(really long response but its worth reading I swear)
DoubleH wrote:
Tell Nascar drivers to just play with RC cars. Scale makes all the difference.
Nascars aren't street legal. You can't just drive around your RC wherever you want.
The proper analogy would be if the AR15 were restricted to the armory. I don't really think anyone would have a problem with that. Would you?
DoubleH wrote:
In my brothers particular high power rifle league they all use the same firearm(type) to make the playing field even, they use AR15s as they are fine firearms and they are cheap(as far as precision firearms go). I'm sure if you marketed such a target rifle as you stated above and could sell it for $800-$1100 a league would pop up around it.
So - then why not ban the AR15 completely and let the market do its thing?
DoubleH wrote:
I personally don't hunt but the people I know that do eat what they kill. It's not like slaughtering buffalo on the plains and just leaving them there. They shoot a dear or a bear or a turkey and then they take it home and eat it, thats not to say they probably don't enjoy hunting it down but different animals have different tastes and people go for the exotic nature of it(turkey probably taste pretty much like turkey though >.>).
I don't buy that argument. This is what I was alluding to when I said "guns are a Rube Goldberg device towards beast mastery." If you find your meat more satisfying if you have some connection to it, then take up animal husbandry.
DoubleH wrote:
Are you a vegetarian ? I personally would love it if they could come up with some vat grown beef/chicken/pork that tastes like beef/chicken/pork
I agree that space travel is under-funded and that space colonization should be a long-term goal of RnD efforts under the inevitable successor-state. The new government, should it be so inclined, ought be able to establish a net-positive colonization program from scratch within 40 years.
In the here and now, I find that vegetarian food lacks the richness or satiety of meat, but it has much more flavor, from the complex spices etc that go into it. Having been a vegetarian for over a decade, one comes to see meat as non-food - if you see it served at a buffet, you might as well be looking at a garnish.
Soyrizo is completely indistinguishable from actual chorizo (confirmed by humane laboratory experiments on real wetbacks). It is tasty enough that it can be eaten straight from the wrapping at room temperature. Even non-vegetarians are likely to find it far more tasty than real meat, and it has the same richness and satiety. It is truly a culinary miracle.
I enjoy Gardenburgers (I usually prepare them as a "Phoenix slider", trimmed to one-third size, with blue cheese, sauteed mushrooms, avocado and BBQ sauce), and soylent Italian and breakfast sausage. Broiling the soylent with olive oil gives it a superior taste but inferior richness to meat.
I would objectively say that Phoenix sliders and soylent sausage are superior to the real meat incarnations because they have much more flavor and less grease - the absence of grease gives soylent a better aftertaste and better-balanced satiety (meaning you get more satisfaction from devouring an entire platter of Phoenix sliders and soylent sausage).
I also make a pasta sauce by broiling a mixture of Prego sauce, olive oil, fresh shiitake mushrooms, and soylent ground sausage. It does not have the richness of real meat sauce, but it has much more flavor. I freely admit it is inferior to the real thing.
Soylent meat, served in the manner of real meat, (e.g., bacon, hot dogs, roasts, etc) are grossly inferior to the real thing (and also far more expensive). Soylent meat is disgusting and completely not worth eating.
DoubleH wrote:
but animals have been eating other animals since the beginning so I don't really have a moral thing against it.
I really don't want to hunt as I'm a little squeamish(I do know where my hamburger comes from, but I would prefer someone else kills it for me

). I have had to kill mice/squirrels(rats with bushy tails !!) to protect my house and a few raccoons, weasels and minks to protect my chickens(fresh eggs are the best eggs).
Neither do I, strictly speaking. My issue is with factory farming and the general over-proliferation of meat in the diet. Like most contemporary vegetarians, it is because of that over-proliferation that I find eating meat distasteful.
I don't have a problem with traditional husbandry (although for the reasons stated above I don't eat free-range meat either). And I think with shrewd use of resources, traditional husbandry could provide abundant if not ubiquitous supply of meat.
I would be firmly in favor of a campaign to establish beefalo herds and promote widespread goose and chicken ownership in suburban communities. Like you, I grew up in a suburb where wild chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys were common. And like you, I don't enjoy killing animals, but I do think that ethical slaughter is no more wrong than euthanizing a dog, and I think that it is morally correct that people should be involved in the production of their food (plant as well as animal and aquatic).
I believe that establishing game as co-habitants on the same land in a sustainable way is more humane for the animal, better for the environment, and more correct than either factory farming and over-proliferation of meat or the hackneyed "meat is evil" from radical leftists. I believe that the surest way to ensure animal welfare is not to insist we can't kill or eat them, but to develop long-term sustainable symbiosis.
To include the AR15 in that vision, however, would be Rube Goldberg.
DoubleH wrote:
Just because you don't like something or some reason for doing/owning something isn't a good enough reason to make it illegal...Firearms don't kill people. Just like cars don't kill people and 747s don't kill people. PEOPLE murder PEOPLE, no one will ever baby proof the world. If some nut wants to kill a bunch of people and he can't get a firearm he will use something else...I don't hunt. I just noted how Target shooting with some calibers/rifles is not so much fun as others...I would like to see this arsenic related hobby though...
Gold prospecting. Some people still find it fun to pan and sluice in rural California. Arsenic can be used to leech gold. It's illegal to own arsenic because it can be used to kill people.
I'm sure M80s and nitros are more fun than the legal alternatives. There's no support for making them legal just because some people find them more fun.
Looking at it from the opposite angle: is that you like something a good enough reason to make it legal above and beyond the standard of safety considerations and inescapable utility that applies to all other hobbies?