Dog Soldier

What you are really looking at is overall weapons laws.

For instance, with my Arkansas Concealed Handgun Carry License I am authorized by the State to carry any legal handgun on my person as long as it is concealed. Using it of course comes under other laws and statutes

What I cannot carry are a wide assortment of "less lethal" impact weapons. Most "combat knives" are right out and all of those are good for felony time.

Some ambiguity in carry laws as well as customs can make for interesting game twists as well. On one side of a line open carry of handguns with long guns mounted openly in vehicle racks won't raise an eyebrow. Head north over the state line into the border city there and you'll have C-SWAT and armed helicopters on you like flies on feces.

And the players should know that

Why aren't carriers licensed?

 

What is even the point of licensing individual weapons?

 

If you are going with a system something like automobile registration you still need to have operator permits in addition of proof of insurance, ownership, license of the vehicle and an operators license.

 

That's entirely too cumbersome and only exists in the real world because such things are a nice source of tax revenue.

And in a dystopian future, Big Brother won't want tax revenue?

 

Edgerunners are, nearly by definition, illegal, and, very often, well armed. Strong gun control can be a perfect complication for them.

This raises the question, is government in an area strong or weak? If it's a "corp" area why would they even allow anyone other than security have weapons at all? Recall that the legendary "Shootout at the OK Corral" was caused by the gun control laws of Tombstone AZ at the time. The Earp brothers and their allies and deputies were attempting to disarm "the Cowboys" while they were in town.

I take quite a simplistic and simple approach to this actually.

 

Guns proliferate 2020. They're everywhere and like the wild west of the 1880s, almost everyone's armed.

 

You can buy any firearm, keep and use it unlicensed.

 

Unlicensed firearms are not easily traceable.

However, the downside is that any police or government security agent can confiscate such weapons without compensation. Indeed, streetcops often have a good sideline in selling on confiscated weapons.

 

Also, the use of an unlicensed weapon in fatal shootings is likely to be used as a mitigating factor in any criminal prosecutions.

 

Alternately, a user can license any weapon they have. The weapon's details, serial number and ballistic signature is registered in a government database (and therefore accessible to any half decent netrunner). This makes the weapon and its ammunition easily traceable.

 

A licensed weapon can be legally carried openly and concealed as desired. It can be used for legitimate security and self defense purposes. It cannot be confiscated unless required as part of a criminal investigation.

 

Obviously corporations maintain corporate licensing for all their employees firearms.

 

 

In reality, this legal issue is subsumed into the more important cultural aspects.

 

Wander into a corp zone with a sniper rifle strapped to your back and you'll have corporate security all over you within minutes.

 

Heading into a combat zone slum without an assault rifle under your arm and you're asking to be slotted and left face down in a gutter.

 

Why aren't carriers licensed?

What is even the point of licensing individual weapons?

If you are going with a system something like automobile registration you still need to have operator permits in addition of proof of insurance, ownership, license of the vehicle and an operators license.

That's entirely too cumbersome and only exists in the real world because such things are a nice source of tax revenue.

I'll second Comp here. I know from experience that without constant effort the "land" will take back whatever you build down in those regions.

I had a client years ago that manufactured steel trusses for construction. They went bankrupt and when I was back in the area 15 years later I stopped to look at the facilities.

There were no facilities, it was all blackberries, gum thickets and rabits with HUGE rattlesnakes everywhere.

there were rusty remains of trusses and sheet metal around but you had to dig. That's how I found out about the rattlesnakes

Justified

Not obviously cyberpunk at first glance. However you can't get much more dystopian than the millieu of Harlan County as presented in the drama.

The characters are fun and in some cases totally over the top and the storylines are as good as some of the best games I've ever been in.

If you haven't checked it out I highly recommend it

Jerry Miculek doing a technical rundown of the two platforms

Here's an interesting link form G&A magazine giving ratings to states

best states for gun ownership

interesting to compare it to the Red State/Blue State politcal comparison. Some New England states are much better than states popularly considered to be "gun toting"

If I'm reading this right the Russian oligarch have been using the banks of Cypress to launder their money?

sounds about right

Now I'm waiting for his wife to join the board and clarify the situation....I mean if she'd marry him she'd have to be able to fit in here, right?

better than an upload

What I like about this particular transhuman idea is we get to keep the fun stuff

I listened to it on an audio boook. Pretty good story however the game mechanics for the MMO that's the pivot point of the story would be unworkable IRL

I'd say give it a go!

yeah...pretty damned punk

Armalite rifle, police and IRA

Armalite rifle, use it everyday

Breaks down easy, fits into a pram

A child can carry it, do it no harm

 

Armalite rifle and the holy Trinity

It’s used against you for Irish jokes and the BBC

Armalite rifle, please skew the aim

Armalite rifle, use it everyday

 

The rifle does harm, it shoots for miles

If a bullet gets you in the heart, destroys your insides

Armalite rifle, police duty, eh?

