I have observed that “very clever” people on the internet have a tendency to disregard solutions that are only partial, even if there is little to no downside to them.

The M16A1 was not adopted until 1967.

Various “off the shelf” AR-15s were purchased by the government as well as small batch contracts, most notably by the Air Force as an early adopter.

This picture is low res and JFK’s hand covers the side of the receiver, but I am relatively confident that the flash hider in the photo is a prong type different than the XM16E1, making this either an AR-15 or a very early M16 (no suffix designators). While I can’t definitively say what it is, an M16A1 it is not.

why aren’t we able to just make it more to our liking?

You are, but you have to figure out how to get it all to work together yourself. That means physically, electrically, and in software. All the things you listed are problems that need to be overcome. If you have the ability, you can do this, but you yourself have to do it or find someone who specializes in such particular work. Most people have neither the skills, time, or patience to do this.

Explain your thesis.

From Wikipedia:

During the American Civil War, Army officers were withdrawn from Coast Survey duty, never to return, while all but two Navy officers also were withdrawn from Coast Survey service for the duration of the war. Since most men of the Survey had Union sympathies, most stayed on with the Survey rather than resigning to serve the Confederate States of America; their work shifted in emphasis to support of the United States Navy and Union Army, and these Coast Surveyors are the professional ancestors of today’s NOAA Corps. Those Coast Surveyors supporting the Union Army were given assimilated military rank while attached to a specific command, but those supporting the U.S. Navy operated as civilians and ran the risk of being executed as spies if captured by the Confederates while working in support of Union forces.

Yeah I noticed that after I posted. It is fixed.

It is called the Takings Clause by the Supreme Court, Cornell Law, and pretty much anyone else who talks about it. Expect the word “take” in a discussion about it.

The clause itself uses the word “take”. Taking with compensation is still taking.

It is called the Takings Clause by

They talked about just compensation, but the change and precedent provided by the Kelo case was in the lowering of the standard for taking. The case also set the precedent that the government could take private land not just for public use, but to transfer that land to another private party. Thus the focus on that. Compensation or not, the land was taken against the owner’s will for the purpose of enriching a corporation.

A flashhider of some type would be seen on most variants sold by Armalite in the era.

Rather than guess from memory, I looked it up.

The rifles were made on contract for KLM, and had a combination of features specific to that run. No one feature was too crazy, but this particular contract run of rifles was a small batch, and thus rare. 16 inch barrels with no muzzle device, semi-auto only, takedown pins on a chain.

If I recall correctly, those are a quite rare AR-10 variant with single digit amounts still surviving. The featureless muzzle in this picture always catches my eye.

The Prosecutors: Legal Briefs, episode 117.

The show is hosted by two prosecutors, so in various episodes on criminal cases their opinions skew heavily pro-prosecutor, but when laying out facts like going through a SCOTUS case they tend to be more fact based and less opinion based, I have found.

cannot be set higher than an amount that is reasonably likely to ensure the defendant’s presence at the trial

That is a sentence that you can really roll over in your head. It does not necessarily also mean an amount within the resources of the defendant. I watch a lot of hearings, and something I’ve seen at least a few times is a set of allegations and past facts (usually something like multiple failures to appear in the past, and/or fleeing from police) in a situation where the actual charge being bailed on has a statutory requirement that bail be offered. The judge doesn’t want to let the person out on bail, so therefore sets the bail at $1 million or something which is functionally the same thing as not giving them bail.

Usually this triggers a motion for a hearing about the bail amount by the defense lawyer to argue down the amount, but if the court date on the charge is earlier than court date for the motion, it becomes a moot issue.

I’m not an expert, but I did just listen to a podcast on this (which basically makes me an expert, right?)

I think yes, technically, legally the federal government could. ‘Kelo v. City Of New London’ ruled that purely economic development was a sufficient justification for using the takings power (eminent domain). The reaction by most states was to make their own laws limiting eminent domain powers so that the Kelo situation couldn’t happen with the state government, but the federal government has never passed laws limiting its powers. Bills to limit federal power like S.1313 were introduced but never passed.

Perhaps they are going for a tone of heroic escapism, or fantastical drama over gory and downbeat “realism”.

If you really just want to see heroes maiming people it’s been done. Invincible, The Boys (show and comic). Even back to the 90s there were comics like Stormwatch that centered on the premise of “realistic” consequences of super powers.

and the whole hooters/twin peaks concept

I haven’t thought about Hooters in years. It always did seem like a dated concept from the 1980s that was somehow still clinging to life in the 90s. It’s still in business, so obviously somebody must be going to them, but I don’t know if I’d call it normal for most Americans.

Anecdotally this is also my experience. I grew up with shoes off in the house, but even up to the early 00’s it seemed to be a cultural outlier in the US.

These days I think the majority of people who I go over to visit have a shoes off rule. Seems like the split is between the older half of millennials and up shoes on, and younger half and down shoes off for the most part.

If a business has a sign posted stating “no guns allowed,” you can still legally carry your weapon in that business.

I’m sure that’s the practicality, but I am skeptical of the legality of a CCW permit trumping the rights of the property owner.

It sounds more like breaking the law and just not getting caught. Do you have any links to CCW permit overriding property owner rights?

#8: Police

State police enforce state level laws, and Federal agencies enforce federal laws.

The whole semi-autonomous thing. If a state and the Feds both have their own laws against something they could each try to arrest somebody, but there could also be a situation where one might not have a law while the other one does. For example , weed is still illegal under Federal law. The Federal government has mostly chosen not to enforce these laws, but it could. Many states have legalized weed to varying degrees.

So there could be a situation where somebody is smoking weed in a state that has legalized it. The state police have no power to arrest that person, but the Feds do.

I’m sure this has all made it more confusing.