Out of Pod Experience

...training people not to do what this moron did

Apparently not a former student.

Remember, projectiles always go somewhere. What goes up does come down. If you are in any celebrations this holiday season involving "projectile launchers", or you get that Red Rider BB gun this year, take this into account.


Carry on.

This actually brings up something totally unrelated...
But it is something that I have always thought about.

& thought about hard...



Random shot into the air, 1.5 miles of ballistic trajectory through the wind and bam! Amish girl head-shot while she was alone on an open road and WHILE she was moving on a buggy? Are you kidding me?

Ironic



You may not believe in god but that is enough to make you believe in the devil.

I wonder what kind of rifle he was using so that the bullet can still have enough speed for a kill after almost 3km in a ballistic trajectory through the air (~2.4km horizontal)...
Or maybe the bullet didn't kill her in the traditional way (piercing), but by blunt force trauma in a weak spot causing her to lose balance and hit her head on the cart, become unconscious, finally fall off the buggy and THAT causing the death ?

Also, if you HAVE to shoot in the air, why not just shoot as straight up as you can ?
This way the bullet will certainly come to a near full stop eventually and then only carry free-fall terminal velocity in air kinetic energy which is almost guaranteed to at most hurt but not kill.

You just reminded me of a commercial - the product I don't recall - where there was a bunch of Mexicans having a celebration old west style - I think this was 19th century setting - firing guns in the air, and then near the end one guy shouts "The bullets!!!!!" and everybody runs away while thousands of bullets start raining straight down.


In reality, if there was no wind and if you fired a bullet straight up so that the gravitational pull was directly opposite the trajectory (no vector), the bullet *could* come straight back down and land on its butt, still spinning too. This is said but I don't know if it's based on anybody trying it.


Firing a muzzleloader is one of "the ways" to clear one, but this is taught to be done in a controlled environment and it depends on the state or local laws too. Some public hunting grounds have a small range near the game check or ranger station for this purpose, some don't. It's also considered that, where a hunting rifle is required to be designated "safe" (if you go to a check station with a loaded gun they will be quite perturbed in most cases), simply removing the percussion cap from a muzzleloader is deemed "enough" in most states. I have seen a lot of conflicts either way, having seen the laws or rules from many states.

But firing it in the air from the yard - FFS. What, the ground wasn't good enough? It is possible to remove a ball from a muzzleloader without firing it too. It's possible to put a "screw bit" on the ramrod, twist it into the bullet, provided that it's lead which is almost always the case, and pull it out, or use air pressure to push it out by connecting an adapter where the "nipple" (that's what they call it) would be. Better systems use oil for this.

This case may be an accidental shooting, but there was negligence. It's irritating with gun cases because it's an either or situation. I have seen cases where granola-munchers go into public hunting lands in dark brown coats during bear season early in the morning or late in the day too (that's just asking for it) and get shot and you get a district attorney or county prosecutor with a political agenda charging the hunter with murder, homicide, criminal negligence, and everything else they could think of. Usually this happens when the county has "that one town" full of ex-urbanites who vote and of course such people raised on police drama shows think "all guns bad, everybody who has them is a criminal". California has managed to infect a lot of west coast counties with people like that, for example. All this while, in the meantime, people get killed because of stupidity on the road and bad drivers never get charged like that.

But then if you kill an amish girl by being a complete tard, it all depends on who your DA or CP is?

Naturally there are calls for a kind of standard for what is an accidental shooting and what is negligence or a criminal act, but every time this comes up, "those people" show up - all guns bad, everybody should give them up - and they are the reason why there is no standard because if all you want to do is codify the laws, they try to bend it into disarmament and/or hunting bans. And that's why making a mistake in one case equals murder charges and being a complete tard in another is "accidental".

"Former"?

That's usually what gets asked for, and that's why it's impossible to, for example, require a safety course for hunting licenses for all ages.

But keep in mind that all dead bodies I have seen outside of funerals and war (though the funerals were related to...) were the results of car accidents. Cars are registered, and if you are a demon on the road they eventually take your license.

In fact, I know a felon who cannot have a gun because of felonies committed years ago by..... yes... illegal drag racing on the road.

So he can't have a gun, but last I checked, he has a drivers license and a truck - an the truck has a nitro bottle in it as big as s SCUBA tank.

So you see, when there are incidents, calls for more laws usually come from such sources that are pushing a double-standard in perception of how the "problem" is handled, the causes, and such other matters that obfuscate the intent of legislation into political agendas.

Requiring a safety course just to own the firearms, for example, gets proposed often. How come this is never implemented, even when, as an instructor, I could presume that most people operating firearms without a safety course are an accident looking for a place to happen?

