What the H*** is CNN Doing? (Vanity)

I am a unabashed gun freak - former president of a handgun (IPSC) club, but really, it is so hard to defend against this weapon that I lean to banning it since 9-11.

That is exactly what CNN wants you to think. Please don't fall for it.

Apart from any arguements about unconsitutionality, as well as plain old uselessness of any gun ban (terrorists, just like criminals, do not obey laws), consider just how much more of a threat this rifles actually is over, say, my .300 Wetherby. The real world answer: not much.

Granted, my Wetherby does not have a 1700+ yard range, but that shot was also an extreme example of a .50 BMG shot. It took tremendous skill, but also more than a bit of luck. Also, how many firearm attacks in the U.S. have ever been done at anything approaching that range? None. The D.C. snipers hit their targets from less than 100 yards, and used a much smalle, cheaper, and concealable (and therefore more dangerous in the real world) rifle. More to the point, just how many sniper opportunities out there require anything near that range? I don't know about you, but in my home town, it's hard to get a direct line of sight for further than 200 yards, which is more than short enough for even a .223 like the D.C. murderers used.

The .50 BMG is so much overkill for any practical use by a terrorist (not to mention expensive and relatively rare), that its very size and weight become its major liability for the sort of uses a terrorist might consider putting it to. For the same money as a single .50 BMG, al-Queda could equip about a hundred terrorists with cheap, small, relatively easy to transport and conceal AK's (and who knows how many explosive devices), which has a much greater potential to cause terror and damage than any single .50 BMG.

The .50 BMG rifle has only a very limited use militarily (though it is imminently suited to that limited use). Unfortunately for the case of the would be gun-grabbers, that specific military application is not suited to the motives, goals, or budgets of terrorists. It's very good for shooting terrorists from a fixed and defended position, but not so very useful for terrorists shooting from an unfixed and undefended posision. Additionally, the capabilities of the .50 BMG are readily thwarted with some very specific but simple measures (see the presidential motorcade example in another post on this thread).

An unjust and unconstitutional ban would not do anything to protect anyone from terrorists, but would only further erode the rights of law abiding citizens.

Speculation based on a lack of knowledge. Even a "retrofit" of the towers would not have insulated them enough to sustain the kind of extended duration high temperature fires that brought them down. It would have been expensive, and ultimately worthless. The designers of the towers were well aware of the risks of an extended fire,wjhich is why the towers were designed to pancake like they did. .

Humph! Let me tell you something you uneducated little nut, you're not half as smart as you think. When It comes to buildings, you don't know a third as much as I do, guaranteed.

It would have been expensive, and ultimately worthless.

Shows how little you know. People like you said the same thing about cockpit door reinforcements, too expensive. But had they been there, 9-11 would never had happened.

Spraying on the insulation was a mistake, period-despite what your incredible highschool level diploma says.

There have been many examples of flaws in New York buildings that were realized and fixed before it was too late. For example, the citigroup building was nearly destroyed by a hurricane in the 90s (luckly the hurricane diverted outward further into the Atlantic ocean) because the building's I beams were bolted together instead of welded. An engineering student accidentally uncovered this and informed the architect. He realized that if a strong wind were to hit the building at one of its corners, the the bolts would fail, sheer, and send the building tumbling down (not cascading downward) onto the streets. They were so panicked that they worked at nights, placing welded plates over the joints, so as not to set off a panic.

Had the citigroup building fell, I'm sure that you would have argued incorrectly that a retro-fit was too expensive.

No you weren't.

Uh, yeah I was.

I stopped reading you attempt at attention at this point. I figure that you're probably some little 14 year old Internet turd who desperately needs somebody to talk to besides mommy. Bye-and try to accept reality sometime in the future, huh.

Humph! Let me tell you something you uneducated little nut, you're not half as smart as you think. When It comes to buildings, you don't know a third as much as I do, guaranteed.

I seriously doubt that. I have masters in civil engineering and mechanical engineering. I run my own precision metal fabrication and testing business. We do a lot of work for building construction. We have also filled orders for Boeing and Lockheed. Before starting my own company (and seeing things from the other side of the employer / employee handshake; that was an education in itself), I worked for many other companies throughout my career.

Please notice that, while you have continually attempted personal attacks and conjectures (instead of presenting reasoned and relevant facts), I have not done the same to you. While, in truth I do not know what your level of education is, and I am not going to speculate, the level of knowledge you have thus far demonstrated has been about that of someone who thinks they are an expert because they watch far too much of the Discovery Channel. You certainly haven't shown the ability to determine an apt analogy from an irrelevant one. If this is not correct, and you actualy do have anything knowledgable to contribute, I think I have been more than patient in waiting for you to do so.

Shows how little you know.

