationwide violent revolution.
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So he is counting from "the average year for colony establishment is 1678", not from the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

So the error is mine, not the author's.

Is another fair use quote out of order?

But You’re Cheating

Am I? Two instances in 340 years is not a great data pool to work with, I will grant, but if you take a grab sample of other countries around the world you’ll see this could be much worse. Since our 1678 benchmark, Russia has had a two world wars, a civil war, a revolution, and at least half a dozen uprisings, depending on how you want to count them. Depending on when you start the clock, France had a 30-year war, a seven-year war, a particularly nasty revolution, a counter-revolution, that Napoleon thing, and a couple of world wars tacked on the end. China, North Korea, Vietnam, and basically most of the Pacific Rim has had some flavor of violent revolution in the last 100 years, sometimes more than one. With Africa, it’s hard to even conceive where to start and end the data points. Most Central and South American countries have had significant qualifying events in the time span. And honestly, if we were to widen our analysis to not only include nationwide violent civil wars, but also instances of slavery, internment, and taking of native lands, our own numbers go way up.
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Anyway I'm not standing up for his analysis, just pointing out that rational people can make rational arguments that even though we live in a blessed bubble of peace here-and-now, it does not take much to pop the bubble.

Somebody has a .sig that says, 'You may never need a parachute, but if you ever do, you'll need it very much" or something like that.
 
By the math, half the people creating the statistics are below average intelligence.....
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I just finished an MBA statistics class and though I passed I could not tell you a single thing that I managed to take away from it other than someone with a doctorate in statistics can likely get numbers to support any position they are trying to argue.
 
One can create statistics that appear to support anything you choose, all you need do is be ...creative when selecting your parameters.

We are, however, now quite a way from the OP of the thread which was the Uvalde shooting and the push for more gun control efforts resulting from that.

One of the things I find amusing (due to the irony) are those claiming that refusing to accept watered down, or amped up versions of what we refused (for cause) before means we are responsible for mass murder, that we condone it, and if we don't agree to do what they want, we want people killed.

To me, that smacks of extortion. Of course when the news does it, or govt politician does it, its not, or so they tell us...
 
One of the things I find amusing (due to the irony) are those claiming that refusing to accept watered down, or amped up versions of what we refused (for cause) before means we are responsible for mass murder, that we condone it, and if we don't agree to do what they want, we want people killed.

To me, that smacks of extortion.
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It also looks like an hysteria and it shows up after something jarring. Maybe less than a year ago, I read it asserted that people who didn't wear masks wanted to kill people. The frustration at not getting one's way shows up as an exaggerated claim about motive.

Now, if you don't want to suspend an important part of an explicit civil right for legal adults, then you value your sport above the lives of children, you stand in the way of safety, and you wouldn't take that position of your child were there -- lots of heat, little light. The insistence is that you must feel the same way, and your reasoning is unwelcome. It's a corner cutting mechanism that was also present in the daycare/satanic abuse panic of the 1990s and the literal witch trials.

If you don't want to put an end to women who float in the water, you aren't serious about the scourge of witchcraft.
 
It also looks like an hysteria and it shows up after something jarring. Maybe less than a year ago, I read it asserted that people who didn't wear masks wanted to kill people. The frustration at not getting one's way shows up as an exaggerated claim about motive.
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I think the link may have come from this thread but I'm not certain. There was a commentator on CNN that was in a debate with Anne Navarro and she continued to argue with nothing but emotion, saying that if he doesn't support new restrictions he supports dead children. He called what she was doing "moral bullying", and it is probably the best thing I've heard that type of arguing called to date.
 
No form of gun control will prevent these terrible events except for possibly 100% confiscation of firearms. We know that is impossible.
 
He called what she was doing "moral bullying", and it is probably the best thing I've heard that type of arguing called to date.
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Sounds reasonable, if not too gentle a name for it.

Turn your opponent into the devil and then nothing you can say or do to them is repulsive in the eyes of God.....

Or a variation on that theme.

its one of the older tricks in the book....the sad part is that it often works, and sometimes works too well.

I believe that one of the reasons our Founding Fathers chose the specific style of government they did was not only to make things difficult for would be kings or dictators, but also as a way to minimize the risk of mob rule on the opposite end.

When ideas and arguments traveled no faster than a fast horse or a sailing ship people had TIME to think about things, heated emotions had time to cool and allow rational thought a chance to prevail before some permanent course of action was undertaken (such as passing a law).

As our technology has increased, things keep moving faster and faster and the time we have to reflect and reason about anything keeps getting shorter and shorter.

Today, (no matter the issue) once it hits the news, within hours there are millions of people electronically yelling "do something! DO SOMETHING NOW!!"

Anyone (of any party) who dares even mention moving slowly and carefully is branded an enemy of safety/the people/someone's rights/ etc., etc.,

No form of gun control will prevent these terrible events except for possibly 100% confiscation of firearms.
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The only certainty is that when there are no firearms, firearms are not used. That's it. Bad things still happen when there are no guns. Different tools and muscle power are used instead.

And then you're back to the law of the jungle, the biggest, strongest rule and do as they please. The young, the old and the weak are their "natural" prey.

Never thought much about that when I was younger and strong, now that I'm old and weaker, it seems a lot more important than it was then.
 
