2025-09-30

The homelab is always a moving target. Just when I think I have something down, I either break it, or I am let in on a product that makes me completely rethink. So, I’ve done some rethinking; and now I think I have the bones of a good project.

At the architecture level, not much has changed. 4 pancake Dells with some ram and an SSD, all running Docker. Rather than go with Nomad, or Kubernetes, I’m sticking with Swarm-mode. I couldn’t fully wrap my head around storage interfaces in the bigger orchestrators so rolling back to my roots. This time I am adding in a few Raspberry-Pi 4B+s in the mix. Also running docker, and Keepalive.d for virtual IP. The tiny boards are running docker as well, configured as manager nodes, with the Dells configured as worker nodes. Some changes to the Jellyfin software dictated that I had to update out of my old AF gaming rig that’s easily 15+ years old by now. It served me well, but I think I’ve fully outgrown it. In its stead I took a gamble on one of those tiny PCs from Amazon, more on this later.

So, I have Swarm up and running. Dropped in Portainer for management, cause GUIs work. Now I’ve got the same problems I ran in to before. This time I brought reinforcements.

For storage, I’ve had a Synology NAS running and it’s great for large slow media files. but I really don’t want any of my container configurations sitting on spinning disks. Earlier in the year I spent some money on a FlashStor from ASUS, it’s sharing up 6 NVMe drives and has the ability to run TrueNAS scale. This took a little learning but I bonded the NICs and got it configured with an available share that all my hosts can talk to.

Rather than use the Synology’s application portal. I instead took another jump at Traefik, hopefully this time I could figure out how to make it work. It turns out that when I was initally trying to make it happen, I was putting the labels in the wrong place, so that it was deploying to the container, rather than deploying to the service. With that out of the way, I was prepped and ready to get stuff deployed.

I initially began with some of the Dumbware.io stuff, little single container things with a single JSON file in the back end. From there it was like falling off a bike, Commafeed, Mealie, and Dashy, n8n, then on to bigger things: Immich, and the *arr stack. Immich is going to be more involved as I want to bring all my data out of google photos, which is going to take a while. As far as the *arr stack, I was able to re-use a lot of my original compose file.

With the Docker stuff up and functional, I needed to address the media streamer, Jellyfin. The tiny pc I got, a Beelink SEI with an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD, was far and away faster than I expected it to be, especially with the sub $300 pricetag. About the only problem is, my instance can’t transcode the AV1 codec on the fly. Everything else, works swimmingly.

Next on my list is to fully build out Immich to replace google photos. Play a little bit more with Affine (my replacement for Obsidian) and work on putting together some more AI things to learn the technologies in use.

2025-03-07

Well, that didn’t work according to plan. I was supposed to start writing more and then this fell off the radar. I’ve never really been good at making things that improve me work regularly. I do enjoy writing, but I have so little time to do it. Maybe if I put it out in the world, I’d do better at trying to remember it.

Since the last time I was here I made a huge change to my everyday; a huge sea-change as it were. I made the switch from Android to iOS (apple). While this wasn’t a spur of the moment change, it does all feel so sudden.

As a frame of reference, I have been in the android ecosystem since 2013, I switched from Blackberry to the HTC One M7. I was very anti-apple, and everything it stood for, I couldn’t stand the concept of their “walled-garden” and loved the freedom provided by Android. I stuck with it, device to device replacing once every other year and eventually landed on first-party Android devices (Nexus and Pixel devices), and I was even more hooked. It really felt like the Android ecosystem was following what the users wanted.

After the Pixel 3, I started having complaints about the device that I couldn’t dismiss… Battery life is terrible, I frequently have to restart, call quality is garbage, et cetera. It finally got to a point when a call was delivered to my phone, should have triggered the preferred Caller ID ring rule and turn my device in to an alarm clock for the neighbors. It continued to be silent, for multiple calls. Suddenly every gripe I had with Android in general took center stage and it was now unforgivable. I needed to change, and since my infatuation with first-party devices was something I wasn’t going to compromise on, it meant I had 2 choices. Get the newest Android, or switch sides.

