I think that I have gone on too long already, just suffice it to say that we know exactly where you are coming from on this. We are both certain that you have the foundation of a good stand-up routine, although it might go over the heads of the uninitiated in your audience.
“...But people have been killed by much smaller firearms that have malfunctioned. ...” (fireman15, post 74)
“... I think that you may be mistaken about the motives of Cody Wilson, founder/director of Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization that develops and publishes open source gun designs. “For him, the central point is not about guns. ...” (fireman15, post 74)
“... We are frequent volunteers at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. We have a home on a small airport with our small airplanes. We set up living history displays at museums, schools and events both on and off of military bases. ...” (fireman15, post 75)
Now it’s my turn to apologize, for lack of timely response.
I live in a rural area, so remote that no mobile device can connect with a signal tower, we cannot receive local TV nor FM radio, and AM radio reception is weak and problematic. So internet connectivity is spotty.
Let me thank fireman15 for his courtesy. Rare on free republic.
And to go further, the entire forum ought to shower him & spouse in praise, for their efforts in museum volunteering and living-history displays. Few Americans suspect why historical understanding might be important; more troublingly, large chunks of the populace believe they’ve attained that understanding, but haven’t really. Unscrambling the perceptions of the latter group demands patience, insight, and perseverance that few can summon.
I will not bore the forum with too many details from my personal and professional background. I have indeed done all the things fireman15 lists in first four paragraphs of his post 74, but I realize readers have naught but my unsupported word. The short version: I was infected with a passionate interest in firearms and weaponry before I could read; chief among my motivations for pursuing a military career was to deepen my understanding and prolong my contact with weaponry.
After 29 years of that, I spent a decade and a half working for a major gun parts supplier, in retail gun sales, gun repair, and parts manufacture, mostly for vintage historical firearms.
The conclusion I came away with is that the American public does not know as much as it thinks it does, about firearms. The “new class” of gun owners who have been frightened into gun buying by the rumbles from the current administration knows even less.
Owning superficial experience thanks to shopping in auto parts stores and performing simple auto repair tasks, great numbers of these folks assume a gun can be assembled from a random collection of parts, by an amateur. They assume in error.
My sensibilities, and whatever fireman15 does or doesn’t guess about them, do not matter, compared to the responsibility all knowledgeable gun owners must deal with, to dispel the ignorance of the neophytes and the heedless, to improve safety.
I’m not interested in Cody Wilson’s motives, if the results involve uninformed and otherwise innocent parties coming to grief, firing guns they assumed were safe, but were not. I haven’t met Cody Wilson, but I have met many “digital pioneers.” Their knowledge of software and printing and much else is great, but not one knew the most basic thing about firearms.
Last of all, I am sure fellow forum members will wish to join me in offering belated condolences, for the demise of fireman15’s friend. It ought to reinforce caution, concerning the nature and magnitude of the forces we create, in pulling the trigger, yanking the lanyard, or touching the “ignite” key. “They don’t make them like they used to” is false. And shooters take less heed of this truth: no one knows what that gun - any gun - went through, in the decades from the day it left the factory, to its moment of truth.
Acknowledging the existence of such irreducible uncertainty, we ought to shoot with prudence, safety, and caution.