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[martinuzz]

I guess that's one way to work out

[Lord Shonus]

Today i stood in the sun for aboit 8 hours in a shooting stand in between the biggest sugar cane planation ive ever seen and nowhere in particular (tm), shooting 12 gauge 00 shots and slugs.

Today was a good day.

Now can someone pls retrieve my arms from the floor?

Oof. If you're not a regular shooter that must have worn you way out. 12 gauge slugs are no joke.


On a semi-related note, I learned today that, if you're willing to put the time into it, you can buy a bundle of parts and put together an AR-15 (a firearm that generally retails for $1000-$5000) for around $400-$500. That's one hell of a markup.

[EnigmaticHat]

I remember you saying in another thread that you can only buy AR-15s made before a certain time.   So how are you allowed to assemble one?  (genuine question)

[Lord Shonus]

I remember you saying in another thread that you can only buy AR-15s made before a certain time.   So how are you allowed to assemble one?  (genuine question)

AR-15s are semi-automatic (one bullet per pull of the trigger) and perfectly legal except in certain states. What you cannot buy is M-16s, which are fully-automatic (one pull of the trigger gives you many bullets) and thus illegal. The M-16 (and the newer M4 carbine) is a military version of the ARmalite-15 rifle.

[AzyWng]

Just a (tangentially/vaguely) related WTF, but I really don't understand what's so bad about the M16 - I've heard that it performed so awfully in Vietnam that the Viet Cong refused to use them as weapons even when they had the opportunity. Meanwhile the AK47 (and its derivatives/variants) are lauded for reliability and durability.

Is any of this stuff this actually true? Or is it just lethal weapon elitism?

[Lord Shonus]

Mostly nonsense. A lot of higher-ranking US military officials resented the notion that the .30-06 (or the replacement, 7.62x51 NATO) was too much gun for the modern battlefield and didn't want to switch to the weaker round (5.56x45) the new M16 fired, preferring the M14. This led to every little (and not-so-little, there were some real problems to iron out) flaw in the weapon being blown way out of proportion.

[NullForceOmega]

The original M16 was a troubled weapon, it had a number of fairly serious issues when first adopted.  The modern counterparts are much improved, but the disappointment is fairly entrenched in the U.S. military culture.

[EnigmaticHat]

Just a (tangentially/vaguely) related WTF, but I really don't understand what's so bad about the M16 - I've heard that it performed so awfully in Vietnam that the Viet Cong refused to use them as weapons even when they had the opportunity. Meanwhile the AK47 (and its derivatives/variants) are lauded for reliability and durability.

Is any of this stuff this actually true? Or is it just lethal weapon elitism?

The AK47 is loved because anyone can use it with little training.  You can drop it in the sand, I think even in mud, pick it up, and it'll still fire.  That's not true of the M16, it requires much more maintenance and care.  They also have different mindsets, the M16 is lighter and fires a smaller bullet that moves faster.  I don't know which one is better at punching through kevlar, doesn't really matter since neither side in Vietnam wore armor designed to stop bullets.  My guess is that if you handed the average conscript or insurgent an M16 with no explanation they'd think it was a useless piece of crap.  I remember hearing an Afghanistan War vet talking about how a captured enemy combatant didn't understand why our soldiers never got hit... turns out no one told him and his buddies what zeroing a gun is.  That's the kind of mindset you're looking at here, someone who is trained little or not at all.

That being said, the big reason an M16 would be a bad idea for the Vietcong is the same reason we don't hand out captured AK47s to our soldiers to save money: its a huge friendly fire risk.  If you're in some jungle at night with 5 feet of visibility, do you really want to be firing a gun that looks and sounds like the enemy's gun?

[Flying Dice]

Just a (tangentially/vaguely) related WTF, but I really don't understand what's so bad about the M16 - I've heard that it performed so awfully in Vietnam that the Viet Cong refused to use them as weapons even when they had the opportunity. Meanwhile the AK47 (and its derivatives/variants) are lauded for reliability and durability.

Is any of this stuff this actually true? Or is it just lethal weapon elitism?

A lot of it was true, especially the stuff about frequent failure-to-extract jams and dubious lethality. A lot of folks blame the problems (somewhat fairly) on bad manufacturing and logistical decisions, but it still had the end result of the rifle being an unreliable piece of shit for a lot of its early years.

The AK-47 and the myriad clones and descendants thereof deserve their reputation. All other things aside, the fact that AK variants are the weapon of choice for pretty much everyone who can't set up their own R&D and manufacturing lines speaks volumes. Cheap, reliable, sturdy. Plenty of myths, of course, but you find that in every corner of human experience.

[milo christiansen]

Modern AK variants are every bit as good as the modern M16 variants. Well, provided they are manufactured to the same standards anyway.

Most AK style rifles nowadays use 5.45x39 ammo, so quite similar to what the M16 used (and still uses). The AN94 actually has some really cool features that no US rifle has, such as a hyper-burst fire. AK47s were obsolete over 40 years ago.

[Akura]

Spoiler: *sigh* (click to show/hide)

...And the sad part is, it took me more than one try to write that.

[Frumple]

Ahaha, you don't know the meaning of shit. That's only marginally worse than the best I can manage by hand, never mind using a stylus.

It's actually reached the point I'm not even trying to make my signature legible anymore. I've stopped trying to even make letters. It's just a line of loopy scribbles with some bits and bobs on it to fool people into thinking I'm trying to put a t or i or something down.

[AzyWng]

I don't understand.

My handwriting is pretty bad, but I can at least make a signature that looks vaguely like my name.

Then again, all of my handwriting is in cursive, and saying that cursive handwriting can be difficult to read would probably qualify as some form of tautology or redundancy.

I'm also pretty young and grew up with electronics all around me, complete with keyboards and not drawing tablets.

My own WTF:

The creator was able to inform me of a (somewhat worrying) movement that I hadn't previously heard of, while still making an entertaining and interesting comic at the same time.

Corey Mohler kicks a lot of ass for someone who doesn't fight people for a living. Then again, given that there are many different kinds of fighting, maybe he/she(?) does fight daily.

The content of the comic (in particular the "Didn't get the joke?" section) may create the sort of discussion not entirely suited for the happy thread, so I've put it here.

[Eric Blank]

Ahaha, you don't know the meaning of shit. That's only marginally worse than the best I can manage by hand, never mind using a stylus.

It's actually reached the point I'm not even trying to make my signature legible anymore. I've stopped trying to even make letters. It's just a line of loopy scribbles with some bits and bobs on it to fool people into thinking I'm trying to put a t or i or something down.

A lot of our customers like to use singular scribbles for signatures on credit purchases. Some even go so far as to only use a straight line. Management insists this doesnt qualify as a signature and we have to demand more from them, but customers sometimes go apeshit if you say you need something more than a line. So the battle to not get ousted by management for not getting a good enough signature and not getting ousted by management for customer complaints for asking for a better signature goes on.

So fucking glad I no longer have to operate the cash registers.

[Greiger]

Heh I guess I'm lucky.  Our credit card machines will actively reject a signature that's just a simple straight line.  I don't know the actual requirements in the coding but I get more than a few people who stare blankly at me for a few moments when I tell them it still wants a signature, before they realize that the machine is telling them to try again, this time with feeling.