Excellent question, and that could be a whole thread in itself. Short version, it was a long slippery slope away from the original ideals of the founders, one pragmatic step at a time, ala’ Animal Farm.
Won’t it be instantly obvious if the gun went off inside the package?
- Packing tape would be intact when the first investigators arrive
- Expanding gas possibly bulged the whole box, possibly creating telltale rips in the cardboard
- Gun still has tape, etc on it indicating that it was left in it’s box and not disturbed
So regardless of why it went off, it seems like the investigators could very trivially determine where the weapon discharged. Any articles on it?
Lumpy, if you’re not going to answer, I’ll finish with this: Arming the populace today is bordering on insane.
Not that I have seen. You are exactly right that the packaging materials would be blown apart. Revolvers vent firing gas not only from the muzzle but also from the cylinder/barrel gap. The packaging would be pretty well shredded. I am curious where the bullet landed. Floor? Ceiling? Wall? It was certainly lucky that a gun that discharged itself when this employee “handled” the box ust happened not to be aimed at the handler or one of his fellow postal employees.
Huh? Oh, right:
Because semi*-random violence is regrettable, but being told to shut up and obey by a bully with a badge rankles.
*I can be reasonably confident I will NOT be shot because of gang affiliations, a drug deal gone bad, a stranger at a party where half the people are high on meth, or a chronically abusive spouse
I’m not sure I’d consider that lucky, though tastes differ, of course. The odds that a straight line drawn through the barrel of the randomly-positioned gun would be crossed by a person would need the room to be fairly full of people before odds were good that someone would be hit by it. It doesn’t seem all that lucky that no-one was hit; it seems much more likely than not for no injuries.
Where do you see *that *in the Constitution? :dubious:
The preamble?
Under “insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense”? Or somewhere else?
Nope, gonna have to quote the part about ensuring the right of rebellion. You already know what it says about fighting it.
Well they did tack on ten amendments called The Bill of Rights, and… 
The gun would not necessarily be randomly positioned. People grab boxes by the sides. The gun would then most likely be pointing straight up or down, straight toward the handler or straight away from him, or to the left/ right of the handler. That is a 50% chance that the gun is pointing at the handler’s chest or one of his hands. In any orientation other than straight up or down it will be fired parallel with the floor at torso height. So, luck. Either that or we are not getting an accurate dscription of what really happened.
That is ridiculous. A package carrying a handgun is not that big. They could grab it in any unpredictable orientation.
I can’t believe you’re challenging Scumpup on this. He clearly has an impeccable grasp of the physics of this. THE END!
A Ruger Blackhawk is not a small handgun. It will require a shipping box of about shoebox size or so, depending on barrel length. The factory box, which arrived inside a larger shipping box, is 7 x 12 x 2.5 inches and has no excess space. Any shipping container for the gun will have to be at least that size. As I pick this one up in all the various ways I might really pick up a box this size. I end up with the following results:
- If I grab it by either long side with one of the short sides towards me, I have a good chance the muzzle is pointing at some part of me.
- If I grab it by one of the short sides, I have a 50% chance the muzzle is pointing at that hand.
You and Hentor go on ahead and keep proudly braying your ignorance to the world though. It pleases me to watch you damage your own side. Neither of you knows a thing about this model of gun, or guns generally, and you refuse to consider any facts that don’t fit the narrative you want. You are both the very models of close-minded ignoramouses. Keep it up. It is people like you who make it easy to keep gun laws from being passed. You don’t understand what you want to regulate, make nonsensical proposals, and throw tantrums when your egregious ignorance is pointed out. Please never change. You are too valuable to us.
So, not the Preamble after all. Are you telling us your assertion of purported fact is based solely on what you wish the second amendment meant, the rest of the Constitution and common sense itself notwithstanding?
The Constitution is pretty short. You can read the whole thing in literally a matter of minutes. I recommend it.
I also recommend not making shit up that is so easily checked.
Maybe that seems big to a hobbit, but not to an adult human. If that was being processed at a postal distribution center, it could be handled in any number of orientations, not just your artificially limited handling. Sorry.
Fucking classic! Some woman in Iowa mailed a loaded gun. Of course she must have used packaging like that in which the gun was originally shipped!
Scumpup, how was the gun packaged? What was included with it? What condition was it in? How old was it?
Answer the questions you chickenshit pussy! (The point being that you cannot speculate wildly based on next to no actual knowledge of the specific case, and then declare THE END!) You absolute fucking moron. Clearly you have an agenda that you want this to fit into, so you’re willing to look like the second coming of Starving for paper towel tubes to serve that agenda.
And thus we come full circle: you insist that “of course the Second Amendment means only that states can raise state armies! It couldn’t mean any yahoo can have a gun, isn’t it obvious?!?!?”. And when someone tries to point out “Well, no it’s not obvious, in fact there’s ample reason to suppose it refers to an individual right-” you start shouting them down:
“Several prominent framers of the Constitution mention in writing-”
“WELL-REGULATED!!!”
“Yes, but at the time that phrase-”
“WELL-REGULATED!!!”
“Look, that interpretation is contradicted by-”
“WELL-REGULATED!!!”
“Why would the framers, when in every other-”
“WELL-REGULATED!!!”
(etc.)
I suppose that when you read Luke 18:16 of the King James Bible, “Suffer the little children to come unto me”, you take it to mean that we’re supposed to use corporal punishment to raise our children to be good Christians. :dubious:
If it was just that you thought that the Enlightenment philosophy of the leading figures of the American Revolution was wrong, that would be one thing; but apparently you simply can’t wrap your head around the idea of freedom including freedom of arms. Your essentially Hobbesian view of human society rejects it as a self-evident absurdity, that no intelligent person could for a moment believe. Well, that is what the framers believed by all accounts. They rejected the millennia-old ideas that thought, and speech, and assembly must be restricted for the good of society; and they included possession of weapons along with those. They dared to suppose that there was a third alternative besides the jungle and the iron fist. That people could be trusted with freedom. Something that I’m not sure you do.
A case for firearms in your home: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/146566-A-Case-for-Firearms-in-Your-Home
Ah, now it’s clear. Guns mean “respect” to you, like they do to street punks. You’re starting to sound kinda freaky. Instead of training cops properly, you’d rather force “respect” out of them with a gun.
If you’ve ever been bullied by the police, did you file a complaint, or did you just wish you had a gun? Even if you had one, what would you do with it, pull it on a policeman?
Fun anecdote: When Timothy McVeigh was pulled over for driving an unlicensed car, the officer patting him down felt a gun through his jacket. McVeigh said, “I should warn you, that gun is loaded.” The officer, standing behind McVeigh with his weapon pointed at him, replied, “So’s mine.” You might learn a lesson from that (and believe me, it isn’t how to flee a crime scene without getting stopped).
Lucky you, so far. While you’re not getting shot—so far—hundreds of others are per week. If those lives don’t matter to you, feel free to check out of civilization.
You left out schools, movie theaters, malls, the workplace, etc., etc. Gun violence isn’t confined to the criminal element. If it was, there probably wouldn’t be much of an anti-gun movement.