I killed all the suspense, I switched sides. I tried to get in to it slowly, first replace the phone and then work on peripherals, but once I set foot in the “walled-garden” it became really tough to bring my old toys with me. The Fossil watch (Android Wear 3, another gripe for another time), The Pixel Buds, and then the unlikely change, chargers.

First, the phone. I didn’t need latest-greatest but did need capable. So previous generation’s pro model, satisfied initial requirements; One handed operation, USB-C, Wireless Charging. I didn’t, really, care about the AI capabilities, or any of the other bells and whistles. It needed to be a phone first. For a 12 year Android veteran, there was a lot to get used to. Ultimately the features I use were all there, and I was able to transfer quite a bit of data** and applications over to the device pretty simply, it just took more time than I thought it would.

After about 2 weeks I started running in to integration issues. My watch would show notifications, but clearing them on the watch didn’t clear them on the phone. So it was the next thing to go. Once I received the Apple Watch, that part of the puzzle just fit together. Everything synched up properly and the Apple device is exponentially lighter. Still not completely happy with the face results but there’s only so much tinkering I am going to do.

Some time after the watch, I ran in to some issues where integrations with the Pixel Buds wasn’t working as intended. At the moment I can’t fully recall but it was just the better answer to get the AirPods. This particular choice didn’t really yield a clear benefit** other than it just works with the phone, and the watch.

Then it came time to look at everything else I do, and the tablet came up. 1st party Android tablets have been lackluster at best in my opinion, but the iPad has a lot of momentum holding on to user base and development. Which means it should be worth the purchase, I was able to trial it risk-free, and came to enjoy** the intermediary between my phone and laptop.

It’s not all a success story though: While the core functionality has been there and so far I have not had any dropped calls, or poor call quality. Messaging has been on point, Apple adopted RCS to talk better with the Android pool, and I got to experience the silly blue bubbles. iMessage has some really great features, but not game changing. There are some things that Apple just falls flat on.

While I was able to transfer data, the device did it wirelessly rather than over the provided Type-C cable, I feel like over the cable would have been a significantly faster experience, this was a terrible first impression.

Alarms (as in alarm clock) are far and away better in Android. If I wake up before they are set to go off, I can dismiss them from a pending notification. There’s also a ‘vacation mode’ in Android, I can set a date range to dismiss scheduled alarms. These show quickly that there is still some development in Android that comes from the users.

Notifications. Apple does them terribly, especially overnight notifications. You get 2 sets of notification stacks. Current and past. I don’t know the criteria for how a current becomes past, but the single most irritating thing is in the morning on first unlock of the phone it plays all the pending notifications as if they’re all new right now, and will not step through them until you acknowledge each one. Thankfully it groups them by application, so email is a single dismiss, same with messages, but it’s the quickest way to make me disregard everything and miss crucial information.

Touching on Messages, there is no way comparable to Android to use messaging from a non Apple device. I’ve been hugely spoiled by Google Messages, if I am sitting at a known computer I can pull up the web app and continue conversations as if I had my phone in my hand. There’s no way to do this. There were suggestions to use the “Phone Link” app in Windows, it’s terrible for messaging, Intel’s Unison app, also terrible for messaging. There’s simply no analog for Google Messages.

Gestures in the OS are touchy and not as intuitive as they could be. Want to dismiss a bunch of notifications quickly, don’t forget to pause before you swipe or you’re gonna open the camera. Want the notification pulldown or the control panel pulldown if you’re off by a couple pixels, you’re going to get the wrong one. Accidentally pulled up search? You’re gonna swipe every cardinal direction and maybe get out of it. I’m sure a lot of these are just part of the learning curve and in six months I won’t even think twice about them, but they’re frustrating now.

