Then Why Are Democrats Against It?

If requiring voter ID is Jim Crow 2.0, then why do Democrats oppose it?

They're the authors of OG Jim Crow, after all.

A Thought Occurs

We used the M16A1 in Granada.

Remember, the M16A1 that was garbage and got everyone killed in Vietnam?

Odd.

Of course, the M16A1 of 1983 wasn't quite the same weapon as in 1964.

The barrel and chamber had gotten chrome lining.

The buffer was completely redesigned.

The troops were better trained in how to clean and maintain them.

But the M193 ammunition was the same, just in case you were still blaming the powder for the problems in Vietnam.

The product improvements were real.

But Is It

Apex Gun Parts has M219 parts available.

The question is: "Is the M219 a machine gun?"

Because the definition of a machine gun is, "A machine gun is defined as any weapon that shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot automatically more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the trigger."

I've seen the M219 in action and it fails the shoot and readily restored to shoot more than one round per trigger pull.

I guess because it was intended to be a machine gun, it legally is one...

The scariest thing is the old silverback tankers insisted it was a huge improvement over the M73.

They all loved the M240. 

Nation Of Riflemen My Ass

I am, once again, watching the US suck hind tit at biathlon.

I can't even say it's because we suck at skiing because the penalties (misses) speak for themselves.

Hey, CMP, weren't you supposed to fix this?

Wait, CMP teaches high-power, which is scientifically designed to suck all the fun out of shooting and biathlon is fun.  Not their wheelhouse.

Speaking of...

Why the Hell isn't XTC / High Power Rifle an Olympic sport?

For that matter, why don't any Olympic shooting sports use "real" guns? 

Everything Old Is New Again

I was just reading about how the USMC is adding the capability to fire the new laser guided APKWS II rockets to their F/A-18C/D fleet.

Rocket?  No, rockets aren't guided.

The AGR-20A is guided, therefore, missile.

The neat thing is it's a standard 2.75" rocket in format, so it can be fired from any 2.75"/70mm launcher in the inventory.  Just need a laser designator to guide it with.

That's a 7-shot launcher for the Marines.  Up to 8 such launchers can be carried on a legacy Hornet.

It makes me wonder where the old LAU-3/A's go.  Those hold 19 rounds each.

The more modern, and probably more compatible LAU-69D/A also holds 19 rounds.

The bigger launchers have more drag, of course, but it'd mean 152 shots instead of 56 if 8 launchers were carried.

I know the USMC and Navy don't like triple ejector racks any more, but that'd add four more launchers to the plane and 28 more missiles in the 7-shot launchers.

But the part that tickled my fancy is how many planes used to have 2.75" unguided folding fin rockets built into them.  The  FFAR becomes the Hydra...

And an F-8 Crusader gets 32 laser guided missiles fired from the belly tray...  If we had any Crusaders that still had the tray and were flyable.

But laser guidance would have made the concept viable in a way that the unguided mighty mouse wasn't. 

Shut Up Clippy

Amazon has rolled out an AI helper named "Rufus".

Rufus pops up in the way with helpful stuff like, "I see that you're looking at the thing you searched for, would you like help with that?"

Why, no, Rufus, I don't want help with looking at the thing I am looking at.

Rufus can be dismissed, but if you use the back button to navigate away, Rufus returns.

Rufus only stays the fuck gone if you use buttons on the Amazon site to navigate around.

This is exactly the same as a sales-drone hovering while you try to make a decision between brands suggesting the item in general.

Most of the charm of shopping online was not dealing with people.

Adding an AI shopping assistant is forcing me to deal with a fake person, with an additional down side of when I tell them to fuck off they don't even look hurt and cry.

¡Que se queme ese cabrón!

¡Fuego!
¡Fuego!
¡La refinería está en llamas!
No necesitamos agua.
¡Que se queme ese cabrón!
¡Que se queme!
¡Cabrón!
¡Que se queme!

It would appear that a refinery in Cuba has caught fire.  One of just three on the whole island.

Loss Leader

I have now purchased Dire Straight's "Brothers In Arms" album three times.

SIGH

First on cassette, then on CD then on mp3.

I have, however, had mp3 prior to buying it from Amazon today.

But my CD rip wasn't a good copy.

C'est la vie.

Measure Twice Cut Thrice

I have baby gates across the bedroom door to keep Shadow separated from Beeper.

