The right to bear arms?

victoriatangoman wrote:
(...)
> What are the unique circumstances of a Habitat that would make the
> above proposition less likely to occur?
(...)

The first thing that come to my mind was a "problem" outlined in Babylon
5: people wouldn't use guns inside a space station because it could
puncture the pressure hull and kill everyone; instead they used plasma
guns that were supposed to just burn people, instead of making holes in
them.

But of course in real space habitats the "problem" will likely be
non-existant for two reasons:

- The habitat is likely to be involved by a thick passive radiation
shielding, and guns wouldn't be able to puncture that.
- Even if you have, for instance, a non-rotating shield and a thin
pressure hull surrounded by vacuum, given the size of a habitat a bullet
hole would not produce a catastrophic decompression; indeed it could
take weeks for some perceptible change in pressure occur, and at that
time the hole would have been patched in a (hopefully) trivial
maintenance operation. (On the other hand, it is better to *prevent*
hull punctures than to remedy ones...)

So, I can't see the "Babylon 5 problem" as something that serious. On
the other hand, here are other gun-related problems that I think to be
more realistic:

- Shooting to the "sky" would not be a safe option, because you could
hurt people in the other side of the habitat (depending on the
design/radius).
- Precise aiming is likely to be very difficult because of Coriolis and
other pseudo forces.

Ok, using guns in a habitat is increasingly looking a bad idea. Perhaps
those plasma guns are not that bad after all. Or, if plasma/ray guns are
not viable for some reason, we can always use swords, axes, hammers and
other charming medieval weapons. :-)

Lucio Coelho