Stepping to the headphones; I moved from the Pixel Buds 2 to the Air Pods pro 2. Not really a 1:1 comparison, but the ANC on the Air Pods is flat amazing. Touch control, however, is cumbersome and terrible comparatively. There was a recently added nod gesture that allows you to answer yes/no silently without touching the devices and its pretty damn cool. I will also note (not that I had a chance to experience this in Android) headphone switching between iPhone and iPad seamless. Switching to a 3rd party device, painful. It’s been my understanding that the Pixel buds do connectivity really well. Moving from my phone to a 3rd party device was simple, phone would only pull rank if a phone call came in.

When it comes to iPad there were a couple of nitpicks. iOS has a battery widget that allows you to see connected device battery percentage. Useful to be able to check my headphone battery without pulling them out of my pocket. Same for the iPad being able to tell me the charge on the pencil. But why oh why can’t I see my iPad’s battery level from my phone?! They can both see my headphones, seems to me like it would be a pretty simple thing to do.

Lastly, the iPhone screen, specifically the glass. Apparently if you make scratch resistant glass it’s easy to break, but if you make break-resistant glass it’s easy to scratch. Apple themselves suggest putting a screen protector on the device to mitigate the scratches. My immediate thought? Just ship it with one…

All in all, the switch has been not entirely bad, but also not entirely good. I do really enjoy being in the market-share majority in the United States, cause it means the accessories are plentiful, I’ve purchased some Magsafe stuff, and combined chargers that can handle Phone, Watch and Headphones off one cable. Since it’s type-c I haven’t really had to change anything else. I would really like to see some better support from Windows devices.

The Home Lab

Learning professional skills at home with unprofessional gains

After years of toying with the ideas of how I want to do homelab things at home, I finally had a scope of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to implement it. Professionally I am 90% a Microsoft / Windows guy. I dabble in .NET and administrate a mostly Windows environment. I speak all the terms pretty well but there’s this other 5% that I know dangerously little about, and I feel like it’s something I need to stop making fun of and just get to it.

The Scope

I’ve maintained a media collection for quite some time, cause it’s legal to own a digital copy of physical media (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) and being able to stream stuff locally eliminates issues with connection speed. I want to make the platform around that media work better and be smarter. Ideally the frontend service will need to be universal, it must work everywhere, on the TV in the living room, on mobile devices, inside a web-browser, etc. It also must be quick. If it’s a hassle to get to the media, I’ll be less likely to use it. If I’m less likely to use it, my home users will be even less likely to want to put time into it. Lastly the interface points need to be easy, I’m here for the complicated setup so that further interfacing with it is easy.


That seems simple enough I have a couple options. I’ve looked in to Plex, and well it just put a sour taste in my mouth from the start. Then I saw some things around Emby but hadn’t really given it a fair shake, so last on the list was Jellyfin. The interface is pretty quick, and it incorporates quite a bit of metadata that doesn’t really take much effort to get in to place, so the whole platform has a polish about it that makes it really attractive.


Now, I’m not going to settle for just serving the media. I, of course, need to incorporate a better way to bringing media into the library (let’s face it, I’m going to want more media…). So onward to find ways to automate fetching media. These are all well known tools and since I don’t really have to interface with them it’ll be simple enough to set them and forget them. On the opposite end of the stack is JellySeerr, a search engine of sorts to hand terms to the well-known tools to make the magic happen and to integrate with Jellyfin.

Okay application stack out of the way, how do I serve it? Jumping on the whale late here, I’ll use Docker, of course. Since my professional life has me constantly looking at processes and identifying the failure points, I saw an immediate need for more than one host, cause the best part about redundancy is redundancy.

Seems like I have a rough shopping list, time to get into it.

The Hardware

Now, I’ve operated some form of storage on my home network for quite some time, I’ve got redundancy built in to the arrays so disk failure isn’t going to stop me. But I only have one NAS… this may change in the future but for now it’s just going to be a weak link in the chain. Media takes up a lot of storage and replicating that across multiple NASs would be prohibitively expensive at this juncture.