The bottom two gates are swing-out style and have two lugs on the door-frame that accept pins on the door.

The top gate has always been difficult to get closed, but the bottom one has always been fine.

I used the provided template to place the lugs, so I assumed it was some kind of tolerance stack-up problem with the gates themselves.

Swapping them top to bottom helped a lot.  The bottom one was noticeably tighter, but still worked correctly.  The top one got looser, but still bound up on the top lug.

So I measured the fit between the lugs and pins on the bottom gate and replicated that on the top.

It amounted to lowering the top lug about 1/8".

Then I measured between the lugs and they now match!

Somehow I got the top lug 1/8" too high when I mounted them initially.

Worse, I replicated this mistake when I lowered the top gate to narrow the gap to allow it to become the middle gate.

Good!

Trump removed a keystone item in preventing life at TL7+ by eliminating the regulations that measured some gas emissions.

Good!

Now, do refrigerants!

The only thing "wrong" with R-134 and R-410 is Dupont's patents have expired.

Well No Shit

It seems that California and Georgia are worried about the costs of tariffs.

The extra cost is being passed on to customers!  That's causing them to either find a vendor not so encumbered or to pass on the purchase.

This is literally Econ 101.

Increasing the price reduces demand.

If the price only increases from a single vendor, but the good is still available elsewhere, the demand shifts vendors.

Which is the intent of the tariff in this case.  To onshore the supply and choke the importers.

So, no shit, the importers are seeing a drop in sales as domestic manufacturers step up.

Or customers are realizing they didn't really need what the importers were selling...

PS:  Did everyone catch how the media suddenly understands how taxes are just added to the price the consumer is paying?  Another TDS miracle!

Bring The Mafia Back

I was never a potential customer, but...

Disney has been going this same way for a while too.

The idea that they can make the same money from charging more from fewer customers does have some merit.

The question still stands whether that's sustainable.

Disney appears to be at a tipping point.

Suggested By Marv

We've begun making a list of the pharmaceuticals ads and going to ask our doctors if each and every one is "right for me."

Should be fun.

Oh Canada

It seems that all that gun control they have up in The Great White North didn't keep someone from shooting up a school and murdering a bunch of people.

And here I thought that just happened in places with lots of guns, like Florida and Texas.

And another shooter who's trans.

Ugh.

Though I am tempted to dust off the old textbooks and see what they say about gender dysphoria and compare it to the "standards" of care today.

I'm going to go out on a limb that looks pretty damn strong and speculate that we're not seeing any genuine cases of dysphoria but we're seeing a the results of brains broken by being convinced they do have a malady that needs to be "treated."

Almost as if emotions took over for science.

That NEVER happens...  Oh, wait.

Well, not that often...  Dammit!

Maybe some science will return to things like medicine.

I Wish We Had Some Grenades

So many role playing games made explosions so complicated we never bothered learning the rules.

Or, it was such a chore we never used them enough to remember them well enough to want to use them.

So in Top Secret or Twilight: 2000 we just didn't buy grenades.

At least, that's how I remember it.

I just checked T2K and the rules aren't so bad, but we had scars from some poor piece of game design.

Top Secret doesn't seem that hard either...

Wait...  Some game had a rule about when an explosion was confined it was greatly multiplied and we always remembered that rule and it got applied to every game!  This is just another reason we all agreed to change to GURPS.

No matter where our aversion came from, we didn't often use grenades.

The GURPS rules for explosions are generally clear.

So I am more willing to add grenades to the equipment list of my characters.

But something I failed to internalize until watching a movie tonight was fragmentation grenades have 4-5 second fuses.

A turn is a second long in GURPS.

That means throw grenade and it doesn't go boom for another 3-4 turns.

I can't wait to see how that turns out in play.

Ackshullally

 

My college degree didn't mess it up.

It was the stuff I learned auto-didactically between getting my high school diploma and my college degree.

Just sayin'.

I would also like to point out to any poor maintenance technician who worked on my designs that I always made sure of tool clearance and that there was space for the fastener to be removed.

It never made sense to me to make a wear item hard to access either.

As Obsolete As Infantry

Chant Du Depart is having a tank obsolescence debate.

But as an armchair armor historian and former 19K...

How many times has the tank been declared obsolete?

