There’s a submarine comedy called Down Periscope from the 90s. The story is, of course, absolute ridiculousness (albeit highly entertaining ridiculousness).

I’ve repeatedly been told by navy veterans, however, that it comes closest to portraying actual life in the navy - in particular, that virtually every character in the film is someone you can actually encounter in the navy.

“But you just like… screw stuff together, right? Cut the basic materials to make the parts, put it together, box it up, ship it out, right?”

• Someone I legitimately spoke to once. We were talking about assembling TVs.

I find that people who’ve never assembled anything more complex than Ikea furniture or something more technical than changed a pipe or switch in their home, tend to think production exists in exactly two levels: Low-tech, hand-tools-at-most labor which can be easily spun up because “anyone can do it”, and ultra-high-tech stuff like computer chips which need highly specialized factories, but where a few factories can mostly satisfy nationwide demand.

Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, Low (gear). The 5 “standard” positions the standard automatic gearshift levers could be set to. Versus the weird stuff like dials or push-buttons that are incredibly hard to operate by muscle-memory if you aren’t looking right at them.

Similarly, the Great Pyramid of Khafre (the tallest of the 3 greats at Giza) was once clad in a smooth exterior. The outermost cladding was taken by locals needing stone over the years, leaving only its peak still holding the original cladding.

Worked briefly in the waste management industry. Guns in the garbage were rare, but a problem. Policy was to call the local police to wherever they were found and turn them over. Police would take perfunctory statements from facility staff and review camera footage to verify someone hadn’t dumped it and claimed it “found”, then take the gun.

The real problem is we weren’t supposed to touch it until police showed up, so the garbage just had to kind of sit there waiting for them.

Everyone’s telling you why “It doesn’t happen”. They’re not objectively wrong in their answers of how resilient firearms can be, but they’re also not answering the question.

The ultimate answer for a lot is “broken down and recycled”. How do they get there, though?

• A lot come through “buyback” programs, where guns can be turned over to authorities for some nominal reward. These tend to harvest a lot of inoperable weapons, frequently from people who had one but didn’t know how to otherwise get rid of them.

• In states with more lax firearm laws, scrap dealers may accept repairable weapons as scrap metal. In more stringent states, they may only accept them if you’ve destroy the weapon as /u/SolOrion@sh.itjust.works outlined in the ATF poster.

• Even in states with strict firearm laws, guns can frequently be turned over to authorities without charges. (CAUTION: Read guides on how to do this, and consult your local laws and policies before treating this as truth. Better yet, consult a legal professional.)

• In some rare cases, a gun dealer may accept the gun, strip it of useful spare parts, and sell them independently.

At this point, the gun will be deliberately damaged to render it nonfunctional (if it isn’t already) and sent to a scrap metal handler. Metal components will be melted down and reused. Plastic or wood components may be recycled or thrown away.

Bows are actually incredibly hard to use. When you see a “draw weight” of the bow, this is the force you need to exert to pull it back to its full draw. 40-50lbs is considered normal, I believe, while the English Longbow - famous for its use in the Hundred Years’ War - had a draw weigh of at least 80 pounds, with some scholars suggesting even 50% greater numbers than that. Imagine lifting a weight that heavy each time you wanted to loose an arrow!

Bows, then, require extended training to use properly. Not just strength training, although professional archers were jacked, but in how to properly employ the weapon. The dominance of early firearms had much to do with not just their absolute performance - at times, they were actually outperformed by bows in absolute terms - but by that their effective use could be broken down into simple actions which could be easily drilled into new recruits.

If we’re talking about modern guns, this effect is much exaggerated. Guns can take some getting use to, sure, and modern bows have added features for ease of use. But guns are, honestly, shockingly easy to use for what they can accomplish.

On the G502, the first button directly beneath the scroll wheel should lock and unlock its free-spinning mode.