playing with fire

[Cacatua_Galerita]

Premixing Oxy-Acetylene made me think of this story from NZ:

https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2018-15.html

The original NZ Herald report is more sombre reading.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I was explosives and weapons in the military, I fully understand the urge to play. To throw off the shackles of common sense, professionalism, and safety and go out and blow some shit up. Live Fast! Play Hard! And leave a smoking hole. I used to wear a T-Shirt on the flight line that said

Trust me, I'm Weapons. If I suddenly start to run, try to keep up

My dogs hate the Fourth of July, they know their ears are going to be ringing for weeks.

This guy seems to be having some fun with his machine guns. I'm surprised that he actually owns several of the them; I thought it was very difficult to own fully-automatic weapons in the United States.

They wear ear protection at the gun range, but I don't think ear plugs are used in combat. A battlefield must be a very noisy place to be, among other downsides.

 

[Duleigh]

This guy seems to be having some fun with his machine guns. I'm surprised that he actually owns several of the them; I thought it was very difficult to own fully-automatic weapons in the United States.

They wear ear protection at the gun range, but I don't think ear plugs are used in combat. A battlefield must be a very noisy place to be, among other downsides.

Every pop of those guns cost about $2.00! I wonder how much those tracer rounds cost

Not counting the cost of the minivan it cost over $2400 to shoot that scene! And NONE of them had proper ear protection!!!

 

[MediocreAuthor]

This guy seems to be having some fun with his machine guns. I'm surprised that he actually owns several of the them; I thought it was very difficult to own fully-automatic weapons in the United States.

They wear ear protection at the gun range, but I don't think ear plugs are used in combat. A battlefield must be a very noisy place to be, among other downsides.

He's probably a licensed dealer. Once you get your dealer's license, it's easy to get any sort of NFA restricted items

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I don't think ear plugs are used in combat. A battlefield must be a very noisy place to be, among other downsides.

Secondhand: hearing loss and tinnitus are extremely common. Ear plugs are issued but often not used or not used correctly, whether by accident or because people are worried about missing something they need to hear. Also, sometimes, they're just defective. There was a class-action suit about that recently.

Fun story: Mary Roach in her book Grunt talks about this, including a quote by some super hard core special operations type who's quite happy with his hearing aids.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Secondhand: hearing loss and tinnitus are extremely common. Ear plugs are issued but often not used or not used correctly, whether by accident or because people are worried about missing something they need to hear. Also, sometimes, they're just defective. There was a class-action suit about that recently.

Fun story: Mary Roach in her book Grunt talks about this, including a quote by some super hard core special operations type who's quite happy with his hearing aids.

Grunt looks like an interesting book I should read. The older I get, the more horrifying war seems. When I was a kid decades ago, I didn't realize how much war movies pulled their punches about what really happens in battles. Paths of Glory did a pretty good job I'd say, even though Kubrick (and rightly so, I think) avoided going too far and over-dramatizing it.

https://maryroach.net/grunt.html

 

[Duleigh]

I required my troops to wear double earing protection just working on airplanes that weren't running. The little inner ear plugs (the tyle that were NOT recalled) and "mouse ears" we all walked away with some form of tinnitus but it's mild compared to what these guys are going to be putting up with in a few years. The human ear was designed to hear quiet things, not explosions, jet engines, or explosions delivered by jet engines.

 

[gunhilltrain]

He's probably a licensed dealer. Once you get your dealer's license, it's easy to get any sort of NFA restricted items

That does look like his shop in the opening scene. I assume though that he can only take them to the gun range and back. Also, even if he's a dealer, then who does he sell machine guns to? Or is it just his private collection?

 

[gunhilltrain]

I required my troops to wear double earing protection just working on airplanes that weren't running. The little inner ear plugs (the tyle that were NOT recalled) and "mouse ears" we all walked away with some form of tinnitus but it's mild compared to what these guys are going to be putting up with in a few years. The human ear was designed to hear quiet things, not explosions, jet engines, or explosions delivered by jet engines.

