People interested in self defense. The term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon" was made up by the media. An assault rifle is just your typical rifle that your great grandfather would have used for hunting back in the day. It is not what the media and politicians will lead you to believe.
I think what leads people to ask this question is an major misunderstanding that an "assault rifle" is a big scary machine gun. They are not. An AR15 or AK47 are not machine guns that spray bullets with a single trigger pull. (Those are fully automatic weapons that are already heavily restricted). Assault weapons account for, on average, 2% of all firearms used in crimes, with the highest estimate being 13%. [1]
The semi-automatic AR15 or AK47 are actually very effective and safe home defense firearms for a few reasons:
- The round they use is less likely to penetrate through walls compared to a standard handgun round. This has been ballistically tested numerous times but no one likes to mention it when talking about the issue.
- They are easier to shoot more accurately at close range and longer distances.
- They hold more rounds. Why do you need more rounds? Because one shot is unlikely to stop most threats. Shocking I know, this is also something that is not how it seems in the movies. Also unmentioned when talking about self defense is that there may be multiple attackers. It's not so uncommon to have more than one attacker in a home invasion.
It was wikipedia that describes the AK 47 as an assault rifle. I followed a link from the hungerford page wondering what a type 56 was.
Wouldn't you be better off with a semi auto pistol if wanting self defence in a house? Rifle seems a little, well, unwieldy and better suited for range. Clearly I'm not an expert. :)
> People interested in self defense
See that's always been a difference in UK / US gun use and ownership.
If I were to shoot an attacker with even a .22 rimfire target pistol I'd expect to go to prison for a considerable number of years. Somehow we've managed to avoid the use of firearms in self defence aside from the occasional farmer with shotgun. Even then it gets widely reported and discussed.
Even at the height of legal gun ownership using one against a person, or in pursuit of a crime has been relatively rare. For the longest time using a firearm against police (generally unarmed here) carried a very high stigma and until the 60s likelihood of being hanged. It's still newsworthy for the police to get out an armed response unit in many areas.
The only self-defence legislation permits the use of reasonable force, which generally means the bare minimum you can get away with. Legally you can kill someone in self defence, but it's almost unheard of. Woe betide you if you hit them a little too hard or often and badly injure the poor burglar.
We tend to view discussion of home invasions and wanting self-defence weapons as a quaint excess of our transatlantic cousins. We don't keep firearms in the home, there are very few baseball (or even cricket) bats kept by our beds. We don't expect, or prepare for, home invasions. Probably in some of the worst areas it's a little more common, and illegal gun use a little higher.
It's interesting our nations diverged so much given gun ownership was fairly common here in earlier years, and both wars lead to many old service weapons kept in drawers and attics, unlicensed of course.
In many US states there is a requirement to retreat - that its not self-defence if you could have avoided the incident. Sounds like the UK has a requirement like that too?
> How is it good that it is now harder to arrest for possession?
It would be easier to arrest for possession if searches, seizures, and arrests didn't require probable cause, and police could just arrest anyone, anywhere for any reason or none at all -- and search anything anywhere without consent for any reason or none at all, and use any evidence so obtained in prosecution.
Much of the Bill of Rights -- and much of the concept of individual rights against government underlying and preceding it -- is based on the belief that making it easier for the government to arrest and prosecute people even for things that everyone agrees are bad is often less of a benefit than the powers granted to government in order to achieve that are a harm.
So that's at least one school of thought on how this could be good even though it makes it harder to arrest for possession, even if one things that arrests for possession (where actual possession occurs) are a good thing.
Phrased this way makes sense. The parent comment sounded more like "drugs should be legal" than it did about individual rights.
And maybe they should be legal, I'm not sure what would help society more so I don't particularly have a stance either way.
Unfortunately those who think they should be downvoted this question. I guess they'd rather not argue their opinion and just hide any comment that questions their opinion.
Eugenics would help society a ton but it's obviously horrible from a moral standpoint. We don't live in a utilitarian society, drugs being legal should have nothing to do with how much they help society.
It has been proven in multiple studies that police dogs can be manipulated by their handlers, either by triggering them consciously or just by the fact that the dog picks up on the cop's body language.
