Image: Sir EDW/Flickr

Protecting Santa is a tough job, so Santa's Defense Forces need heavy-duty weapons like this candy cane small arm that is standard issue on the North Pole:

The core of the system is the Candy Cane Carbine (C3), a modular candy cane small arm that can be tailored to a variety of applications. For more serious threats to Santa, especially those hardened against small arms fire, there is the weapon of last resort, the Mark 12 Tenenbaum Launcher.

Link - via Laughing Squid

Want to take your pillow fights to the next level? These pillow weapons were designed with you in mind! Guaranteed to cause less bodily harm than a real scimitar, or lightsaber for that matter, they will make you fee like you’re armed with a real weapon when the pillows start flying. Now go forth and plush the heck out of each other!

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I’d like to meet the SEALS that took out Bin Laden some day and buy them all the beer they can swill. Navy SEALS are so badass; they are the only thing Chuck Norris fears. Just look at this SEAL blowing stuff up on the battlefield with a giant gun. That is one of the most awesome photos I have ever seen. This SEAL was testing some new night-vision system, and the photo was snapped way back in 2004. It really makes you wonder what sort of awesome goodies they play with now, don’t it. Link

Where I live in the suburbs of Los Angeles there is a small – admittedly very small – chance I will be shot at while driving or riding in a car on the freeway. For reasons not clear to me, some young men enjoy shooting at other young men. Some even enjoy shooting at strangers. I am getting pretty tired of all the violence in our culture! One of my solutions for the freeway shooters is to give them their own freeway. This would be a toll road where one pays for the privilege of smashing and damaging other cars and even harming the cars’ occupants. It is likely that my fussy rules – “No Smashing or Squirting Above 30 MPH” – would be ignored by drivers who are already prone to breaking rules. The toll booth operator would look for the words “Road Violence Certified” on the driver’s license and require the driver to sign a waiver exempting other drivers from responsibility for property damage to his car, bodily injury or death to his person or passengers. The toll road would be walled off from nearby bedroom communities, though the sound of screeching tires, and violent thudding would be audible from backyards at all hours. Perhaps at times gunfire would be heard. If this sounds like science fiction, I can attest that while I live in a “good” neighborhood of Los Angeles, one that is relatively safe, it adjoins a “bad” neighborhood where the sound of gunshots, especially at night, is not uncommon. The existence of this special freeway would of course stimulate a small industry devoted to the design of protective grating, cladding, and roll bars, as well as offensive weapons that would be guaranteed to dent vehicles or ruin paint jobs. The least offensive weapon would be the squirt cannon. Some cannons would be oversized versions of a child’s squirt gun, while others would be powerful and might be capable of shooting liquids that peel car paint. Perhaps there would be participants – new to Car Wars – who would naively think it fun to bring the entire family along for an afternoon at the Car Wars Toll Road. That would be the last time they brought the wife and kids! Here the car owner is shown filling his squirt cannon for the first time. Designing a vehicle that could inflict harm, yet remain relatively unharmed itself would be a challenge. My sketches explore both offensive and defensive modifications. The latter include window bars, cladding, heavy armor and spiky projections from a car’s body. A Bonger Car, named for the sound it makes when its “bonger” arm smashes a car’s reinforced metal roof, would dent or smash in the roof of a nearby vehicle, but unless it was protected in some way, it would be easily damaged in a retaliatory attack. The protected Bonger Car may look silly, but it sustains less damage than when unprotected. Exiting the car following an afternoon at the Car Wars may require outside assistance.

Visit Steven M. Johnson at his website.

Christan Morales said her son just wanted to honor American troops when he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and small plastic Army figures.

But the school banned the hat because it ran afoul of the district’s zero-tolerance weapons policy. Why? The toy soldiers were carrying tiny guns.

"His teacher called and said it wasn’t appropriate," Morales said.

Morales’ 8-year-old son, David, had been assigned to make a hat for the day when his second-grade class would meet their pen pals from another school. She and her son came up with an idea to add patriotic decorations to a camouflage hat.
Earlier this week, after the hat was banned, the principal at the Tiogue School in Coventry told the family that the hat would be fine if David replaced the Army men holding weapons with ones that didn’t have any, according to Superintendent Kenneth R. Di Pietro.

The edumacators win again! Link (Photo: WPRI)

To avoid getting delayed behind noisy schoolkids waiting in line to pass through new metal detectors at the state Capitol, lobbyists are signing up for concealed handgun permits exempting them from the security checkpoints. [...]

The only people exempted are lawmakers, properly identified state employees or Texans who carry a pistol with a concealed handgun license — or just the license itself, which allows them to bypass the security lines for an express lane reserved for “CHL: Holders.”

“Every lobbyist in Texas is going to become a card-carrying member or a gun-carrying member,” lobbyist and former state lawmaker Pat Haggerty said. “We’re going to have more damn guns in here than we know what to do with.

“And there are some lobbyists I don’t know whether I’d trust — or trust myself if they’re around,” added Haggerty, a Republican who represented El Paso for 20 years. “It would certainly be a good way to do away with the competition.”

There’s method to this madness, folks: metal detectors are there to detect guns being furtively smuggled into the State Capitol building. You can openly carry concealed firearms if you take an all-day training class for certification to do so.

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The sling was likely mankind’s first, true projectile weapon. It generally consists of two cords and a pouch. These cords are held in one hand and a projectile is placed in the pouch. The length of the sling provides greater mechanical advantage than one’s arms. Projectiles can be slung over 1500 feet (450m) at speeds exceeding 250 miles per hour (400 kph). The sling is unique in that the movement of the weapon is merely an extension of the user’s body. The power and accuracy of the weapon is not by technological means, but rather user skill. The connection between slinger and sling is an intimate one, a relationship rarely found in modern weaponry.

Slinging.org has the history of the sling, information on different kinds of slings, and advice on making and using a sling. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Whether we like it or not, weapons play a pivotal role in human history. Most of them are simple and ruthlessly practical, whereas others evolved to become highly ornate, to the point that they could no longer be used as actual weapons but as ceremonial pieces instead.

Socyberty has an interesting post about the 10 most unusual blades (including knives and swords) from around the world. Take, for example, the katar shown to the left:

The Katar, shown in the introduction, is a short punching sword from India. The hand fitted into the grip so that the blade was above the knuckles. It was a weapon used by the Rajput, referred to as “the most valiant warriors of the Indian sub continent.”

Used in close combat the blades were said to be able to punch through armour.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sagest.

“And the deputy said, ‘Ah hah! He ate the evidence,’” Mabe said. “But we had the banana peel and they took a picture of it.”

John Steven Szwalla, 17, was charged with one count of attempted armed robbery. Warrants and records with the sheriff’s office list different addresses for him, with a most recent address in Clemmons.

Deputies joked about charging him with destroying evidence, said Major Brad Stanley, a spokesman for the Forsyth County Sheriff’s office.

Szwalla is in the Forsyth County Jail with bond set at $50,000.

Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Flickr user Jason Gulledge)

They’re screwed down though, which makes them safer but rather counterproductive.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ant8627.