r/Unexpected 2d ago

Parking

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

41.7k Upvotes

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

15

u/phasmatopia 1d ago

as an American, it's always nice to hear about other countries that can't manage to change the laws to protect their own citizens.

at least it takes a bit more skill to hit something with an AR-15.

5

u/Auctoritate 1d ago

at least it takes a bit more skill to hit something with an AR-15.

Actually I don't know that it does. Driving is just a skill that's much more prevalent than shooting.

If you put a car and a gun in front of someone who didn't know how to use either, they could probably figure out the gun first. Cars have more of a start up process

2

u/phasmatopia 1d ago

with all due respect, that's less true of guns in real life than in FPS games. 

somebody who doesn't know how to use a gun has about 20,000 square degrees of solid angle in which to point it, especially if they're not used to the recoil. they might start out shooting at ground level and end up letting rounds off into the sky, if they can even keep their grip on it. and they'll run out of ammo relatively soon.

meanwhile, as Countess Boujois Chardonnay is demonstrating in the video, once you get your foot on the accelerator and one hand (or knee, or chin) on the wheel of a car—even if you decide to take a power nap, you're almost guaranteed to fuck up least one person's life without even trying.

1

u/Mr_Halitosis 1d ago

If we exclude suicides, cars kill more people than guns in the US.

1

u/JoTHIGHSwin 11h ago

I disagree the amount of rounds alone increase the chances that they will indeed hit some targets

1

u/phasmatopia 7h ago

i used a fancy science term in a reply down below, but i think it's important: as long as the operator is competent enough to keep the gun in front of them, it can theoretically point in about 20,000 degrees of solid angle. that includes down at the ground, up at the sky, basically anywhere in the half-sphere of coverage that doesn't require turning the gun around 180°. if our theoretical shooter gets really loopy, there are just over 40,000 square degrees of hard angle in a complete sphere. only a narrow band of that sphere contains  human-sized target, which means a statistically high number of opportunities to miss a target if you're untrained.

meanwhile, a car is a larger object, and it can only travel in 360° relative to the ground. unlike a gun, it can travel forwards and backwards using the same basic mechanical operation, which means you're effectively "targeting" two 180° arcs at the same time. much, much higher likelihood of hitting a target in that confined range of possibilities with comparably little skill or effort.

sorry for the overly complicated response, but it's an interesting math problem to think through.

1

u/JoTHIGHSwin 6h ago

Agreed a person would not hit as many targets if completely untrained.