I'll say it. I do not think that people should be arrested for possession of drugs, and I think that anything which makes it harder to arrest for possession of drugs is a good thing.
Why is this down voted? I don't agree with the opinion he seemingly expresses with his questions but they are legitimate questions from the other side that we can address without suppressing debate.
It wasn't really a legitimate question though. Even if it was murder we were discussing we'd want it to be harder for the police to falsify evidence and force unreasonable searches.
Downvoted for a legitimate question on why this is a good thing... Awesome unbiased community we have here. Seems to me it would of been more helpful to upvote and state why this is a good thing rather than try to brush any common objections under the rug.
I just terminated a ton of CAT5e for security cameras and I can definitely see the margin of error begin high. It sucks to do, I feel like there should be an easier way to terminate them that doesn't involve carefully trying to align the right color combination and holding them steady enough to then align them in that same order with tiny slots on the plug.
Yes, the correct solution is structured cabling with punchdown jacks, punchdown patch panels, and commercially manufactured and certified patch and lobe cords. No one is going to pay commercial electrician rates, even lv, to futz around with a crimper, especially when one little plastic tab getting snapped off means a cable needs to be re terminated.
I have done a lot of punchdown jack connections, and a few crimp connections, and I have to agree that the punchdown connections (into a female jack which receives a patch cord, and the patch cord goes to the device) have been much more deterministic. It is rare when one does not work the first time.
I wasn't using structured cabling, just ordinary Cat5e cable.
But I think for a security camera, as in the parent comment, which may be getting PoE, the tidiest connection would use a crimp-down male RJ45. I would not enjoy being up on a ladder fussing with a crimping tool and 8 stubby wires.
Still better to put a jack (facing down!) into a surface mount box and patch into the camera. When you are working with outdoor gear, put the surface mount box into a waterproof jbox. Even if you are going into gear with a gasket that requires you to crimp an end on a patch cable, it's still better to do it this way. Jack-to-jack lasts so much longer and is so much more reliable, I will almost never allow crimped ends anywhere in my networks. Patch cables are a commodity, horizontal runs are an investment.
I worked on creating a similar service for a few months in regards to helping businesses (SaaS companies specifically) capture testimonials. I ultimately decided not to pursue the idea after having conversations with potential customers. SMS was not going to be a feature in the initial version and we may have been targeting different niches but I would definitely recommend getting it in front of your target audience as soon as possible or just talk to them about it.
I found that most SaaS companies wanted a few really well written and well placed testimonials rather than a constant stream of subpar testimonials and didn't really need a system for that.
It sounds like you may be going more towards local small businesses though and maybe they have a need for it. Happy to discuss any questions further with you if you'd like.
My starting market is definitely local businesses, though I do think there might be hope for online companies too (one idea for subsequent versions would be to have the ability to turn Twitter/FB/forum posts and linkable web comments into testimonials with just a couple of steps, rather than going through the whole copy post->go to your CMS->reformat it stuff. There will also be an embeddable testimonial board.)
I'm pretty far along with the initial version to demo it to them, so I should have it front of them fairly soon. Dealing with sub-par testimonials is something I thought about early - that's part of the reason everything requires approval by default. I'm hoping these businesses will post the great ones, appreciate, but maybe not post the so-so ones, and take seriously and act on the negative ones.
Ultimately, I'd like it to cohere from three things: a central place to aggregate reviews/testimonials from many sources, a customer feedback system, and a "reminder to review elsewhere" (to nudge the marginal reviewer to actually leave that Yelp review) service rather than just a feedback system like TalkBin or Talk To the Manager.
FWIW, virtually every small project post discussed on HN has a variety of people arguing that the name conflicts with some other small project. Maybe projects should be named using UUIDs or something.
Great, we're gonna go from coolname.io to b0593290-370e-4710-8fba-a6b00cde400d.io
Just imagine trying to keep up with the latest javascript frameworks. "Was that b0593290-370e-4710-8fba-a6b00cde400d or b0593290-370e-4710-8fba-a6b00cdd400d?"
Really cool idea... Does anyone have an idea of the technology behind this or how they are doing it? I've been looking for a way to do something similar and need to convert 3D models to PSD files at different angles
Hey, I'm the CTO at PixelSquid...thanks so much for your interest. This has been an absolute labor of love for us so it's great to hear kinds words. Right now, our publishing site is available to only a few artists, but in the near future we will be opening it up and will be rendering out PSDs for users that publish through our site.