Because of the double standards and the political agenda. Once you "require" anything involving guns, you open the door for control. The desire for control comes from statism and ignorance, and so the controls are not based on any logic that proves solid results. The worst crime infested cities in the US have strict laws pertaining to firearms, their use, and possession, for example, whereas such laws exist because of crime.

Another example of the double standard would be how the high capacity magazine or the semi-auto is viewed, as compared to the high performance sports car. To commit a crime with a gun, you have to have intent to commit it - basically like robbing a bank for example. But sports cars operated on public highways having speed limits they can exceed easily are designed to break the law. Remove "the law" from the argument and make it about about "safety" then, and you still have the same problem. A gun is going to launch a projectile anywhere you point it, but a car can be designed to operate as speeds deemed unsafe in most circumstances.

Still I get asked "what do you need that 30 round magazine for?" yet it's a kind of heresy to ask "what do you need that turbocharger for?"

Because of that very caustic double standard and politicization of the issue, there will never be any real requirement for training or safe handling instruction. Hence the reason why I spend a lot of time and money training people on this.

There is also another element: the disarmament movement does not really like to push for regulation that simply requires training for another reason they don't mention. When people are trained in the use of small arms, two things happen: 1. they become empowered in a positive way and realize they have control over the weapon just like any other tool and 2. they learn that a gun is not the end-all-be-all device of instant death and doom as shown on TV. If everybody knew how hard it is to actually hit a moving person with a pistol, it would be next to impossible for one person with a gun to hold people "at gunpoint" and march them down to a field to kill them or to an ATM. But because people see that all of the time on TV, and see a little pop gun hit someone and they drop dead instantly, they are conditioned. The disarmament movement wants YOU to look at the cop or soldier with the gun and be so much more afraid of it. So when they occasionally attempt for laws requiring firearms training, it's a "please don't throw me in the briar patch" thing where they are merely playing up for political points and not wanting to get it passed into law.

We are supposed to be peasants.

No amount of background checks or training can get the stupid out of people who fire guns into the air.

My problem with the story? "No charges have been filed." If you fire a gun blindly into the street and kill someone, you'll go to prison whether you intended harm or not. So this guy lives in a rural area...I still expect him to demonstrate the good sense to realize that a bullet WILL come back down and hit *something*.

Hmm you bring up an interesting point with how we require tests for a drivers licenses, but not guns. I forgot that an firearms card is required, but all that says is who you are and where you live. To get a gun you then need a background check...Which then only looks for criminal activity.

There should be a test...and also need to check that a person doesn't have a history of mental illness too.
Matter of fact should be test on whether or not you can have a kid...but that's a separate issue.

The thing is it's happened a lot more than once so we know that bullets (smallest I've heard of is a .38 which is pretty much the same as a 9mm) do kill people when coming back down. If the people aren't killed they usually get substantial injuries because it is a piece of lead (copper jacketed if not muzzleloaded) coming at you at the force of gravity. It's not an instant kill but the blunt trauma (say to the skull) is usually what kills people.

Here's a wiki on it, apparently the CDC found that every new years eve in Puerto Rico about 25 people are wounded by falling rounds and 2 killed

Well it's seldom proposed that one must have a "parenting license". A drivers license for a car is more of a matter of demonstrating that you know what the signs and signals mean.


With procreation, the notion that you have to pass some test to have a kid might seem logical but like with firearms safety, where would such a proposal come from? Social engineering? Racial control?

As with many topics, we might find ourselves on a path whereby it's better not to have the state try to solve it, because at best they will simply screw it up, and at worse the enforcement powers of the state apparatus will be abused to push an agenda. Sure the people who tell you whether or not you can have a kid today might be good souls basing the criteria on real parenting capability, but later on "the power" could end up in the wrong hands.

Homosexuality for example, is something I never cared to see laws passed against. Not because I try to be some supporter of gay rights, nor do I get the lifestyle - not caring for it in fact - but even if I find that lifestyle to be repulsive on observation, state functionaries having the power to deem what I do with my personal life is even more repulsive. Since I am not into the butt and have a choice to not have to observe such activity, it's a fair deal. But a badged bandit prying into my personal affairs ("gay check"?) is not as easy to simply choose not to consent to.

The same goes for any notion of using laws based on what "someone might do". We have already seen the hypocrisy of starting wars based on what they "might do". (preemtpive wars) passing laws in that mindset can be equally bad. Of course guns are the only thing over which such laws are proposed - and usually by the same politicians who want to tell you how to live, bail out the large banks, start wars, tax you, etc.


Whenever it's up to "somebody somewhere did something so quick, to the pass-new-laws-mobile!", I have to remind people that nothing is safe in that kind of environment. Eventually some noob will get griefed in lowsec and hang himself in the closet, and some politicians looking to win the "soccer-mom vote" will try to include MMOs into the already obtrusive and vague "anti-bullying" laws.