[SCRAPPED] The Conventional Weapons Testing Act

[Defwa]

Sounds to me like you want to author a ban on murder.
That will fill up a lot of the holes you're looking at in this proposal.

[Labrellus]

Sounds to me like you want to author a ban on murder.
That will fill up a lot of the holes you're looking at in this proposal.

No, I wasn't specifically targeting murder, but if you think something along those lines should be added I can add it. I just felt that along the lines of what I am getting at I am just instituting a standard that forces Nations and PMC's to follow rules regarding testing weapons.

[Wrapper]

OOC: Okay, Gruen, shame on me for posting a knee-jerk reaction before reading the whole thread, and missing that link. **shudder** On the other hand it actually does reinforce my point about this being too specific, as they did more than just test conventional weapons.

Still OOC: Labrellus, open your mind a bit here and I shall do the same. If you could ban human weapon testing and at the same time ban other types of lethal testing, such as the two off-the-cuff examples I gave, why wouldn't you go that route? The preamble of the Wiki article uses the phrase "lethal human experimentation" -- that would cover it all, and would certainly be worthy of our attention. But, ummm, don't use the word "human", before Bears Armed, Potted Plants, et al, have simultaneous conniptions.

[Labrellus]

OOC: Okay, Gruen, shame on me for posting a knee-jerk reaction before reading the whole thread, and missing that link. **shudder** On the other hand it actually does reinforce my point about this being too specific, as they did more than just test conventional weapons.

Still OOC: Labrellus, open your mind a bit here and I shall do the same. If you could ban human weapon testing and at the same time ban other types of lethal testing, such as the two off-the-cuff examples I gave, why wouldn't you go that route? The preamble of the Wiki article uses the phrase "lethal human experimentation" -- that would cover it all, and would certainly be worthy of our attention. But, ummm, don't use the word "human", before Bears Armed, Potted Plants, et al, have simultaneous conniptions.

OOC: Should we change this to a lethal human experimentation bill? Because that actually sounds a lot better. Or do you feel that we should scrap the idea entirely?

[Normlpeople]

"You have literally pretty just replaced "conventional weapon" in place of "drug", and using the same text. The idea itself is ludicrous, as such a test would fall afoul of domestic laws in every civilized nation. This needs scrapping now, before you end up further embarrassing yourself."

[Bears Armed]

REALIZES that PMC's (Private Military Corporations)and Nations will test these weapons on unwilling victims without their knowledge for the sake of cutting costs.

OOC; Not in any country (or workng for any country) with a sane & effective government, they won't... and not if their leadership is reasonably principled (which some may well be) or concerned about good PR, neither. Seems to me that you're giving prejudice against the idea of PMCs (because of some RL matters?) too strong a voice here. I'd be a LOT more worried about despotic governments doing so, and even in that case I'd only say "might" rather than "will".
(Anyhows, how often do PMCs actually research weapons for themselves instead of just using ones that were developed & tested for governments?)

[Sierra Lyricalia]

REALIZES that PMC's (Private Military Corporations)and Nations will test these weapons on unwilling victims without their knowledge for the sake of cutting costs.

OOC; Not in any country (or workng for any country) with a sane & effective government, they won't... and not if their leadership is reasonably principled (which some may well be) or concerned about good PR, neither. Seems to me that you're giving prejudice against the idea of PMCs (because of some RL matters?) too strong a voice here. I'd be a LOT more worried about despotic governments doing so, and even in that case I'd only say "might" rather than "will".
(Anyhows, how often do PMCs actually research weapons for themselves instead of just using ones that were developed & tested for governments?)

OOC: On this point, it helps to actually put yourself in the position of what it is you're trying to outlaw to make sure there's actually a problem (and in this case having watched at least a season's worth of MythBusters helps too ). So let's say I'm the head of R&D at some great big soulless defense contractor. If I try to come up with a test program for this newfangled weapon I'm trying to perfect, I find it's just cheaper to set up a bunch of dummies with g-force patches and paint balloons, than to:

1. round up enough homeless people or other derelicts to make a useful test without anyone noticing;
2. make sure you have facilities to freeze their corpses while waiting for
3. a whole lot of autopsies to be done, by doctors who have to be
4. paid enough to keep them quiet since no boilerplate non-disclosure agreement in all of history is going to hold up in court if this is what they're disclosing;
5. everyone else working on this has to be paid off as well, even if you staff the program with an abnormally large number of psychopaths and sociopaths;
6. and if there's any kind of malfunction or accident, the families of your workers have to be lied to and well-compensated so they don't start asking too many questions;
7. and here's the kicker: barring #6, that's all for one test. Each successive test increases the costs of 4 and 5 logarithmically, but increases the costs of the first three exponentially.

Even governments have a limit as to their patience for cost overruns. So if any entity in any WA nation actually conducts weapons tests on this basis, it's not within the WA's competence or remit to deal with. We don't make laws targeting supervillains or other totally irrational obsessives.

All that said -- and as previous posters have pointed out, the WA already covers cases like the CIA's MKULTRA human experiments -- I think there might be some room for legislation on weapons testing; for IRL inspiration as to what these issues actually are, you could look at the criticisms leveled against the U.S. Navy's activities on Vieques, Puerto Rico. There are other examples, though none so widely known I think (except of course for nuclear test sites, which aren't what you're going after).

Lastly, when changing the target and effect of a resolution so dramatically, it's considered preferable to start a completely new thread and mark the old one as abandoned or kaput.

Best of luck.