The docker hosts; I have some criteria, since these will live in the rack behind my computer chair, they had to be quiet, and preferably small. I was holding out to capitalize on surplus hardware when my office did a hardware refresh but that didn’t happen. I had seen something around using Micro Form Factor desktop PCs to perform these tasks, and I knew this was going to be my solution. Off to Ebay to find a few identical machines for my “server”. I found a really good deal on some Dell Optiplex 3040 MFFs, they had a decent but not fantastic CPU and half the RAM that the board could handle and as expected no Hard Drive. I got 4. The RAM and SSDs came from amazon, 4x1TB SSDs cause they’re dumb cheap this time of year, and enough RAM to max out all the boxes. The irritation came when I had to order the external power supplies, not something I was used to in the desktop space, but it makes sense when you realize that MFF PCs are really just laptops with better cooling and a bit more room for I/O. The boxes came with WiFi capability which got my gears turning but ultimately, I opted to just remove it. SSDs and max out the RAM and I was ready for OS.

The Software Part 1

Something I hadn’t really considered up until this point was what OS did I want for the Docker hosts. I had previously used Debian, and I had some recommendations for RHEL, but I opted to go with Ubuntu Server for the most universal Linux experience, I may catch some flak for it, but at the end of the day I have a working product. Got the OS installed on all the machines and made sure that I did everything identically on each one.** Once each machine was ready for production I was off to take on my next consideration; which flavor of containerization/orchestration do I want to use? The two products I considered were Kubernetes and Docker Swarm. After not much research I figured that Kubernetes was going to be too much for what I wanted to do so Docker Swarm it is! Setup was dead simple I had the cluster up and running in no time. Adding in Portainer for management and I had a pretty solid foundation to work with.

Without getting fully into the gritty details I have the following containers to stand up; Jellyfin, JellySeerr, Radarr, Sonarr, Transmission, Jackett (prowlarr is probably going to replace this). I want them to be able to run on any host at any time, so I had to come up with a way to make the storage the same on each host. After learning how mounts work in Linux, I opened up an NFS share on my Synology and mounted that on each host. Now regardless of where the container is running it can see it’s configuration data and do it’s job.

Some quick configuration to get all the services talking to each other and it was time to test. I picked a movie I hadn’t seen and requested it through JellySeerr, which in turn handed the search over to Radarr, which grabbed some information from jackett and sent the request to transmission, great right? Once completed Radarr moved the file into my media library and we were ready to rock.

Trouble in paradise

This story isn’t without a little peril though.  I found that Radarr and Sonarr weren’t fully doing what they were supposed to and after a couple of restarts I found that they were really struggling to work with their internal database (which really really really dislikes being shared over NFS) so it was time to figure out how to have persistent storage available across the cluster.  First suggestion was to use Ceph, but that really requires having an available disk to dedicate to the application and these MFF PCs really don’t have that.  Next was to figure out GlusterFS which looks like it can slot in on top of an existing file system, you know like that 1TB SSD I have in each of the hosts?  Another really simple setup and solution that only required a little bit of work to get functional.  Though adding in some options to wait for Gluster to start up before mounting the storage didn’t really occur to me, I added it in so should give me persistent replicated storage available to all 4 hosts.

The Software Part 2: The Search for Curly’s Certificate

Now that I have all the services working, it was time to condense them in to a stack, for easier deployment and replication should my entire cluster fail. Exposing Jellyfin to the outside world I realized a couple of issues. First; Port mapping from my router to the cluster doesn’t really allow me to do proper load balancing or failover to point at different hosts. Second; I should figure out a reverse proxy to hide all the services behind, so everything is secured encrypted and happy.

Not knowing how to approach the first one I started to try to fix the second. I had trouble getting Traefik configured right to properly handle inbound requests and forward them to the appropriate service, so I opted to use the gui for nginx built in to the Synology for the time being.

After doing some more research on the subject I found that there is a linux application KeepAliveD that will enable all the nodes in the cluster to use the same virtual IP and through VRRP determine which host answers on the address, and allowing any node in the cluster to fail without taking all the services with it.

The End of Our Story

So, now I have this semi-complex setup to acquire new media and to consume said media in a friendly way, that flexes some principles that I use in my day job. In the near future, I want to utilize some internal process monitoring and external monitoring so I know if the services go down. I’d also like to take a better look at Traefik to move the reverse proxy into the docker environment. Not too shabby for someone who doesn’t know Linux.

