I nabbed a plugin to fix my borked LJ Crossposting script... mine was not behaving nicely. So this is mainly a test to see if/how it works.
Test.
Test 2...
Big Test
Now we're testing an edit, and adding in a link to the plugin's home.
Comments (No responses yet)Tragically, there was another school shooting at the beginning of this week. This one was in Finland, and their second in 12 months which left 10 dead, 11 including the shooter. We can expect the cry for more gun control, both domestically, and in Finland, so I pulled out a post I've been saving due to not having time to finish it.
Finland
First I want to address the Finland shooting. Finland is third in the world in terms of gun ownership per capita, behind the US, and Yemen. This is because hunting is huge in Finnish culture, as one person puts it, "the national sport". And yet more people are killed by knives than guns (according to that article). The youth are raised around weapons, they can legally own a firearm at 15 with parental permission, and for handguns they must be a member of a gun club. Yet until 12 months ago, they'd never had a tragedy like this.
The conclusion we should be able to come to, is its not the gun's fault, its the human's. You have a person capable of cold-blooded, calculated murder, and no amount of laws will stop them from carrying out what they want to do. It requires human intervention: Parents who care, friends who realize when someone's hurting inside, kids that are strong enough in their self-image that they can get through school without bullying. As many are so fond of criticizing the War on Terror, its more than just people with guns, its a social problem that requires compassion, and understanding. However, if those fail, you had better be prepared to fight for what you love, because when a person reaches the utter mental darkness these killers were in, there's going to be no reasoning.
Its worth pointing out that in this most recent case the killer had homemade bombs with him, as did the Columbine shooters, if they had no access to guns, they would have still been able to kill.
But that brings us to Gun Control.
Gun Control
Gun Control: At its heart, the idea is fairly basic, to control the guns that are in public circulation so that bad people can't get them. While I know people who would argue against any limitation on weapons, I think most will agree that there are people out there who shouldn't own firearms, just like there are people who shouldn't be able to drive, people who shouldn't be allowed to practice law, and people who shouldn't be allowed to practice medicine. One obvious answer here is felons, if you're convicted of a violent crime, you forfeit your right to bear arms.
Unfortunately, in recent years gun 'control' goes way beyond 'control'. Now people want a gun ban in the name of gun control in some places, such as the District of Columbia (recently overturned), and Britain. Yes, this will keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, unfortunately we have to remember that these guys who shot up their schools were not law-abiding. They committed many acts of cold-blooded murder, and no gun ban would have prevented that. Now, it would have made it harder to get the gun, but as we can see from Britain, it would by no means have stopped them from getting guns. There violence went up once private citizens lost the right to bear handguns. I've heard first hand accounts from friends that if they ever did something wrong, and the bobbies wanted to stop them, they'd simply run, since the worst they had to face is a night stick, and they could out run the cops.
Piracy
Now, I'm going to play to my (intended) audience for a while. You know I'm not just some crazy gun nut, I also fancy myself a (white hat) hacker, and know most of the arguments for and against music|software piracy. What does that have to do with gun control? Lets examine DRM, or "music piracy control". DRM is a system whereby a company can have "absolute" control over their intellectual property, in this case lets say music. If I went to any hacker, and said that Congress passed a law requiring DRM on every digital music download, to prevent piracy, do you think they'd be put out at all? No, they'd laugh, and explain how in 3 minutes or less they'd be able to bypass the DRM (I'll refrain to linking to those news stories... I value my freedom). I know, I know, this is completely unrelated! Or is it?
In both cases we have an arbitrary control system, X, designed to stop the user from doing Y. In the case of gun control, X is "legal ramifications" and Y is "buying guns", and in the case of DRM, X is "DRM", and Y is "copying the music". In both cases it is the honest people that suffer here from a lack of freedom and security. In the case of guns its physical security and the freedom to defend yourself, and in the case of DRM its the lack of freedom to use what you've bought and the security that if your computer dies you can have a backup. So why is it that one of these is a perfectly smart move, and the other will never work?
As a security professional I know that there's no such thing as a secure system, I don't believe that for a computer with limited physical access and a decent firewall. So why would I believe that any country, or even any city, could pull off a complete gun ban, eliminating the ability for criminals to get their hands on them? Now, in the case of my computer, I plan for Bad Things to happen. I keep backups, I make sure there's spare hardware around just in case, and I look at my security logs to make sure. But how do we plan for Bad Things to happen when the gun ban falls through? Should we sit around, and pray the cops come quicker than the 5 minute average? I've had my car trashed before, had two friends of the criminal take their time, and walk away right past the cops who took 10 minutes to get to my call. Do I have faith that they'll be that much quicker when I call and say someone's held me up at gun point? Or that Someone's broken in and has a gun? Of course not! I'm not saying citizens should take the law into their own hands, just be given a chance to defend themselves until the cops can show up.
