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Comment: Re:Flashback (Score 1) 261

by Koualla (#13080834) Attached to: 107 Cameras to Scan Discovery for Damage
ATTN: Citizen of Earth
FROM: ankh.terra.sol
RE: Your posting, saying simply "I wouldn't"

I have just metamoderated a moderation of this post that called it "insightful". Your simple statement that you wouldn't is just that. It gives no reason for your choice, and so I felt unable to allow a moderation of "insightful" for your comment to go unpunished. Forgive me if I get a little verbose, and I know it's really offtopic here, but I've been mostly away from Slashdot for over 2 months and I feel the need to write something.

Perhaps you are no good with a handgun, so you don't feel competent to use one. Certainly an airliner is a challenging environment for defence, and I understand that special ammunition is desirable that wouldn't puncture the aircraft's skin. Perhaps this ammunition has a reduced propellant charge that wouldn't correctly operate the mechanism of a Glock with a standard spring. Perhaps whoever moderated you up knew Citizen of Earth's previous postings, and knew why you took that position.

Maybe you're a blanket pacifist, but we live in a real world where bad people do bad things and it has been found, at least as far back as David Vs Goliath, that being handy with available or improvised weapons is, or at least can be, a survival skill. Also, it's not just the prototypical 'bad guys' and 'criminals' you need to look out for. It's also corrupt regimes. That's one of the reasons why Americans value their right to bear arms. If I was down in Port Arthur with a handgun when (apparently) Martin Bryant 'went postal', the result might have been quite different.

I handled three replica pistols earlier today, and I'm considering getting back into target shooting again, both rifles and pistols this time. I think I'll try IPSC sometime - perhaps with a Beretta model 92x. (Wasn't it an 'S' that Mel used in Lethal Weapon?) I wonder if They'll let me shoot standard gun with a Beretta Neo. A Biathlon rifle would be nice too, I wonder if they'll let me ride from home to the range and back on my motorcycle with the Biathlon rifle slung across my back (if it's in a bag, I think it's just possible that they might :-).

I've been away from shooting for a decade and a half, and no, reading Slashdot didn't cause me to want to acquire concealable weapons. There's no great rush. Things tend to happen in their own time.

I feel the need to explain what my general policy would be in using firearms against criminals and others who would seek to harm me and those I love. I would aim never to intentionally take a fatal shot, consistent with the need to protect myself and other innocents in the vicinity from imminent danger. Obviously if the situation escalates rapidly, a poorly aimed and possibly fatal shot may be the surest way to prevent loss of innocent life or serious injury. An event resulting in the death or serious injury of an adversary would require
some serious review of what happened and why, but in any case I'd like to be able to offer at least first aid assistance to the person(s). IOW, I'd like to be able to shoot 'em up and then immediately patch 'em up, though in some conceivable circumstances this is clearly not going to be feasible. I may be running for my life.

Regards, Koualla.

FWIW, Back in my day, my first computer - a laptop - had 256K of battery-backed SRAM for main memory, a 6MHz 186 CPU, plugin ROM modules, a 16-line character-only mono display, nonstandard serial & parallel ports, a ROM BIOS written in C, and DOS 2.x ... and I liked it. :-)
No floppies in the portable unit, though - we used RAMDISK, so knock n K off the 256K of main memory To get the actual amount available to programs, where n is the size of the RAMDISK.
(Too long for a sig, I know; I'm trying to cut it down).

Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.