Armalite rifle, use it everyday

 

It’ll do you damage, it’ll do you harm

Blow your legs off, blow your guts out

I disapprove of it, so does Dave

It’ll do you damage, it’ll do you damage

Damage, damage, damage, damage, damage

 

 

Read more: GANG OF FOUR - ARMALITE RIFLE LYRICS

OTOH, I suppose we should really be thanking our lucky stars that they are generally so backward and ignorant. Imagine how difficult it'd be to fight them if they actually knew what they were doing!

 

Yeah they might learn to fly planes into buildin...oh wait... too late.

 

I do love the blanket american mentality that especially seems to exist in armed forces circles that because they make do without indoor plumbing and can live happy lives without twitter, facebook, or bad reality tv, that this somehow makes people of a certain region less educated and/or idiots. Osama Bin Laden was college educated in business and economics, studied the writings and military history of montgommery and De Gaulle and he belongied to one of the largest and wealthiest families in saudi arabia, who controlled one of the largest construction firms in the middle-east.

 

The "RPG blanket" you guys keep repeating I suspect you got from watching blackhawk down too often. It does not take rocket science to figure out that unguided rockets designed to kill tanks can also kill hovering / slow moving helicopters if they happen to be within the effective range of the user of the launcher. Hell the "idiot" soviet soldiers you guys were alluding to earlier and their weak training tank corps and so forth, are who's grandparents figured out... on their own, in the second world war that putting bed springs on the outside of their tanks would prevent the warheads of the german panzerfausts from detonating against their tank hulls. And that is where the modern birdcage armor you see on strykers got its inspiration from. Somehow when someone in the west thinks of something its innovative and intelligent, but in the east they're idiots ?

 

Methinks you don't know the development history to a great number of pieces of US military equipment outside the small arms world and the recent all-over-the-media F-35 debacle. Look into the development of the Bradley for example, which was done by well educated folks who started with trying to do a scout vehicle to replace the M114, and a new APC to replace the M113, and what you got instead was something that didn't do either task well, was a decade late, and was vastly over-budget. Unfortunetly its a rare thing that a US politician will actually cancels a project once its reached the point of being a lemon and starts over rather than letting it continue just for jobs in some congressional district or another. I'm sure even with the latest flop on the F-35s they won't cancel the thing, because they've spent soooo much on what was supposed to be a less expensive plane than the F-22s, burdening it with too many tasks, too much unproven technology, and too rushed a delivery timeframe.

So what if some US politicians, perhaps even most, are warmongering pork barrel stuffers?

And BTW, are you trying to imply that crashing airliners into buildings by clinically depressed, suicidal religious fanatics takes a lot of skill??

Instead of medication and therapy they were given a permanent solution to their short term problems

heh, this is getting into Smoking Room territory now

Sometime we all forget the strategies, tactics and techniques that gave birth to the modern self loading battle rifles.

Ever wonder why they have sights calibrated for 100 to 1000 meters with a primitive U notch on the rear?

Doctrine was while sitting in the trench or hole or whatever the LT commands "rifles to single shot, sights to 1000.

the troopies all comply

Now "aim", using the concept of aim loosely referring to putting the front sight on some landmark that's approximately where the 1000 meter target may be.

The squad all fires on command and half a dozen or so rounds come raining in as fast as the troops pull the trigger.

They'd do this as they advanced gradually reducing the range until they were within 100 meters

Once within 100 meters we have the doctrine of "walking fire". That is fire a burst every time your left foot hits the ground. Once they got within throwing range they'd start chucking grenades at the enemy.

Did this work?

Sure if you have a lot of guys it does.

So, within those parameters the potential 3" to 5" MOA groups with the AK47 and the 4" to 6" MOA from the AKM was perfectly acceptable. The fact that those are theoretical optimum group sizes attained by QC who pick and choose their components from a run for a test build explains the "minute of pie pan" comments most civilian users will claim

You have a round, magazine and extractor system designed to be able to operate under adverse conditions in a platform with poor balance and horrid ergonomics.

