It always made Superman flinch!
Posted on 09/25/2006 11:42:27 AM PDT by Dr. Zzyzx
Welcome to "The Weapon Shop of Ishtar" by Jack Vance
where everyone can by a gun to protect themselves from the government, and other agressors, while preventing agreesion.
( utopia )
Let this be a warning. Stock up on guns before these things become mandatory. I seriously doubt they will be able to retrofit a S&W Model 29 at a price the owner will pay.
I believe that this sort of nonsense can only come from the deranged mind of a committed gun-grabber. These people suffer from the delusion that guns are 'complicated', mystic devices beyond the ken of normal folk. They don't really comprehend that when they propose this sort of silly gadgetry, they're taking something low-tech, simple, and elegant, and jacking it up with fragile, finnicky, complicated, totally unnecessary crap.
Anybody up for a game of AD&D?
It always made Superman flinch!
Guns don't kill people, Smart guns don't.........
I'm going to hold out for the adjustable phaser.
I would be open to believe a pro-gun proponent came up with this before the theory of appeasement was debunked on 9/11.
Nothing like having a drained battery - I'll stick to my simple little Colt 6-shooter... -
Thanks for the info and sage words of wisdom. And last but not least, thanks for your service!
Remington should have a lot of batteries for sale from the Model 700 Etronx Rifle they made. As I recall it had simple key to turn on the electrons.
It was manufactured from '99 to '03. It only lasted 4 years.
The Non Etronx Model 700 has been around since 1962 and still going strong.
44 years and still counting vs 4 years and gone.
I wonder which one is more dependable? (/scar)
"It is still a heavy peice of steel and will leave a nasty bump on the head when you throw it at them."
Smart rocks are next.
If someone is facing severe bodily harm when they decide to shoot their attacker, but their gun doesn't go off, what is the natural expected consequence?
For a firearm to be useful for self-defense, it must work reliably in critical sitautions. A firearm which works 99.99% of the time at the range and 90% of the time in critical situations would not be very useful for self-defense.
I never understood any advantage of the eTronx rifle. Since any semi-auto using the eTronix principles would almost certainly be classified as a machine gun, it was limited to bolt-action only. The eTronx trigger was probably great, but surely mechanical triggers were available that were essentially as good. So what's the point?
The Weapon Shops of Isher.
They had weapons like that , except they would actually jump into their owners hands and were keyed to their eyesight, very effective.
Interesting meditations on weapon ownership and the kind of
society that happened when all were armed.
I forget who wrote it, I read so much SF as a kid.
Aaah, A.E. Van Vogt here is a review.
One of his classics that I had not previously read is The Weapon Shops of Isher. I finally got around to reading it now because it deals with the issue of the right to bear arms, which is so topical right now, particularly where I live, only a few miles from Columbine High School. In this novel, the eponymous weapon shops all bear the slogan, "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free."
In the distant future, the world has been unified under the empire of Isher, ruled by the young but ruthless Empress Innelda Isher. The only check on the power of the empress is the existence of the impervious weapon shops, which provide defensive weapons to ordinary citizens. Now the empress has constructed a gigantic machine, designed to create an invisibility shield to allow her forces to overwhelm the weapon shops. However, for no apparent reason (Did I mention the plot might be outlandish and illogical?), operation of the machine has caused a man from 1951 to be snatched far into the future, where he begins to swing back and forth through time, with the machine moving through time as well, as if on the other end of a temporal seesaw.
Meanwhile, in the sleepy little town of Glay, Fara Clark, a slightly dense devotee of the empress, is outraged that a weapon shop has opened for business, and determines to do something to drive the weapon makers away from his home. His rebellious son Cayle, on the other hand, is quite pleased by the weapon shop's appearance. He quickly befriends weapon maker Lucy Rall, who convinces him to leave home and run off to the big city. When he does, he soon receives an education on how dangerous and hopelessly corrupt Isher society really is. He is in constant danger, but has two things going for him. First, he has unparalleled "callidetic" talents - a pseudoscientific way of saying he is amazingly lucky. Second, unbeknownst to Cayle, Lucy is watching out for him, on the instructions of one of the leaders of the weapon makers, the enigmatic Robert Hedrock. Hedrock is hoping Cayle will prove the key to thwarting the schemes of Empress Innelda.
Van Vogt leaves little doubt where he stands on the gun issue with lines like, "He thought: The right to buy weapons - and his heart swelled into his throat; the tears came into his eyes." Yet the book doesn't get preachy. For one thing, van Vogt's point is much broader than the matter of guns. The weapon makers represent the libertarian spirit that refuses to submit to complete government control. Unfortunately, some of the impact of the fight for freedom is lost because the weapon makers are hardly valiant underdogs; rather, they are the ones with enormous technological and organizational advantages over the empire. The weapon shops are supposed to be an institution preventing any government from gaining too much power, but van Vogt doesn't explain what's to stop the weapon makers themselves from asserting absolute power over the entire world.
Van Vogt is so busy throwing plot twists and new SF elements at you, however, that there's really no time to get bogged down in political theory. It all makes for very fun reading, especially the moments of phildickian reality shifts. For example, at one stage in the novel a character makes a telestat (video phone) call and is startled to see his own face answer the call. Only after the book is over do you realize how random and unnecessary most of the added SF elements were. For instance, one of the characters is immortal, but there's nothing at all in the story that requires him to be immortal. Even Cayle's implausible "callidetic" powers weren't really crucial to the story.
The profoundly corrupt Isher society is very interesting, and the characterization is quite strong. Like Heinlein and, to a lesser extent, Asimov, van Vogt tends to turn his favorite characters into hyper-efficient supermen. (Hey, maybe we can add Ayn Rand to the list of authors influenced by van Vogt!) Thankfully, there are enough fallible characters here to hold the reader's interest. For much of the book Lucy Rall is a better realized female character than was commonly seen in the pulps of the 30's and 40's. (Later on, she finally settles into worrying about whether Cayle is going to marry her and becomes less interesting.) And Fara Clark is sympathetic as a hard-headed defender of the status quo who gradually has to face some of the problems with his society.
Overall, this is a solid example of van Vogt's important early work, not without faults but certainly vibrant enough to entertain.
Why thank you. That's a first.
I believe in the dictum of "Keep it simple, stupid". When you are scared and the $hit has hit the fan, one doesn't need to doubt one's equipment or worry about technicalities.
The NRA is a great organization and I'm a long time member.
It might have been developed by Remington during the Clinton's anti-gun era as the child prof gun. That is only a guess.
They did use almost zero lock time as a selling point, that was the only other thing they could come up with.
All the components of the ammo were the same as a standard cartridge with the exception of the electronic primer. ( per The Blue Book of Gun Values)
Ammo now scarce. ( Blue Book )
My guess, Remington lost money on "The Politically Correct Rifle" and stopped production, while the other Model 700s just keep selling and selling.
They cannot seem to get it through their heads, the best engineering is "KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID".
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