Yes Ken, it is different. Armed forces disabilities can only be had by people who have put their lives on the line in service of their country. That's about as "different" as it gets. You've clouded the issue by bringing in your question about whether this particular disability is disabling. But that's nothing to do with the point you originally made which is that all these benefits are the same.
PAL-V "A helicopter is an machine designed to shake itself to pieces" Rotary aircraft are a whole new dimension of expensive, every hour in the air represents something like a fifth of an hour of certified A/P mechanics time (plus air certified parts cost etc). Like the idea, but it's not the "everyman" jet pack they told us to expect in the 60's ;)
Nice plane. The problem is the decline of general aviation. We've always had cool technology; you can find a flying car from the late 60's at the seattle flight museum, moler has had a really neat ducted fan car (no runway) since the 80's... the problems are the cost of risk management, liability and traffic control. When my dad came home from an infantry tour in Korea, the average guy could get his private ticket and hope to fly frequently enough to stay current and enjoy the hobby. I work in technology and have a family, there's no way I could do that on my median-ish salary Let's see a flashy video about that, set to jazzy electro tunes ;)
"tacky" yes, "picture"? no. That's a caricature Ken, it's intended as humor.
I think it's a shame that, in this particular forum, so many people are describing range mishaps. This incident was (apparently) about a drunken sole idiot performing a single tragic idiocy. I don't think it's accurate to paint gun ranges as hotbeds of similar activity. While we've had a few highly reported problems locally, gun ranges are not typically dangerous places to be, you do not see national statistics that back up the anecdotes being publicised here as the -norm- for range behaviour at least in terms of injury or death. Please take anecdotes for what they are.
At the range I teach at, anyone who -heard- "Don't worry it's not loaded" would be expected to ask the person to leave and to report them to the next board meeting. The board would absolutely act on that report and if investigation corroborated it in any way that would be that persons (the one whose gun is "not loaded") LAST day on our range. Even though according to this anecdote no injury was created. So, sure, people make mistakes, but in most places systems are in place to lower or eliminate the likelihood of harm as a result of mistakes. Doesn't always work, but it's not the "wild west" version of keystone cops that we're seeing here IMHO.
From the article that seems true. You probably know that it's statistically unlikely though, but even if it is his first crime that's the way our system works. You -are- innocent until you're proven guilty that first time. So we can't expect to stop a crime like this before anything has happened. The thing policy has to be focused on is making so it doesn't happen a -second- time. And we're really not good at that (hence the statistics that a lot of crime in recidivist...)
Plenty of states have tests like that. For years in the south your skin color was part of the test, until rather recently the CPL (it's CPL in Washington) test in Boston required you to fire with the Sheriffs gun, whether it had sights when it was your turn depended on who you knew. I'm sorry for this tragedy. Enforcing the laws that we have will help prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.
I've seen a lot of weird stuff at ranges and shops over the past ~20 years but never anything like your 2 or 3. At the ranges I go to (bellevue and other) either of those would end in criminal charges.
How about we use "first-degree manslaughter"? That's a pretty serious charge.
We need a bill that fines people for suggesting legislation based on emotion with little or no fact. And, that's not just emotion talking...
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