** If only there was a tool for this, that could make sure that my environment stays homogenous and all commands are executed the same way every time on multiple machines…

OMGWTFBOOOM

Now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘What the hell kind of title is that?’.   Well, I have been busy lately with kids and work and my usual environment for writing has changed for the better but is no longer as conducive to me getting any writing done.  So, now I am picking a different time-slot to put together something for reference when I come back to change things.

To properly set the stage I need to give some background.  I am part of a local group of IT folk who tend to do things together, on our Slack channel someone posted that they have a set of old home theater speakers free for whomever wants them.  I had designs to build good sound for my living room television, along with a more secure cabinet and whatnot.  I got the speakers, they were some high-end Polk Audio with solid enclosures, after removing the protective screens all the drivers appeared intact. I was excited.  Then I started shopping for feature rich receivers and the price made me shy away, never mind the amount of work it would take to build a cabinet to fit in the space and I would have no way to protect the drivers from the errant Hot Wheels car thrown by a child not getting their way, so the speakers sat in my office taking up space.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago I was going down the rabbit hole on YouTube (Google’s term) and I re-discovered people making their own Bluetooth powered speakers.  While watching one of the videos I happened to look over at the 6 speaker cabinets that I had just taking up space in the corner of my office.  Longer story short I had done some cleaning, my workbench was available, and the tinkering could begin.

First some research on what I had and what it was capable of; 1 CS1000p Powered Center Channel, 2 FX500I Surround Speakers, 2 RT800I Floorstanding Speakers, 1 PSW450 Powered Subwoofer.  Right off the bat I had keyed in on some terms that piqued my interest, specifically ‘powered center channel’.  I hefted this beast on to the work bench and now it was time for discovery.  On the back of the CS1000p, there were 2 screw down inputs one for mid/high frequency and one for low, an RCA jack for subwoofer, a switch for high level input on and off, and a traditional power input.  On the front I could see a total of 5 drivers, what appeared to be 2 woofers, 2 drivers for mids and a single tweeter in the center, there’s also a volume knob and a green LED.  I did not see a power switch of any kind, so I assumed that this was an always on sort of thing.

Next step was to test functionality, I broke apart a headphone cable to get leads that I could connect to the inputs on the back, I powered the speaker up, connected it to my tablet, and nothing.  The speaker powered (evident by the green light on the front) but nothing was coming through the drivers.  Well, this may end up being a little more difficult.  Time to break out the trusty screwdriver and let’s see what’s inside.

The first thing I noticed was that there were a bunch of screws on the metal back plate.  I pulled what appeared to be the screws holding the plate in place and was able to remove it from the enclosure pulling it away and disconnecting the cables attaching the guts to the drivers.  I was able to mostly identify what circuitry was at work here.  I had 2 channels but unsure which speakers they were attached to and some thinner gauge wires I assumed for the volume knob and the LED.  Still attached to the plate were a power conditioner, what appeared to be an amplification board, and a power converter from AC to DC power.  Upon closer inspection the plastic housing around the Subwoofer input and the Switch for High Level input looked like they either had some weird epoxy around them, or they had melted.  I had a hope for epoxy but turns out they were melted.

Now is the point where I must interject that I do not have very much electrical knowledge, but I usually have an approximate knowledge of what I am looking at.  I was able to identify the amplification chips and put together a rough idea on the path of audio signal.  I wanted to try one more time to power the components and push audio through, but the results were the same as before.  The parts on the back plate were going to have to be replaced.  Okay, let’s look at the drivers.  A couple hundred screws later I was able to get part numbers on the individual drivers and get what their power rating was.  I also found that there was a crossover board behind the center 3 drivers, which handled throwing the highs to the tweeter.  Some shopping and YouTube lead me to a replacement amplifier and Bluetooth module.  The video made everything look simple.