If you like it, cool! But seriously, don't boast about the reliability of a rifle whose targetted users were only issued 3 full magazines and not expected to survive having used them all

I've observed that AK fanboi's are remarkably sensitive about their prediliction even when they are usually really thick skinned about almost everything else in their life.

Sort of like the worst of the Glock-herd

Seriously though, I like the 1911 pattern handguns being fully aware of their 100+ year old eccentricities. I spend a great deal of my time when training with work on the malfunction drills.

So, in a career with 10's of thousands of .45 sent downrange I've had 3, yes 3, malfunctions. And I automatically cleared and continued my drill.

OTOH I've seen with my own two eyes guys with Glock 19's that malfunctioned whose jaws literally dropped and they stared at the offending handgun like a dog staring at a Christmas Tree.

If the design isn't mechanically unsound on some basic level then it's the operators job to keep it running.

There's no magic, only hard work

No magic bullets, no magic guns, no magic techniques.

vietnam

 

afganistan v ussr

 

mogadishu

 

afganistan v usa

 

iraq 2: electric boogaloo

 

 

yeah phipps, untrained idiots with ak's sure do have a shitty win/loss record, don't they

Vietnam~ Walter Cronkite and body counts

Mogadishu~RPG swarms

Afghanistan~ IED

Iraq~ IED

Where's the AK's?

Make it broader, the North American Federal Open Trade Alliance versus the Celestial Mercantile Hegemony.

The NoAm Alliance extends all the way to what had been Panama. The Asian side could encompass Siberia south to Vietnam.

And the NRA has a higher approval than the President

Gallup, 54% approval for NRA

Marginally higher than the 53% who approve of same sex marriage.

I just put that last in there to point out that there's got to be an awful lot of overlap between pro-NRA and pro same sex marriage

This place had a video on YouTube that popped up in my recommendations so I checked it out. Told a few people I know about it and probably made some sales for them

Ares Armor

Ares Armor on YouTube

As a nice follow up on my inspiration for this thread Duelling is illegal in Tennessee but James Yeager doesn't appear to be aware of that bit of law

Happy Birthday!

 

In doing so, they missed the boat in another respect (IMHO). Had they "trained away" the problem, it is likely that they would have seen improved marksmanship on a department-wide scale. It is much easier to identify (and overcome) bad shooting habits (breaking wrist up or down, thumbing, anticipating recoil, etc.)

 

 

The man's speaking pure truth, pour him vodka!

 

I've been trained to keep my finger off the trigger when I'm not shooting, and I'm merely a walt playing around with an airsoft toy (granted, I managed to accidentaly shoot myself before I learned that. Luckily with an airsoft gun all you get from an accidental discharge is a gentle slap from the fate meaning "finger off the trigger, you idiot!").

Up to the point where I was at a real firing range last week, and after firing a few shots from a G17 I noticed I have to take a breath... so I still kept the target in my sights, but took the finger off the trigger. The instructor was really surprised why I did that...

 

 

Now, as for stupid folks training in guns - there's that story from the Polish Army when there was still a draft in effect. And let's be honest - the draftees aren't always rocket sciencists. So, there was the guy who had a PM063 RAK as his service gun (likely, he was a tank crewman). And every time he was at the range, after taking a shot he tended to place his left intex finger in front of the barrel end. Luckily, the instructors have noticed the fact before the guy shot his own finger off.

What they did?

Well, every time the guy entered the shooting range, they assigned him an NCO with a stick. Every time the NCO noticed the guy moving his fingers to the muzzle, he was to hit the guy's steel helmet with the stick (and, I bet, call him names...). As I said, the fella wasn't a rocket sciencist, but after so many hits to the helmet even he learned to keep his hands safe when opearating that ugly little weapon.

 

If a draftee soldier could have been trained in that matter, the policemen could get it, too.

...maybe with something softer than a stick, most of them do not wear helmets

Perhaps a Tazer?

13lb trigger pull?

 

Pardon me being from Down Under where we aren't allowed dangerous toys, but does that seriously mean you are 'lifting' 5 kilograms with your index finger?

 

Wouldn't you get a crampy finger and pull the whole point-of-aim off to the side?

 

 

i.e. Major Contributing Factor?

 

Good lord, why not just put them in plate armour and have them run in with a club?

 

 

((And I shall quote my friend here, upon hearing the story : "Whyyyy??? Whaaaat did you do thaaat for? I wasn't doiiiing anythiiiing...whyyyyy!" lol. ))

That is exactly what that means and it was mandated IIRC by the NYPD to deal with the bad habit of officers who, as the saying goes, "wrapped their booger hooks around the bang switch" when they were not intending to fire.