Word: weaponeering
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...natural disaster, the devastating Kobe earthquake, was assailed by the most synthetic of catastrophes: a poison created by man, and a madness that was strictly human. In what could only have been a carefully coordinated, painstakingly planned atrocity, an apparently diluted form of a nerve gas called sarin, a weapon of mass killing originally concocted by the Nazis, was placed simultaneously in five subway cars at morning rush hour, killing 10 victims and sickening thousands more...
...money came at a particularly sensitive moment. Kagan had alienated many faculty members through his speeches about excessive liberalism and with his support of faculty cutbacks. "The donation was seen as a weapon in the hands of someone who had an autocratic style as dean," says Comparative Literature professor Michael Holquist, who, along with Comp Lit chairman Peter Brooks, was one of the earliest and most open critics of the Bass-funded program. The problem was that "the money was being given to support Kagan," says Holquist. "In the academy, it's always a clash of egos." Even those...
Nomenclature can obscure the magnitude of this change. When people talk of allowing concealed weapons, there is a tendency to imagine legions of citizens who had previously carried their Smith & Wessons on their hips gratefully slipping them into a coat pocket. But since half the states flatly ban carrying an exposed weapon (and the practice attracts unwanted attention everywhere), restrictions on concealment are effectively restrictions on almost any carrying of handguns outside the home. As the states change their CCW laws, citizens may have to endure background checks and waiting periods to procure their handguns, but most will also...
...jump-started it was an article by Wilson in the New York Times. The influential criminologist cited trials in Indianapolis and Kansas City that suggested that violent crime can be cut drastically through campaigns to locate and confiscate illegal guns. But the Fourth Amendment prohibits frisking someone for illegal weapons without a reasonable suspicion that he or she is armed and dangerous. Wilson mused that if technology could pinpoint a concealed weapon at a distance without an invasive search, it might justify subsequent frisks and confiscations, and "our streets can be made safer even without sending many more people...
...projects that will now be receiving funding apply different methods toward the same goal. One measures distortions caused by weapons in the natural electromagnetic waves generated by the human body. A second produces its own pulse and, radarlike, measures its reflection. A third tracks disturbances in the earth's magnetic field when a weapon passes through it. Projected applications include a monitor and a built-in computer that could identify gun makes and types...