Airplanes made them obsolete during WW2.

HEAT rounds made them obsolete.

ATGM made them obsolete.

Fuel consumption made them obsolete.

Inability to cross bridges made them obsolete.

Inability to be quickly transported to the battlefield made them obsolete.

And now drones have made them obsolete.

Oh and nuclear warfare made all other kinds of war obsolete, taking tanks with them.

Every time the tank goes obsolete, we get the end of horse cavalry trotted out as an example.  And they bring up Poland v Nazi Germany every-single-time.  That was a unique case and it really doesn't illustrate what they think it does.

Horse cavalry persisted for decades after WW2.  It lasted until light vehicles became reliable enough to supplant them and was finally replaced when the logistics support got good enough to support vehicles that far forward.

It is of note that while the US Armor Branch harkens back to Cavalry, they never really were cavalry.  Jokes to the contrary aside.  ie "Death before dismount!"

Armor does serve the same role as heavy cavalry did, as a shocking force, but it's got other roles too.

A tank is a wonderful mobile machine gun post in support of infantry that can engage with that machine gun without the distraction of being killed by small-arms fire or shell splinters.

To be obsolete, you need to have been replaced.

Almost all of the claims of obsolescence come from it being more dangerous to be a tanker than it had been.

Is war.  Is dangerous.

Every time someone has come up with a clever new way to kill tanks, it's not that long before a clever way of negating or, at least, mitigating that threat appears.

Drones are commonly mentioned and the Ukraine v Russia war cited.

Like horse cavalry and Poland v Germany wasn't representative of cavalry, drones in Ukraine v Russia isn't representative of tank warfare.

Neither side is using their tanks like we would.

Lots of evidence of a lack of combined arms from over there and it's really surprising to me because I was led to believe the Russians knew about it and used it.  I guess that was just the USSR...

We'd be doing this war differently.  First off, we'd not be hamstrung by the inability to do deep penetration strikes into Russia.  There wouldn't be a functioning rail network by the end of the first week and without that Russia's log-train collapses.  Our air force isn't Ukraine's.

Our tank doctrine is not theirs either.  We emphasize mutual support and combined arms.  We coordinate and communicate better, and we own our own over-the-horizon comms.

Anti-drone weapons, both electronic and kinetic, are coming if they haven't already started being fielded.  The near boredom exhibited by Armor officers when replying to queries about drones makes me think we've got a solution to the drone problem we're actually keeping secret for a change.

It is especially obvious reading these threads that my decision to no longer offer one commenter a soapbox to sound smarter than they are was wise.

I'm far more concerned that the helicopter has become useless in war than the tank.

Governing Least

"The government isn't best which governs least -- it's the best government that needs to govern least."

From Slovotsky's laws via Joel Rosenberg (RIP).

America, as designed, is supposed to be self governing.

The people of America did self govern for most of a century and a half.

But something changed.

It wasn't really that long ago, but it's approaching a century.

The urge to make other people do what we wanted them to do instead of doing what they wanted to do.

As designed, we shouldn't be able to do that as long as what they're wanting to do isn't doing us any harm.

Even if they are harming themselves.

But we got busybodied about it.

Once you start down the path of being a busybody, nothing is off limits.  Plus you get the moral righteousness of saving the benighted souls for their own good.

THEN!

You get an "industry" of people who grift off of saving their fellow man from themselves.

Suddenly you no longer have a government that governs least because you have a people that need governed more.

Unami

Watching "Poker Face" and a character offers another some demerara sugar.

He said it added an unami tone to the coffee.

A bag of it is just $5 on Amazon, so we said, "what the Hell?"

I added a tablespoon to my coffee and...  mildly sweet with unami.

Who the Hell knew?

I don't normally take sugar with my coffee either.

This will be the second time we've tried something from a show we watched that worked out great.

Smash burgers from "The Menu" being the first. 

An-Dissipation

If you've been enjoying reading about my Dissipator project, Palmetto State Armory has them on sale again.  In OD or FDE.

You'll need to find a bolt carrier group and charging handle, but if you're buying uppers from PSA, you know where to get those!

If you're reading this months or years after the initial post, those links will likely be dead.

Not Even Once

While I have been at parties centered around the Stupor Bowel, I cannot say I have ever watched it.

Not even the one time.