Actually, I do know. The perimeter column truss support design of the towers would have made the retrofit you glibly suggested require the towers to be practically disassembled floor by floor. As a matter of fact, a retrofit, in which additional stronger spray on insulation was added, was in progress when the towers were hit. As and when floors became available, more spray on insulation was applied. On one of the towers, all the floors hit by the impact had already been retrofitted.

For complex structures like trusses, spraying on insulation is simply the only good way of getting good coverage and therefore good insulation. "Firmy fixed" insulation like you glibly suggested would in fact have reduced it's insualting properties, and decreased the failure time for members so insulated. In real world construction, the only time insulation is ever "firmly fixed" is for asbestos containment projects in which the risk of asbestos release is greater than the reduction of it's insulating ability. The amount of reinforcement required to hold spray on insulation against an airplane strike would have been too massive.

Finally, even for modern insulation, the only thing insulation does is extend the time required for the protected material to be heated to its point where it's elastic modulus has been reduced to the failure point. In other words, it means a longer fire is needed. The fires were still burning when the towers collapsed. Had more insulation been present, the towers would have stood longer, but they still would have ultimately collapsed. The failure of the sprinkler systems had more to do with the fires bringing down the towers than the insulation.

For example, the citigroup building was nearly destroyed by a hurricane in the 90s (luckly the hurricane diverted outward further into the Atlantic ocean) because the building's I beams were bolted together instead of welded.

Hmmm. Another example from the Discovery Channel. Who would have guessed? And also quite wrong. The Citicorp building correction was done in 1978 or 1979, not "in the 90's" (it was kept secret until the nineties, though). More importantly, and more relevant, the Citicorp Building problem was not a design flaw. The building designer correctly specified for the joints to be welded. However, the builder varied from the plans and chose, incorrectly and probably illegally, to bolt the joints together instead of welding them. This variance from the original good design completely changed the building structure's dynamic wind response beyond what the basic design's safety factors could allow. Had the building ben built as it was designed, it would have been fine. A repair and correction was needed because the actual dynamic response of the building as built was not sufficient to withstand the sort of winds it would receive every 20 years or so on average.

As to the World Trade Center, how many time in the last hundred or thousand years has any building had to withstand that size of a fire? Buildings are designed to deal with what is actually likely to occur (so should laws). Attacks against buildings hardly counts as a design criteria. Iran and North Korea (and others) are desperately trying to get nukes. Should we retrofit all buildings to withstand a direct nuclear strike? Or does it make more sense to convince Iran and North Korea to change their plans? By an extension of your logic, we should all be living and working in bomb shelters because one of them "could" be hit by a nuke.

Do you also think we should be living in a police state because someone "might" attack the government? Well, think on this: had Clinton actually done something about al-Queda instead of concentrating on reducing the rights of U.S. citizens, the September 11 attacks would not have happened, and your so called "flaw" in the design of the World Trade center would not have come to light. Which is a better solution: killing terrorists, or building all structures as if they were bunkers? Infringing the rights of free, law abiding citizens has been demonstrated time and time again to be utterly ineffective, and should not be considered an option (yet CNN and the gun grabbers still try to present it as such).

Had the citigroup building fell, I'm sure that you would have argued incorrectly that a retro-fit was too expensive.

Um. No. The Citicorp retrofit only cost about ten million dollars, which is really not all that expensive, as such things go. The ongoing inslulation retrofit of the World Trade Center towers had already cos much much more than that, and as has already been seen to have been inadequate.

I stopped reading you attempt at attention at this point. I figure that you're probably some little 14 year old Internet turd who desperately needs somebody to talk to besides mommy.

Just like everything else you've said, you come up with yet another ignorant conjecture. And also like everything else you've said, completely wrong. And another attempted insult trying to take the place of a rational arguement. You can't disprove anything I've said (because my position is completely right) or defend your own position, so you resort to pathetic personal attacks. Do you realize you're really only demonstrating your own inadequacies here?

Probably the chief of these inadequacies has been your utter inability to get around the ego you have armoring your ignorance. Here you actually come out and admit you're not even bothering to read or understand my points (much less successfully refute them) before spewing out your irrational half baked responses. You are so emotionally dedicated to defending your ignorance that you intentionally ignore anything that might help you. Which is really really sad. For your own sake, I strongly suggest you aquire a level of intellectual detachment as you develop your critical thinking skills. If you don't, you're going to find yourself more and more often grasping desperately to the wrong side of an arguement, and you won't even know it.

Bye-and try to accept reality sometime in the future, huh.

Hmmm. It looks that at least you've finally learned enough to not dig your hole any deeper (but not without trying another cheap shot, alas). Though I would have actually liked to see a single relevant and rational argument from you, I guess that was expecting too much.

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