A truly criminal gun

[TexasRifleman]

The wiki page never states that sulfur and saltpetre were used together as a medicine.

Not sure what else to say to be honest. It's pretty clearly stated in the article you quoted.

Saltpeter was known to the Chinese by the mid-1st century AD and there is strong evidence of the use of saltpetre and sulfur in various largely medicinal combinations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#China

This entire thread serves no useful purpose. Many of the arguments read like they were straight out of the Brady handbook.

Guns are inanimate objects and their use is determined 100% by the person holding them. Anyone who believes otherwise is, in my opinion, insane.

Whether the origins were for warfare or not still doesn't have anything to do with 'criminal use'. Warfare is not necessarily a criminal or even an evil act.

Inanimate objects do nothing and have no meaning by themselves.

 

[RedLion]

Dang it, you caught me! How did you know I was a card carrying anti?

 

[TexasRifleman]

Dang it, you caught me! How did you know I was a card carrying anti?

It's not that , I don't mean you personally at all and I apologize if it sounded that way. I just don't see the point of saying that guns were specifically designed for criminal use.

That's the argument "they" make all the time, that somehow the object itself is part of the problem, that there would be no crime if guns hadn't been invented.

They just aren't. People are the problem. Some people do bad things with inanimate objects, some people do good with them.

 

[content]

Hello friends and neighbors // no such thing

 

[RS14]

It's not that , I don't mean you personally at all and I apologize if it sounded that way. I just don't see the point of saying that guns were specifically designed for criminal use.

Historical interest, for me. Lots of hardware is interesting--take the Soviet silent pistols I mentioned at the beginning of the thread. It's impressive that they can do that, and it was a clever solution to their problem--assassinating somebody quickly and quietly.

Another class of hardware that I really enjoy is aircraft. It is often really interesting to read about the roles that warplanes wind up fulfilling. Take the Hawker Typhoon--it was designed as a high altitude interceptor, but wound up being used as a low altitude interceptor and fighter-bomber with much more success. And that's interesting.

 

[chrisdelrosario14]

Guns were developed for killing whether it be for food, protection, or military. There would not have been any other practical application to spawn their early development. Guns were very expensive at one time and only the affluent or soldiers had access to them. As the costs of producing firearms went down people found that target shooting offered much more than just to practice killing things and competitive sport of target shooting came to be.

^That's what I meant Texas Rifleman