Deal with the Problem
For the sake of the argument, I'll say we have a completely 100% secure gun ban in effect in America. This won't stop violence, as Britain has shown us, there must be another cause. In the end, crime is a human (not social, humans created society, therefore its a human problem at its root) problem, and will be around as long as humanity is. What we, as a society and a race, need to do is recognize those human problems, and combat them, not the weapons used. When guns are banned, knives will be used. When knives are banned, shanks will be made (look at prison), when all sharp objects are eliminated from our society, ropes will be used to strangle (again, look at prison). There's no end to violence, the best we can hope to do is recognize what causes humans to become killers, and fix it.
The most obvious period, is during childhood. There's a recurring pattern of these school shootings where the kids doing the shooting were "outcasts" in their school, or were ridiculed, or bullied. Those are by no means reasons for murder, not even for retaliation! But, those killers should stand out to school counselors as people who need extra concern (not pills, actual human care), and stand out to the students as people who need their compassion. We're a society who wants to do away with moral and personal responsibility, when what we should be doing is recognizing that a successful society will care for each other.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I feel that the true control needed in our society, is that of controlling ourselves. Guns are regulated enough, we need to turn ourselves now to the people next to us in society, that man on the bus who's always looking sad, that driver who just cut you off, the quiet kid in your class that you all think is just a bit odd. Take it upon yourself to say hi, or not flick off the driver, or ask him to sit with you at lunch. Not because this may prevent a shooting, or a suicide, or an incident of road rage, just because they're humans too, and we all know the dark places a human mind can go to when depressed. I guarantee you, if we spent as much time and focus on helping those next to us in society (I don't mean hand outs, socialized health care, or any of that, I mean honest to goodness one citizen helping another kindness) then violence will go down in a way we'll never know through straight gun control.
As I mentioned before, I'm putting together an AR-15, and my next few posts will be the story of how its been put together. I'm also using this project to test out Picasa, so I'll use that to post my images (just as soon as it finishes scanning a few of my automated rip folders, such as icanhascheezburger, forgot I had all them!)
Before I begin, I'd like to link to a schematic which can be found here. This way when I mention random parts you can find them and play along!
This first post is about the lower assembly, which is the buttstock, lower receiver (has the hammer, trigger, magazine well, etc). At this point I'd like to note I'm using a great book by Walt Kuleck and Clint McKee, The AR-15 Complete Assembly Guide, its got nice pictures and very very good detail on how you'll screw stuff up if you don't listen. Well worth the $17!
Parts
Lower Receiver
I bought a DPMS stripped lower receiver from a local gun enthusiast, which cost $158.73 after taxes, cable lock fee, etc. On the AR, this stripped lower receiver, meaning it is just the frame, no trigger, hammer, nothing on it, counts on its own as an assault rifle, because it has the serial number on it. So I walked out of there with a piece of metal in a locked dry box with a cable lock through the mag well, to make it 'safe' to transport.
Lower Receiver Bits
I'm not too particular about my trigger yet, so I also picked up a DPMS Lower Receiver Parts Kit for $56.99 (Don't buy anything direct from DPMS by the way, you can always find it cheaper). Some may ask why I didn't just buy a completed lower receiver, but I wanted to understand how everything works, and say I built every inch of this gun.
Buttstock
All that was left was the stock, and I snagged a Command Arms 6-position stock assembly, for $92.99. Its a very nice stock, and am quite happy with the sturdiness of it, as well as the function. It has rails on the right side, and a 4 battery storage area on the left side (can be swapped for more rails) which is more functionality than I'll need for a while. Went on in about 5 minutes, including forgetting to put a detent in, and having to redo it.
Assembly
The assembly was easier than I expected in terms of simplicity (piece X goes in slot Y), but harder in terms of executing it (piece X really does not want to go into slot Y, and X's spring is fighting me too). It took about two hours, including redoing a few steps to make sure it was right, flinging detents all over the room as I learned why they say to do something one way, and searching my house for various tools I thought I already had.
