• 1 Post
  • 379 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 25th, 2023

help-circle


  • Honestly, my advice, unpopular as it might be, is that unless you plan on riding a motorcycle you should probably get an automatic transmission car instead of learning on a manual transmission. Manual transmissions–in the US, anyways–are largely relegated to performance vehicles where people want them. But the hard truth is that automatic transmissions do a better job at driving efficiently and keeping the engine at a safe and ideal load than any driver with a manual. And it’s a lot less hassle for most of the driving that people tend to actually do. For instance, it’s uncommon to have a cruise control on a manual transmission car, which makes long drives more tiring, and stop-and-go traffic puts less wear on an automatic transmission.

    If you plan on riding a motorcycle though, you must learn to use a clutch, because all non-electric motorcycles use a clutch (usually a wet clutch, but Ducati uses a dry clutch); manual transmissions are lighter and more compact, and weight matters a lot on a motorcycle.

    I say this as someone that learned to drive on manual transmissions, and exclusively had cars with manual transmissions up through about 2022.


  • Learn to shift based off the sound of the engine, dont stare at the tachometer.

    Do not do this.

    Every engine has a different redline. The redline is based mostly on piston mass, which doesn’t necessarily correlate directly to engine displacement, given that it’s common to have 4, 6, or 8 cylinders in a car. If you’re shifting primarily based on engine sound, you can be shifting too low in one car, and then too high in another. The tachometer is a much more reliable way of learning where you should shift in any given vehicle.

    Also, constantly running your car in the maximum power band–which tends to be close to the redline–probably isn’t great for it.









  • Wut?

    No, silencers weren’t regulated into the NFA by the ATF; congress put them in there, way back in '34. You can read the text of the act here. It’s in the very first section:

    AN ACT

    To provide for the taxation of manufacturers, importers, and dealers in certain firearms and machine guns, to tax the sale or other disposal of such weapons, and to restrict importation and regulate interstate transportation thereof.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of American in Congress assembled, that for the purposes of this Act -

    (a) The term “firearm” means a shotgun or rifle having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length, or any other weapon, except a pistol or revolver, from which a shot is discharged by an explosive if such a weapon is capable of being concealed on the person, or a machine gun, and includes a muffler or silencer for any firearm [emphasis added] whether or not such a firearm is included within the foregoing definition.

    It’s right there in the text.

    Aside from that, the ATF per se didn’t even exist prior to '72; before that, it was part of the IRS, rather than an agency within the DoJ, and before the IRS, it was part of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.





  • Hard pass on discussing anything with your denialist guns r gud mentality

    Yeah, isn’t is strange that someone doesn’t want the state to have the monopoly on violence, and believes in civil rights? Weird, right?

    From your article:

    “Platkin said Glock is profiting by continuing to sell the adaptable version in U.S. markets, even as they make and sell handguns in Europe that cannot accommodate such a switch.”

     This is something I've having a really hard time finding a source on. Everything I can find says that that about half of the Glock pistols that are sold in the US are made in Austria. And, as I said, sales in Europe for pistols are very tightly controlled, meaning that very few pistols--relatively speaking--are getting into the hands of anyone other than cops and military, so I'm not sure that there's a strong motive for them to make the design alteration in the EU.
     Aside from the assertion from New Jersey's AG, I just can't find a source for that. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, and, if the AG is correct, then yes, Glock should change their design in the US. There's already precedent for this; open bolt semi-automatic firearms manufactured after 1986 are banned because they can--in general--be readily converted to full auto. However, given how many Glocks currently exist in the US, that would be an enormous legal mess that could possibly result in the National Firearms Act being declared unconstitutional.
    

    “Also known as “auto switches,” the devices, which are already illegal in New Jersey and some other states, […]”

    They’re illegal in EVERY state; it covered under federal law, specifically the National Firearms Act (1934) and Firearm Owners Protection Act (1986). Even if it was legal in New Jersey, it would still be a felony to possess or use one.





  • But it doesn’t.

    An automatic firearm shoots multiple bullets each time you pull the trigger, until you release the trigger; the trigger does not reset.

    With most semi-automatic guns, you have a light spring that resets the trigger once you release your finger. A forced reset trigger (FRT) forces the trigger to reset. The FRT pushes the trigger forward, even if you’re trying to keep the trigger pulled back. If you keep tension on your finger, as soon as it’s reset, you’re pulling it again. So, legally, you are pulling the trigger multiple times, because the trigger is resetting each time a bullet is fired.

    Based on the way that a machine gun is defined in the National Firearms Act of 1934, an FRT is not a machine gun. The ATF can’t re-write the law to say what they want it to say; that requires an act on congress.

    The is compounded by the fact that Rare Breed ran the idea by the ATF before they went into production, and they have/had a memorandum from the ATF saying that an FRT was not a machine gun, and not subject to the NFA. After they had approved it, and *after Rare Breed had produced and sold a few hundred/thousand, the ATF raided Rare Breed, and also showed up at customer’s homes demanding items that the customers had legally purchased (e.g., unreasonable search and seizure, a 4A violation).

    Machine guns have been illegal in the United States since 1986, a notion that even gun rights groups have come to accept.

    This is… Not true. The Firearm Owners Protection Act–among other things–made it illegal to transfer automatic firearms manufactured after '86 (i.e., “post ban”) to non-police/military people. Machine guns produced prior to '86 that were already in the hands of non-police/military people can still legally be own and bought/sold. A pre-ban select-fire AR-15 will run about $30k+ these days.

    Secondly, there are a number of groups and people still actively fighting to overturn the NFA as being a violation of 1A. There was a case out of the 5th circuit (?) not that long ago that points out the circular logic of the gov’t in re: machine guns. E.g., per Heller, guns in common use can’t be banned, and machine guns aren’t in common use, so they can be banned. But they aren’t in common use because they were largely banned by the gov’t. The gov’t created the condition of them not being in common use by banning them, and then used the lack of common use–due to the ban–as justification for the legality of the ban.