Monday, December 17, 2012

Tannerite


The police department logged more than 50 gunfire complaints this year through July, double the number for all of 2011, records show. Some of the complaints raised another issue. Gun enthusiasts here, as elsewhere in the country, have taken to loading their targets with an explosive called Tannerite, which detonates when bullets strike it, sending shock waves afield. A mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, Tannerite is legal in Connecticut, but safety concerns led Maryland this year to ban it.
Tannerite. Youtube is full of videos of idiots being anything but responsible with this stuff. 

6 comments:

Evil Brad said...

You're really on a roll, aren't you Boris?
Like Rumsfeld said just after 9/11, "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Boris said...

Here's my deal, Brad: There are seven billion people living in the world today at a state of technological complexity and impact on each other and the planet that has never been seen in our history. A hundred years ago we could barely fly, now we've sent craft to the very edge of our solar-system and have seen through telescopes the oldest parts of the universe. Our activity is such that we are altering the very climate that sustains us. We have created weapons of such power that we can destroy ourselves and most life on the planet. Even today's small-arms, as I discuss, are items that have never existed. When they first appeared, used in war, the cut-down massed infantry in the tens of thousands. The horse, the calvary charge, the afternoon battle on a green field were history. To the people of the time, that was a horror unseen before. But we normalised it, and kicked it all the way up to nuclear without ever questioning the wisdom of it enough to stop it. If we don't stop it, the day will come perhaps in our lifetime that the state system that keeps these weapons and their potential largely in check will fail: We've already seen what happens in places with widely available weapons and no government or social order. I don't want to see that, now or in the future. The tools that allow a man to walk into an elementary school and shoot children should be banned. These are the same tools that other men use in places like Afghanistan to control people by fear and intimidation. Basically, I am approaching this from a place goes far beyond Newtown or some bullshit about law-abiding gun owners, Canada vs the US. We get a peaceful, safe, world when we destroy the things that make it dangerous. I haven't got time anymore to engage in debates about laws and ownership of firearms becuase it's bullshit. IF you're not arguing for the severe restriction of firearms, you're OK with other people's children dying. It is a zero-sum game.

Evil Brad said...

Actually, I am very much in favour of restrictive laws regarding firearms. Roughly what we have in Canada right now.
You are not talking to a second-amendment conservative here.
The sooner the US can adopt something similar, the better. That is something that actually would save lives.
And I do indeed argue for such restrictions. Just not with you.
You seem to be more interested in waging some sort of culture war.

Boris said...

Culture war? Please define.

lungta said...

i'll jump in
i don't see the actions of this distressed young man acting against perceived wrongs
as any different from the actions he has watched his government display in his short adult life
america bombed iraq to get arabs remember?
m allbright said 100,000 child deaths were acceptable in support of the bush imaginary wars
obama has drone killed 137 children outside of war zones
disarm the 10,000 nuclear warheads
dissolve the 1000 overseas military bases
if guns are wrong
then they are all wrong
start from the top down or
your people learn "acceptable" by example
whether it is respect for children
or guns

Silverfox said...

The American public has more guns and ammunition in their private hands than all of this world's militaries and standing armies put together, including their own.

If you add all the privately owned guns outside of the US to that military total you're still going to be measuring a few tens of millions planet-wide against at least two hundred million of them simply inside the US.

Unless you are as deranged as they are, such a fact can only indicate an extremely sick and extraordinarily fearfull society.

One that is in fact really far more afraid of itself and its own members than anything else or any other problems it might have.

You'd also have to be an idiot to not recognise just how big and profitable, (in addition to unusual and abnormal), that entire business of guns and the private ownership of them in the US actually is, or the equally inordinate amounts of money that are spent in any number of ways to present and promote that condition as somehow being normal, acceptable, and even necessary.

Well it isn't anywhere else nor has it forced any other countries to lock-up and imprison anywhere near as many of their people for violent and criminal behavior.

Twice as may per capita as Russia which is number two in that department and about eight times what the world's average is.