The closest I've come was when Janet Jackson flashed the crowd during the half time show and I was on the phone with FuzzyGeff at the time.

So I have continued the long tradition of not watching the Stupor Bowel, and the National Felon League in general.

It's really my dad, who played in high school and watched avidly, who made me apathetic towards football in general.  Often hostile, really.

My dad, and his friends, coupled with the jocks in high school and living in a college town soured me on sportsball in general.  I don't get the allure, I don't grasp the fans.

Yet I really enjoy Hockey.

BUT!

If the local team loses, it doesn't harm me.  If they win, I gain nothing.  I don't structure my life around being able to watch it, though I do make time to watch.

It might be because I was the third string goalie in my sophmore year of high school.

Something I only set out to become because of the two sports rule in Anoka-Hennepin School District and I wanted to do biathlon.  You had to try out for and be accepted for two sports or you didn't get to play any.  You could not be in more than three.  Hockey was short many of the school's jocks because they went out for track, football and basketball.

Biathlon was also unpopular because of the time requirements.  You needed to be able to get to the local range very often in addition to skiing.

I still giggle about signing out my rifle and taking it home on the bus to go shooting over the weekend.

Oddly, I'd become a jock because of being successful at biathlon.

I am sure my bullies noted, after I blacked out and beat the worst one, how good a shot I was and they were an easy shot from where the bus dropped us at school to where they hung out before home-room.

Having a reputation among the bullies for being crazy AND a reputation among the jocks as a wicked shot does have its advantages. 

Retention

Got my retainer washers in.

First, there don't seem to be SAE retainer washers.  All I could find was metric for the Ø0.180" tube...

I figured 4 or 5 mm would do, and ended up with a 750 piece set with retainer washers from 2mm to 12mm.

The Ø5mm x 14mm OD was too big.  The flange caught on the barrel and it bent in such a way as to stop being a retainer washer.

Ø5mm x 12mm OD is just right!

Now I have a 748 piece set that I will probably never use again!

Update:  I have tried the Brownell's Retro triangle, vintage triangle, USGI A2, Palmetto's more oval A2 style and Magpul's MOE handguards.  All of them fit just fine!  Though vintage triangle handguards are just a little longer than the other types, requiring a LOT more effort on the slip-ring to get them off and on; but that's true of the M16A1 clone they live on too!

Flap Flap Drip Drip

When it gets cold, my toilet starts dripping.

It's no surprise that this will be visible on the water bill.

So I, finally, replaced the flapper.

The new one is soft and pliable.

The old one was misshapen, hard and brittle.

Procrastination...

I had the replacement part for months.

It Bears Mentioning

I went to check the private messages at the SJGames forum where I'd confronted Sean "Kromm" Punch.

I got one message from the thread starter thanking me for speaking truth to power.

That makes it worth it to me.

Ewwww But...

So, you've found yourself face down and drowning in an unflushed toilet.

Whomever is drowning you, pulls the handle and flushes the toilet.

Well, at least you're going to drown in clean water after catching a breath...

Then you feel the hot sensation of piss on the back of your head.

Nope.  Today is NOT your day.

Who Separated Them

 When we got back from shooting, Harvey decided that we needed to rearrange things so that she could get at HER gun safe.

It's a fair cop.  It's been behind the corner-of-clutter in the bedroom for a while.

So we moved the pile of clutter and then moved her safe to a better location.

In the process of sorting through the clutter, we found many things that could be discarded.

Of note is a sandal.

She asked if I even wore that pair any more.  I replied that I did not.

But there was only ONE sandal.

Hours later, I encountered the other one.  In the opposite corner of the room from where the one she had found.

I blame the cats.

Triumphant Return

The Lovely Harvey has overcome her fear of damaging her robo-shoulder and taken Kevina to the range!

Considering she has not had this carbine to the range in more than a decade...  Not too bad a group.

I got the M1956A2 zeroed with the new 5x scope too!

 Gotta say, that Faxon barrel is pretty sweet.

So Different

I am so enamored with Dottie's current configuration that I grabbed Tabitha to see how they compared...

They both have early furniture, but the slightly heavier Dottie points so much better.

I'm at a loss.  Dottie just feels better than Tabitha.

There's so many ineffable gun things.

I Figured Out Why *I* Was Offended

The "inclusion" and "sensitivity" changes for GURPS 4th Edition Revised could have been made silently.

