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It all goes back to "Top Gun." In the heads-up display on Maverick's Tomcat, you can see a computer compensate for human aim with precision laser guidance and careful calculations. How long before that technology made its way to to a conventional hunting rifle? It's here now, with a price tag of $17,000 to $21,000. We came to Las Vegas the first week of January, the way we always do, for the Consumer Electronics Show. The vast trade show features over 3,300 exhibitors, and covers 1.9 million square feet. But there are no shooting ranges at CES. To check out...

The guest of honor at a Stoughton baby shower that deteriorated into a bottle-bashing, chair-smashing brawl between as many as 200 people Saturday night tearfully told the Herald yesterday that gate-crashers and cops with stun guns ruined her special night and terrified the guests. “My niece got shoved across the room. She’s only 2 months old. A kid got hit in the head with a table. I was very scared. It’s still a shock to me,” said Maria Depina, 22, of Brockton, who blamed the chaos at Club Luis De Camoes on party crashers “we didn’t even know” and overly...

People familiar with the internal negotiations say Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders have a tentative deal to enact the nation's first gun control measure following the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.

The knowledge base on FR is awesome when it comes to all things gun related. I am looking for suggestions for the best bedroom quick access safe for one or two of my handguns. The grandkids come over often so I want a small safe, and since I am a married man it shouldn't be ugly as sin or overly large (aesthetics, you know). My wife and I need glasses so I want easy access in the dark. I am strongly considering fingerprint scanning safes. Please help me whittle down hours of research!

There are no gun shops in Chicago, so they say, but murders are on pace to hit 730 for 2013. Guns are usually the weapons that the killers choose to use.Two teenage boys were murdered over the weekend, and guns were the weapons used by the killers. One victim, 14-year-old Rey Dorantes, was reportedly shot while sitting on the front porch of his home. Fifteen-year-old Victor Vega was reportedly walking with another male when they were approached by an armed man who opened fire, killing Vega. In separate incidents, four other people were wounded via gunfire, and all but...

Today the people of the United States of America have an opportunity to make the world a better place. Rather than wasting time compromising the political ideologies of progressives and conservatives, Americans could use that time to employ modern economic and scientific advancements to eradicate poverty. The USA could lead the world into a new era where prosperity is the rule rather than the exception.

An executive with BP Alaska says the company plans to add two new rigs on the North Slope this year. But Phil Cochrane says the company won't search for or produce new sources of oil. In prepared remarks to an Alaska Support Industry Alliance conference in Anchorage, Cochrane said the rigs will be used to accelerate production from existing reserves. He said it's a response to a state policy that discourages investment.

Last week, it was reported that Morgan Stanley would ax 1,600 jobs, or about 6 percent of the global institutional securities group, Bloomberg News reports. The latest round of reductions are expected to begin today and continue into the coming weeks. According to Bloomberg News, half of those cuts are expected to be here in the U.S. The bank is also expected to eliminate about 15% of the i-banking positions in Asia, Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, Fox Business reports that the Dubai office's equities division will be hit, too. Layoffs have been hitting a bunch of the big Wall Street banks....

A Us judge has ruled that the Palestinian Authority has the right to cover up a memo linking it to a suicide bombing that killed two teen American citizens in Israel, The Post has learned. The document — accidentally handed over to lawyers suing the authority for $300 million on behalf of the teens’ parents — reveals a “close relationship” between the bomber and a captain in the Palestinian Authority security forces who planned the terror attack, court papers say. The two-page memo, written in April 2012 by Maj. Ziad Abu Hamid of the authority’s General Intelligence Service, also details...

Alternate headline: “Unctuous man finds true calling.” I felt sorry for him when I saw this last night, partly because he doesn’t look well — that suit and tie seem too big — and partly because, whatever you think of him, it’s too bad to see the office reduced to a form of super-celebrity. (Although in fairness, thanks to The One, we’re well down that path already.) I’m not sure why he did it. Did his pal Spielberg talk him into it to goose pre-Oscar buzz for “Lincoln,” because the two of them inexplicably still need more personal validation at...

Featured Term (selected at random):SEPTUAGINT The most important translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. As the story goes, the Egyptian king, Ptolemy II (309-246 B.C.), sought a copy of Jewish law for his library. Eleazer, the Jewish high priest, sent six scholars from each of the Twelve Tribes to Alexandria to work on the translation. Because of the number of the scholars involved, their joint co-operative production was called the Septuagint, abbreviated LXX. The early Christians used the Septuagint as a basis for their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. As time went on, it steadily became a...