Being one to like having multiple opinions, and not wanting to throw a bunch of cash at a learning project I looked around to see what others were doing.  I then stumbled on a video where someone had found an amplifier board with Bluetooth built in (Hey, less wires!) and it was cheaper than the separate boards, I also found that it had a bunch of extra headers for expansion.  Almost like this board was built for this specific purpose.

The board in line for purchase is manufactured by Dayton Audio, it is a KAB-250v3 it delivers 50 watts to left and right channels (remember I have 2 channels inside the speaker) it’s a Class D amplifier board, with Bluetooth 4.0.  In the box it has the board and wiring harnesses for power, speakers, a Bluetooth pairing control button and an external Bluetooth antenna.  Also, in the box was a quick-start guide, which was just detailing out which headers are for what feature.

Right about here is where the anxiety set in.  In the past I have caused some irreparable damage to 12v electronics by being careless, so I wanted to be extra cautious, I had monetary investment into this project at this point.  Before moving forward, I wanted to make sure that the speakers and my amplifier would be compatible.  While on an errand with my wife we were close to a music store that sold pro audio equipment, I gave it a shot, talked with their pro-audio guy.  He gave a bit of a shrug and said, “I think you’re just going to have to be brave.”  He did clue me in to make sure that the impedance of the drivers matched up and to start low before going bigger.

Okay, moment of truth.  Time to test the Amplifier board with a single driver.  I pulled the driver out of the enclosure and put together a bunch of temporary connections, time to power everything up.  The outlets on my workbench have individual switches to turn them on and off makes it nice for instances like this where I can flip a switch faster than I can frantically unplug something.  I checked all of my connections to make sure I had continuity in all the places I should and then flipped the switch.  I don’t know what I expected, maybe some sort of startup noise, a flourish of non-existent LEDs, something.  All I got was a single green LED on the amplifier board and a little EM feedback or coil whine (I assume) on the driver.  I pulled out my phone and set off to discover Bluetooth devices and there it was “DAKAB”.  Initial pairing was a little shaky, but I really think I just didn’t have a handle on what the controller button actually did.  I got paired and time to fire up Google Music and hit play on a playlist and I immediately find that my Bluetooth volume was set to max.  But it worked!!!

I did a little happy dance, my wife laughed with/at me, and now it was time to test the rest of the enclosure.  I broke my temporary connections, reinstalled the driver, connected to the channel and re-ran the test, another success!  One more test, this time powering the whole enclosure and one more success! Now it was time to plan out how I wanted to tuck this all back in to the enclosure to make this fully function.

I opted to continue to use the AC to DC 12V 1.5A converter that I had on hand, just connecting it to the AC conditioner that was already present.  I used Butt connecters for all the connections cause a more permanent solution would be further down the evolutionary path of this project.  About an hour of testing connections and wire management I was able to fully re-assemble the enclosure and a final test to mark the completion of version 1.0 of what I have titled OMGWTFBOOOM.

What I have right now is a surprisingly capable powered Bluetooth speaker.  My plans for the future of the project is to re-surface the outside of the enclosure to introduce a little bit of weather resistance, replace the soft cover on the front with a metal grate of some form, and add wheels cause this thing is understandably a bit on the heavy side.  Additionally, I would like to put together a better method for delivering power and including a battery for some true portability.  Some more upgrades down the road would be an auxiliary input and some USB power for extra functionality.  Last, I would like to add a paint-job to complete the cosmetics.  But as with all projects, this will be a full evolutionary process.

Shall not be infringed

I’ll try to keep this as sane as possible; it’s difficult with some of the arguments being thrown around.  Let’s first set the stage, I am pro-gun.  All the firearms I own are legal.  I have a license to carry a firearm in the state of Texas.  I exercise that right a lot.  None of the firearms that I own have been used to harm another human being and to be clear, I hope that I am never put in to a situation where that would change.  I try to make it to the range on a regular basis to maintain a level of proficiency with the firearms that I own.

There is a narrative across media outlets that is hell-bent to demonize anyone like me.  Every time some of these people get screen time they revive tired old arguments that, despite any and all previous disproval or rebuttal, they claim goes unanswered.  So; let’s put things back in to context.