They could have just gone through and eliminated the so-called offensive references without making an announcement they were making sensitivity changes.

They virtue signaled.

I'm part of a weird, in between, where I'm OK with not offending people, even fringe folks, but am getting sick and tired of the announcements that they are making changes to be less offensive...

While missing that the announcement is what's offending me.

I know, "straight white male, who cares if you're offended?"

My wallet cares.

What really pisses me off is that SJGames used to be the different gaming company.

They stood up against The Man and didn't do things like everyone else.

And here they are, in lockstep with all the other game publishers.

I kinda feared this when the theater kids took over gaming after Critical Role started their show.

In hindsight, that almost guaranteed we'd get a more "Hollywood Safe" crowd, or at least the companies would aim at this much smaller and more vocal market.

It was their market share to keep.

I'm gonna just keep playing with my version of the game with the racially insensitive references.

They don't bother me.

My four main worlds are an alternate WW2 with magic and LITERAL Nazis, an alternate history where magic became real after Trinity, an alternate history where WW3 started in 1997 and a conversion of Traveller.

All have bigots in them.  All of them don't care about the sensitivities of the groups being oppressed by the bad guys.

Nazis murdered people by the, literal, box car.

Racism and bigotry is a core part of Funny New Guys!

The Soviets don't love their children too in Twilight: 2000.

Traveller is so casually racist that there's hundreds of intelligent species that are called "minor races."

The move to inclusivity and sensitivity is a move away from dramatic conflict.

Without such conflict, the story is stale and boring.

A Reminder

The goal of any business is to appeal to everyone who wants to purchase the product.

By selecting one group of customers over another you are automatically refusing their money.

Alienating existing customers for this other group means your are refusing future sales to an established customer.

If you publish a role playing game, you're saying that you don't need them any more: but they can reply, "I can play the game with what I already have, forever, without spending another nickel.  Can you keep the doors open and the lights on if I stop buying stuff from you?"

In fact, if they go out of business tomorrow I still have enough stuff to keep playing.

I did not have to buy anything more to play this last time when FuzzyGeff came to visit.

Game Designer's Workshop has been out of business since 1996 and I am still playing two of their flagship world settings using GURPS.

Does SJGames really think I still need them?

I really don't.

They've gone woke and if you read Sean "Kromm" Punch's reply to why they're doing this, they cannot see that the sensitivity bullshit is offending people.  They don't care about us, but I suspect that they will miss us soon enough.

Just look at the shambles NASCAR is in after they chased the inclusive chimera.

Just To Be Clear

It is always OK to offend National Socialists.

They're always pissed off anyway, it's like it's their job or something. 

Speaking Of Exonyms

Nazi is an appellation to members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei  or National Socialist German Worker's Party.

It was intended to be derogatory.

So, if you set out to strip all offensive exonyms you need to stop using the word Nazi.

Or you need to start defending why it's OK to offend some people and not others.

If you manage to do that, you will find that you didn't need to strip exonyms from your writings.

Some people do live up to the stereotype.  Even if you go out of your way to not offend them. 

Shiny Let's Be Bad Guys

The descent into woke at Steve Jackson Games continues apace.

"Sensitivity reading" is the process of editing a manuscript to replace privileged wording – phrasing favored by majorities, the powerful, or the elite, whether in the region of publication or globally – that is offensive to, reinforces negative stereotypes of, or erases the less privileged. Examples include calling a physically disabled person a "cripple," calling a mentally ill individual "nuts," referring to a minority group using a disrespectful exonym, dismissing the contributions of a group, or implying or outright stating that everyone in a certain group is a criminal or less intelligent. The goal of the procedure is to remove negative overtones that target ability, ethnicity, gender, geographical origin, religion, sexual orientation, wealth, etc., rendering the writing more inclusive and equitable without loss of meaning or clarity.

Kromm, GURPS Line Editor

Considering that the people making those sensitivity changes are the epitome of powerful and elite...

But it's an effort doomed to fail.

You cannot make something completely non-offensive to everyone.  The fact that the attempt is offending so many people in the hobby is a sure clue to that truth.

A lot of noise is being made about "exonyms" and how they offend the people so labeled.

Gypsy and Eskimo come up most often.

Sioux and Commanche...  Those are not the words those tribes called themselves.  Those are the, deliberately, offensive labels their neighbors applied to them.

