Why is that useful? Who is able to shoot at a train without being able to either board it or spawncamp a station?

Are cars and buses tested against that standard? (Certainly bikes, ferries, streetcars, and pedestrians are not required to pass this test.)

As someone who grew up in the Deep South, I'm inclined to think it's useful for exactly what it's tested for. (At least, once upon a time.)

I'm reminded of a Usenet post I read in the '90s from an Army helicopter technician who expressed his frustration at ranchers shooting at the "black helicopters"; the technician spent too much of his time (i.e. > 0) patching the holes.

People take potshots at trains in the Midwest and West all the time. Bored teenagers with .22 rifles, mostly.

A bored teen in the Midwest with a .22 took out a window in my car.

Yet we don't require car windows to be able to withstand a .22.

Passenger trains?

If so, does this happen as often for highways? If not, why not?

No, not passenger trains. Freight trains.

Making that determination would require differentiation.

arrest them. simple. discharging a firearm at people.

How about just thinking about the problem blew for just one second. Were putting you in charge of arresting children pot shooting trains in the Midwest along about a hundred thousand miles of rural train track.

You need to come up with a system for reliably detecting hits on any part of any train (or they will aim for areas hard to detect), anywhere on a journey and immediately notifying nearby law enforcers to converge on the location before the miscreants can get away from the area. Oh, and the system has to be simple (a criterion you set for yourself), and has to be able to distinguish hits from gravel kicked up by other passing trans or the train itself.

I’m sure you worked all that out before posting and you think it’s obvious, but please enlighten those of us not as bright.

I’m against it of course, but realistically allowing children or anyone else to have unsupervised access to guns has a cost. It’s not a simple problem. It’s n the cite to if HN I’m against lazy posts that don’t add to the discussion.

> [...] allowing children [...] to have unsupervised access to guns has a cost. It’s not a simple problem.

Does everyone else feel like the quoted statement is a perfectly normal thing to say? I am asking because I sure do not. The world is full of complex problems with no simple answers, but this one, in my opinion, is not one of them.

Which answer are you referring to? I didn’t offer one. As it happens I’m for very restrictive gun laws, such as the ones in the UK where I live.

He sounds like a realist.

Anecdotally, people shoot 737 fuselages in transit by rail from Wichita, Kansas to the assembly plant in Renton, WA all the time. Boeing has a specific process for inspecting them when they arrive and patching them up. There's a lot of very rural railway in between the two locations.

Old interesting thread about this: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=276419

Maybe it's a good analog for things like debris or gravel being thrown by another passing train? Or rocks thrown from a bridge?

They can also continue to "up-armour" them with "ghetto grates".

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3411766 http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3411770

Plus the requirement that windows resist a 35 pound cinderblock hitting them at speed. And yes, that's needed.[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/projectile-problem-goe...