It’s not often an ex-senator gets a shot at his old job just months after losing. So Scott Brown is widely expected to jump at the chance, running in a special election for John Kerry’s seat that presumably will become vacant within weeks. But there are compelling reasons for Brown to pass on what would be his third Senate campaign in four years — and he’s thinking long and hard about them. Topping the list: In 2014, he could run instead for Massachusetts governor, a job that Republicans have had much more success winning and keeping, as Mitt Romney can...

Myrtle Beach, S.C. — Tim Scott, the newest member of the U.S. Senate, got a hero’s welcome from the groups meeting here for the South Carolina Tea Party Convention this weekend. Scott, who replaced Jim DeMint as South Carolina’s junior senator this month, has had a meteoric rise in politics. Five years ago he was a member of Charleston’s city council. Since then he has won a seat in the state legislature, and in 2010, he became the first African-American Republican elected to the House from a Deep South state in decades. Scott knows the cadences of Sunday preaching well....

Not a bug - a feature. Politico: _________________ The individual mandate penalties will be pretty weak as they are phased in over two years - only $95 when they start in 2014, much less than it costs to buy insurance. And yet, everyone with pre-existing conditions will have to be accepted for coverage right away. That's why insurance companies are telling the administration the mandate won't be enough for the first two years. They want more incentives - such as a late enrollment fee - to get healthy people to sign up quickly. Without getting the healthy folks in, the...

Bernard Shaw specifically points to Pygmalion as didactic.(In the preface) Which means instructive or teaching. The question is, what is he teaching, and to whom? On the one hand, there's the obvious answer that he is teaching "the masses" about how selfish and superficial that the upper classes are.(which isn't always true) But on the other hand, Bernard Shaw is very popular amongst today's elites. What did he teach them with this? Here are some highlights. From act 1: THE NOTE TAKER. You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to...

The U.S. economy is a thoroughbred racehorse that has won every past race. Now, it won't run at all. The trainers (Washington) first tried the "carrot" approach. They tempted the horse with apples (TARP funds), but somehow, the apples never got to the horse. Then they offered actual carrots (bailouts), but the faster rabbits (banks) ate them before the horse could. The thoroughbred just stood there. The trainers switched to the "stick." They took away the horse's oats and hay and gave his food to a favorite animal (Solyndra). They removed the racing saddle (first position on GM stock), gave...

Seaway Crude Oil Pipeline Company LLC announced that service on the 500-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline between Cushing, Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast resumed today, with approximately 400,000 barrels per day ("BPD") of capacity now available to shippers. Service was suspended on January 2, 2013 so that the remaining pump station connections could be completed allowing capacity to be increased from approximately 150,000 BPD.

Piers Morgan is one of many people who seem to think the word "murder" must always be preceded by the word "gun," even though "gun" is not defined as an adjective in my dictionary (Webster's Unabridged, 1976). Here is what he said in his interview with Alex Jones."How many gun murders where there in Britain last year? ...It's actually 35 -- against 11,000 [in the U.S.]"A video of clip from that interview, as well as a good debunking of Morgan's statistics by Reality Check, can be found here.First, some straightforward fact-checking. Morgan said there were 35 "gun murders" in "Britain...

INDIANAPOLIS — Republican state Sen. Jim Tomes says there may growing support for his proposal to train more school teachers in the use of firearms. Tomes, a gun-rights advocate from Wadesville, floated the idea of arming teachers in a December interview with an Indianapolis TV station when he was considering introducing legislation that would make it easier to do so. Within days of the story, he heard from teachers and retired educators in Indiana and around the country who supported the idea. “Two months ago, if we talked about this, we’d have been laughed off the face of the planet,”...

I admit to using the word "conservative" loosely -- we are talking about Hollywood, after all. It here refers to those films that are at least respectful of the American experience and generally supportive of faith, family, and/or country. A film can score as much as 50 on the quality scale and 50 on the conservative scale, the latter graded on a Hollywood curve. The two values are equally weighted. Although it may not seem obvious, 2012 was a better year than most. 10. Dark Knight Rises 75 In the third of Christopher Nolan's trilogy, Batman comes out of retirement...