o0o0Jack_Burton0o0o

Right.

March 13, 1996 Dunblane, Scotland

16 children and one teacher killed at Dunblane Primary School by Thomas Hamilton, who then killed himself. 10 others wounded in attack.

March 1997 Sanaa, Yemen

Eight people (six students and two others) at two schools killed by Mohammad Ahman al-Naziri.

March 2000 Branneburg, Germany

One teacher killed by a 15-year-old student, who then shot himself. The shooter has been in a coma ever since.

Jan. 18, 2001 Jan, Sweden

One student killed by two boys, ages 17 and 19.

Feb. 19, 2002 Freising, Germany

Two killed in Eching by a man at the factory from which he had been fired; he then traveled to Freising and killed the headmaster of the technical school from which he had been expelled. He also wounded another teacher before killing himself.

April 26, 2002 Erfurt, Germany

13 teachers, two students, and one policeman killed, ten wounded by Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, at the Johann Gutenberg secondary school. Steinhaeuser then killed himself.

April 29, 2002 Vlasenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina

One teacher killed, one wounded by Dragoslav Petkovic, 17, who then killed himself.

Sept. 28, 2004 Carmen de Patagones, ArgentinaThree students killed and 6 wounded by a 15-year-old Argentininan student in a town 620 miles south of Buenos Aires.

Sept. 13, 2006 Montreal, CanadaKimveer Gill, 25, opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon at Dawson College. Anastasia De Sousa, 18, died and more than a dozen students and faculty were wounded before Gill killed himself.

Nov. 7, 2007 Tuusula, FinlandAn 18-year-old student in southern Finland shot and killed five boys, two girls, and the female principal at Jokela High School. At least 10 others were injured. The gunman shot himself and died from his wounds in the hospital.

on and on and on. None of them used rifles by the way.

I consider it a box cutter that can be used to assault passengers and crew on a plane that can then be flown into a building killing thousands of people instantly. Strange how an abstract word with no real meaning can be interpreted so differently between multiple people. Perhaps that is why it is used so often in political speak to demonize things politicians don't like or understand.

In case you missed the entire point of my reply, it cannot be more or less of an assault weapon because the term "assault weapon" has no meaning or bearing on any firearm and is strictly political propaganda. Any firearm can be used to assault someone. In fact, so can most inanimate objects in the world. Shall we label them all as assault weapons? While this attempt at repeating myself is probably in vein I do hope You now understand the absurdity of your prior statement.

Yeah, With gun related homicide down 49% since it's peak in 1993 and gun ownership at an all time high with 41 states now having concealed carry laws, we must be nutjobs. Ironically so many people allow the media to drive their perception of reality that the vast majority like yourself falsely believe that gun homicide and violence has increased.

In fact Despite national attention to the issue of firearm violence, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, today 56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.

Keep up the crusade, you sane and level headed individual.

No truer words have been written. The level of ignorance displayed by many in this thread is saddening. If you were to ask any of these dunces what an assault rifle is they couldn't tell you. They have no clue that it is just a political buzz word that is effectively used to successfully manipulate their ignorance.

What separates the two weapons you described is purely cosmetic. The AR 15 has a pistol grip and the Mini 14 does not. There is zero difference in the lethality or functionality of either firearm. Yet these fools think they would achieve something by banning an ergonomic preference of some gun owners.

Also, for the record, all you nitwits in this thread that think the NRA is run by gun manufacturers have no idea as to what you are talking about. 97% of the NRA's funding comes from it's members dues and private donations that are not tax deductible. The gun laws failed because they would not have stopped the sandy hook shooting or kept mad men from their madness which is the true cause of that tragedy. The people of the red states would have thrown out their representatives had they voted for the new gun laws as was proven by the five democrats from red states that voted against it.

Semiautomatic rifles account for less than two percent of gun crimes and yet receive nearly 100% of the attention. ASSAULT! sure does get the liberal juices flowing. While were at it, the only way to stop rape would be to cut off all men's genitals. It doesn't really matter if the vast majority of men don't rape women or that there is more than one legitimate use for their genitals. We all know that the solution is to label them assault genitals and ban them.

@warrenebb: A very good point. Nintendo's focus is on controller gimmicks or what they would call disruptive interaction. That decision also leaves their hardware in a previous generation.

What is the motive for a developer to port their game to the Wii U? They would have to take a hatchet to the game code and cripple the software on the difference in ram alone.

Not exactly what entices developers and leaves little to no chance that they will make the Wii U a lead platform porting to the other consoles.

That means if they are going to make games for the Wii U they will most likely be exclusives and Nintendo does not drop money hats for devs to make exclusives.

So the Wii U ends up like the Wii, GC and N64. A Nintendo exclusive console that like the Wii is drastically under powered compared to the competition.

Even for die hard Nintendo fans that is a daunting proposition. How many Zelda games do you get to play in a generation? If your lucky two. How many 3D Mario or Luigi games do you get to play in a generation? If your lucky two. How many Mario Cart, Pikmin or Metroid games do you get to play in a generation? Again two if your lucky.

What then will a Nintendo fan be playing for the majority of the Wii U's existence? Nintendo Land?

@prestonhedges: What was the Wii's attach rate? The true measure of a huge success. Then it dropped like a stone in water, a failed model, an under powered Nintendo box that didn't sell anywhere near the software or receive the third party success they had hoped. Also, the 3DS is under performing and facing stiff casual competition.

It is a surreal conversation. The answer must be 7 year old hardware with a limited use tablet controller. So confident has Nintendo become in the great games and all that the Wii U has to offer that they will for the first time give their competitors free reign to dominate E3.

Surreal indeed.

Hindsight that would have worked for three generations and an upcoming fourth? I also said equivalent, not ridiculously over engineered difficult to program for PS3 like hardware. Though, because they got the formula right the PS3 was ultimately a success. Perhaps it should be called foresight when it was predicted and predictable.

Hubris indeed, the belief that they could ultimately thrive without the core. A belief that was founded in an alternative revenue source known as the handheld market. The Game cube was a good piece of hardware and failed miserably because it was not given the financial support required to achieve success, Iwata admitted as much in his explanation of the 3DS price cut. They were making money hand over fist with their handhelds and decided the core was not worth the expense.

Then came the Wii strategy that was again predicated entirely on their handheld success. Take no financial risk on the core, claim that HD gaming is not worth pursuing because of diminishing returns. A complete and absurd lie. An HD Wii would have required a financial risk to give the core what they wanted and the core was again cast aside with a very poor lie. The Wii was created to capture the casual gamer and it did for a time, but in time, HD consoles with motion controls proved they were able to take and hold the casual and core gamers. The Wii began to die and the HD consoles anchored by the core, thrived.

Now the great handheld revenue stream that enabled them to abandon the core is faltering. The handheld market radically and rapidly changing with smartphones. Nintendo, has made another terrible decision with the Wii U. Not only have they shown their blatant hypocrisy by tepidly stepping into the HD gaming market of diminishing returns but also by wasting a great deal of capital creating and including a controller with a screen that no one needed or wanted.

Many including myself have wondered how on this earth Nintendo believed that releasing a console having the equivalent of 7 year old hardware at the time of launch with a severely limited tablet controller would be a success. We were right, it is not.

The formula is simple, so simple that Nintendo cannot figure it out. Create a console that is the hardware equivalent of your competitors, gain parity with third party software and maintain your fan base with first party software as always. Sadly, such simple and obvious advice has perhaps been ignored for the last time.