This is the best primer over ever found on the topic

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjHf9jaFs8XWoGULb2HQRvhzBclS1yimW

Also US, and largely agree, but I would move Hardee’s/ Carl’s Jr. Down to bottom tier. That’s also where I’d put Jack in the Box. I’d put both In-n-Out and Whataburger as mid tier - I think both are VASTLY overrated.

Though In-n-Out is owned by a Christian Nationalist that’s hell-bent on turning America into (more of) a fascist oligarchy and openly using their wealth to destroy democracy, so they’re on my boycott list, along with Chick-fil-A.

Takes me about 2 seconds with a 5lb steel mallet.

But. But. But it says “do no evil,” right on the box! ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ

I have no idea on a metric of how frequently an “ordinary” gun jams, much less these modified ones, but I can apply some logic from my knowledge/experiences. The weapons you mention having experience with are designed with appropriate tolerances to not bind up under heavy use, so are a bit different from the ‘consumer-grade’ type we’re talking about in this specific event.

The type of semiautomatic rifles we’re talking about here use recoil to cycle the action. A bump stock allows the whole weapon to oscillate - and can have an effect similar to not securely shouldering the weapon. This prevents the needed energy from being transferred into the action for complete cycling, and that would make the weapon prone to jamming.

I don’t know if I have much of value to add to or reply to your second paragraph, but yeah that fixation is weird.

I mean, he didn’t really have much of a problem with accuracy - he fired a total of 1058 rounds, and those rounds or shrapnel from them injured 413 different people. Of course, many people received more than a single gunshot wound. He killed 58 (later 60) in ten minutes of shooting – effectively one person every 10 seconds. I think it would be difficult for a single person to injure or kill more from where he was standing with any weapon short of an RPG.

He was operating a significant number of his weapons on bump stocks. Bump stocks allow firing at a much higher rate than the weapons were designed for. Operating at a higher rate causes the weapons to overheat. Overheating causes misfires and jams (and inaccuracy and can permanently damage weapons, but I doubt he was particularly concerned about those things). He did have them all set up in a row and many on mounts. He broke out the overlooking windows of his hotel room before he started shooting. It seems he was shooting with one until it jammed and then moving on to the next rather than trying to clear misfires.

I don’t know about the lack of mental health care being the “main issue.” A healthy society wouldn’t be in dire need of such extreme amounts of mental health care. These mass shootings are a single symptom (among many) of a very complicated and interwoven set of factors that have brought us to this place. There is no single solution that will fix the problem, and the only way out of this mess will take significant investment and likely generations to break the cycle. But humans are greedy, and particularly in the USA, we only look for simple simgle-issue solutions that can have a measurable outcome (and be economically viable) within the next couple or fiscal quarters or an election term, at most. The solutions we should be implementing don’t work on that sort of time scale, and many will be very costly (in varying terms of both money and/or freedom)… So, we just don’t do those things.

Disclaimer: I hate cruises and the entire industry, but ended up getting roped into a few before COVID by weird family dynamics.

I found a portable router to be pretty handy on cruise ships. The only Internet available is through the ship’s WiFi, and the Internet package I had limited connectivity to a single connected device per cabin. The travel router would be the single MAC and allow all our devices to connect. I was also able to share with family in the next cabin over.

A few months ago I stayed in a hotel for about a week and I couldn’t get my Nintendo Switch to connect through their Wi-Fi. My Switch also doesn’t work on my phone’s hotspot for some reason, even though other devices connect and work fine. Anyway, that scenario would’ve been nice for a travel router, but I didn’t bring it with me on that trip.

There’s also this weird discussion trap that damn near everybody falls into regarding the post office - why does it need to be profitable at all? It’s a government service - nobody expects schools, police departments, fire departments, NASA, public works departments, health departments, departments of transportation, the military, or basically anything else to be profitable.