But if I say Oceti Sakowin, or Numunuu, will you know whom I speak of?

The Blackfoot don't call themselves that.  They call themselves Siksikáí'tsitapi.  You will not find my wife being offended by the name of Blackfoot.  Me?  I'm saying Blackfoot because I will BUTCHER their name in their language.

I know where Gypsy comes from.  The Roma people, living according to their own rules, are not good neighbors.  Having earned that reputation, they really haven't earned a lot of right to complain when the stories grew a bit past the truth.  And by the way, the only Roma I've met who are offended by the term Gypsy are exactly the same kind of race-grifter you'd expect them to be.

Eskimo vs Inuit is the same thing as Sioux vs Oceti Sakowin.  Someone else's name for them.  The Inuit are insulted by how Eskimo was used.  Fine.

Give English some time, though, and your preferred name will be used in exactly the same way.

Remember, English, despite not being a tonal language, can magically change the word "Sir" to mean CENSORED.  I seen't it! 

PS: While working for the Tavrchedl', Mr Punch has engaged in something that's extremely offensive to the people of Florida: Being a fucking Canadian telling us that we're doing everything wrong.

Uniformity

Something kind of dull about making soldiers for gaming is the uniformity.

They all, basically, use the same gear so there's not a lot of personalization to do.

Well, there's some, but...

If one takes the personalization too far one ends up looking like the crew from an action film where no two characters use the same weapon, cartridge or magazines.

My T2K conversion gives a price break for buying weapons that are issued to the character's home nation.  That encourages them to use the standard weapons.  That discourages personalization...

C'est la vie!

Technologically Improved

Making GURPS characters is greatly aided with a spreadsheet.

It does the math for you and that means it's super simple to do things like checking to see if raising a stat by a point and lowering the points spent on skills, but retaining their levels, is more or fewer points in total.

Most of the time this kind of min-maxxing doesn't, quite, pay off.

Sometimes, though, it does!

Somewhat belatedly, I am making the three NPCs that FuzzyGeff and Marv have linked up with in my Twilight: 2000 game.

It's something of a playtest for my T2K to GURPS conversion too.

We've found a couple three mistakes that are simple to fix thanks to the same technology that let me type it out and make a pdf file to share with people.

Comrades

I've found about five people I've served with on Facebook.

We're mostly Gen-X, so spotty about getting on social media.

Some of them have even replied after so many years of not being in contact.

Kinda neat.

A Good Run

Ed Iskenderian has passed on at the ripe old age of 104.

If you know who he was, then I don't have to explain.

Fake Tube

Palmetto State Armory used a screw they epoxy'd into the gas tube hole of the front sight base to hold the handguard cap.

Because it interfered with triangle handguards, I tried removing it and created a "would not screw back in" condition.

So I ordered a pistol gas tube and cut it down to provide a block to rotation at the handguard cap.

A longer gas tube would have been better because it would have been straight here.

No matter!  Thag have hammer!

Now there's a stub of a gas tube to help hold the cap steady.  There's a washer-like slip on fastener that I cannot recall the name of that would be perfect for holding the cap forward...  As soon as I remember what they're called I will order some.

Update: Retaining washer!

Kinda neat looking in the cooling holes and seeing gastubisinterruptus.

Wile E Coyote school of gunsmithing for the win!

Since I Have Magazines On The Brain

MSG Jeff Gurwitch (SF soldier type) did a review of his personal experience with several AR mags.

and

I'm still trying to figure out what magazines were what in that ATEC report, I noticed that both Mission First and Daniel Defense have shape that would preclude them being used in an M27 magwell...

Unsafe Storage

A Florida woman is in trouble because her kid showed up at school with her Lorcin L-25.

Her five year old kid.

The child doesn't seem to have had much nefarious intent, no ammunition was found with the gun.

She's being charged with violating the safe storage laws and child neglect.

Oops!

I've got mixed feelings about the laws about safe storage.  I think you should make every reasonable attempt to keep the kids and guns separated while there's no adult present as a matter of being a responsible parent.

I don't like making it illegal to fail in that effort.  At least not criminal.

I guess the neglect charge is a, "well if you'd been paying attention the child would never have gotten to the poorly stored gun."

I really hate blanket charges like that.  Vague laws make for bad arrests.