Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 October 5

= October 5 =

What is this thing?
Uploader has a local name for the bug. Claims a local discovered it. What is it? Magog the Ogre (t • c) 01:31, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's a caterpillar. Someone would probably need a location to get more precise than that.-- Jayron 32 01:34, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The file description page on commons has some clues, including a precise location in Kenya. Jahoe (talk) 09:17, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Description says it's a centipede, but it looks suspiciously similar to a Saturniid moth larva to me O_o Dr Dima (talk) 20:07, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * It is certainly not a centipede. μηδείς (talk) 23:51, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Looks to me like a caterpillar which is starting the process of forming a chrysalis. That part near the bottom appears to be the start of this stage.  Here's another species at about the same stage in chrysalis formation (the one on the left): . StuRat (talk) 05:27, 7 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Slug moth caterpillars (family Limacodidae) look similar, but I'm not finding an exact match at Commons or even Google images.--Wikimedes (talk) 19:27, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Slide-fire adapter
In the reports and commentary about the latest (at time of writing) American celebration of the Second Amendment mass-murder there are many mentons of bump stocks and slide-fire adapters. Bump stock is a redirect to an article which has some information about them (as well as lots of hints for anyone wishing to murder lots of people). We do not appear to have anything about slide-fire adapters. What are they? DuncanHill (talk) 21:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * More or less the same thing. "Slidefire" (the company) are one of the main makers of bump stocks.
 * One difference, in historical terminology, is that a bump stock requires a semi-automatic (self-loading) weapon. A "slide fire" technique was originally applied to manually-loaded weapons, particularly pump-action shotguns, with a poorly-designed, faulty or modified trigger disconnector. Holding the trigger down on these and racking them (working the loading slide) they would fire the trigger mechanism as soon as the breech went back into battery. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:58, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 22:18, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * The shotguns are also sometimes called slam fire. Here is a video that compares how fast you can fire the two types: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-csrQ_VP5Y --Guy Macon (talk) 22:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Off-topic: I find the little jabs in your question a bit insulting to a lot of people, especially when you say you really have no clue about what you're talking about. Please refrain from the superfluous comments in the future. Justin15w (talk) 14:40, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Has anyone seen any other notable uses of bump stocks this week? I think defensive gun use claimed there were something like 33 million of them. Jimbo forfend that we would offend anyone using one! Andy Dingley (talk) 14:57, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * One doesn't need to have an extensive technical knowledge of firearms to have a valid opinion about mass murder and its enablers. DuncanHill (talk) 15:21, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

I think slamfire is the most relevant article here. By the way, can you source a number of bump stocks in circulation? It strikes me that a potential way to numerically establish thresholds regarding "advanced" weapons is to take the number of innocent casualties (i.e. not suicides, not the shooter, but including any other 'incidents' we may have missed...) and divide by the bump stock * years to get some kind of threat evaluation, which then can be compared to figures like here for other phenomena (a 1/625 crash rate per 10 miles drunk driving, though we still have to do some heavy philosophy to decide if a per-year comparison is relevant. If we're going to argue about gun control on the science desk at least let's do it with some kind of numbers and theory.  (There is a pro version of this at  but I have to discard it because their cost is based on lost wages, i.e. if someone invents a gun that can only shoot the poor that would be considered OK, but one that shoots the rich is not; note it is certainly possible to invent that sort of gun with facial recognition and a no-shoot list. I think a simple per-life number, presuming wounds are proportional, is far more productive) Wnt (talk) 05:48, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Some of us are making comments like "mass murder and its enablers" which aren't helpful to the OP's question "What are they (Slide Fire stocks)?" Please stop that.
 * The GunsAmerica blog actually reviews a Slide Fire stock in this article, and halfway through describes other bump stocks found to be illegal by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE). It's a WP:BIASED source on the politics of bump stocks, but reliable on the OP's question "What are they (Slide Fire stocks)?".
 * Even the question of bump stocks' legality is tangential to the OP's question, but I'll try to walk through it quickly: In the US possession of most firearms is protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. In other words, it's a civil right which has been upheld in recent years by two landmark rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States.  The Supreme Court has, while affirming a base right to keep and bear arms, defined areas in which local, state and Federal lawmakers may act Constitutionally to protect the nation from abuse of weapons deemed suitable only for the military's monopoly of extreme armed force, and only overturned laws banning or unduly restricting all possession of firearms, regardless of their civilian or military nature.
 * Bump stocks permit a Semiautomatic firearm to fire more than once, rapidly, by pulling the weapon's trigger more than once for one pull of the trigger by the user's finger. The question before the United States Congress is whether this circumvents existing Federal and state laws allowing only specially cleared and registered citizens of the United States who have gained BATFE's permission to own Fully-automatic firearms, which are made to fire more than once with just one pull of the weapon's trigger.  Only after a prototype of the Slide Fire was submitted to the BATFE for approval was it marketed.  This year's Congress is considering whether to enact laws specifically regulating or prohibiting all bump stocks. loupgarous (talk) 09:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * As the OP I don't think my comments - in response to criticism of me - were unhelpful to my original question. DuncanHill (talk) 19:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * See WP:SOAPBOX, then. We're a reference desk, not a debating society or a political party. loupgarous (talk) 01:14, 25 December 2017 (UTC)