The trigger guard's been the hardest part so far, since its roll pin just did not want to go in, and required a "motivator". After that went in, I put in the magazine catch, so I could mount the gun on a handy little bench I have, and then moved on to the trigger and disconnecter. Somewhere in there the bolt catch went in, and that's where I stopped last night. This morning I got up and put in the hammer, safety, pistol grip, and buttstock. It was very straight forward, but like I said above, there are a few places where you really should get a tool to do the job for ya, like the front take-down pin. Otherwise you're gonna shoot the spring all over the room, and don't even think about finding the darn detent afterwards!
So now I've gotta go order all the upper parts, a receiver, bolt/bolt carrier, barrel, and some hand guards. I'll be getting a scope eventually, but may pick up flip up sights due to cost for this first build, not sure. I have pictures of the whole process, if you know how to get a hold of me in real life I'll pass on the URL.
Comments (No responses yet)Its been a long time since I've written anything, I've kept busy at work and at play. On the work side I'm going to look into what it will take for me to actually run Three Planets as a real company, mainly for tax purposes and my own sanity. On the play side, there's been a LOT more developments.
I just picked up a motorcycle about two months back since one thing I love to do while stuck on some code is drive. Naturally I figured that riding would be an even better escape. It turns out it is, but I'm concentrating too much on the riding to be able to head-code. The upside is, this is probably the most fun activity I've ever found. So, meet Kari:
I realized on Sunday that I've put 1000 miles on her in the month and the week since I got my license, not too shabby considering I probably spent on the low side of $100 of gas for that entire time! Since she's an older bike, I'm doing as much of the maintenance as I can, so that I'll only need a mechanic for major operations. More on that later.
I also (very, very recently) decided to get into Gun smithing. To that end, I'm going to be making an AR-15 over the next month(s), and keeping track of my progress here.
So, what do the two new activities have in common? Both of them stem at least partially from an interest to be reliant upon only myself for work. This comes from the programming I do, where I have chided others for not thinking outside of the box, and really doing anything they want with the code. It finally dawned on me that that goes in all walks of life, and you can even approach it in the same way.
Lets take the Gun smithing, for example. I'm approaching this from a design perspective first. I laid out what I want to use the gun for, then set my constraints (money), and planned out the parts. This is exactly the same method I take for programming: First I'll plan out how I want it to look/act, figure out what corners I have to cut to keep it within my memory/CPU/bandwidth bounds, then start with the functions.
In this case I decided I want something for (eventually) match target shooting, for medium ranges (100-600 yards). My constraints were that I wanted to build it all myself, short of fabricating the parts, and that i didn't want to spend more than $700 on the total cost. So far I've decided on the following:
It should be a really fun project, I look forward to learning a new machine and how it all works. This will also mean that from now on my firearms will be like my computers, completely unique, and I'll have an intimate working knowledge of each and every part.
So why now? Why am I trying to learn all this new stuff once I get out of college, and not while I was in it? The answer here stems from some conversations I've had about why I enjoy firearms, and thoughts I've had after them. The short answer is: "I'd rather learn how to shoot now, when I don't need to, than later when I need to, but don't know how." I don't think carrying rifles in public is necessary, though I am a vocal defender of the 2nd amendment, however I do think it is very short-sighted to assume you'll never need to use a firearm, and therefor write them off. Didn't you learn how to change a tire, even though you may never need to, perform CPR in gym class, or how to balance an equation in science (or for the scientist, write in plain English, or not blow up the world)? Sure, all of those will be needed a whole lot more than shooting, but other than CPR shooting might be the most important to know if any of those situations came up.
Now, I considered myself set once I learned safety, and how to aim properly. But lately I've been thinking that its really short-sighted of me to assume the rifle will work perfectly all the time. More importantly, I don't know when its not working at 100%, because I don't understand it all. Just like the sorority girls whose computers I'd clean up at the end of the school year, I might not realize all the junk that is building up inside my gun. So, I've decided that I need to know at least basic gun smithing, just in case. Knowing this will keep me, and those around me when I shoot, a whole lot safer in the long run, plus save me money!
The motorcycle is the same story. I have no idea what's going on, and if you read up on an inline-4 engine, there's really no excuse for that. So again, I'm teaching myself basic mechanics in order to keep my machines running as smoothly and safely as possible.
And if you think about it, these skills of checking the usual fail points, oiling the squeaky parts, and throwing your own custom parts in, are the same across many fields, not just mechanics, gun smithing, and programming. So get out there, and get yourself head first into a new field today!
Comments (One response so far)
