Autoweapons (1987)

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/autoweapons.html

by dgellow • 12 years ago

41 44 12 years ago

ccs.neu.edu

angersock• 12 years ago

This...this is glorious.

Far more interesting and helpful than autotools debates.

HCIdivision17• 12 years ago

Reading your comment before the article completely threw me. At the time it was the only comment, and so I thought the whole thing was a parody of how using autotools is overkill or something. (Or, knowing nothing like I did, maybe about some sort of AutoCAD software suite, which can also be likened to some forms of violence.)

Confoundation ensued until I came back and other posters noted it's actually satire about actual gun use.

Though it was a bit fun attempting to misinterpret the whole piece that way. Turns out it's funny from every angle.

Crito3• 12 years ago

See also, the famous "Acknowledgements" section in the scsh manual: http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html (Also by Olin Shivers)

LyndsySimon10• 12 years ago

Holy crap.

If someone wrote that today, I have no doubt they'd be facing criminal charges.

It's dated 10 days before the Assault Weapons Ban went into effect, so it's not like it was before political correctness hit the scene. Gun control was the topic for the left at that moment in history.

Now I have to go figure out what happened to this guy.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

I assume this is him:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/

(Notice that is just the parent folder to the HN link. I don't point it out to be snarky, it's just a pretty strong association...)

vezzy-fnord2• 12 years ago

Not sure if the firearm he mentioned qualifies under the restrictions of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

In any event, you are severely underestimating the federal government's general tolerance for "obscenity" and speech that is potentially objectionable. Honestly, if John Waters can get by fine, so can this.

Loved the jab at the left, as well. Such a descriptive term.

gambiting3• 12 years ago

I find it weird how different US is to EU sometimes. Guns have literally never came up in any of the conversations I had with friends, and the only "gun" I have ever held was an air rifle during my scouts training. Yet this article is fascinating and I would not have even though this would be such an important thing at US universities(or at least was - 27 years ago). Entirely different culture.

JimboOmega• 12 years ago

It's almost unheard of for civilians to actually have automatic weapons, and it was in the 80's too. I think this is at least partially satire.

bmelton6• 12 years ago

To be fair, there were likely a lot more fully automatic firearms on the market in 1987 than there are today.

The law passed in 1986 basically prohibited civilian ownership of automatic firearms manufactured after that date, so almost exclusively, legally owned fully automatic firearms owned today were manufactured before 1986.

PhasmaFelis3• 12 years ago

Undergrads having recreational firefights on Main Street while their elders sip tea and look on approvingly is also relatively uncommon.

jahewson• 12 years ago

It's a parody.

gambiting3• 12 years ago

oooooohhh, alright then. It flew right past me - I was completely ready to believe that it was being serious.

Crito3• 12 years ago

Either I'm missing your joke, or you are missing Olin's. American universities, 30 years ago or otherwise, do not actually have the sort of gun culture that Olin is describing. For example, Olin was not actually going to mount an M60 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60_machine_gun) on the roof of his car.

jrhauser• 12 years ago

Poe's law.

JohnBooty2• 12 years ago

I'm an American and it flew over my head at first too. Until I got to the latter parts and it got progressively more ridiculous. It definitely starts out subtly- in fact I'm not actually sure the beginning is a parody!

FYI: There are a lot of people who own guns in America, but they are a minority. By a large margin, most homes (about 2/3 of homes) do not have any gun owners. The popularly of guns varies by region... it is a big country and there are lots of cultural differences from state to state.

LyndsySimon10• 12 years ago

I've never considered gun owners a minority, but it appears that you're correct.

That said, approximately 40% of households self-report as having a gun according to the recent stats I've been able to find. It's important to note that from 2010 or so to today, firearms and ammunition sales have been substantially elevated. Until this year, it's been basically impossible to find inexpensive .22 ammo. A couple of weeks ago I needed a couple of boxes for a range visit (introducing a new friend to guns), and I had to visit seven different stores before I finally found some. A year ago, I wouldn't have been able to find it locally at all.

