If you had a time machine

[Jim Watson]

I would help with the drafting of the 2nd Amendment

Not strictly gun related but I would like to slip in Amendment Zero:
"All laws and regulations shall apply to all government employees whether hired, contracted, enlisted, appointed, or elected, in the same manner and degree as to citizens of that jurisdiction."

Yes, Mr Prez, your secret service bodyguards are going to have to have CCW permits.
Yes, General, your tank will have to have a license plate if you take it off the base.

[44 AMP]

Does that include members of Congress??

Why not just say "All laws apply to everyone, no exceptions, and we really, really mean it!"

[Jim Watson]

Yes.

Just trying to put it in compatible language with the rest of the document.

[Ricklin]

I would go back to 1967 and make about 1000 lightning links and register them. Sell 3 or 4 of them every time I need 100 K.

[Sharkbite]

I would go back to 1967 and make about 1000 lightning links and register them. Sell 3 or 4 of them every time I need 100 K.

Now THATS a plan!!!!

[Stressor]

Ah yes the pre-86 investment trope.

[44 AMP]

Ah yes the pre-86 investment trope.

Could you explain what that is? I don't get what you mean.

[Stressor]

Gun people don't understand opportunity costs and claim they would buy guns as investments. But it's gun related so ok I guess.

[jrinne0430]

I would do everything I could to defeat, or repeal the NFA 1934.
Same for the GCA 1968. It would be a much pleasenter world without these monstrosities.

This^^^plus try to stop the 1986 machine gun ban portion of the Hughes Amendment.

[44 AMP]

IF you prevent the 1934 NFA and the GCA 68 there is no need for the 86 FOPA and nothing for the Hughes amendment to attach to.

Having a time machine includes the ability to travel back and forth, so my pipe dream would be going back mmm a thousand years, or so, and spend a summer in what is now part of California, collecting "rocks"...

[Jim Watson]

Which version do you prefer?
1. Time travelers are somehow insulated from paradoxical changes made in the past.
2. Time travel changes result in a new timeline.

[44 AMP]

Which version do you prefer?
1. Time travelers are somehow insulated from paradoxical changes made in the past.
2. Time travel changes result in a new timeline.

The answer to this is "yes" sort of.

First point, every change, every decision every act creates its own timeline.
Second, the technobabble is "gross macro probabilities cancel out random micro probabilities.

The idea being go back and hunt some dinosaurs, bring the trophies home with you, the most you'll be changing is the chemical composition of a few ounces of oil...

OR., don't worry you'll prevent the human race happening, because you stepped on the one small proto-rodent from which we all developed. There isn't just one. We will still evolve, just from a different rat...

Note that in fiction, you can't go back and save your girlfriend or your parents with the time machine, because you built it after they died. If they don't die, you don't build the time machine....

and, if you don't build the time machine, the most you can do about your parents dying is...grow up and become the Batman......

Want to make a change that starts with a gun design, convince the Crown to fully adopt the Fergeson breechloading flintlock.

[mehavey]

>...go back and hunt some dinosaurs, bring the trophies home with you,
> the most you'll be changing is the chemical composition of a few ounces
> of oil...
>
> OR., don't worry you'll prevent the human race happening, because you
> stepped on the one small proto-rodent from which we all developed.

Beware... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

[44 AMP]

Nothing to beware of. Its a theory, and while they have built complex math models to explain how it COULD work, there is no proof that the assumption that random minor things have a determining effect of larger complex actions DOES work.

Set your parameters wide enough, you can co-relate anything in our physical universe. But some degree of co-relation is NOT the same things as causation. Your wife didn't romantically snuggle with you last Tuesday because a month ago some guy in a bar in Hoboken ordered a Miller instead of a Budweiser.

They call it CHAOS THEORY for a reason.
Two reasons, actually...

[mehavey]

Somehow.... I just can't get the Archduke Ferdinand out of my worry box.

[DaleA]

Somehow.... I just can't get the Archduke Ferdinand out of my worry box.

I remember hearing about a British publication back in the 1920's that ran a contest where people made up fake headlines and the winner was:

"Archduke Ferdinand Found Alive! World War One a Mistake!"

[mehavey]

^^^ ^^^


postscript:
WW-I --> Fall of the Tsar --> rise of Lenin --> Treaty of Versailles --> German Econ Collapse
--> rise of Hitler --> WW-II --> 85 million Dead --> Atom Bomb

no need to play what-if...
all because of the murder of a single backwoods minor 2-bit tuberculer decaying aristocrat

[44 AMP]

all because of the murder of a single backwoods minor 2-bit tuberculer decaying aristocrat

I'd say there is just a BIT MORE to it than that.

[nuchie11]

Yeah, you can't really summarize history like that since there are multiple things happening at the same time. For example, you could try stopping Hitler, but then Stalin might have some new plans. So you see what I’m saying? There was never just a single thread but multiple ones. You would need to be everywhere all the time. Not even with a time machine would you be able to change anything

[mehavey]

All op sit came as direct result of the latter.

Break ONE element in the chain and you have a dramatically different
starting sequence "most likely" then moving in a different direction

[44 AMP]

The old saying is "you cannot step in the same river, twice."

This means no matter what you do, something changes.

And, the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle applies.

Also, there is this...

Not even with a time machine would you be able to change anything

Most certainly, with a time machine, you can change things. However, YOU are going to be the only one who knows anything changed.

Alternate timeline, or alternate dimension, does it matter, only you (the traveler) will know there is anything changed or different.

[mehavey]

Everyone's always doing "something" that affects the universal reality moving forward.
"Universal" means for everyone -- unless you live in California.

There -- Gödel might intimate -- time (and everything else) is an illusion anyway.

[DaleA]

And, the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle applies.

One of the funnier (IMhO) plaques I've seen for the BnB crowd was:

"Heisenberg may have slept here."