I would like to make an alternative suggestion to the "weapon of war" debate. In the end--the real issue isn't the absolute terminal performance of the cartridge, although the 5.56 has been proven to be especially damaging on soft tissue--what it really comes down to in my mind is "ease of proficiency." In other words, how easy is it for the particular weapon to be quickly learned and used effectively to put lethal rounds on target quickly? Keep in mind this doesn't mean qualitatively better than other weapons/cartridges; just how compressible is the learning curve for an average person to become effective at using the weapon.

While someone like Jerry Miculek is potentially more proficient with a revolver than a newbie with an AR, it took a lot of investment for him to reach that level of proficiency (plus likely some alien genetics tampering ;) ).

I would argue that without the slightest doubt the M4/AR is the greatest rifle ever designed in terms of accessible proficiency.
 
I find this "weapon of war" meme to be both fascnating and utterly devoid of any common sense.
EVERY firearm design we have throughout history is an outgrowth of a "weapon of war"
The historical ignorance of context is strong here.. . *
...by design I might venture.







* Not in this Forum perhaps. But certainly by Current-Education-of-the-GAP intent.
 
Well, gun control is not about safety from criminal acts, it’s about eroding constitutional rights.
The 1st and 2nd are the biggies, after that taking the rest of the rights is easy.
Our country’s founders looked upon millennia of experience with governments.
Some say the constitution is antiquated, I say it’s modern compared to the whole of human history
 
although the 5.56 has been proven to be especially damaging on soft tissue--
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Compared to WHAT?

and also, comparing what to what?? I mean this as a serious question, not snark.

Compare FMJ to FMJ, ok, compare JSP and JHP to FMJ? not fair.
Compare high velocity rifle to lower velocity pistol? again, not fair.

When you tell people who don't know any of the story the part you want them to hear, and only that part, they don't know "the rest of the story".

I think any, and every time anyone remarks on the 5.56mm round being "especially damaging" the first words out of your mouth should be "compared to what?"

Compared to a .22short? sure. Compared to regular military ball service pistol ammo? Yep, (but then about everything going faster will be...)
Compared to a .300 Magnum? not so much, :rolleyes:

I see a lot of reports from ER docs and trauma surgeons (especially now with the rifle and its round at the top of the media's "hit list") describing and even pontificating on the horrific wounds caused by the 5.56. And their not entirely wrong, based on what they see.

What they see, most often, are people shot in crimes, where the common weapons are pistols and shotguns. Compared to them, the 5.56 is powerful and does create worse wounds, generally speaking.

What they don't see, and don't have a frame of reference for is people shot with the more powerful and even more "devastating" wounding power of the typical big game rifle, or even larger military cartridges (which are also often big game class rounds).

So, when someone puts forth about the terrible wounding power of the 5.56, always remember what they aren't saying along with what they are.

It's really all a "red herring", a distraction. If you focus on the gun and its effects, you're not focused on the fact that the crime is MURDER, not what it was done with.

Take away this gun and that round and the world will be safe and all smiles and brotherly love, right? Sorry, the world doesn't work that way...

There are no guns among prison inmates, go live with them and see how safe you are....(when there are no guards around) :rolleyes:

We see occasional stories mostly from parts of Asia, which have strict control over private gun ownership, where someone takes a blade and commits mass murder. Sometimes killing over a dozen people before being stopped.

I think this happens more than we hear about in our news, and we only see reports of it once in a while because our news people have many other stories they consider more important to tell us.

In some societies, the blade is the cultural weapon of choice, and it is often used, even when they do have guns available.

Consider this, if a deranged (note, I'm deliberately NOT saying "mentally ill") killer lops the heads off their victims with a machete, or a sword (or a chainsaw!:eek::rolleyes:) People are horrified, and rightly so, but hey, its not like he shot them! (intentional sarcasm)
 
gbclarkson said:
Tench Coxe has been dead for 200 years. Times have changed since his era of muskets and sabres.


“Let me state unequivocally — For all intents and purposes, the AR-15 and rifles like it are weapons of war,” retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, June 2, 2022. This guy is not just some random civilian. He knows what he is talking about. And he is still alive.
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Yes, but bolt action rifles also are "weapons of war", and so are shotguns (pump action and auto loaders). As in... they are actually used by our troops!

So if an auto-loader rifle (AR 15) should be banned because it is a "weapon of war", shouldn't bolt action center fire rifles and shotguns be banned too?

Banning the AR platform because it is a "weapon of war" does not make sense, because guess what, many other platforms that civilians use are also weapons of war.

A different, compelling reason is necessary to ban the AR 15, or otherwise you'd have to ban ALL firearms.
 
It's really all a "red herring", a distraction. If you focus on the gun and its effects, you're not focused on the fact that the crime is MURDER, not what it was done with.
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You ignored what I wrote--I did in fact say the cartridge wasn't as potent as other cartridges, but when you take the whole package together--lightweight, accuracy, ease of operation, low recoil and flip to get back on target quickly etc I still stand by it's one of the most lethal weapons ever made if you consider how quickly one can get proficient in its use. Unless of course you argue with 70 year's of military use as a red herring. I think there are many thousands who would agree if they weren't dead because they were on the receiving end.

What you're saying essentially is that it still takes a finger to operate one--like any other gun. I wouldn't argue with that.

Also, I didn't personally call them weapons of war, nor did I personally call for them to be banned (why would I do that--I have LOTS of em).
 
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