I grew up in Arkansas and lived there until mid-2013. I'd guess that 70% or more of households there have at least one gun, and most of those would have multiples. A centerfire hunting rifle and a shotgun would probably be most popular, followed by a centerfire handgun. Maybe 20% of households have 5 or more.

Obviously my estimates above are based on my own perception, but I believe them to be conservative.

After moving to central Virginia, I can definitely tell that fewer people here are comfortable around firearms. I suspect that's mostly accounted for through population density - I now live in a small city instead of a rural area.

bellerocky3• 12 years ago

I thought this post would be about automating weapons. Like with beagle boards/arduino + servos and computer vision auto targeting and a smartphone. Which would be kind of scary, but at least technically interesting.

icebraining• 12 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPgqfnKG_T4

bellerocky3• 12 years ago

Wow, water guns to shoot squirrels. The technical stuff is super interesting. Thank you!

PhasmaFelis3• 12 years ago

Given the "(1987)" tag, I was expecting something vaguely prescient about drone warfare. I was delighted to be wrong.

bellerocky3• 12 years ago

I didn't have the (1987) tag when I left my comment.

LyndsySimon10• 12 years ago

I guess I don't get it.

I mean, it's obviously a parody, and it seems to be poking fun at the competitive nature of American academia... but it's just not funny to me.

Maybe it's because of my background? I'm a huge gun nut, so most of those conversations seem at least to hint at something that's meaningful to me.

For instance - the US military used a slower-burning, dirty powder than specified by the manufacturer when rolling out the M-16 and variants in Vietnam. As a result they got dirty very fast and jammed far more often that is acceptable. The first "example" is referring to this.

The biggest thing I came away with is that Olin Shivers knew a ton about gun culture in 1987. Considering that there was no Internet and therefore no gun forums to waste hours every night on in 1987, he must have actually be a firearms enthusiast himself or have consulted with someone extremely knowledgeable to write this.

All that said, there is one line that made me smile:

"Poor Felton. Published, and published, and perished just the same."

onedognight• 12 years ago

Considering that there was no Internet and therefore no gun forums

It seems you missed the signature of FreeBSD co-founder Jordan Hubbard

moderator of rec.guns

or maybe that this is a reference to a news group[1] which was the internet of 1987?

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum#!forum/rec.guns

67726e• 12 years ago

BBS aside, you'd think a subscription to Guns & Ammo would suffice for that kind of stuff.

LyndsySimon10• 12 years ago

My apologies, I was mostly being hyperbolic by saying there was "no Internet". My experience with BBSs and newsgroups is quite limited, considering I was three years old when this was published :)

Do you have any idea of the membership of rec.guns in 1987? My favorite forum shows 6,188 users logged in right now, and 6.7m unique visitors in April of the year.

vezzy-fnord2• 12 years ago

it seems to be poking fun at the competitive nature of American academia

I honestly can't tell what it's trying to satirize.

jjoonathan• 12 years ago

He might also be mocking a group of people pushing to ban weapons from campus, the surrounding city, or some other place where the incidence of gun violence is already so low that such a ban would have little or no effect other than to aggravate law-abiding gun enthusiasts such as himself. By imagining a world in which law-abiding gun owners were regularly mowing each other down for sport (i.e. a world in which the proposed bans would be directly effective) he hopes to demonstrate just how ridiculous some of the claims coming out of the anti-gun camp were.

That's just a guess and there are more sophisticated arguments on both sides of the debate but it would be a crime to ignore such a wonderfully amusing piece of fiction on that basis alone. FWIW I was born into and consider myself sympathetic with gun culture.

LyndsySimon10• 12 years ago

I hadn't considered that; it seems plausible.

It seems like he was just trolling more than anything else. I'd love to read the replies he references in his email!

anon4• 12 years ago

Ugh, posts like this make me sick.

JUST BUY AK47! It was made exact for dirty hands and bad gunpowder. You think you can improve on design? You think your M16Z8Vblahglahblahs better?

YOU KNOW NOTHING JOHN SMITH!

Autoweapons (1987)

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