That makes me wonder if, since the invention of gunpowder, virtually all combat veterans have suffered some degree of hearing loss.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

That does look like his shop in the opening scene. I assume though that he can only take them to the gun range and back. Also, even if he's a dealer, then who does he sell machine guns to? Or is it just his private collection?

Ugh... it's a whole thing.

NFA items require a tax stamp, and anyone who is willing to register can own one. That does include machine guns, explosives, and destructive devices.

However NFA items have to be registered. If they are not properly registered, they cannot be owned by anyone other than dealers, who are exempt (the idea is, they can own them in order to test their quality and see if they would be willing to sell NFA registered versions of the same items)

Basically, dealers are allowed to own and exchange "dealer sample items" that the general public cannot own.

(And I think dealers can also allow others to shoot their guns, for fun or profit [although I'm not sure about that last part])

 

[Duleigh]

My old boss out in Colorado has 3 Thompson sub machine guns, he had to jump through a lot of hoops to legally own them and he has a lot of fun on his big chunk of land. He's not a dealer, just a nut like me.

 

[yowser]

I take it 'NFA' is not the National Flute Association?

 

[Duleigh]

It = No Fun Allowed

 

[MrPixel]

You guys were talking about personal experiences with firearms yesterday, and I thought I didn't have anything to contribute. And then I recalled an event from my teen years.

Dad wasn't real serious about guns, but had a bolt-action .22 and an Army surplus .45. Every once in a great while he'd take us out into the desert (we were surrounded by it) and plink at cans or something. Though we tried, we kids weren't strong enough to handle the .45's recoil, and it was an awkward weapon in the first place.

The .22, however, for as primitive as it was, was actually comfortable to shoot. He had rigged a cardboard box with a target this time out, so it was fun to test our "proficiency". My turn came and we changed to a fresh target; I fired one, checked the target (~75 yards away), and complained to Dad that the sight was off. Of course it wasn't, according to him (whadda you know, kid?).

I said something like, "Lemme show you. I'm going to put one 1" to the right, and another 1" to the left." "Show me," I think he said.

Funny thing, I did exactly what I said I would. We never went shooting again.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I learned to shoot at a very young age by using my older brother's single-shot .22 rifle. We kept that in the dining room beside the window looking out to the back yard and the garbage pile about 75 feet away from the house. If we saw anything moving on that garbage, any of us kids could open the dining room window and shoot it (rats). We became rather good marksmen by shooting those rats.

When my father threw out an old TV on that pile, he placed the picture tube beside the cabinet which was to be burned. I was about eleven years old, when I set that old picture tube on its side with the front of the tube facing the house and laid on the ground about 50 feet away with the rifle to shoot straight at that picture tube front.

Did you know that those old TV tubes had a screen made of two-inch thick glass? Well, at that time, I didn't know that.

When I shot that TV picture tube screen, I heard the plink as the bullet hit the dirt about three feet to my right.

Today, I'm still amazed that I survived some of the adventures of my youth.

 

[gunhilltrain]

My old boss out in Colorado has 3 Thompson sub machine guns, he had to jump through a lot of hoops to legally own them and he has a lot of fun on his big chunk of land. He's not a dealer, just a nut like me.

Having sub-machine guns in rural Colorado is one thing. I'm not so sure about big cities. If I'm walking along a street in a New York, what happens if I come up behind some middle-aged lady and accidentally startle her? (That has happened to me.) If she's packing a weapon, I could be blown away. "I"m sorry officer, I thought he was a menace."

I know, an armed society is a a polite society. Yet, in the scenario above, it would be RIP GunHillTrain.

 

[MrPixel]

I heard the plink as the bullet hit the dirt about three feet to my right.

Yikes! Yeah, the glass is thick on those old CRTs... and have a high lead content, and therefore require special handling to recycle.

Problem with CRTs is they emit X-rays, especially color tubes because of the very high voltages within, so the shielding was a necessity.