The term Assault Rifle:

  • Defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as; military firearm that is chambered for ammunition of reduced size or propellant charge and that has the capacity to switch between semiautomatic and fully automatic fire. Because they are light and portable yet still able to deliver a high volume of fire with reasonable accuracy at modern combat ranges of 1,000 – 1,600 feet (300-500 metres), assault rifles have replaced the high-powered bolt-action and semiautomatic rifles of the World War II era as the standard infantry weapon of modern armies.
  • Defined by Mirriam-Webster as; any of various intermediate-range, magazine-fed military rifles (such as the AK-47) that can be set for automatic or semiautomatic fire; also: a rifle that resembles a military assault rifle but is designed to allow only semiautomatic fire.
  • Defined by Google as; a rapid-fire, magazine-fed automatic rifle designed for infantry use.

 

That’s interesting, isn’t it?  Mirriam-Webster is the only one that defines a rifle that looks like a military assault rifle as an assault rifle.  In fact, looking through weapon classifications through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) there is no actual designation of an Assault Rifle except as it pertains to the proper name of specific firearms (AK-47, MP-43, MP-44 and STG-44) Everything else refers to what is defined above as a “Machine-Gun” or “Machine Pistol”.  Funny how the governing body doesn’t use the term Assault anywhere in regulations.

This raises 2 important questions;

First, who brought the term Assault-Rifle in to the narrative?  We harken all the way back to World War II where Nazi Germany coined the term Sturmgewehr (loose translation Storm Rifle, or Assault Rifle).  A more apt term to consider is ‘Assault Weapon’ which has been narrowed down to pretty much any semi-automatic weapon that looks like it could be military issue.

Second, why is a dictionary allowed to push political agenda?  It’s been my understanding that Mirriam-Webster is a de-facto standard for word definition, and now they’re attempting to alter the meaning of a word (or two in conjunction in this case) in accordance with social and political landscape.  I don’t know about you, but I think that should put Mirriam-Webster in the same league as Wikipedia.  Still mostly valid, but cross reference with another source.

Gun-Crime vs Violent-Crime

There is a willful disconnect between Gun-crime and Violent-crime when the statistics start flying.  There are always claims that after a ban on guns goes in to effect, gun-crime goes down.  Nobody likes talking about violent crime.  In fact if you compare the two, the only thing that changes after a ban goes in to effect is the weapon of choice.  The reality is usually somewhere in the middle, while I will concede that having a gun someone determined to cause a lot of damage has less hindering them if they have a gun, but far more devastating atrocities have been achieved without guns.

It’s easier to buy a gun than a …

This is where things get funny.  To legally obtain a firearm, one must fill out an ATF Form 4473, and pass an FBI Background check.  It’s neither quick nor is it easy.  Not to say that the 4473 is equivalent to the SAT, but it is comprehensive and falsifying information on the form is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and/or up to a $250,000 fine.  I frequently ask anyone who thinks purchasing a firearm is as easy as getting a coke to actually take a look at the 4473 form.

A gun’s only purpose is to kill human beings

Well, no, and in the same vein, yes.  There are some gun’s whose sole purpose is to be accurate for target shooting.  But that’s an outlier.  Of course, we’re talking about the AR-15, and similar rifles.   You’re right, it’s primary function is to kill human beings.  Unless you’re hunting small game, it’s not a great choice.  But the ownership of said rifle is usually not for hunting, it’s for defense, be it from a home invader or some other threat to one’s liberties.

 

After only scratching the surface that’s all that’s there it’s an argument between the two sides.  Since this is the United States, there must be two sides, and we must be polarized against each other to maintain our way of life.  Look the only way to truly put the whole thing to bed is stop the mud-slinging, and have an adult conversation about all the contributing factors.  Some takeaways from the narrative to consider; Most people want less murder (on both sides), most want to keep guns out of the hands of those who wish to commit evil.  Lastly there is not nearly enough education about firearms in the world today.  I don’t even pretend to have all the answers, I just know that we’re trying to achieve the same goal, maybe we should work together.