I do some work in personal protection inside and outside of the home and there are really quite a few simple things you can do to better protect your home from a break in or home invasion.
First, make sure you have a solid wood or metal door with a deadbolt. Second, reinforce all exterior door frames with door jamb armor, a large metal plate that covers your door jamb and 3 1/2 in screws that secure it into the frame. [1]
There's quite a few other window security films on the market. 3M is probably one of the best. [2]
You'll want to look into securing your glass to the window frame so it doesn't just pop the glass out in one piece. Some windows make that easy to happen and some secure the glass in pretty well. 3M has a few attachment systems that hold the glass in the frame. One easy option is a silicone sealant called Dow Corning 995. It's an incredibly strong silicone that bonds the security film to the window frame. [3]
And finally get a gun and learn how to use it. You can tell me how much you hate guns but when a insane machete-wielding man kicks in your front door, a phone in your hand dialing 911 is not going to stop him in time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bsAMSQ13bY
For me? Not often. But home invasions are not uncommon throughout the world. I like to be prepared for events that may not happen everyday but have a high potential to be deadly if they do happen. Same reason you probably have a fire extinguisher in your house. How often does your house catch fire?
Given machete-bearing lunatics are far less likely than depressed teenagers, perhaps your cost/benefit analysis on being prepared is lacking a few variables.
That's a pretty week study. Results indicated that gun ownership had a weak (odds ratio = 1.36) and unstable relationship with homicidal behavior: http://www.guncite.com/Kleck-Hogan.html
And the CDC disagrees with that assessment. Even as gun ownership is on the rise [1], and more people than ever are carrying concealed firearms, the number of people (raw number, mind you) accidentally killed with firearms each year continues to drop. The accident rate shows an even more marked decline. [2]
There are, according to the CDC, 308 million people in the United States. That’s 308,745,538. Of those 308 million people, only 600 were accidentally killed with a firearm. That’s a 0.000194% chance that you will be accidentally killed with a gun in any given year. According to the National Safety Council, over 12,000 people die every year simply by falling down.
But, our difference in opinions doesn't really matter here so, good luck to you. There are sheep, there are wolves and there are sheep dogs.
We're talking about the organization that was forbidden from spending money on firearms injury research, right?
> That’s 308,745,538. Of those 308 million people, only 600 were accidentally killed with a firearm.
Ah, clever. Take a discussion of homicide/suicide and start presenting stats on accidental deaths as if it were at all relevant.
To return to the actual point, if you have a gun in the house, it's far more likely to be used by your kid to kill themselves as you are to be confronted by a machete wielding lunatic. On a non-anedoctal level, the stats just don't work.
Your second link has nothing to do with accidental deaths, but rather with violent crime. Heck, if violent crime is dropping, that's an argument against the necessity of gun ownership. Did you paste the wrong url?
Also, this:
> There are sheep, there are wolves and there are sheep dogs.
People interested in self defense. The term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon" was made up by the media. An assault rifle is just your typical rifle that your great grandfather would have used for hunting back in the day. It is not what the media and politicians will lead you to believe.
I think what leads people to ask this question is an major misunderstanding that an "assault rifle" is a big scary machine gun. They are not. An AR15 or AK47 are not machine guns that spray bullets with a single trigger pull. (Those are fully automatic weapons that are already heavily restricted). Assault weapons account for, on average, 2% of all firearms used in crimes, with the highest estimate being 13%. [1]
The semi-automatic AR15 or AK47 are actually very effective and safe home defense firearms for a few reasons:
- The round they use is less likely to penetrate through walls compared to a standard handgun round. This has been ballistically tested numerous times but no one likes to mention it when talking about the issue.
- They are easier to shoot more accurately at close range and longer distances.
- They hold more rounds. Why do you need more rounds? Because one shot is unlikely to stop most threats. Shocking I know, this is also something that is not how it seems in the movies. Also unmentioned when talking about self defense is that there may be multiple attackers. It's not so uncommon to have more than one attacker in a home invasion.
[1] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf