U.S. Virgin Islands seizing guns, ammo in anticipation of Irma

They always use some excuse of national emergency like this. Consider it a test run for the rest of the country.

formatting link

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred
Loading thread data ...

A gun seizure that affects almost entirely black people would leave most NRA members paralyzed with indecision

Reply to
bitrex

The racial makeup of the U.S. Virgin Islands was:[62]

Black or Afro-Caribbean: 76.0% (66.1% Non-Hispanic Black) White: 15.7% (13.5% Non-Hispanic Whites) Asian: 1.4% Mixed: 2.1% Other: 4.5% Hispanic or Latino of any race: 17.4% (10.3% Puerto Rican, 5.4% Dominican)

formatting link

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

OMG guys, it's happening! Government is seizing the guns! Rise up! Rise up! Time to storm Washington armed to the teeth!

Wait, Virgin Islands you say?

Ok, just send the mildly-worded letter of protest

Reply to
bitrex

Funny how you've got your stereotypes backwards.

The concept of gun restriction in the United States didn't even exist until after the Civil War, when Democrats didn't want newly-freed black people to be able to protect themselves (e.g., from the Klan).

And it's still Democrats in cities with dense black populations that want to disarm those same people today--Democrats not trusting their fellow (lesser, apparently) Democrats.

When I was a kid you could still go buy your .22 rifle at the hardware store, or from the Sears catalog through the mail. It didn't seem to be a problem.

If you're going to spam s.e.d. and smear people, you might as well have your facts straight.

Cheers, James Arthur

(lifetime NRA member - my dad, a physician, bought it for me when I was 12)

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Yeah, a .22 is great for shooting pecans out of trees.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
John Larkin

Democrats today want gun laws that are somewhat on par with the gun laws of every other first world nation in the developed world. And the NRA has always been pro gun-control when it suits the white nationalist agenda. Ronald Reagan and the NRA couldn't leap at the opportunity fast enough to support the Mulford Act in California when they realized the Black Panthers were arming themselves.

Weird how you think that Democrat's motivations for wanting gun control must be exactly the same as the NRA's and Reagan's motivation for it back in the late 1960s - omg, those violent black people, like that's the only reason it could possibly be. Nah, that was the _right's_ motivation.

In any case, for the most part right never brings up or acknowledges black people in any context other than to make absurd accusations of racism against Democrats (based on what the party was 150 years ago or something, like that's relevant) other than that they couldn't care less. Just one more tool in the arsenal - it's absurd to give accusations of hypocrisy any credence when it comes from the masters in the field.

Personally I find it astounding that people have to go through such convolutions of logic in what seems basically like an attempt to intellectually rationalize homophily, which is more or less a psychological/biological preference not much different than liking spaghetti over pizza. It must be continually exhausting.

Heh, please. In the rogues gallery of s.e.d. habitual off-topic posters I'm not even in the top 20.

Reply to
bitrex

Hi James, OK I've been meaning to ask this OT question here on SED. It's about guns. (I was refraining 'cause of all the other 'noise'.)

I don't want to take anyone's guns away. However I like this idea from Jim Wright. (mostly a liberal)

formatting link

Kind of a long read. Basically more responsibility if you are a gun owner.

I wondered what you (and others) here thought. Thanks, George H.

Reply to
George Herold

As soon as "liberals" agree to follow the Constitution. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jim Thompson

I think your author says it himself--more laws won't "fix" gun violence. He goes on to suggest exactly that--more laws to "fix" gun violence. But it won't work. He acknowledges that criminals aren't much deterred by laws, and law-abiding people don't need to be deterred.

"If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time." --Shimon Peres

I don't think you can legislate responsibility and courtesy. At some point we have to trust each other to do the right thing in a free society. And we punish the ones who don't do the right thing, according to law.

But most particularly, your guy is solving the wrong "problem." The problem being solved is "how do we ensure a safe, stable country for generations to come?"

If you look at history, governments go bad not rarely, but often. Often. I've seen it. I witnessed a coup d'etat in Asia. I've been where countries had turned on their citizens in Africa, South America, and all over Europe.

In the last hundred years, six times as many people have been killed by their governments, than have been killed in war. (Google "democide.")

From Wiki: "According to Rummel, 'The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom.' Rummel concludes that 'concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.'

This is stuff that the Founders of our country saw in history before them, and gave us protections to prevent, to give us a stable, safe, lasting, prosperous country.

Freedom isn't perfect. It isn't free. But it's the best thing--the best form of government--that's ever been on this little blue marble.

I once asked my dad if chlorine in the water caused cancer. He said "Yes," a few ppm, but the alternative was losing orders of magnitude more people (and at young ages) to epidemics and water-born disease.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Don't forget the ban on "Saturday Night Specials". The point of which was to make handguns too expensive for the poor (blacks).

Facts? Leftys don't need no steenkin' facts!

Reply to
krw

it a test run for the rest of the country.

t

il

to

The original Klan seems to have been Democrat-affiliated - though the Democ rats back then don't have much in common with today's Democrat, and more th an than the progressive Republicans who got rid of slavery and set up the S herman Anti-Trust Act don't seem to have much to do with today's inequality

-maximising Republicans.

Guns kill people - mostly the people that own them, by their own hand. It's not a matter of trust, but of public health (which James Arthur isn't that fond of either).

ore,

em.

If you don't mind people getting killed in gun accidents. My uncle - like y our father - was a physician, but he started off in a country practice, and telling parents that their kid wasn't going to make it quite put him off g uns.

our

James Arthur never stops spamming s.e.d. and smearing people, and he's part icularly careful about keeping his fact straight, and leaving out all the f acts that don't fit his bizarre view of the world.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Most gun violence in the US isn't perpetrated by criminals during the commission of some other crime, it's mostly interpersonal/domestic conflict. i.e. some people get into an argument/beef and someone lights someone up.

Reply to
bitrex

At the end of the day open-carry isn't even much of a deterrent against crime. If an attacker is determined to get you then no problem they'll just get more guys. If it's just to act as a deterrent against random crime then that would've been easily solved by simply not going to areas where muggings and assaults happen with regularity. It's not like those places are mysterious.

If it's just to be regarded as a bad-ass who feels like a gun will provide the final word in any argument or dispute so they never have to humble themselves by ejecting from a conflict then it means the person is on an ego trip, and there's a solid argument that flaunting weaponry intrinsically makes one a target of violence, not much different than walking around with diamonds around their neck, same as any other kind of flaunting/ego-driven behavior would.

Anyway this is Self Defense 101 kind of stuff

Reply to
bitrex

i.e. if laws and punishment don't deter hardened criminals at all, and criminals also have firearms, walking around with a gun as a "deterrent" is pretty much just telegraphing that "squeeze first, ask questions last" is the only appropriate tactic to take when committing a crime against that person.

Reply to
bitrex

OK, never mind then. (I think we are starting from very different places.) But thanks for at least reading. George H.

Reply to
George Herold

When I was a kid, I had a Daisy BB rifle I used to shoot walnuts out of a tree. If I hit the walnut and it fell to the ground, I could recover the BB inside and put it back in the rifle.to shoot another walnut. But one day I saw a little sparrow bird sitting on the roof and I shot at it several times until it finally flew away and crashed to the ground and died. I still feel guilty today. .

Reply to
billbowden

Gee George, I read the article you asked me to, gave you my reaction, gave detailed explanation, then went beyond this myopic mental box to focus on the big picture--keeping America stable and safe from genocides, tyrants and ruin--and all I get in return is "OK, never mind"?

What's your thinking on this subject you brought up, and why? If we're to pass firearm etiquette into law, isn't that just a pretext? Why not add a literacy test and a poll tax?

Aren't you saying, at bottom, you don't trust your fellow citizens, and you want a police state to reign (sic) them in?

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Well, I used to be a lefty, so I think maybe they do need to go a little deeper. Growing the government reduces freedom, for example, and reduces opportunity. Raising the minimum wage does the same, and cuts employment. Subsidizing people means they'll work less, and be willing and able to work for lower wages (depressing the prevailing wages). Pay single moms, and you'll get more single moms. Anything the government "gives" to one person it had to /take/ from someone else first. And so on.

Being left often means shooting from the hip--snide and snarky (picture Jon Stewart), but wrong. A common pitfall for smart people, who can tend to know everything (without thought or study).

Reagan nailed it when he said it's not that our liberal friends are ignorant, it's that they know so much that isn't so.

(E.g., that Marxist claptrap that Republicans are racist misogynists who love breathing air and drinking water they proudly polluted personally, rabies, and killing kittens, for the wealthy.)

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Just to drop some gas in an already worthless thread....

Think of the average person. Then consider: half of the people out there are dumber than that.

Basic gun safety statistics are about three sigma.

That is, annually, someone is killed by a gun (by its owner, or someone in their family, or a criminal, whatever), about as often as UPS crushes your packages, or a restaurant botches your order.

If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, I don't know what else to say.

About regulations: there is no slippery slope, and there is no straw man. Many other things are regulated far more strictly, and those regulations work magnificently: take flight for instance. Airliners are _deep into six sigma territory_ on deaths per flight. That's a dumbfoundingly astonishing accomplishment.

Is there even anything else, that's mostly operated by humans, that's anywhere near as repeatable?

No, there is no reasonable excuse for such a shitty rate. The strongest objection is only ever: "muh guns!". That fear mongering, that right-wing outlets promulgate ever so effectively.

But they're wrong. You'll get to keep your guns.

Because you're a responsible person.

Aren't you?

Or do you _know_ that you're an irresponsible person, and will lose your guns? I must say, you won't garner much sympathy that way...

But this is nonsense. I mean, guns are /banned/ in places. Right?

Nope. There are gun owners in Germany. There are gun owners in Australia. There are even a few in Japan. (Though, perhaps, so few that they don't even publish a number? -- I can't find one!)

How does that work? Simple: to qualify, you need to meet several simple, basic, reasonable rules for owning, caring for, storing, and using a gun.

It's not a clusterfuck of inconsistent rules. There's no FUD about how one must qualify. It's spelled out clean and simple. Can it be gamed? Probably. Is a common criminal going to bother with it? No. And there goes 99% of your trouble, right there.

Granted, those three countries are rather extreme examples compared to the US, but it's far from impossible. And if you're a responsible gun owner, you'll easily meet those qualifications. Maybe you need to pick up a few locks, that you meant to buy anyway. Because you're a responsible gun owner anyway. Right?

If any kind of gun control ever does manage to pass in this country, it will be incremental, adding only very basic rules. Like actually having background checks ran, not just waving people through. No, you're not going to lose your guns.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Tim Williams

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.