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turtlespeed

US Capitol Bldg: Shots Fired

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DanG

Quote

The woman didn't have any weapons in the car, but the car itself is a pretty potent weapon.



I'd just like to point out that she had excellent taste in vehicles.



Only terrorist like cars like that, i am putting you on the list;)
I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

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DanG

Quote

The woman didn't have any weapons in the car, but the car itself is a pretty potent weapon.



I'd just like to point out that she had excellent taste in vehicles.



I prefer Italian, but the best engine company in Japan that makes vehicles is Honda.

For the situation in which she found/placed herself, she should have gone German.

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winsor

***

Quote

The woman didn't have any weapons in the car, but the car itself is a pretty potent weapon.



I'd just like to point out that she had excellent taste in vehicles.



I prefer Italian, but the best engine company in Japan that makes vehicles is Honda.

For the situation in which she found/placed herself, she should have gone German.

You do know that Ford won the best engine in the world award this year, dont you?

(BTW, I am not a Ford fan)
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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rushmc

******

Quote

The woman didn't have any weapons in the car, but the car itself is a pretty potent weapon.



I'd just like to point out that she had excellent taste in vehicles.



I prefer Italian, but the best engine company in Japan that makes vehicles is Honda.

For the situation in which she found/placed herself, she should have gone German.

You do know that Ford won the best engine in the world award this year, dont you?

(BTW, I am not a Ford fan)

Don't think Ford is an engine company in Japan though.

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SkyDekker

*********

Quote

The woman didn't have any weapons in the car, but the car itself is a pretty potent weapon.



I'd just like to point out that she had excellent taste in vehicles.



I prefer Italian, but the best engine company in Japan that makes vehicles is Honda.

For the situation in which she found/placed herself, she should have gone German.

You do know that Ford won the best engine in the world award this year, dont you?

(BTW, I am not a Ford fan)

Don't think Ford is an engine company in Japan though.

Now there is a fucking revelation!!!
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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DanG

Yes, it was a Nissan. Infiniti G37 Coupe, to be exact.

I drive the same car she used. I would have gotten away.



Hmm
Seems you like your car
And I doubt you would have driven it into anything, especially a cop car or police baracade
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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rushmc


"The 1.0L ecoboost engine from Ford which won the top award for 2012 is not available in N America."

It also won in 2013.

I wound up driving a Lincoln, which I was prepared to dislike. After noticing that it got 27 mpg on the highway, I took a look under the hood. WTF? An alloy block OHC 4.6 litre V-8?

While GM owns Opel and Vauxhall, which have some very impressive models, Ford also has a variety of really superb designs that never reach our shores.

I reiterate my contention that, if your goal is to drive in such a manner as to draw fire from people intent upon your demise, a street-worthy armored vehicle is the way to go.

In all seriousness, it concerns me that we have become so weireded out that our response to someone expressing mental illness behind the wheel is to kill them. I am biased by the fact that there was an infant in the back, and that the driver, bat-shit crazy though she may have been, was likely the kid's mother.

Having been the target of a woman's fury with a 6,000 lb vehicle as her weapon of choice, I have some feel for the decision process of the LEOs on the scene. Luckily, I had the option of evasion, but they were stuck having to deal with the situation, and sidearms vs. vehicle is a lopsided equation. Even with perforated tires, a determined driver can still use a vehicle to fatal effect.

I realize that mental illness is a disease and all that, but when someone is barking mad and poses a serious threat to those nearby, it is hard to bring treatment into play.

On the one hand, the insane asylums of yore simply warehoused people in a drug-addled state, all too often in simply ghastly conditions. OTOH, simply releasing these people, with or without their meds, does not turn out to be much of an improvement.

Psychiatry is one of the softest of the soft sciences, and its practitioners are often drawn to the field by the fact that they identify with the mentally defective, so I take with a grain of salt the bulk of the theories popular in the psychiatric community. However, the threat posed by mental illness is real and significant.

In this case, as well as many of the newsworthy incidents involving firearms, insanity is the core issue at hand. That being said, using the knowledge that we have a problem with the clinically unhinged is problematic, since there really is no effective means of either identifying nutcases or dealing with them.

Let's say we come up with a clear criterion for identifying the mentally ill. For example, if Scientology sounds good, there is something severely wrong with you.

That's all well and good, but now what do we do with that knowledge? Any means of removing people from society on that basis has historically been abused more than it has been used to good effect - look at the USSR.

Also, there is the problem that many who have made the greatest contributions to our society were not too tightly wrapped in the first place. Brilliance and sanity are not too tightly coupled.

Thus, even though we may have a good idea of what is the basic problem, its solution seems destined to remain elusive.


BSBD,

Winsor

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Nice summation. What's it doing in SC of all places :P

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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winsor


"The 1.0L ecoboost engine from Ford which won the top award for 2012 is not available in N America."

It also won in 2013.

I wound up driving a Lincoln, which I was prepared to dislike. After noticing that it got 27 mpg on the highway, I took a look under the hood. WTF? An alloy block OHC 4.6 litre V-8?

While GM owns Opel and Vauxhall, which have some very impressive models, Ford also has a variety of really superb designs that never reach our shores.

I reiterate my contention that, if your goal is to drive in such a manner as to draw fire from people intent upon your demise, a street-worthy armored vehicle is the way to go.

In all seriousness, it concerns me that we have become so weireded out that our response to someone expressing mental illness behind the wheel is to kill them. I am biased by the fact that there was an infant in the back, and that the driver, bat-shit crazy though she may have been, was likely the kid's mother.

Having been the target of a woman's fury with a 6,000 lb vehicle as her weapon of choice, I have some feel for the decision process of the LEOs on the scene. Luckily, I had the option of evasion, but they were stuck having to deal with the situation, and sidearms vs. vehicle is a lopsided equation. Even with perforated tires, a determined driver can still use a vehicle to fatal effect.

I realize that mental illness is a disease and all that, but when someone is barking mad and poses a serious threat to those nearby, it is hard to bring treatment into play.

On the one hand, the insane asylums of yore simply warehoused people in a drug-addled state, all too often in simply ghastly conditions. OTOH, simply releasing these people, with or without their meds, does not turn out to be much of an improvement.

Psychiatry is one of the softest of the soft sciences, and its practitioners are often drawn to the field by the fact that they identify with the mentally defective, so I take with a grain of salt the bulk of the theories popular in the psychiatric community. However, the threat posed by mental illness is real and significant.

In this case, as well as many of the newsworthy incidents involving firearms, insanity is the core issue at hand. That being said, using the knowledge that we have a problem with the clinically unhinged is problematic, since there really is no effective means of either identifying nutcases or dealing with them.

Let's say we come up with a clear criterion for identifying the mentally ill. For example, if Scientology sounds good, there is something severely wrong with you.

That's all well and good, but now what do we do with that knowledge? Any means of removing people from society on that basis has historically been abused more than it has been used to good effect - look at the USSR.

Also, there is the problem that many who have made the greatest contributions to our society were not too tightly wrapped in the first place. Brilliance and sanity are not too tightly coupled.

Thus, even though we may have a good idea of what is the basic problem, its solution seems destined to remain elusive.


BSBD,

Winsor

Good post!
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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DanG

Quote

Hmm
Seems you like your car
And I doubt you would have driven it into anything, especially a cop car or police baracade



I do like my car.

I was just making a joke. Probably inappropriate.



Not at all.

Now, do you have any advice for her? Like, how to dodge bullets using that car?
I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

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The car's strength is acceleration. 0-60 in 5.1sec, and excellent acceleration when already at speed. It didn't look like she was taking advantage of that. She certainly could have out run those Capitol police cars if she'd found a straightaway. Given where this occured, she probably could have found some open lanes on Constitution Ave heading West and gotten a good lead on them. If she made it 14th street and there wasn't trafic on the bridge, that car would excel on the relatively straight GW parkway. Is that what you were looking for?

- Dan G

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SkyDekker

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Now, do you have any advice for her? Like, how to dodge bullets using that car?



Roof mounted .50 caliber and shoot them before they can shoot you.... :P


Rear mounted RPGs!!!
I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

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